I acknowledge that housing prices have come way down and so have gas prices here finally

However, I haven't seen the prices of good and services come down much these days which surprises me a little. I'd be inclined to think retailers and service providers would be offering more discounts

Granted where i live is a bit out of the way so to say and perhaps the above is indeed the case elsewhere so please let me know if it is.

If not, I'm curious to ask if people around here have thought of reducing their prices or having sales/offering discounts, etc in order to boost business during these times?

On another one of my sites, the first step in the checkout process involves email capture. What we did a few weeks back is take a look at all the people who had recently completed step 1 of the checkout process (registration), but did not complete step 2; actually paying for the service. We then emailed them offering them a discount. Nearly 5% came back to buy as a result.

If you have an idea to induce buyers in these times do share

Hi Nic,
A ways back when raw materials were costly, it really drove up the cost to manufacture, which intern added to the cost of goods for the retailer. So while you may see drops in some things like petroleum, the lower prices for raw materials today do not change the cost of finished goods in existing inventories. So that should be factored into ones decision when offering discounts. Also keep in mind that we had a record year and project next year to be the same. Hedging can be a wonderful asset for many businesses.

We offer a variety of discounts like 15% or 25% off purchases, but they are primarily for our existing customers use. 1st time customers still get a deal because they can always get free shipping and or take advantage of the other free services. While its important to attract new customers, way to many businesses fail to take good care of their existing customer base. In the long run returning customers are what makes or breaks a business.

I am leery of sites that have all of their prices struck out, you know the ultra high “was price” and the “now or sale price”. In my opinion too deep of a discount sets off warning sirens. While I expect to see Christmas decorations slashed to 50% to 75% after the holiday, I feel that doing so with non-seasonal items is a sign of desperation and frankly customers are getting smarter and know how to smell a rat.


Nic, reviewing/auditing your sites checkout performance is always good to do and 5% is really good. We do the same with checkouts that stopped short of converting.

But at times the offers have to fit the situation, below is an email that we received before Christmas:

“Charles & Peggy,

Thank you for taking the initiative and sending the 2 out of 3 shirts I ordered.  I'm currently deployed to Iraq so email is limited - hence the delay in responding to your attempts to contact me.  I am told that the 2 shirts arrived well (good too since they were for Christmas) and you refunded my money with a 10% Discount on my next purchase.  I am very grateful for that and will certainly purchase from you again.  I liked the Royal Aloha Shirt, so I will just wait until the Mediums are restocked (granted they will be prior to May?) as that shirt was for me.   

I hope you have a wonderful Holiday Season.

Merry Christmas”

I probably didn’t offer the ideas that you were looking for Nic, so here is a peak at my upcoming “date sensitive” promo. I am going to offer existing customers a shot at a really nice, non-related product that is actually made by another company. While all of them will get a sweet discount on their purchases, only one lucky customer will get it the item.

I was thinking more about when to offer discounts and a job I did last week came to mind. I had been working with Reebok on supplying Hawaiian shirts for the Hawaii Bowl and while price was a small factor, the product quality and service ultimately closed the deal. Did I give them a discount? Sure I did, after the decision was made they still got offered 15% off and I believe that they very much appreciated the offer and will come back again and again. I will say that working with Reebok was quite an education in sales and marketing.

Nice deal WS! Working with Reebok can only be positive

I agree with you on "super discounts" of 75% or such for example - at time it can seem fishy. That's a good point i have not noticed.

We essentially work in 2 distinct industries:

you deal with good
while i deal mainly with services

there's a lot more leeway in the service industry to play with prices i find (in general terms - there are exceptions) and I expected to see the service sector offer more discounts or incentives these days

there's a lot more leeway in the service industry to play with prices i find (in general terms - there are exceptions) and I expected to see the service sector offer more discounts or incentives these days

I am not so sure that service related businesses have more leeway. But I guess it depends on where the service is in the food chain and how many tiers they are dealing with. I was working with one of our regular “services” this morning and they didn’t even imply or even hint that the economy was bad for them or their clients. Business as usual.

On one hand service sectors may be afraid that consumers will come to expect permanent, lower costs, hence it don’t occur as much. On the other maybe people are just more tuned into fluxes in the price of goods and just don’t notice price breaks in services.

I have just launched a super deal on my caricatures website. Will be interesting to see how it goes.

Well, it's a good thing that the price of gas went down, that's a big relief already. But it would have been better if, like what you said, the prices of commodities would go down. It's just alarming how some companies decided to shut down business because of recession, and most of them can't even afford to lower down the prices of their products, some as i just mentioned just cease operating. Aactually, this is where you can find great deals, during closing-down sales. and also, there are good travel deals during this recession period.

That super deal i mentioned a month ago - basically below cost....

Not one taker.

Two possible meanings:
1. They did not like the artist style
2. To meet the minimum requirement (10 people) meant it was still too much, despite being hugely cheap.

We have to think about why the number of sales are reducing.

People are being more reserved with their money.

This could be for a number of reasons, one being reducing, or negative, inflation (ie, the goods/products/service may be cheaper tomorrow).

Or it could be that now that savings are earning next to no interest that people are spending money on goods that will hold their value (ie - investment. Last month my savings account earned £0.14 interest, so I had double glazing installed in my house).

So, the question is now, how do we encourage more sales; like always we have to identify our target markets and get into their heads, make them believe that their life would be better with our goods/service.

needs are either physical (food, shelter, etc) or emotional, driven by desire

As a marketer from way back, I can say that now is the time to be increasing marketing spend which I talk  about here

Essentially because your competition is probably lowering their marketing spend, you have the opportunity to increase your market position and to become more dominant. That is how household names are born, during bad time when they are the onces who are still there.

I was checking the price of car insurance the other day for my son who has just bought a new car. Out of three online Quotes,the RAC came in best at 200 dollars cheaper.
Thought that this would be a good time to check with the RAC how much they would charge for my car. I could not believe the difference,i saved 621 dollars and still got the same cover with extras like windscreen replacement and car hire. I changed my house and contents too and saved over 100 dollars.
So it pays to shop around in today's market.

janet

Yes you are right this very risky to any deal at this time. I am totally agree with you. but, dealing is the problem so good dealing is a solution of this problem. Means we all know that this is very big problem we are facing in this Economy but we should to sort out from this problem.
[you also get some tip about this type of matter at my site [below at signature]
Thanks for your time !!!!

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Whaputte!!!

Considering when this thread was started it was still a bit better than now, the economy that is. I have personally seen a lot of discounts and sales i have never seen before.

Some places are offering deals that are out of this world. Just the other day i was shopping on a well known site and they offered diamond jewelry for 200 less than the original price, i only know it because i was following the certian item for a few months.

Point being, even though a lot of other places still havent brought their marketing prices down, they probably soon will considering people have been cutting back big time just to keep jobs and cut costs.