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Nintendo’s popular Wii system was the “it” electronic gift last year during the holiday season. This year, it’s just as hard to find a Wii and even pricier to buy if you can find one. Nintendo responds to the Wii shortage by saying it takes 5 months to increase its monthly production rate which is currently at 1.8 million per month to meet demand across the globe. That means, the shortage is likely to continue through the holiday season again this year.
Nintendo claims the shortage is not manufactured as one might wonder. While Nintendo claims a manufactured shortage is not good business, it does seem suspicious that the company did not ramp up production to meet demand for the Wii’s second Christmas appearance. Certainly the laws of supply and demand are working in Nintendo’s favor with customers clamoring to get their hands on a coveted Wii and dishing out the money to pay the inflated pricetags associated with it.
What do you think? Is the shortage simply too convenient? Is it a ploy to drive word-of-mouth marketing and an online buzz? What do you think of manufactured shortages? I don’t like them because in the end, the customer suffers by paying too much for an item. Is Nintendo guilty of massaging the supply numbers or poor planning?
The idea that nintendo used manufactured a shortage to drive sales is absurd. The fact of the matter is that people want to buy one, and can’t, thereby creating the “buzz” about a shortage. A video game console is not a beanie baby. People go out with the intention of buying the console and the intention of buying a game. The sales numbers alone comparing 360, PS3, and Wii numbers should be proof enough that manufacturing of a shortage could only hurt the Nintendo bottom line.
I suspect it is more likely that Nintendo feels their current production capabilities are going to be sufficient in the long run and they don’t want to spend extra money on infrastructure only to be running at 50% capacity a year from now.
There are 3 reasons for the shortage:
1) High Demand
2) Consumers buy more than one system (They limit to one per customer, but not one per family household and a whole family could go to a shop and buy one console each, which could total several consoles so they could resell them)
3) They have an uneven distribution of consoles. Cities that demand nintendo wiis don’t have them in stock and cities that are fully stocked with wiis have less demand.
I seen people comment on forums that their shops are full of wiis while other shops say they are still sold out.
It may be unexpected for the demand to be so high, but nintendo could at least use some brains and distribute more consoles to the higher demand areas and less to the lower demand areas instead of vise versa. This is why there are many resellers on ebay and craigslist charging $100+ over MSRP.
1581 days ago
[...] December, I wrote a post about the Nintendo Wii shortage asking if Brandcurve readers thought it was real or manufactured. Whether or not it was real, [...]
1608 days ago
[...] to take a look at the various trends in search terms throughout the course of 2007. For example, Nintendo’s Wii shortage certainly drove an online buzz for the product late in the year as people frantically searched to [...]
Purposeful for greed – standard operating procedure…
Pretty da**ed disgusting but we still buy it regardless – we, the consumer, have the power to change it but that will never happen.
I believe that the shortage is manufactured. Nintendo has so much to gain from a shortage. Most people (especially the younger target market) view a shortage as the next “hot” item. Similar to the Tickle Me Elmo craze, this is a great way to make a product more valuable and desirable in the eyes of consumers.
I think the Wii shortage is rather “convenient”. I luckily found a Wii last week just ‘wandering’ around in Wal-Mart when they were getting ready to stock the shelves with them. I just know it was because I was in the right place at the right time. I do however think that this was poor planning on the manufacturer’s part. If the supply=demand, then everyone’s happy and the comapny’s pockets are padded. Hopefully, they will learn from this lesson and get better prepared for next Christmas. That is, if the fascination with them lasts that long. Oh yeah, I got mine at Wal-mart for $249.99. That’s the going price.