The Christmas season is special. People buy differently and for different reasons than in other months.One very important difference is availability. Everybody wants the same things, and they want them at the same time!

This Christmas, Nintendogs are very popular, and mostly sold out. Finding one in stock is hard. Parents are desperate. One way to try to get hold of one is to scour the search engines, like Google. Online stores advertise on Google, with sponsored link adverts, shown here.

You look down the list … and there at number 3 is “Nintendog for Xmas - Buy Now!” From Littlewoods Online! It’s gonna be ok!

But when you click through and find the page, you see its not like that at all. In fact its all rather bizarre. “Nintendogs Labrador and friends, £159.00 - Out October 2005. Pre-order now and receive on day of release”. THEN next door to this, it says “Delivery within 9 Week(s)”. 9 weeks?!

Is this a Nintendog for Xmas? Doesn’t look like it for me, and it is a very messy communication throughout. I suspect marketing and e-commerce are not talking and consequently expectations have been set very badly. And the Nintendogs page itself doesn’t look like its been updated since October, which is bizarre, as millions of these have been sold.

From a customer experience point of view, excuses will not hold much water in the circumstances, it’s just like a salesperson standing at the door to the store saying, “Roll up, roll up, get your Nintendogs here in time for Xmas!”, but when you get in, they are nowhere to be seen, at least not this side of February. If you were a desperate parent chasing these games, pitching up on this site, thinking your search was over, what would you think of this store?

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