"Guitar Praise"??

I was out today with my parents getting some Christmas shopping done. Well I wasn't getting much shopping done considering WalMart didn't have the chia pet that my little sister wanted and I have no clue what to get for my other little sister, so it was really just me walking up and down aisles and finding things that I wouldn't mind having. LOL. I mean I'm really not too worried about not being able to find something for them so it's all good. But I did run into my friend Micah Landers, the author of the Remedies blog and it was good catching up with him and talking his past job and his future plans.

But in our shopping adventures my parents decided that they needed to stop by Family Christian Bookstore to get some things so we ventured out to Florence. As soon as we pull up to the store I notice a sign in the window, it says "Guitar Praise". As soon as u saw this I just cringed. Obviously this is a Christian spinoff of the ever popular xbox 360 game "Guitar Hero". The first thing thought that came into my mind was "Why can't these Christian companies just come up with an original idea?" If these companies would just simply come up with an original product they might actually sell some stuff or imagine this, they might actually influence some kids in a positive way. Sure they might have some success selling a product but that doesn't mean that the kid is gonna like it. Usually these parents just buy these kind of things for their kids as a Christian alternative to the real thing and usually the kids hate these products simply because they've already had experience with the real thing and they know what the experience should be like and when they don't get that experience they are disappointed.

Here's an idea. Get some good businessmen to come up with some good original concepts and then get some good marketers for a Christian company and then see what happens. I'd bet that there'd be some success with whatever product they came out with.

As I continued perusing through the Family Christian Bookstore I also noticed some other things that really seem to be some poor business decisions as far as the customer experience go. First of all I picked up a cd to see what the titles of the songs were and half of the back of the cd was covered by this plastic electronic alarm. I couldn't even read the titles of the songs. Now, this may not be the fault of the store, but it most likely is. I mean, I thought the alarms were on just like one cd, but no, they were on every single cd, I couldn't read the titles of any of the titles on any of the cd's. It was annoying to say the least.

The next thing that would definitely hinder me from buying a cd from this store was the fact that they took out the "cd listening stations." These were small scanners that allowed a customer to scan the cd's barcode and then listen about a minute of every track on the cd. These were in the store, but since they have been taken out for some amazing reason. These two things I noticed almost immediately. And I wouldn't be surprised if their cd sales have gone down durastically. Now I could see someone saying that these cd listening stations kept people from buying cd's because all they do is listen to the cd in the store and leave. But this isn't a good argument because its only a sample of the song and I'm definitely more likely to buy a cd if I can listen to it in the store.

These are just some of the things that I annoyed me about the Family Christian Bookstore. This caused me to think about the concept of "Christian Bookstores" and their purposes and what not. This is a different post for a different time, but it is an interesting thing to think about. Hope this post interested you a bit.

Comments, Thoughts.

go read something