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The shady economics of ‘buy one, get one free’ deals

295 点作者 zzaner超过 6 年前

34 条评论

rlue超过 6 年前
What makes this really interesting is how living in an economy where prices are both set by the seller and non-negotiable causes consumers to equate asking price with value.<p>As a consequence, BOGO feels like a better deal than one item at 50% off MSRP. A 50% discount is a change in the asking price; the value of this item must have depreciated in some way for the seller to want to get rid of it (e.g., this garment is going out of season), and the price I&#x27;m paying is a fair deal that I&#x27;m happy to accept because I don&#x27;t need to indulge in extravagances.<p>But in a BOGO deal, the asking price hasn&#x27;t moved (or, as the article discusses, may actually be inflated); the fact that I paid full price means that it retains its original value, and the one they throw in is simply an enticement. In other words, I purchased an extravagance at full price, but it was a deal because I walked out with two. The amount paid is double the previous example&#x27;s, but the perceived value is fourfold.<p>This isn&#x27;t even getting into the actual value of perceived value (cf. the sticker price of wine vs. its perceived quality). Really interesting stuff.
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chrisdone超过 6 年前
I feel that there is a wealth&#x2F;background effect here that could be studied somewhat too. I think people who don&#x27;t have to worry about money are less likely to pay any attention to discounts and deals.<p>Having come from a council estate, there is a certain mindset behind getting a deal for everything, making your little money go as far as possible, buy one get one free, or discounts on anything, or coupons to get into restaurants or discounted vacations, or companies that &quot;get you deals&quot; on all your electric, gas, TV, internet bills, 8 packs of cheap beer, etc. are all seen as victories and you are crazy for not taking advantage of them. There&#x27;s an emphasis on getting more quantity for less money. That&#x27;s easily exploited.
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ChrisSD超过 6 年前
&gt; A coffee mug that usually sells for $10 + $3 S&amp;H will go for $13, with FREE shipping.<p>I actually prefer this. It&#x27;s much better than shops that activity try to hide shipping costs until the last moment. Also it makes comparing prices quicker.
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richpimp超过 6 年前
I recently went to a department store called Kohl&#x27;s for the first time with my wife, who&#x27;d been shopping there for years. For those unfamiliar with this store, think something similar to a JC Penney&#x27;s. What struck me was that above every item was some digital signage showing a discounted price or promotion (B1G1 Free, 25% off, etc.), along with the MSRP price. So basically, anything I looked at seemed like a great deal. They also have a rewards program whereby you get &quot;Kohl&#x27;s cash&quot; whenever you reach some threshold for purchases (something like $5.00 Kohl&#x27;s cash for every $100 spent), which effectively gives you a discount.<p>Of course, I soon realized that this was all simply a tactic to encourage people to continue to spend their money in the store, an effective one at that. The &quot;sale&quot; price was really no different than the standard price at any other retail store. It was just the perception of getting a good deal and triggering the dopamine receptors in the brain. I told my wife this, but her reaction was one of incredulity. Her thinking was she was saving money by shopping there. It&#x27;s such a simple, yet brilliant tactic. Make people feel like they&#x27;re getting a good deal, and they&#x27;ll spend more money than they otherwise would.
