Since Harry Potter is (and I believe its STILL) creating such a STIR in Malaysia, we thot at shoppingNsales we try and piece it all together on this little post. If you’re fed up with all the controversy, skip this!!
If you’ve been jungle trekking since Friday morning till now, u may just wanna start by reading what happened …. Read it all below (will try and make it Chornological)
- Friday Morning : Tesco & Carrefour advertise that The Deahtly Hallows will go on sale at RM69.90 (whilst the retailing price was RM109.90)  here
- Saturday Morning : MPH, Popular & Times Bookstore blames the Publisher Penguin Books for this outrageous price under cutting and made a Protest by NOT selling the Harry Potter Book  here  or hereÂ
- Saturday Morning : Shocked, angry and dismayed. These were some of the reactions by Harry Potter Fans to the decision by three major bookstores to not sell the final Harry Potter novel -Â hereÂ
- Saturday Morning : More than 200 Harry Potter (HP7) Books were sold at Tesco Penang from 7.01am onwards – here
- Saturday Morning : MPH declares that over 5,000 pre-ordered Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows collected their books from them. First customer lined up at 4.45am outside Carrefour and was sold out before 5pm. Over 1,000 people queued at Kinokuniya, Suria KLCC to buy the book, with the earliest queuing at midnight - here
- Saturday Morning : People commando crawled under the shutters to get into Borders at 7.01am – here and here
- Saturday Morning : Harry Potter Fans they must be, two newlyweds still dressed in their wedding suit & gown rushed to get their copy of Deathly Hallows - here
- Sunday  : Four booksellers (MPH, Popular, Harris, Times) will be meeting next week to resolve the pricing dispute on the Harry Potter book - hereÂ
- Sunday : MPH says they WILL NOT sell Harry Potter and the Deahtly Hallows. They said they were protesting the “indiscriminate price discount,” adding that it was not fair of distributor Penguin Books to “allow hypermarkets to sell such a popular book when they are not in the book business. - here
- Sunday Afternoon : The Domestic Trade and Consumer Affairs Ministry views the price war among book retailers over the latest Harry Potter book as a move that benefits consumers –  here or here
How do Malaysian Bloggers react to the above? Read some of BLOGS entries found on the above Harry Potter Price Madness
- Harry Potter causing Deathly Sales on Malaysian Bookstores
- Its a Scramble
- Sad
- Harry Potter Price War
- Price wars? Who wins and who loses
- Harry Potter Price War
- Where to buy your Harry Potter Book 7 & Milo
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Discounts
- Harry Potter Price War in Malaysia
- Harry Potter & The Coup in Malaysia
- Harry Potter and The Evil Price War
- potty over harry potter
- Harry Potter Price War
- Of Harry Potter Craze
- harry potter and the queer bookstores
- The Harry Potter Price War Part 2: Why Shafie Apdal is Wrong
- Of Harry Potter and Amaran!
- Magic gone with Major Bookstore Chains
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MPH, Popular & Times Bookstore boycott Harry Potter. I boycott MPH, Popular & Times Bookstore! Bye bye MPH, Popular & Times Bookstore. I wont be buying anymore books from your stores. FOREVER!
Imported books in Malaysia is expensive not all people can buy those books. But this action by TESCO or other hypermarkets proves that these bookstores are getting clean profit about 40MYR per book. I mean , TESCO isn’t a regular “kedai runcit”. I think they(TESCO) are still getting their profit. Maybe marginally low than the 109.90 price. But still they are getting profit. No one in business selling an item to get a loss. I hope TESCO and other hypermarkets will sell more cheap books. Let reading be a habit among Malaysians. At least now it’s a affordable hobby.
Some people advised hypermarkets to sell only discounted groceries. One company: WALMART. You put a high price on your book people will buy the cheaper offer. It’s never the consumer fault or the competitor. It’s your management and your companys fault. Just move along. You lost this one,bookstores.
1 for the consumers.
Sorry for the bad English as well as emo-long comments.
