Wednesday, June 18, 2008

Bad discounts

I'm not going to mention the name of the online retailer with this promotion, but they're currently offering a $25 gift card with $100 purchases. I count at least a dozen products with $99.95 price tags, and 4 or 5 with $100.00 price tags. It's probably a deliberate strategy to make sure they don't have to discount electronics products with poor margains.
Only the $100 products are eligible for the gift card, leading to a prolonged mental debate among your average consumer of a) does shipping count? b) does giftwrap count c) is there a $5 product on the site? The answer to all of which is no, leading to what I'm sure are substantially lower conversion rates, due to frustrated consumers.

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