Best Things in Life are Free … Really?

By Carly

For a whole host of reasons – the lousy economy being the first one to come to mind – many different businesses are offering their products or services for insanely cheap, or even free, in some cases. For example, T.G.I. Friday’s sold select appetizers for five cents (with a purchase of a drink) on Cinco de Mayo. And Kentucky Fried Chicken and Oprah teamed up to offer a free grilled chicken dinner with coupon. The debacle ended up with several customers being turned away from KFC restaurants for a variety of reasons.

Marketer extraordinaire Seth Godin alluded to this trend in his blog, and it’s an interesting thought. Could “free” really hurt a business? While some are optimistic that the KFC-Oprah event could end up being a positive for the fried chicken chain, many customers were left with a bad taste in their mouth. (No pun intended!)

The purpose behind these special offers is to build up a goodwill between provider and customer/client. Once the economy turns around, the businesses that survive will be the ones that treated their customers with respect and appreciation when times were bad. However, whenever there is way too much of a good thing, it overloads the system and people miss out. (In the barest, simplest terms, isn’t that what happened with the economy in the first place?)

What do you think? Should businesses be more prudent when it comes to these special offers and deals that seem to be popping up all over the place?

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