Red Racks Thrift Store Essay

Thrift store shopping is in my blood. I grew up watching my mom and grandmother stalk up and down the aisles looking for the perfect, name brand find. When I was little it was boring but as I grew up, other kids began complimenting me on my “brand new” name brand items that my mom had paid $5 for, from this point on I was hooked. In my house we know all the sale days and what items are on sale through out the week, we are always prepared but we where not prepared when we walked in on Black Friday. In this paper I will discuss my experience during my visit to Red Racks Thrift Store and the different persuasion tactics that I noticed during my visit. I will begin by discussing the atmosphere of the store and then will lead into the elements of

I entered the store with my mother and was immediately hit with the smell of laundry detergent, febreze and coffee as well as someone shouting over the Christmas music playing through the store intercom and the roar of customers “Welcome to Red Racks” in a shrill tone. I quickly noticed that there was a table full of fresh coffee, water and even granola bars set up not 5 feet from the door in the direct path to the cloths. This is a perfect example of pre-giving and also a good way to keep people in the store longer. Next I noticed all of the signs hanging from the ceiling that where lit up and spinning over each section, labeling what was beneath them. There was also signs hanging that said. Everything with a blue tag- half price, a green tag-70% off, and the “%’s” kept getting larger until it said “Find the Red Rack Pocket (their mascot) and it’s FREE!.” It was a mad house. The entire store was not filled with the pocket tag, it was primarily the blue tags and consequently due to the scarcity of the other colors and the pocket tag people where storming the aisle looking for certain tags not items they needed or wanted. Thrift stores already contrast retail store and even second hand stores like Plato’s Closet with their low prices so we the additional slash that Red Racks was offering today was almost