Today I got another one of those offers from my supermarket app where they usually have this little spinning game you can play where, depending on what you get randomly, you could get, for example, 30,000 or 50,000 points, which is like 30 to 50 dollars for purchases of a certain amount. For example, you have to spend 75 dollars to get that. And so it’s good if you intend to actually buy something, but if you’re not, then of course you are often spending money that you wouldn’t have anyway, so you’re not really saving. And what I was thinking was, this promotion comes up so often to the point where it doesn’t even feel like it’s something that you should necessarily have to take advantage of.
And so it makes you wonder, as a business, is there a certain limit you should place on coupons and deals that you put out there? Because many times you are actually training people not to shop until they actually see the deals come, because they come so frequently. I remember there was one example, I believe it was Bed Bath & Beyond, where they normally have these coupons to save X amount of money very frequently, to the point where I believe they actually mentioned during some meetings that they’re training their customers not to buy at the regular retail price because the coupons are so frequent. And so as a result they tried to scale back a little bit, but it makes you wonder in that case, is it a good idea to hold back when it comes to deals like these?
I suppose in one sense it does make sense not to give people too many deals like that, because let’s face it, if you’re trying to save money and you’re frugal, like someone like myself, and you do your research, then you will wait it out. At the same time, if your prices are extremely high, like at a store such as Shoppers Drug Mart, in many cases then you tend to not buy anything unless you get some type of discount or deal, so I suppose it’s kind of different in that regard, where if you want the sale then you’re going to have to give them a discount, considering your prices are so high, versus a store where the prices are so much lower. You don’t need coupons because that’s where you’ll go by default normally. So that’s something that’s interesting to think about when it comes to offering deals too frequently overall.