The truth behind Buy One Get One FREE deal!
For provident shoppers, buy one, get one free sounds like a great offer! Often considered valuable, it is not as great as it sounds! The offer is in fact so appealing that it becomes almost impossible for the consumers to get the real sense of it.
Often, it becomes difficult to judge whether the buy one, get one free offer is fair or deceptive because it is often clouded by the magical four letter word, FREE! The offer comes in the form of a disguise that shadows the fact that unless you’ve the intention to buy two items at a time, it really isn’t a big discount!
In fact, the BOGO offer would translate straight to “buy one get one at 50% off” and the deal would be same as 25% off on your total (overall) purchase. But the hidden fact that no one pays attention to is the fact that the amount of money you spent at the store has grown because you bought two items.
Buying more than one item is representative of the fact that the consumer has spend more money than he/she intended.
Hence, BOGO (buy one, get one free) can be amazing if you’re looking forward towards buying in bulk. But for most of the people, free isn’t always the best option. It is a tactic applied by the marketers and retailers to make customers shop even more!
Buy one, get one free, is a thinly veiled attempt making the customers buy more than one item at a time. For a shopper that spends carefully, BOGO may sound as the best way to get bonus in return for a penny. Consumers perceive the quality of a bargain based on the price they pay, compared to the original price list. Retailers are guilty often of the distorting regular price, raising the regular price. Several companies have been caught distorting prices in conjunction with the BOGO offers.
The word ‘Free’ is a tremendous motivational trigger and people like the opportunity to expand the deal by buying more than one item at a time. And by doing this, consumers fail or forget to do basic math i.e when you buy more than one item, you need to spend more, not less! For instance, suppose you’ve gone to buy a jacket that is worth Rs.1250. On one side, is a jacket with a tag of 30% discount and on the other side is a jacket at full price, but is equipped with buy one, get one free deal. While the second option may get you two jackets, the overall amount spent in total would be more than compared to the scenario, when you just focused on the jacket with 30% discount. Now let’s say those jackets are on buy one get 50% off deal. Option one : Buy one jacket at Rs.1250 and option two : The first jacket would be available at Rs. 1250 and the second would be available at a price that is half the previous one. When translated into layman’s language, the total amount of money saved from the BOGO deal would be the same as 25% off the total price. But the amount of money you’ve spent has grown because you bought two items.
A major thing that the retailers and marketers don’t tell you about is that BOGO deal is often applicable to products that have a lesser value. We won’t say that customers are unable to look through this veil but they go for it blindly! For most deals, it would be better for you to go for an item you were waiting for to be on sale rather than purchasing it through buy one, get one free deal.
Hence, whenever you go for shopping, apply simple logic : if it’s too good to be true, it’s too good to be true!
About the Author
This blog has been contributed by Megha Harsh, serves as a content writer at The Ideaz Factory. She has been a student of English Journalism at the Indian Institute of mass communication. A writer by day and reader by night, she is loathe to discuss herself in third person. In addition to writing blogs, she also has interest in writing poems.
