Ripped off by the Discount
Even at 4pm on Saturday afternoon Borders was packed (okay, so I’m exaggerating just a little – this is Wellington, New Zealand after all). Pushing our 6 month old boy in the buggy in front of me, I slowly navigated the isles, while my wife and daughter sat reading books in the children’s area. Why were we there? Why were so many other people there?
I was most certainly there because I had received discount coupons by email the day before offering 50% off each adult book and each childrens’ book purchased. I think most of the other people were there for the same reason.
So the discount coupons were successful in getting us to the store and purchasing. And as a consumer I was happy to get books at a great discount.
However, if I look at my own behaviour with stores who discount regularly, there are some undesirable side effects of discounting (for the retailer). At Borders for example I now expect discounts. I won’t pay full price there - I’ll wait and purchase when there is a satisfactory discount. As a result of its discounting strategy, Borders will never again make full sales margin from my purchases. The same at our local supermarket. I know certain items are discounted regularly, so I only purchase when there are savings to be made and buy sufficient quantity to get us through to the next discount cycle.
But probably the worst aspect of discounting is the bad taste it leaves for those customers who didn’t get a discount or got a lesser discount. We had a chuckle at work when the 50% Borders vouchers were emailed on Friday. One of my colleagues had purchased a book from Borders the week before with a mere 30% discount voucher – what a rip off!
Perhaps Borders would be better to use an ‘unexpected idea’ strategy rather than a ‘discount’ strategy to get people into their store.
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Totally agree re regular discounting at stores such as Borders and the Supermarkets. These stores do need to think about new ways of marketing their products as most people will now not buy a product unless it is heavily discounted. Sharon