Sex Sells?

Today I went for the IT SHOW 2006 which is form 9th-12th March at Suntec City Exhibition Centre Level 3, 4 & 6. Really a huge fair. It brings together the hottest technologies in computing and digital entertainment. There were (in no particular order) XBox360, Creative(which also opened it's world first concept stall at Marina Square yesterday), Fujitsu, Logitech, Nikon, BenQ, Altec Lansing, Sennheiser, Acer, HP, Dell, Mac, Lenovo, PenDrive, Canon, Brother, Sony, Olympus, Belkin, Kodak, Kingston, Maxtor, OKI, Philips, Samsung, Panasonic, Lexmark, Fuji Xerox, Linksys, Fujifilm, LG, Toshiba, NEC, SanDisk, Casio, Palm, Imation, Ranger, Sanyo, Pioneer, D-Link, OTO, Osim and many more (these are the few names that I could recall from my memory). They were selling everything from cameras, printers, scanners, LCDs, Plasma, laptops or notebooks, storages medias, handphones, MP3 Players, sound systems, projectors and every other IT stuff that you can think of even massage chairs.

Therefore with so much competition how do you win the customer? By deploying ladies to pull in the customers. These ladies some (or should I say most) are dressed to kill, with heels so high, skirt so short and erm bust so "visible". They push out flyers at every men that walk pass them. Some of course were just wearing normal polo-T. With makeup so thick u can hardly see their real skin. Some are pretty and well have a hot hot body. While other well...are still pleasant looking. Not all the companies have this use this tactic only those that are really big and have really a number of competitors. Other tactics like freebies or slashing of prices are also used. I must also say that these companies also deploy to the ground the IT-savvy ones or those that are the real IT-gurus. So over all it is a dog eat dog world. With who to gain? We the (male) customers.

Sad to say this "Sex Sells" tactic is not used everywhere. Just take a look at any big departmental store cosmetic department. There are so many brands like MAC, Lancome erm....and many more. (not too sure of the names. ) But anyway I never once saw hunky male parading in trunks to pull in the females customers to the booths to buy the perfume or cosmetics. And never have I seen any male apparel store without at least one or two female staff even if them are sell men innerwear. So it seems that Sex really do sell. But if seems only to work if the sales is a female. There have been surveys done that both males and female often prefer to be served by a female staff member. Why is that? Is that sexist but in a different way? Females on the whole are more gentle and are more polite. Mmm.... I too actually PREFER to be served by a female too. what about you? I really do think that overall sales will be better on the female side rather than the male side when all other conditions are the same.

Therefore a little marketing skill I learned today. If you really want good sales get good-looking people to do it. It will be better if they are ladies. Would be the best if they are also dressed to kill.