More marketing stupidity

My readers know that I like boardgames - I mention Puerto Rico often enough. I used to be an avid role player as well - I went so far as to create my own rule and magic system for a game I ran for a number of years. With that in mind, it's just infuriating to watch the madness at Hasbro.

Here's a company that purchased Avalon Hill a few years ago. In the wake of that, they discontinued the vast majority of AH games. That purchase ticked off quite a few gamers I know - including me. It was also a stupid move. Hasbro was selling mass market family games. AH was selling niche strategy games. The cross-over between the two market segments was virtually nil, and yet - there they went, buying it up - and closing it down. That yielded them a bunch of bad word of mouth, and no real gain in sales. I'd love to ask the genius at Hasbro who came up with the idea just what they heck he was thinking. But it gets worse.

Hasbro also bought up Wizards of the Coast, which itself had bought TSR - makers of D&D. Wizards of the Coast had started putting up some nice game shops, which stocked a large selection of role playing games, and a large selection of strategy games. So what did Hasbro do?

• Stopped carrying any non-Wizards role playing games in the stores. Guess what - role playing gamers tend to buy lots of things from a variety of systems. All that move did was drive those buyers online, and back to the specialty stores
• Eliminated most of the strategy games, filling the stores with Hasbro mass market games

This last one has to be looked at specifically. My friends and I play a lot of strategy board games - we play at least once, sometimes twice a week. So we - and people like us - will regularly drop a good deal of money when we go to a game store and shop. Are we buying things like Cranium? Maybe, but are we buying it at Wizards? Heck no, we buy that sort of thing at Toys R Us, Target, and WalMart - just like everyone else. The target audience for mass market games was never going to walk into a Wizards store; the committed gamers were. That is, until they eliminated most of the games we buy. At that point, we started going to Funagain to buy what we were interested in.

The upshot of all this? Hasbro is closing down Wizards of the Coast retail stores. Now, why is that?

• First, they created bad word of mouth in their target market by
• Buying, then killing, Avalon Hill
• Buying, then castrating, Wizards of the Coast

is it really that big a surprise that it hasn't worked out? This sort of thing happens in all sectors - IT, retail, you name it. It happens when senior managers who don't understand market segmentation decide to expand their business through rapid buying. It continues when the same management is stunned at how badly it goes, and finishes when they end up closing down the thing they bought. I watched this at ParcPlace, where management bought and killed, VSE. I watched it with FAO Schwartz, where they bought, and have now killed, Zany Brainy. I'm seeing it again with Hasbro and their stupid purchases.

Seemingly, an awful lot of companies need a CSO - a Chief Slapping Officer. What would that person's job be? To slap the CEO every time he decides to buy a company...