But Tesco and the hypermarkets AREN’T making a profit – they’ve openly admitted this. Cheap bestsellers are just a way for them to attract customers to their stores and buy their other products. That’s where they make the real profit. Meanwhile bookstores can’t compete with that kind of pricing, and they’ll eventually go out of business. You can’t afford to give the hypermarkets a substantial percentage of the market share, because their priorities just aren’t the same.
I don’t understand the mentality of some of you people. What is the freaking wrong with TESCO and Carrefour selling at RM69.90?
And what’s the fuss about?
SO WHAT if the hypermarket is undercutting?
If you can get a book at a lower price, YOU BUY IT!
So, why want to buy the book at RM109.90? Because your principles? Because you want to prove to other people that you can afford a RM100+ book? or you just want to brag about it?
and about marketing. Do you really think that a book that people has been anticipating for 2 years NEEDS to advertise it to the fans? People has been hoping to get it EARLIER by one year or 2. So, saying that the hypermarkets are stealing the bookstores hard earn thunder is just crap. Harry Potter is a name people want to “ride” on it’s popularity.
Another thing, what’s the freaking deal about “cheap”?
Does that mean that my cousin who is a fanatic Harry Potter fan is a “fake” fan because she bought it at RM69.90, while my friend who bought it at RM109.90 because he just want to read it because his girlfriend is a huge fan is a REAL fan?
What kind of illogical, mentality or absurdness is this? I don’t understand you all, when you all can buy pirate CDs/DVDs, but shouts “FOUL”, when a highly popular book is given a huge discounts.
I am just sad that “common sense” is just a myth nowadays. While “illogical” stuff like, “hey, buying at RM69.90 is bad, we should buy at RM109.90.”
What the hell is going on in this world? or in the minds of Malaysians? I hope someone can figure it out, because I can’t.
Even if TECSO and other hypermarkets are making no profit,don’t TESCO have their right? Plus just like some other people suggested it’s time the bookstores change themselves to compete but the above post sums it up.
i only went to get harry potter. i did not stop to buy any groceries at all (come to think of it, i rarely go carrefour anyway). i still say it is up to the customer to choose where to get their books, be it hypermarket or bookstores. as to the argument that bookstores will go out of business if hypermarket start selling books and people will not be able to get those books that are not bestsellers, i do not concur cause there WILL always be people buying books at bookstores. a good example: kinokuniya and borders had a loooong queue and stampede; aren’t those customers who choose to pay 109.90 instead of 69.90?
boycotting will only result in resentment, IMO anyway
“So, why want to buy the book at RM109.90? Because your principles? Because you want to prove to other people that you can afford a RM100+ book? or you just want to brag about it?”
What the hell? Where on earth have we said this? I’m not against cheap books, I’m against discounting that’s specifically designed to hurt the bookseller. I’ve gone into more detail on my blog, but short version: TONS of bookstores around the world have closed because of crap like this, to the extent where hypermarkets in the U.S. control 15% of all book sales. Wal-Mart has screwed around with so many publishers and musicians, refusing to carry their products just because they object to a passage or lyric. That’s not healthy in the long term.
Furthermore, while bookstores are there to promote and sell books, hypermarkets use books ONLY to promote their other products. They’re not going to carry the less popular but arguably more important works of lesser known authors; they’ll just carry the usual, reliable bestsellers like Archer and Clancy and Dan Brown. There’s no incentive to bring in new blood, because the hypermarkets refuse to carry them, and most of the bookstores that would have gone out of business.
And I resent the implication that we don’t like what Tesco is doing because we’re elitist or whatever. I LOVE books and I want nothing more than to see them flourish. What the hypermarkets are doing does absolutely NOTHING to help that, but make it worse.
Bookstores should change? THEY’RE SELLING CDs JUST TO BREAK EVEN FOR GOD’S SAKE. And not at 40% off I bet.
