Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

thehustle.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 250 posts

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

#91

Post by jacobyoder »

jjeaff wrote: post #83
everdrive wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I usually don't like language that suggests that consumers are brainwashed by marketing. But, getting people to comprehend that spending money =/= saving money is surprisingly difficult. Even when they understand money has been spent, it's not spent rationally: money "saved" at the grocery store doesn't actually mean less total money spent, rather the same amount as usual is spent, and more food than usual was able t…

I'm not sure I get what you mean. If I go to the store with a list of the usual items I purchased and some of those items are on sale, I end up spending less money for the exact same items.

> usual items I purchased and some of those items are on sale

Often the "deals" are "buy 3, get one free", where the per unit price might be a bit less than a single unit, but if you only went in for 1, but ended up buy 4, you've paid more than you might have otherwise. Sometimes it's a good deal, and you get more value, sometimes the items expire before you end up using them, etc.

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

#92

Post by dazc »

chippy wrote: post #32

> 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. You will find people vigorously defending their behaviour when challenged on this. For example: Amazon Prime. Amazo…

The difference with Prime though is you also get a video and music streaming service included.

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

#93

Post by scraft »

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'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).

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't need to be frozen, staying in the fridge, sealed, lasts for long enough).

One of the bigger savings we have got from a food perspective is to move towards making a 'menu' 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.

The above approach has also meant eating much healthier food, not finding ourselves in a position where we order take away because we don't have anything in. Ensuring we have not only meals planned, but healthy snacks (fruit etc) factored in too. It isn't a binary choice of by doing this we get everything 100% perfect, but it has been a hugely noticeable improvement.

I have read several times that some of these approaches and typically favoured by those who have more disposable income, which isn't ideal, as we really want those with less income to be getting all the good savings to try to ease/stop the wealth gap.

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

#94

Post by vxNsr »

pattle wrote: post #29
rlue wrote: post #21

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. 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…

> This isn't even getting into the actual value of perceived value (cf. the sticker price of wine vs. its perceived quality). Really interesting stuff. I fall foul of this trick quite a lot when food shopping. For example if I'm buying a box of cereals and I see one is priced at £1.80 and another is priced at £2.50 but is on sale from £3.50 I'll buy the more expensive one because I'm under the illusion that I'm getti…

When it comes to commodities, the best thing to do is shop by unit, ignore the "sale price" and the msrp, look only at the cost/ounce or cost/unit most US stores list both on their price tags, though you have to watch out for when they use different measurements for directly competing products (ie kellogs sold by the ounce while store brand by the pound).

In semi-blind taste tests I've always preferred the name brand of cereals but not enough to pay extra for them, so when they come out to be the same price as the store brand per ounce I'll buy them otherwise I just go with the cheapest option.

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

#95

Post by jamiethompson »

dazc wrote: post #89
hannob wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have hard numbers to quote on this, but I'm very convinced that you end up paying more in the end. From my own experience and pretty much every one I talk about this, people have a tendency to buy things they'll never need. (I constantly try not to do that, but it takes active thinking about it all the time.) No discount deal is cheaper than the one where you don't buy something you don't need. Then there's u…

A long running promotion in Tesco is 3 bottles of any brand beer for £5.25. I can't imagine anyone ever goes into a store with the intention of buying 3 bottles but if you just buy 2 you're misguided into thinking you'll lose out. In reality, you're spending more and drinking more than you really want to.

But if you did want to buy 3, or 6 or even 12 bottles then it is actually a saving. It's about shopping smart.

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

#96

Post by jacobyoder »

underwater wrote: post #65
paganel wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I ended up doing in order to avoid this is that I’ve been buying from the same brands for some time now, i.e. the same soap, the same shampoo, the same butter (truth be told, for butter I fluctuate between two brands), the same chocolate, the same detergent etc. This way I don’t fall for tricks like the one you mentioned because I almost don’t care about any other brands and products than the ones I’m really int…

You're not exactly beating the system. That's just plain old brand loyalty, which companies love. You've stopped shopping based on quality or value, and they can turn a profit without investing anything into marketing.

paganel is saving time by no thinking about the issue, so 'winning' in some sense.

However... you don't know what the brand is. The brand may be the store brand, which... while it's brand loyalty, is almost always the cheapest, and usually don't have any marketing expense beyond the product in the store in the first place.

I've learned to love most store brands, and... it may be my mind rationalizing it, but I think they've actually become much better quality wise than they were 20 or 30 years ago. But again may be a trick of the brain.

Biggest issue I see is that store brands often don't have the same level of variety. Chips - store brand may have 4 flavors - other vendors may have 10-12 on the shelf above. If I really want a specific flavor, I'll get a name brand, otherwise, just go with store brand (or.. with chips, hopefully skip altogether!)

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

#97

Post by coredog64 »

ocfnash wrote: post #11

I quite enjoy mentally parsing these "offers" in logically equivalent ways. E.g., "buy one get one free" as "only sold in units of two" or even "each purchase of one requires compulsory purchase of a second". As a child I remember considering the difference between "extra free" and "free" which I used to see on cereal boxes. Sometimes the box claimed "10% free!" but other sneakier boxes would claim "10% extra free!".…

Allegedly, when you see the “10% free” message on groceries, that’s a signal that the manufacturer is about to downsize the quantity, with the non-free portion of your purchase being the new normal.

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

#98

Post by dazc »

joshvm wrote: post #47
chippy wrote: post #32

> 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. You will find people vigorously defending their behaviour when challenged on this. For example: Amazon Prime. Amazo…

Given that other retailers charge upwards of £10 for Saturday courier delivery, Amazon is cheap. They also have fairly no-questions-asked customer service policies which is nice.

The refund policy is many times fairer in the UK than with other retailers. I never fell like I'm taking a risk with Amazon. OK, they have a fake products problem but I haven't experienced that yet.

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

#99

Post by jamiethompson »

I think the counter argument to this is non-perishable food and other groceries.

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.

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's a no brainer. I hardly ever pay full price.

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

#100

Post by everdrive »

jjeaff wrote: post #83
everdrive wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I usually don't like language that suggests that consumers are brainwashed by marketing. But, getting people to comprehend that spending money =/= saving money is surprisingly difficult. Even when they understand money has been spent, it's not spent rationally: money "saved" at the grocery store doesn't actually mean less total money spent, rather the same amount as usual is spent, and more food than usual was able t…

I'm not sure I get what you mean. If I go to the store with a list of the usual items I purchased and some of those items are on sale, I end up spending less money for the exact same items.

Suppose a grocery bill is usually $100 a week, and (for simplicity's sake) let's say it buys 30 food items. In the example I'm referring to, $100 would still be spent, but 35 food items purchased. This could only be considered "saving money" if the extra food allowed you to spend less than $100 on next week's groceries.

Anyhow, sorry for being confusing. It's possible this example isn't all that common in general. I just bump into it all the time.

Post reply on HN