With the advent of bulk purchase marekting websites, are businessess considering the impact of discounting on their brand???
Is discounting a sustainable form of marketing?
Here are a couple interesting blogs on the subject
blog1
blog2
From my perspective there are several reasons to use discounting within your company. The first being to drive additional sales when one is overstocked, or preparing for a new range of products. The second is to leverage the marketing reach of these websites customer lists to increase your brand awareness within a mass population.
The main reason in my opinion that companies should not discount is, unless you are the warehouse, or 1-2-3 dollar store where your business is discounting, and volume is the name of the game, how does discounting reflect on your brand? If you start discounting will it impact on your ability to ever sell a product at full margin again?
The idea behind this post is for those companies out there looking at using discounting as part of their strastegy consider the real impact on their bottom line, and their brand positioning. The recession has been difficult for many organisations, but there are other ways to make your business work without necesarily resorting to discounting. And as I have stated above there are also good reason why this sort of marketing can work!
