Surely you have happened to surf the internet or scroll down your Facebook and Instagram home and find ads with huge writings like "Discounts", "coupons", "promotional code", "sales" or "voucher". These are posts that advertise e-commerce sites or shops of various kinds that want to inform you of their small offers and big sales that they have made available for you. Let's talk about Amazon coupons with yours black Friday offers, promotional codes Zalando, Shein and Booking and much more, some also valid in points of sale.
When we find these adverts we are immediately intrigued. We want to know what are the offers, discounts and possibilities that coupons and promotional codes can offer us. We think the discounts are sensational, great for some items. What we do is see the full price of an item, apply the discount percentage to the price, and finally see the price of our much-desired item drop. We can't wait to buy, we are happy and the only thing we think about is "I saved! ". But is that exactly the case? Let's see what psychologists say.
Discounts as many as I can: this is what is hidden
Imagine you have a voucher or promotional code for a shop or e-commerce site. After choosing your items to buy - perhaps some already in the pipeline - you begin to approach the cashier to continue with the payment. At this point, the cashier or page of your online store shows you the full price of your shopping. You see that it has a cost, maybe even a little tipsy, but you are calm and show yours winning card: your or your promotional code. AND suddenly the price goes down. You are happy, you are happy. You experience a feeling of well-being never experienced before and you realize that you can buy those items of yours while saving a lot of money. You think you have done good to yourself: you can finally give yourself a purchase while also taking care of your wallet. But in reality this is not the case. To prove it is a team of psychologists it's a Orange juice. Here's what their research revealed.
Love for discounts: it's all psychology
As already pointed out in the previous paragraphs, everyone loves discounts. In fact, if we look at the number of searches made on Google at least monthly terms "promotional code" o "Promotional codes", in Italy we reach up to about 700 thousand. But that is not all. If we look, however, at the number of searches made monthly on Google in the United States, always for the same terms, we reach about 2,5 million; quite a large number if we consider the fact that the United States represents one of the largest nations in the world by surface, preceded by Russia and Canada. But why does this happen? Here it is explained here.
A team of psychologists has proven, following a search, that people would prefer a discounted orange juice over perhaps the same juice paid for at full price. In fact, people were made to buy a discounted orange juice and then they were made to taste it. This research found that exactly in the first 15 minutes of purchase, the juice tasted much better and more delicious to the taste buds than the same juice purchased at full price. But once these 15 minutes passed, the delicacy of the aforementioned juice began to diminish to go against a much more banal flavor, common to a normal orange juice on the market.
In other words, this research has been able to demonstrate how much discounts, vouchers and promotional codes have value and only work immediately upon purchase, that is precisely when the customer sees the price go down to the checkout and for this reason he obtains a sort of gratification. Which only points out a further question. If so, in fact, if the discounts work only in the immediate moment of purchase, coupons, sales and promotional codes are only valid in-store, but not online. this is because with the long waiting times mainly due to the shipment and delivery of the goods, the customer who has taken advantage of the discount will never get immediate gratification but will be able to enjoy his items at least a week after the purchase, when by now you will already have forgotten that you paid for them at a discount. So yes: sales and offers are a very effective sales strategy, especially online.
