Will the $199 price without marketing hurt the PB?

Here is what I noticed at the various stores selling PB for $199 during boxing day sale (equivalent to black friday ).
Walmart - Dead display unit, shelf tags have original price only. Store full of people and no one even glance at the PB.
Best Buy - store full of people. Only one person was looking at playbook. I told the girl to get the 32g model because it was only $50 more. Her only question for me was "does it play download movies?".
Staples - nice display, good signage. Customer walks in, ask sales guy to look at tablets on sale. Sales guy takes customer right pass the PB to a much higher price ASUS.

Here are my thoughts. When the playbook first came on sale 200-300 range, the educated/informed consumers were snapping these units up, hence leading to out of stock everywhere. When the PB went on sale again this pass week, the sales have declined. Your joe consumer will wonder what is wrong with the PB if they are only 40% of the cost of other tablets. Is it poor hardware? Is it lack of apps? Is it lack of critical app (email, skype, netflix, kindle etc.....)? Is the company going under?
Even for consumers who find there way here looking for answers, they will still be confused by all the garbage posts (both positive and negative posts)

I hope RIM will wow the consumers and tech reviewers at the CES, the OS2 release, and follow up with a HUGH marketing campaign to stop/turn consumer perception of the PM.

My buddy manages a Radio Shack store here in NYC. He said when the priced dropped, the sales were BRISK. His store is all sold out of the 16gb model and doesn't carry the other models anymore. He said they shipped them back when the price went back up. He noted that many of the buyers asked questions like "If BB goes under, will they update the software?"

So, in his opinion, people seemed to think that this was something similiar to what happened with HP. At least in the general/average consumer's mind.

This is where the marketing that you mentioned might come in handy.

I have purchased two PBs now. Picked up another one at Best Buy this morn and will give it to my brother for his Jan 24th B-Day. I think it's a very cool device but don't know if I would have paid $499 for it.

I think R.I.M needs to figure what part of the Playground they want this device to compete in and do their best to stake-out and establish their territory.

The $199 price is supposed to be going away after Sat. My buddy said that the sale only lasts thru the 31st. His regional office hasn't provided any info on what the price will be on Sunday morn.

I think if the price goes back to $499 the PB will once again be dead in the water.

Yeah I don't see any commercials on TV here about the Playbook or it's sale price, yet they are all sold out around me. I'd say at this price and considering how awesome the Playbook is, word of mouth is more than enough to get Playbook's off the shelves.

word of mouth by me sold 6 pb at the office during the first sale. But now there is lots of stock and the hype is not there.

Well I guess the no advertising help them a little money wise, considering the
big loss they took. By word of mouth I got around 4 people at work a few
family members and friends to pick it up.

So this is like the pyramid scheme of marketing. You tell 2 friends, they each tell 2 friends and so on and so on.
Hhhmmm, maybe RIM can pay existing customers in app $ for selling the device to friends and families. It works for other product/service start ups.

I was wondering about the lack of advertising, i see the ads for the Bold all the time. They should have had something on it in that commercial. My son said to me tonight that he has seen it on tv. He is only 7, smart but 7 so i don't know. Maybe on a channel i don't watch.

James

all the retailers have shown in their boxing week flyers the Playbook sales discount, RIM has written down their PB inventory, profits will come from their smartphones that's why the commercials on the Bold

the point is, if the pb isn't flying off the shelf at 199 when a lot of bargin shoppers have cash in hand, it will be difficult if not impossible for rim to raise the price of a pb1 back to a profitable level even with OS2.

nearly everyone in my sports group uses a bb phone. when i walked into the club one day with a playbook they all wanted to know how it worked and what it could do. 2 of them now have playbooks. i know i'll be their tech support, but that's cool. i was in a staples yesterday looking for a micro hdmi cable and actually upsold a guy to a 32gb playbook for the salesman. had mine in my back pocket and gave him a first hand real world demo. he walked out with the same hdmi cable as me, a screen protector, and a case. and better startup knowledge than i had when i got mine.

and i got no sales commission out of it.

the lower prices are making a difference. rim will make some of that back on app sales, and genuine accessories. like everyone else, i just wish there were more apps available. sorry, android ports don't count to me. native apps will make the platform strong, not cludged apps from another platform.

The same thing struck me. During the first "firesale" there was real interest in the stores. This time around, nobody paid much attention to the Playbook, that I could see (of course, it was Christmas). In Office Depot and Best Buy, while the sale prices were posted, the display models were not even working. These days, though, a lot of buying takes place online, so it is difficult to know just what was happening. We'll probably get reports soon.

they have already taken a price cut on all their inventory and based on last call. rim is going to aggressively advertise. lets see what happens.

i actually heard a best buy rep say that the pb was an inferior product and that was why it was so cheap to a customer trying to buy one. telling him that the android was better. funny thing was the person was holding a bb.

perfecting and fixing these small bugs (os2) before marketing would make the average consumer ask the sales rep more questions instead of just accepting the answer is inferior. A why to the rep. " i can't answer that since i have no clue what i am doing working in an electronic store" (If you are reading this and you working in an electronic store and know how to offer advice. pls don't be offended it is only intended for the people that have no clue)

marketing will only help pb.