By: Virna do Brito Lopes, 401903
A few days ago I read that One Piece, a Norwegian brand of clothing, is opening a new pop-up store in Amsterdam where people, in the near future, can buy stuff with their social media accounts. This is a concept which allows customers to link various platforms such as: LinkedIn, Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr and Twitter and pay in-store according to their friend and fan following. In other words, the more followers you have, the more discount you get. For each 500 followers one can earn 1 dollar discount towards a purchase for a maximum of 20 dollars. In order to earn this discount it is required to upload and share an image of one of the stores and use the store’s hashtag.
The business introduced this new payment method last year, called ‘’social currency, when it opened up a branch in Soho, New York, which was very expensive because the rent in that area is really high. Therefore they had to come up with an idea to attract customers and create buzz in order to stimulate the store’s sales’. Moreover the store has always been a pioneer when it comes to social media marketing and gained a lot of its success through this. And so the concept of paying with ‘’social currency’’ emerged.
Quickly after its launch the campaign became a success, attracting 40 million followers and 1.5 milliard readers. The only problem, at that time, was that people had to travel to New York in order to take part in the campaign. But now, after receiving feedback, from multiple customers and potential customers, and suggestions for making it possible to also pay with social currency in other One Piece stores and its webstores, the businesses is working on it.
I personally find this idea really amazing, although I don’t have so many followers, so it isn’t really an option for me. But then again, who does? It seems almost impossible for a normal person like me or you to get more than 2 or 3 dollars’ worth of discount. Or am I wrong? If you had the possibility to pay with social currency, would you?
References
Spilka, S. (2014). Are you Instagram-famous? OnePiece offers discounts for every 500 followers across various platforms. Accessed at:http://www.psfk.com/2014/11/functionalize-3dprinting-circuit-boards.html
Stamkot, S. (2015). Betalen met je socialmedia-account. Accesed at: http://www.metronieuws.nl/mode/interviews/2015/10/betalen-met-je-socialmedia-account
