Ocado's Multibuy Calculation To Customers' Disadvantage

dlusman

eddddy wrote: »

Hi geordie joe

You are completely wrong! Try it at M&S, Sainsbury or Tesco.

As Cycrow says, their tills are obviously smarter than you realise.

And the programming algorithm to always do a "favour the customer" promotion is actually reasonably simple in most types of promotions.

List the items in order of value
work your way down the list until the promotion becomes applicable
work out the discount
continue down the list repeating until you run out.

For example consider items priced at 2,4,8,2,5,6

if they are all part of the same "3 for the price of 2 , cheapest free" promotion then order them as

8,6,5,4,2,2
working down the list you get the 8 , 6 & 5 . The promotion triggers and you get 5 discount.
Continueing down the list you get 4 , 2 & 2 the promotion triggers and you get 2 discount

similarly if they where on a "buy one get one free , cheapest free" promotion then working your way down the list you get
8 & 6 - 6 discount
5 & 4 - 4 discount
2 & 2 - 2 discount

Becomes more complicated if you have some of the products in 2 different promotions but the basic principles remain the same