December 05, 2006

Threshers Voucher Creates Storm Online

Wow - a good deal sure can spread quickly online! Last week, Threshers, the high street off-license (AKA wine store) sent a 40% discount voucher around to suppliers and distributors . The offer spread virally across the web and resulted in a stampede by UK consumers eager to get their Christmas libations at a generous discount. Visits to the Threshers website (www.threshers.co.uk) surged eight-fold last week and the site ranked #37 among Grocery and Alcohol websites up from #103 the week before.

The weblog for South African wine-producer, Stormhoek, which posted the voucher on 24th November, saw its website visits surge ahead of those to Threshers, capturing a 110 times larger share of visits than Threshers. On 28th November, the voucher was also posted in the forum of MoneySavingExpert.com and 45% of visits to Threshers.co.uk came from forums.moneysavingexpert.com last week.

Wine retailers are trying to benefit from the frenzy. A search for "threshers" on Google yesterday returned a sponsored result for Sainsbury's promoting 25% off wine and today, Virgin Wines was the top sponsored result, offering 50% off wine.

BTW - The Threshers offer is valid until 10th December, though inventory may be running low...

The following chart shows the increase in visits to Theshers and Stormhoek last week.

Hugh McLeod from Gaping Void has some really great analysis on this... Quoting from the Cluetrain Manifesto:

"Networked markets are beginning to self-organize faster than the companies that have traditionally served them. Thanks to the web, markets are becoming better informed, smarter, and more demanding of qualities missing from most business organizations."

Posted by Heather Hopkins at 11:24 AM
Posted to Shopping and Classifieds

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» Hitwise Review Threshers Disastrous ‘Viral’ Campaign from Connected Internet
Heather Hopkins from Hitwise has produced an interesting analysis of the online fiasco over at Threshers this week. For those of you who missed it, Threshers, the high street off-license (AKA wine store) sent a 40% discount voucher around to suppliers ... [Read More]

Tracked on December 27, 2006 06:23 AM

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Posted by: Ward at December 7, 2006 01:03 PM

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