Poll of the Day > Is "voting with your wallet" a double-edge sword?

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InfestedAdam
02/19/18 6:49:35 PM
#1:


Is "voting with your wallet" a double-edge sword?




I'm sure we've heard the saying "vote with your wallet" numerous especially when it comes to products we personally view as being bad. Still, I can't help but wonder if purposely not buying certain products or waiting till they're dirt cheap might hurt consumers more than help.

To some degree I feel companies will continue with their product regardless of the sales count but might resort to other means to make up for their low sales and use the excuse of the low sales to justify their actions. Could low sales from boycotts potentially hurt consumers more than it'll help?

Comments and opinions are appreciated,

Thank you
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SushiSquid
02/19/18 6:50:26 PM
#2:


Nah, fuck 'em.
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rexcrk
02/19/18 7:30:05 PM
#3:


Definitely.

When they finally decided releasing Simpsons season sets again, I saw people saying they wouldnt buy them because theres no Blu-ray and various other reasons, but all I could think was thats a great idea in theory, but Fox wont see it that way, theyll see it as there not being any profit in further DVD releases.

Which is a shame because Id love it if companies got it, but most of the time they really dont.
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shipwreckers
02/19/18 8:43:11 PM
#4:


Companies will blame everything EXCEPT themselves for low sales. That's why the "vote with your wallet" concept is so absurd. Even if literally everyone boycotted a game (as in, zero sales, not even one), there's still no guarantee that the company will actually learn the NATURE of their error, much less correct it.

If you want to make a dent, then you (and thousands upon thousands of others) have to be vocal, just like when EA got reddit bombed over Battlefront II. Burying a product in a sea of negative reviews is a good start.
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darkknight109
02/19/18 9:03:08 PM
#5:


shipwreckers posted...
Companies will blame everything EXCEPT themselves for low sales. That's why the "vote with your wallet" concept is so absurd. Even if literally everyone boycotted a game (as in, zero sales, not even one), there's still no guarantee that the company will actually learn the NATURE of their error, much less correct it.

If you want to make a dent, then you (and thousands upon thousands of others) have to be vocal, just like when EA got reddit bombed over Battlefront II. Burying a product in a sea of negative reviews is a good start.

But here's the thing - companies don't care (much) about negative press, they care about sales. Think of all the shit EA and Activision have taken over scummy microtransactions... then you learn that they made $787 million and $4 billion respectively off of those same transactions. With that in mind, do you think they are less likely to put microtransactions in future games or more?

If you want a product to improve, you have to do both. You have to "vote with your wallet", but you also have to be very vocal about why you are boycotting and try and draw the company's attention to it. If they see lots of complaining and lots of sales, they won't bother fixing anything because there's no impetus to do so. The only reason why negative publicity works as an incentive to fix something is because it usually leads to poor sales; if that isn't the case, negative publicity is just meaningless noise that companies are free to ignore (especially in an industry - like gaming - that is notorious for its negativity and where a small number of people can make a disproportionate amount of noise regarding things they don't like).
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keyblader1985
02/19/18 9:09:27 PM
#6:


Voting with your wallet is equally as important as communicating to the company WHY you're not purchasing the product. Doing one without the other is pointless at best and harmful at worst - complaining but buying it anyway tells the company you'll support them no matter what, and not buying it without saying why just tells them that you're not interested in the product as a whole.
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WarGreymon77
02/19/18 9:45:40 PM
#7:


There's just one problem. The mindless masses don't care about principles or boycotts. Especially futile in the age of globalist conglomerates.
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Zeus
02/19/18 11:09:13 PM
#8:


If something is bad, why would you buy it? >_> That's not really a matter of voting with your wallet, is it?

InfestedAdam posted...
or waiting till they're dirt cheap might hurt consumers more than help.


Not going to change my buying behavior, though. It's very rare for any game, film, show, etc, to come out and really make me feel like paying full price.
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SinisterSlay
02/19/18 11:15:29 PM
#9:


Vote with your wallet works, but it only saves yourself from buying crap. Too many too happily by crap.

In the end, just don't worry about it. Think only of yourself. Your not boycotting to stop a company, your boycotting so you don't get scammed or ripped off, etc. Why do I never buy a Ubisoft game? Because they are all shit, sometimes something they make looks tempting, but they make so much shit, that I avoid anything that looks kind of good, because it's probably shit with some floral scent on it.
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cute_fan
02/20/18 7:59:07 AM
#10:


^.^

Zeus wrote:
If something is bad, why would you buy it? >_>

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Rooster_Sucker
02/20/18 8:52:31 AM
#11:


No.

Double-edge implies the consumer may get cut somehow.

If I dont want to support a shit product, not only do I not support it, Im not out any money or time.

In the case of video games, even if it were my all-time favorite series, I have plenty of other games to play.
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Kyuubi4269
02/20/18 8:58:35 AM
#12:


Voting with your wallet encourages removing bad things, expressing your opinion encourages adding good things.
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InfestedAdam
02/20/18 9:32:47 PM
#13:


Thank you for the responses. Some of you raise a good point in that we need a combination of low sales and expressing our discontent with said product(s) if we hope for any improvements. Low sales by itself could mean any number of reasons.
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LittleRoyal
02/20/18 9:57:29 PM
#14:


Top option.

Mass effect is a great salong game
New mass effect is horrible nobody buy nobody pay multiplayer

Suddenly series is DEAD
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InfestedAdam
02/20/18 10:00:34 PM
#15:


LittleRoyal posted...
Top option.

Mass effect is a great salong game
New mass effect is horrible nobody buy nobody pay multiplayer

Suddenly series is DEAD

I've read it is almost the same for the Deus Ex series. Supposedly it is just on hiatus but DX: Mankind Divided didn't sell as well due to both the pre-order fiasco and the in-game micro-transition.
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