Posted on by Sheldon Nesdale

Why Is Harvey Norman Stuck In The 1990’s?

Yes, yes, Harvey Norman does sell the latest technology: Plasma TVs, Laptops, Macbooks, Printers, Digital Cameras etc (at awesome prices), but why oh why do they contradict this image with the following:

  1. Dot matrix printers for printing out your receipt
  2. A 1990’s website
    • With a “splash” page (the home page just has a big photo and link to the rest of the website)
    • The navigation is located in 4 different locations (very hard to figure out where you are. Totally unintuitive)
    • No open hours (forces you to pick up the phone and ask – that is so 1990’s!)
    • No E-commerce (unlike ALL of their competitors: Dick Smith Electronics, Noel Leemings, Bond and Bond)
  3. No social networking activity at all
    • No Facebook page
    • No Twitter account
    • No Linked-in profile

Perhaps Harvey Norman has people in the marketing department (either here in New Zealand or in head office in Australia) fighting for these changes, but because it is a private company run by an old fuddy-duddy family, they are probably very happy with the way they doing their mass media advertising (radio, TV, flyers every day).

What have I missed?

Write your comments below.

13 Replies to “Why Is Harvey Norman Stuck In The 1990’s?”

  1. awesome… I echo all of those thoughts. I have an issue with their over pricing and poor service too. Items at Harvey Norman are usually higher than others e.g. JB Hifi, and yet we get nothing extra in return. Maybe they are so successful because the message they continually pump out. “We are the home of technology” If you say it often enough and loud enough, people will eventually forget the nay-sayers, the ones that cannot compete on advertising their message.

    But as you say, Harvey Norman has no social media profile to speak of (I’ll add that the Australian counterpart does http://twitter.com/harveynormanAU) so how can it convince the people that ignore mainstream media of it’s stature.

  2. yeah those dot matrix printed receipts are crazy, then stapled up for ya, bizarre. I actually picked up the phone myself and rang to find out their hours a couple of weeks back, I’d already determined that Noel Leeming and DSE were closed via their websites. Harvey Norman were open late that night so got my business.

  3. Your totally correct, they are old school as. The thing that annoys me when I go there is that the people behind the counter are always reading books if they have nothing to do. Having worked in retail, this is a bad look. And they are always reading books, so they must be allowed to do it.

  4. One thing I would like to know is: Do they actually tell their staff to lie about how long something will take?

    We bought a table set – and were told it would be in Auckland in three weeks time (made in Christchurch) 5 weeks later, not only two weeks late, they had ordered the wrong sized table, couldn’t deliver on the day they said they would and then expected someone to go home on 10 minutes notice…

    THEN… (lords know why!) we go to order some cards and photos – ready on Tuesday the chap tells us…

    it’s now friday and still nothing…

    Was this the company that had Erin Brockovich as a spokeswoman? I feel like writing to HER to complain.

  6. The headline of this piece is very good (obviously it caught my eye). But you may need to update this post as I was a bit gutted when I followed your link to their site only to find it has been upgraded. I was getting ready to “point and laugh at the fat kid” when I found out he was in fact ripped up and better looking then me. sniff

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