Be cautious offering promotional pricing

paddyrg

Purely from observing myself as a consumer, think carefully before offering regular discounts.

Supermarket ready meals are usually £2.09 each, they offer 3 for a fiver - but not having a fridge/freezer available and so being unable to benefit from the offer, I find I will not buy the meal I would have bought for £2.09 as it is clearly only 'worth' £1.66 - even though I normally have no problem at £2.09.

Or Maplin regularly send me vouchers in the post - they can be erratic, but can be in the region of £7 off £70 purchase. They have goods in store that I want, that are reduced by £50 in a sale, cost £79.99 instead of £129.99, but because they haven't (yet?) sent a voucher, I have walked away from the purchase for something I want that I would have considered a bargain.

It can't be just me who acts this way - so exercise caution before offering regular discounts as they can actually disincentivise buyers.

Or is it only me?

Annisele

It's not just you...but I have a feeling that a group of MSE posters might not be representative of the UK's shopping habits.

InsideInsurance

paddyrg wrote: »

Supermarket ready meals are usually £2.09 each, they offer 3 for a fiver - but not having a fridge/freezer available and so being unable to benefit from the offer, I find I will not buy the meal I would have bought for £2.09 as it is clearly only 'worth' £1.66 - even though I normally have no problem at £2.09.

Is this actually an "offer" or just the normal pricing?

It is certainly not uncommon for bulk buying to attract discounts, as a random example but it just happens to be open on my browser at the moment, looking at kitchen roll, they offer them in packs of 2, 4 or 6. And the per roll price is £1.32, £0.98 & £0.72 respectively.

Whilst for you it may mean that you decide to walk away from the sale because you don't want to or cant store the extra and dont like the fact your paying almost double for getting a two pack rather than 6 I do think you are in a minority.


That said, with there being so many sales so frequently these days I do agree to some degree that more people wont buy non-essencials outside of sales unless its a distress purchase. I want to replace our kettle soon, almost all the stores that sell it have it for within £2 of each other and every store has had it in a sale recently and their reduced prices have all been within £2 of each others too.

When I finally get round to buying it, it will be simply at the next store that has a sale rather than having a brand loyalty to a particular store.

On the flip side, I wouldn't stop feeding our pets because their pet food is not on offer this week.

paulwf

I think it is the frequency of the offers that is key. For example when we saw anything we liked at Whittards you just knew it would be in a sale soon so we'd just wait a couple of weeks until the prices dropped. No wonder they went bust (now resurrected). Currently the Body Shop have 30% off offers every few weeks, my gf just waits until the next offer before buying anything.

For special offers it is good to make them special i.e. a big discount, when you see "15% off" or similar there is little point as that is not much of incentive it just means the regulars get what they normally do but at a discount.

BTW the 3 for £5 ready meals in M&S absolutely flew out when I was working there, you'd see people buying 6 for Mon-Sat and a Dine In For £10 to cover Sunday lunch.

spadoosh

This happens across the whole of retail. Your aim is to purchase the goods at closest to cost price of the seller.if this is more expensive than you would like try and find elsewhere cheaper.

The fact of the matter is you refused to buy the £2.09 meal but definately bought something in its place, was this better value?!

lincroft1710

The best offer I have ever seen was when Lidl reduced the price of a product by 1p and had a big sign pointing out this reduction. I was so overjoyed at the thought of saving a whole penny, and spent many hours thinking what I could do with this penny if I bought the product.

Other excellent offers I have seen are 2 large packets of crisps for £3 in Tesco, sensible because if you buy just one it will cost you £1. Also in Tesco are those marvellous 3 for 2 offers which if you look closely at the label you will see that the offer expired 2 weeks ago.

Experienced MSErs may detect a note of sarcasm in the above. All offers/reductions actually occurred within the past few weeks.

paulwf

lincroft1710 wrote: »

The best offer I have ever seen was when Lidl reduced the price of a product by 1p and had a big sign pointing out this reduction. I was so overjoyed at the thought of saving a whole penny, and spent many hours thinking what I could do with this penny if I bought the product.

When I worked at M&S they once decided to have a promo where lots of items were splashed with £1 stickers. Naturally a lot of prices were reduced but a few had to be put up a few pence to fit in with the promo

cottager

InsideInsurance wrote: »

On the flip side, I wouldn't stop feeding our pets because their pet food is not on offer this week.

Me neither, but it's better when it is so I tend to buy extra then... then struggle to find space in the cupboard to keep it.

lincroft1710 wrote: »

Experienced MSErs may detect a note of sarcasm in the above. All offers/reductions actually occurred within the past few weeks.

This is reminiscent of reports they've had on Watchdog a couple of times about these special offers and 2-for-1 etc being misleading. Two recent examples I've noticed. Large packs of 9 t/rolls being pushed as a brilliant offer, when the per sheet price for packs of 4 was far lower -- but guess where the shelf was stripped bare! And KitKat 4-finger bars: price per bar for packs of 4 was much less than the 8-packs being promoted.

I can't be overly smug as TBH it was only a year or two ago I noticed "per unit" info included in tiny print on the shelf price tags, but I always use it now...

motorguy

Its all about perception though isnt it? They want you to perceive that they always have the best prices and always have great offers on.

The most cynical example i have seen of this is the big supermarkets reducing their prices on a monday when the price comparisons are done, then raising them again for the rest of the week, knowing that most people will see the adverts showing how they are the cheapest, but not actually check the prices in store.

motorguy

Does anyone remember when the first 'superstores' opened? It was all about how they could buy in bulk thus pass the savings on.

Somehow that has been lost along the way - i dont necessarily feel Tescos offers me any more VFM than my local supermarkets could have / do.