chippy超过 6 年前
&gt; Most online clothing brands offer ‘free’ shipping, with the catch that you have to meet a minimum purchase amount (often $100) to qualify. Some 58% of consumers will add additional items to their cart — often things they didn’t originally intend to purchase — just to “save” $5 to $10 on handling fees.<p>You will find people vigorously defending their behaviour when challenged on this. For example: Amazon Prime.<p>Amazon Prime is a product that costs you money and makes you spend more money on Amazon, and yet people will defend their spending saying that they are &quot;saving&quot; money.<p>The shipping is &quot;free&quot; but you have to spend £8 a month to qualify. If you don&#x27;t spend at amazon during that month you are still down £8 (that&#x27;s about £100 a year). If you spend something at amazon during the month you are still down the £8 in addition to the money spent at something.<p>Amazon Prime is a shady product designed to get you to spend money at Amazon.<p>As the article says often you will find the same product for lower in other places. You just need to do the sums. Another common defence we will see when people respond to this is &quot;Oh I know it doesn&#x27;t save me money, it&#x27;s the convenience&quot;.<p>Retailers love making their customers comfortable and not thinking about these shady offers. Imagine having millions of customers so happy they will pay more money to you <i>and</i> defending this very process.<p>Now... there&#x27;s also the shady dark patterns the company uses to sign you up for it and make it it harder for you to cancel, but that&#x27;s another thing!
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scraft超过 6 年前
Buying the right BOGOF items saves money. For instance, after spending a lot of time trying different options, I now know exactly what face soap I want and I also know the price it sales for. From time to time, it&#x27;ll be sold as a BOGOF, so providing the price makes sense (i.e. it is the normal price or less than 200% of the normal price) then it is a good buy (it has long shelf life, and will always be used).<p>I use up about 1.5 loaves of bread per week, so some weeks I buy one loaf, some weeks I buy 2. If it is a week where I only need one, but it is BOGOF I just buy 2 and put on in the freezer (and then take it out the following week). It is a similar story for cheese (although that doesn&#x27;t need to be frozen, staying in the fridge, sealed, lasts for long enough).<p>One of the bigger savings we have got from a food perspective is to move towards making a &#x27;menu&#x27; of food we are going to eat that week. Then buying the ingredients needed for each dish. This means little or no wastage (good on so many levels), being able to buy at a good price (rather than not getting something required then picking it up at somewhere convenient buy more expensive halfway through the week) and knowing the quantities up front makes it easier to either buy in bulk, or knowing when a deal that involves extra quantity will be suitable.<p>The above approach has also meant eating much healthier food, not finding ourselves in a position where we order take away because we don&#x27;t have anything in. Ensuring we have not only meals planned, but healthy snacks (fruit etc) factored in too. It isn&#x27;t a binary choice of by doing this we get everything 100% perfect, but it has been a hugely noticeable improvement.<p>I have read several times that some of these approaches and typically favoured by those who have more disposable income, which isn&#x27;t ideal, as we really want those with less income to be getting all the good savings to try to ease&#x2F;stop the wealth gap.
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Vinnl超过 6 年前
I tend to make a conscious effort to ignore &quot;deals&quot;. As far as I know, the one case in which a deal is actually advantageous as a consumer is when that deal encourages consumers to buy more of a certain product at the same time, and the merchant passing part of the scale and predictability savings on to the consumer. For example, if you buy tooth paste every now and then anyway, buying it at the same time as many others might make it cheaper to offer that tooth paste. Or for example having the option between essentially equivalent meal ingredients, more people cooking the same meal at the same time can allow for offering those ingredients more cheaply.<p>In most cases, however, it feels like they only benefit the merchant, by manipulating the consumer to buy things they don&#x27;t need, or more expensive things.<p>I don&#x27;t think the cost savings I&#x27;m missing out on by not making purchases in the first category outweigh the extra costs I avoid by also not making purchases in the second category.<p>That said, I&#x27;d love to hear of more ways of how deals can actually benefit both consumer and merchant.
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maaaats超过 6 年前
Up until 2009 in Norway, it was illegal to advertise products with unrelated additions (&quot;tilgift&quot;). Not strictly related, as here it&#x27;s the same product. But this made it illegal to do promotions like &quot;buy our car, get a free iPad&quot;, &quot;buy this coke, get a chance to win prices&quot;. I think consumers wanted the law gone, as it looks like we missed out on deals other countries had. But it makes it harder to compare and tricks our brains.
