Wednesday, November 22, 2023

BOGO with a twist

Interesting article today in the Journal about the evolution of "Buy One Get One free" or "BOGO" offers from places like Dominos, Starbucks, etc. It seems that the new thing is to link BOGO offers to clearing some other hurdle like signing up for a rewards program or coming back in to the store a second time so as to separate out the "price-insensitive" customers who are less likely to be influenced by a BOGO offer. This lets you collect more data about these customers Which makes a little bit of sense when you think about it for a second.

But then when you stop to think about it for more than a second, it is pretty counterintuitive. Why do you want to get all this data on your less affluent customers and exclude the more affluent ones? Contrast this with Costco's longtime strategy of locating stores in more affluent areas, which allows Costco to have a super-affluent client base, albeit a bargain-thirsty one.

Then again, what do I know?

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