Comments on: Does Dell’s hidden discounting work? It’s a mystery to me.

By: Tim

Tim — Tue, 19 May 2009 02:24:40 +0000

Thanks for the comment, Susan. What did Solid Cactus do? I’d love to hear more about how that worked.

Thanks again for reading.

Tim

By: Susan Petracco

Susan Petracco — Thu, 14 May 2009 17:28:39 +0000

When it’s obvious and not hard to find, I think this might be a fun approach to discounts. At the very least, it adds a little stickiness to the site. I noticed that Solid Cactus recently added this feature to their Yahoo! stores add-ons. I thought it was cute. No idea if it converts or not, but it made the site more memorable to me.

By: Tim

Tim — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 02:00:33 +0000

@Linda – Good point. I would think a 35% discount would get me excited. For that matter, so would 20% off. The problem I have with this type of promotion is that I suspect I’m going to go looking for the 35% discount code (can’t you just see customers searching “Dell 35% promo code” on Google?) since I “know” it’s available. Seems to me they’d be better off testing a control and a challenger.

I do like the “fun” aspect of it, so you may be right. Who do we know at Dell who’ll spill the beans on its outcome?

@Jake – Another good point, Jake. Maybe the “mystery” is a compelling hook. But if it’s truly a mystery, should they be announcing the possible values? Wouldn’t waiting to present the possible values do a better job? To me, this method sets an expectation (“up to 35%”) that Dell may or may not meet. As an old friend of mine likes to say, that creates “antici-pointment.”

To add insult to (arguable) injury on this one? Dell sent an update tonight noting their original discount of up to 35% on monitors and storage is actually only 30%. Not that we haven’t all been there, but this whole thing may not go down as Dell’s finest moment, eh?

Thanks, both, for the comments. You’ve definitely given us all some great food for thought.

By: Jake Stein

Jake Stein — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 19:23:10 +0000

It actually reminds me of the treasure hunt in the Stickiness chapter of the Tipping Point. TV commercials referenced a mysterious gold box instructed viewers that you could get a discount by looking for the gold box in print ads. If I remember correctly, the ads with the gold box mystery drastically outperformed the traditional ads they were being tested against. I wonder if these Dell ads will be at all successful.

By: Linda Bustos

Linda Bustos — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 17:50:04 +0000

This reminds me of the Scratch and Save promotion the Hudson’s bay company up here in Canada uses often. You usually get the lowest tier, but 25% off ain’t bad for a computer and I think there’s an element of fun thinking you “could” get even higher discount – but I agree it’s easy to abandon the cart if you don’t get your high discount. There has to be more motivation to buy than a possible ridiculously good discount vs. just an average sale price.

I recall from a Marketing Experiments webinar discussing the psychology of price, when you list “10-50% off” people remember the first number

http://www.getelastic.com/the-psychology-of-numbers-in-ppc-ads/

and assume that’s what they’re going to get. Wonder if that affected Dell’s situation?