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ocfnash超过 6 年前
I quite enjoy mentally parsing these &quot;offers&quot; in logically equivalent ways. E.g., &quot;buy one get one free&quot; as &quot;only sold in units of two&quot; or even &quot;each purchase of one requires compulsory purchase of a second&quot;.<p>As a child I remember considering the difference between &quot;extra free&quot; and &quot;free&quot; which I used to see on cereal boxes. Sometimes the box claimed &quot;10% free!&quot; but other sneakier boxes would claim &quot;10% extra free!&quot;. The latter allows the marketer to quote the same nominal figure for a smaller absolute quantity.
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flavor8超过 6 年前
We&#x27;re staying in Nashville overnight on our way somewhere else and enjoyed walking around on a weekend evening.<p>We noticed that all of the stores selling cowboy boots (and there are multiple) have a &quot;buy one get two pairs free&quot; offer. All boots in the store we checked out seem to be priced at $300+. So, instead of simply offering discount boots at ~$100, they&#x27;re leading you to think you&#x27;re getting $300-quality boots and $600 of &quot;free&quot; value in the extra pairs. Framed like that, who could possibly refuse?
afpx超过 6 年前
I’m very interested in knowing what proportion of retail revenue comes from these types of dark patterns. Is it even possible to come up with a number? If so, I’d be willing to help fund the research.<p>The other day a friend and I were discussing the “take X% off your entire order” coupons. These seem to be very common, lately. She mentioned that she recent used one on a cart of $100 in items. She expected a $20 discount. But, to her surprise, she only received $2 off. Apparently all but one of her items were ‘restricted’ items.<p>It seems like many companies find it easier to trick people than to actually provide great service or products.
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samstave超过 6 年前
Tangentailly related; i recently needed to buy a new shirt, where in the past, i had shopped at Express for some work shirts - but havent been in their store in several years - i went in as they were having a 40% off store wide.<p>Their shirts, which i used to have dozens of - are now priced at $69 per shirt... less 40% for this sale.<p>Ive never paid $69 for one of their shirts in the past. So the 40% off now reflects what i ised to have paid. So i feel they raised the prices of their shirts, then hold frequent 40% off sales to lure in traffic of people thinking they are getting a great sale - only to pay what the full retail of the shirt used to be.<p>So Express literally found a way to inflate sales of product through this tactic.
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telesilla超过 6 年前
My local supermarket does this all the time to my great annoyance, I never thought about the mathematics of why they don&#x27;t just discount the item. At least it&#x27;s better than the kind of deals that abuses people&#x27;s misundertandings of mathematics entirely, such as <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.telegraph.co.uk&#x2F;finance&#x2F;personalfinance&#x2F;money-saving-tips&#x2F;10986643&#x2F;Supermarket-fake-offers-in-pictures.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.telegraph.co.uk&#x2F;finance&#x2F;personalfinance&#x2F;money-sa...</a>
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billpg超过 6 年前
My local pizza shop offers &quot;Buy one get one free&quot; and &quot;Free delivery&quot;.<p>They also offer a discount if you only want one pizza, and a discount if you collect instead of having it delivered.
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jamiethompson超过 6 年前
I think the counter argument to this is non-perishable food and other groceries.<p>There is a certain brand of shelf stable non-dairy milk that my family use a lot of. The usual price is £1.50 a carton. Every few months there is a 3 for £3.00 offer. Now this is obviously a ploy to get you to buy more than you needed and also to appeal to new customers.<p>But I use these offers to stock up on weeks worth of the stuff. If has a shelf life of over a year so it&#x27;s a no brainer. I hardly ever pay full price.
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kabacha超过 6 年前
I&#x27;ve been living in Thailand for a while now and the market is so unregulated and abused by these sorts of deals.<p>A big super market near my house runs 2for1 buns every day for the past year.<p>I&#x27;ve got desensitised to the point where I don&#x27;t even see the &quot;original price&quot; anymore. The deal price is just the real and only price. The only real deals are the &quot;almost expiring&quot; price reductions super markets put out before throwing out old food.<p>I wonder if in the grand scale of things this abuse backfires or I&#x27;m just a rare case as a foreigner.
