Friday, November 28, 2008

Shopdroppping

Shopdropping - have you heard of such a thing?

It is defined according to shopdropping.net as "SHOPDROP: To covertly place merchandise on display in a store. A form of "culture jamming" s. reverse shoplift, droplift."

I first heard of it on a tv show which spoke of it in context of people buying an item at a Walmart / Target type store. After taking the item home, they create a homemade imitation of the original, swap tags, and covertly return the item to the store's shelves. Consumers instead of buying the $9.99 mass market item are buying a hand-made one of a kind item, often worth far more than what the buyer intended to buy. However shopdropping may also mean changing labels on existing merchandise or adding pamflets or other politically or religiously motivated items to merchadise already in the store.

Often, no one knows of the shopdroppers activities and the only one that takes glee in the activity is the shopdropper themselves.

When looking up information about shopdropping, I actually came by seminars about the idea. Although, I think that it is fairly comical . . .I'm thinking that some people have way too much time.

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