Frosty the snowman

economy - The edges of consumer power

These days I'm exploring the expanding power of the offline consumers and visiting quite a number of department stores. And I'm not alone: I walked back home last night, an ordinary weekday, when stores closed at 10 PM and the streets were packed with people, restaurants were full, a scene most big cities would have in the weekend. But this was a basic road between Xujiahui and Shanghai Stadium on an ordinary day.
I'm managing quite well, although this year especially the many editions of "Frosty the Snowman", played in almost every department store in different editions, drives me crazy. The government should consider a ban against this song soon.
The number of stores has expanded greatly and possibly tonight we will go newly build Cloud Nine at Zhongshan Park. But for the time being we sticked to some existing shopping departments. The day before yesterday we visited Parkson at Huaihai Road (near Shanxi Nanlu subway station) and the scenes were just amazing. Packed was an understatement, even for Shanghaise standards. Long lines of eager customers before the counters, making the paying process rather tiresome. But they sold like crazy. I spend an hour in the boots department and the ravage showed that offering large numbers of vouchers drives the Shanghai to the edge.
If they would just not play Frosty every ten minutes.
The opposite in Hui Jin in Xujiahui, also an erstwhile hit among shopping Shanghainese. Apart from the first floor where ugly clothes were sold for 10 percent of the original price, other parts of this shopping oasis were eerie empty. Sometimes there was so much sales staff around, it started to look like an old-style state-owned store. Quality of the clothes or the prices did not seem the problem, but some stores seem to be losing in the ongoing struggle for the disloyal Shanghainese shopper.

The original Frosty