Price Match Guarantee

April 16

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , , ,

What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago this week?

Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer (April 13, 1775).

“Being fully determined not to be undersold by any person whatever.”

A “NEW ADVERTISEMENT BY RICHARD DEANE, Distiller,” ran in the April 13, 1775, edition of Rivington’s New-York Gazetteer.  Even though it had a dateline from two months earlier, “Feb. 10, 1775,” and had been running for several weeks, it still merited being called a “NEW ADVERTISEMENT” because it displaced another advertisement that Deane regularly placed in New York’s newspapers for many months.

The distiller took to the pages of the newspaper with some fanfare to inform “the public, my friends and customers” that he would not be undersold by any of his competitors who marketed their own “brandy, Geneva, and cordials.”  He believed that he had lost some customers to other distillers, prompting him to proclaim that he “can afford to sell said liquors on as cheap terms as any others can theirs, of an equal quality.”  Moreover, he deserved special consideration because “it cannot be denied, that I was the first distiller that ever made brandy and geneva, for sale in this province, … introducing a business, whereby the country saves annually large sums of money, that must otherwise have gone to foreign parts.”  Consumers should purchase his liquor, he asserted, to support local industry and, especially, the entrepreneur who took the risk of establishing the trade in the colony.  In turn, they could depend on what they spent supporting the local economy.

At the same time, Deane made appeals to quality.  He declared that even though he lowered his prices considerably, he still made “brandy and geneva of a full quality, and a high proof, as usual.”  He also pledged that he would not “diminish the goodness of my cordials, in any respect whatever.”  Furthermore, the “great demand for my liquors in most parts of North-America … is sufficient proof of their excellence.”  Consumers should trust existing customers, the distiller reasoned.  To encourage them to do so, he offered a price match guarantee.  He listed the prices the prices per gallon of brandy, gin, and several cordials, but also declared “that if any other person sells liquors of an equal quality with mine, cheaper than the rates underneath, I will immediately sell at the same price, being fully determined not to be undersold by any person whatever.”  Deane recognized that he lost customers because other set lower prices, but he aimed to win them back and gain new ones in the process.

August 22

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , ,

What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?

Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter (August 22, 1771).

“As low a Price, as … can be purchased for at any Shop in th[i]s Town.”

In the summer of 1771, Richard Jennys sold a “Variety of English, Scotch and India Goods” at his shop across the street from the “Old Brick Meeting-House, in Cornhill” in Boston.  His inventory included “a Parcel of beautiful and newest Fashion Apron Gauzes, Gauze Handkerchiefs and Aprons” as well as “a few Pieces of handsome Lutestring and Mantua Silks.”  Like many purveyors of goods who advertised in the Massachusetts Gazette and Boston Weekly News-Letter and other colonial newspapers, Jennys made an appeal to price in his effort to incite demand and convince prospective customers to visit his shop.  He described his prices for the lutestring and silk as “very cheap.”

Yet Jennys did more than merely promise low prices.  In a nota bene that concluded his advertisement, he offered a price match guarantee to consumers.  “His Customers,” the shopkeeper declared, “may depend on having any Article at as low a Price, as the same can be purchased for at any Shop in th[i]s Town.”  Jennys certainly had plenty of competitors in Boston, a bustling port and one of the largest cities in the colonies, but that did not prevent him from vowing that he would not be undersold.  In such a crowded marketplace, he attempted to distinguish his shop from the many others that carried similar goods “IMPORTED from LONDON.”  Although he made a point of noting his low prices for certain textiles, his price match guarantee suggested that the bargains did not end there.  Instead, comparison shoppers could get a deal on every single item that Jennys had in stock.  Jennys leveraged every other advertisement that promised “the very lowest Rate” or “a very low Price” by alerting customers that he would offer the same deals.  Some retailers have made this practice a cornerstone of their marketing strategy in the twenty-first century, but they certainly did not invent the price match guarantee.  Entrepreneurs like Jennys deployed it centuries earlier.