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consp超过 6 年前
Fortunately some of this (bloating the price just before a sale to cover the cost, note: e.g. day before) is illegal where I live. Though it doesn&#x27;t stop shops from trying. It does give the customer some extra power. If for instance the shop fails to sell all stock and dumps it afterwards you can try to claim the difference as this falls under deceptive practices.<p>The buy one get two variant is fine as long as there is actual profit to the customer and no shady &#x27;you still pay the same but it looks different&#x27; offers.
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hakfoo超过 6 年前
I suspect a lot of the BOGO deal structure is to exploit the consumer who intentionally buys only what he can use.<p>Supermarkets here have gotten big on &quot;buy one get (1, 2, or even 3) free&quot; for large meat packages (racks of ribs, for example), but keeping the price tag high-- say $12 per pound. If you fully exploit the offer, you&#x27;re effectively paying a bargain $3 per pound, but that requires a lot of fridge space to deal with four big packs of perishable meat. The consumer who says &quot;I only need one or two&quot; is being gouged for NOT wanting to throw rancid leftovers away.<p>A similar related gimmick are the &quot;buy N, save $M deals.&quot; If you buy any ten of a pool of random items, they knock off $10 from the order, but if you only need 9, or 1, you&#x27;re paying full price.<p>There&#x27;s definitely been a swing from &quot;everyday low prices&quot; to &quot;gimmicks and games.&quot; Everyday low price became &quot;3-day sale&quot; became &quot;only with club card&quot; became &quot;only if you install our terrible app and explicitly select you want the promotion ADDED to your club card.&quot;<p>I think the ultimate goal is to get where they can advertise aggressive discounts, knowing they don&#x27;t have to give them to anyone but the people most willing to jump through hoops to get them.
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whoopdedo超过 6 年前
A related and greater rip-off is the discount cards that give you coupons after a purchase. Consumers become addicted to these &quot;deals&quot; that make it seem as if they&#x27;re paying a very small amount for something. When in fact they paid up-front with the original overpriced purchase. It amounts to an interest-free loan to the retailer that is paid back to you with those coupons.
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User23超过 6 年前
My mother always said &quot;50% off what?&quot; Obviously when the merchant sets the nominal &quot;retail&quot; price to whatever they want, they can set the discount to whatever they want too and maintain their profit margin. This is basic algebra solving for one variable given a desired &quot;discount&quot;. It&#x27;s amazing how effective it is though.
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legatus超过 6 年前
Does anyone know of a book (even better a textbook, if possible) detailing these strategies? This article is about the &quot;BOGO&quot; deal, I&#x27;m interested in reading about other kinds of these strategies, and why they work. If anyone has any recommendation, especially for more academic stuff (textbooks or papers), I would greatly appreciate it!
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dspillett超过 6 年前
Everything even vaguely commercial with the word &quot;free&quot; attached is shady. I&#x27;m in a minority here (I must be, otherwise it would stop being common because it wouldn&#x27;t bring in enough marks) but I&#x27;ve grown cynical enough that the word actually puts me on guard and I go searching for the small print, or it just puts me off completely if I don&#x27;t have time for the small print.<p>It isn&#x27;t just BOGO offers, anything free is suspect:<p>* Just pay postage! (postage is nearly as much as the item costs on Amazon&#x2F;eBay&#x2F;others with delivery included, and it&#x27;ll take up to six weeks for your item to arrive)<p>* Do the Great North Run for free! (... plus a £320 charity pledge)<p>* First month free! (if you don&#x27;t cancel 27 days before the free month ends you&#x27;ll be paying for the service for at least 6 months afterwards)
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mojuba超过 6 年前
The shady economics of a non-functioning close button of an annoying &quot;Subscribe to newsletter&quot; popup. Bottom line: it works but also sends a negative subliminal signal to the visitors that a given business is desperate. Just something for website owners to have in mind.