” Meanwhile, Borders bookshop, which did not join the protest, ran out of stock by yesterday afternoon. ”
Some bookstores are also sold out. So maybe in the long run Jeffrey ideas is right but then,some people have much money to spend on books and some aren’t that lucky. If I like HP I would definitely buy from TESCO or other cheaper offers because I’m not that lucky.
If Borders can sold out with RM109.90, why are the others so afraid of WHAT?
WOW such strong opinions & statements from some of U!!
Gonna just say … if i were a Harry Potter fan .. i would have gone to Tesco/Carrefour to get the best deal. Why? Cos i love bargains and why pay more if i can get the same thing at a different price.
AND …. leave the book assocation and congolomorate fight their own battles on pricing, merchandising, publishing n marketing!! Anyway .. its Harry’s last book! Good bye Harry Potter … doubt u will cause such a havoc to the Malaysia Book scene ever.
sns : )
Too late. Damage already done. I stick to my boycott of MPH, Popular & Times Bookstore! CONSUMERS RIGHTS!
It’s not only books that we are talking about…..in Malaysia everything is agent controlled! In US, prices for stuff like books, CDs, apparels are not fixed by the distributors. It’s a price war between the retailers, and it’s all for the good of the consumers. You can get discounted Levis jeans at Walmart and Costco without other retailers screaming for boycott.
All I can say is kudos to Tesco and Carrefour. I hope they bring in more books and CDs to sell at discounted prices. For the rest of the bookstores, too bad! It’s their loss, not ours.
Have u seen this from the STAR today?
MPH, Popular & Times are giving in finally and they are gonna sell Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows at a 25% Discount.
So using my Calculator. RM109.90 – 25% = RM82.43
hehe
*Mebbe Penguin Books cut them some slack and gave them a whopping discount!
Read it here
:: http://thestar.com.my/news/story.asp?file=/2007/7/24/nation/18386712&sec=nation
I for one don’t care if the bookstores goes under. Their greediness is their own undoing. And don’t give me excuses like Borders are a big company, because Popular can be consider a big company too, with it’s amount of branches in Malaysia and also in Singapore.
The only reason that this whole thing boiled over because of MONEY. You all should understand that in Malaysia, the social spending power of the majority of consumers aren’t earning enough to buy ORIGINALS at their insane prices. Imagine one Harry Potter book at RM109.90. A family of four would have to forgo some necessity if they were to buy a book at RM109.90 for one month. Add that to their cost of living, it adds up.
Rich people like some of you all can care less for a mere RM109.90 for a book, but middle class and poor people like us have to work hard to feed our/their families, pay bills, pay for children educations…etc.
That is why when there is a bargain, people tend to grab it. They could have cared less if the bookstores goes under. Because to them, it’s not their problem, there will be other bookstores around. That’s their way of thinking, because of their limited financial situation.
Think about it.
… None of you have listened to a goddamned thing I’ve said about market shares and monopolies and freedom of choice, have you?
Screw it. You guys get the industry you deserve.
I haven’t even read a single Harry Potter book…
Jeffrey,
I think The Doctor already summed it up. No one give a damn about market shares and monopolies.
I think we Malaysian like to use the freedom of choice though.
It’s typical Malaysian thinking. You can scream/explain/shout all you want about fairness, market shares and monopolies, but I the normal Malaysian won’t and probably don’t even care if (for example) Popular goes under. To them, it’s another company, there is always others. You can also say we Malaysian like to take things for granted, but that’s our so-called Malaysian thinking. It won’t change overnight just because you have a solid argument.
Don’t compare Malaysia to other countries.
I have read, understood your comments Jeffrey, and like KLJS said. I don’t give a damn. Neither did my cousin, my family, my friends , my colleague. I asked them all, and they don’t give a damn about market shares, monopolies and stuff.
One of my colleague even said “Go tell them they have too much time. It’s none of their business. If people want to give discount, they give lar. What the f (he actually say that for the first time) does that have to do with you all?”
I have to say, that I could not agree with you in 100% regarding Harry Potter (Malaysian-Related) News | shoppingNsales, but it’s just my opinion, which could be wrong
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