What can be more heartbreaking than discovering that the Black Friday deals you have been looking forward to only reflect “dubious” discounts? or that the ‘Special’ offers aren’t so special?
Usually, towards the end of the year (and for Black Friday), many stores offer highly promoted sales at discounted prices; however, now more than ever, consumers have begun to call out stores and popular online shopping websites in Nigeria for their “fake” discounts as they find out that these special offers are not what they claim to be.
According to reports, these retailers only use the said deals to lure shoppers, whereas, the prices are far from discounted.
“I wanted to buy a sweatshirt, about two months ago, but the price was about N5600. I couldn’t order it at the time because it was too pricey for my pocket at the time. So I was waiting for Black Friday price slash. To my disappointment, the same sweatshirt was priced at a supposed discounted price of N7300,” Funmilayo Sanyaade, a marketing expert shared.
In a LinkedIn submission, 54 year old Jamal Nasruddin disclosed that everyone at one time or the other has been cheated by these false offers.
He disclosed: “I had an experience & seen such news too. A shirt had a label as Rs 800 cut and 400 offer priced. After buying and removing the label I discovered it’s a top label and the bottom has an old price label Rs 400. When it’s having Rs 400 label it’s not sold out & when it’s having 800 cuts and mentioned 50%. Offer is sold out easily.”
In a submission, branding consultant, Talal Al Murad pointed out that where the power of purchasing is subject to research, the power of marketing is psychological.
For decades, the power of psychology has been leveraged in marketing in many ways to understand what motivates people to make a purchase, influence buying behaviour, boost sales, create ads that are appealing to consumers, design, and price products so they will be seen as a good value.
Dhaval Parikh, founder and CEO of Praxis Studio pointed: “If you want more sales, you need to understand buyer psychology. People buy more when they see the sign ‘sale’ or ‘discount’, they think they’re getting things cheaper and they empty their wallets.”
For Nandi Holding, Chairman of the Board at Nandi Holding people tend to gravitate towards discounts.
He said: “You could manipulate people’s psychology to make a sale. However, you must add value in the equation. People relate it’s intrinsic value to price and if price is discounted, – to people’s perceived value, then sale might happen.”
