No more cheap sales says Rebel Sport

By IRENE CHAPPLE

One of New Zealand's top sports stores has a new marketing strategy - stop the sales and let customers know how expensive their trendy caps and running shoes really are.

Rebel Sport believes its constant "50 per cent off" sales are turning off discerning sports buyers, who want the latest styles and are prepared to pay for them.

Focusing on the high-end of the market is a strategy that worked for products such as Stella Artois, which introduced the tagline "reassuringly expensive".

The rethink was prompted by disappointing results this week for Rebel Sport's parent company, The Briscoe Group.

Its figures showed the sports chain suffered a same-store drop in sales of 2.9 per cent over the adjusted full year and its shares dropped 8c in response.

Briscoe Group managing director Rod Duke said he was confident that Rebel Sport's sponsorship of Super 12 rugby would boost the brand this year.

But an image problem was highlighted by research showing consumers felt the ongoing sales and repetitive in-your-face advertising cheapened products they took seriously.

Some people were buying highly technical stuff just to go to the footy and they made it clear that if Rebel wanted to be taken as a serious store it needed to do things differently.

Mr Duke's problems were crystalised succinctly by an analyst who criticised the cheapening of Russell Athletic, a brand once considered premium.

Rebel Sport, with its constant run of sales, was doing itself a disservice: "It's devaluing the brand," the analyst said.

Sport and leisure-wear buyers, said Mr Duke, were "aspirational and fashion conscious".

They wanted shoes with the latest gadgets, colours that were in vogue for the season and they would spend top dollar to get these things.

That attitude was encapsulated neatly by the Stella Artois campaign.

The Belgian beer brand enjoyed increased sales in Britain on the back of a campaign that unashamedly promoted its premium price.

Consumers remained wedded to the idea that there was a direct correlation between price and quality, Duke said.

Marketing strategist Howard Russell said price was a huge part of creating mystique.

Consumers would also pay more for a product if it was a reward or it was important to them.

Mr Russell said despite consumers having no way to prove price equalled quality "one suspects invariably if you pay $40 for a tube of [beauty product] it will be better than if you pay $15".