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2T1Qka0rEiPr超过 6 年前
Minor comment, but I&#x27;m pretty sure in Ariely&#x27;s experiment he dropped <i>both</i> prices by 1 cent (i.e. the Lindt became 14 cents), hence the drop was identical, but this completely shifted the purchasing decisions.
vxNsr超过 6 年前
One way to combat this mentally is to have set prices for things in your head... ie the price you feel each commodity should cost. Don&#x27;t buy things that deviate to far from that price.<p>For example I feel a nice non-iron, fitted, button down shirt shouldn&#x27;t cost more than $20, so I only buy when I see them at, or around that price, BOGO or not (and I need one&#x2F;two). Same goes for lightning cables, I&#x27;m not paying more than $5&#x2F;(10ft)cable no matter what material it&#x27;s wrapped in.
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ksec超过 6 年前
I think we need to cite those Study were done in US. And the results are pretty much US specific. From my experience ( Retail is big, so it might not be applicable to every category ) Buy one get one free or anything with the word &quot;Free&quot; works in US, Works in UK, Kind of Works in EU, Doesn&#x27;t work in Asia. Or At least most of the SEA, China, Japan, Korea etc. The consumer mentality is completely different, and in reality the 50% discount price would work better.<p>Having it completely &quot;Free&quot; as the spend $12 Beer for Free T-Shirt example doesn&#x27;t work in Asia as well. Because you would soon realise these market wont pay a $12 product to get a &quot;Free&quot; T-Shirt. It only works in Japan and Korea, and that also depends on the products.<p>Generally Speaking, Discount is better than Free with Strings attached in Asia Regions. Pricing Strategy, Consumer Expectation and Product Selection is so vastly in every Asian Market are part of the many reason why many large Retailers failed in China.
ocdtrekkie超过 6 年前
This article of course totally ignored the scenario where the buyer is aware of the going rate for a given item, and either stocks up when a sale happens or waits until the price point they want to pay. The article basically is suggesting &quot;deals are bad&quot; instead of what it should be saying, which is &quot;don&#x27;t fall for bad deals&quot;.
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dazc超过 6 年前
A friend once pointed out a deal on Coca Cola in one store where 2 bottles were actually cheaper than one single bottle. I reckoned the expensive single bottles were only there to convince you that you were getting a great deal?<p>Coca Cola is, I think, the classic example of a product where fair cost has become irrelevant.
beefield超过 6 年前
Funny the title calls economics. But the textbook economics with its utility maximizing rational agents is utterly incapable even accepting the <i>existence</i> of this kind of phenomena, much less analyzing...
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lancesells超过 6 年前
I just read the book &quot;Dollars and Sense&quot; and recommend it if you&#x27;re interested in this topic. It&#x27;s kind of surface level but it does help explain the ways people spend and think about money.
skizm超过 6 年前
JC Penny almost went bankrupt when they tried to stop doing sales all the time and just charge fair prices. People want sales, even if the item isn&#x27;t really cheaper.
HNLurker2超过 6 年前
This reminds me of that Elon Musk meme where you buy glasses by searching &quot;x&quot;.the glasses are free but the transportation is like twice the price to male em
runyor超过 6 年前
This can be generalized to: Every time someone offers you a &quot;deal of a lifetime&quot; it&#x27;s a deal that mostly benefits him. If it doesn&#x27;t screw over a third person it usually screws you, and if it screws over someone else it still might screw you.<p>That&#x27;s why the smart man will find deals himself. E.g. instead of waiting for a prospect from a cars dealer that makes him a good offer, he will study what makes a good second hand car, when the prices of second hand cars are lowest and then he will go and make an offer to a caring owner of a car to become its second hand owner.
jacknews超过 6 年前
I thought it was known as BOGOF?
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