Conditional sales - opinions?
marble
Posts: 7,500
I know it must work for DAZ because they have always done it but for me, the words "when you buy..." are an instant trigger to ignore whatever comes next. They have all these promotions claiming discounts like 65% off but then you see those dreaded conditions. Am I an outlier here? I NEVER buy on the condition that I first have something else in my cart. It has become a matter of principle now so that even if I might want one of the conditional items, I will not buy. I'd rather wait for those newly released products to become discounted items in the future. They always do.
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I don't care for them either. So I just don't buy. I have added a few things to my wishlist and I just keep an eye on them to see if they're on sale for a price I can afford/am willing to pay.
I will scroll immediately passed any of those, not even worth looking at as it'll always been something I don't want as a required purchase
The only time I pay any attention to conditional items is on a gift card sale - and I will buy the cheapest item(s) that satisfy the requirement for the greatest discount.
If it lets me buy things I wanted for less than otherwise then yes, of course - whyever not? There have been a few cases where I have been on the fence and such an offer has tipped me into buying.
I'll buy when I want the 'conditions' anyway and the price for both seems fair; I'm not totally opposed to this concept. I'm fast-scrolling through all current offers though because they almost always require you to purchase from the day's new selection (and quite a lot of that, most often) - and there hasn't been anything attractive for me for weeks now. I absolutely refuse to be talked into buying someting I don't like and have no use for.
Thanks - I think this is the real point. I compare my buying habits in supermarkets which have similar promotions - usually buy one, get one free or similar. I don't mind those so I do stock up while the price is discounted. Or they sometimes do a brand sale such as buy 3 of the products of this brand to get the discount. Again I buy to stock up. But it is not the same with DAZ items because, with breakfast cereal, I will need the same again next week, so stocking up while the price is low makes sense. Being enticed by DAZ discounts only if I buy something I would struggle to place in any of my scenes is an entirely different kind of marketing and I just find it annoying.
unless of course you want the new thing anyway
in the past I would have been all over the Basilisk but these days I think hard about buying anything at all no matter how much I would like it
because reasons
my wishlist keeps growing as I still hope one day things will change
My financial status forces me to be very picky anyhow so with characters, for example, I look at whether I like the skin rather than the character. I dial-in my own character shapes anyway so the skin is important because it can be used on any number of my own shapes. For the same reason, I don't buy additional textures for clothing. I would rather buy shaders which can be used on any clothing (or other cloth products).
I am constantly amazed when I read forum comments like "straight into my cart" whenever a new character appears. I wonder how many hundreds of characters some people have? I just counted my total G8F and I have 47 characters. Half of them I never go near because I found fault with them at some stage (such as painted-in skin shadows and creases or mis-aligned nipples). Is 47 about average or high or low?
Ah, the dreaded asterisk symbol! Bane of everyone who's ever worked in retail...
Anyway, it depends on if I want and/or need the extra item. Back in the day, DAZ would have PC items on those sales, and I'd buy a tile shader or texture pack (for an item I didn't even own) just to save the extra money. As long as the savings was worth the extra item, however. Spending $2.99 to save a $1.99...not really good money management.
For big purchases, I can see buying that $15.99 item to save an extra 10% on a purchase of $200 or more.
If something I really like fulfills the condition, then sure, why not. But I won't buy anything I'd never use just to get a discount. There's always another sale.
My Install Manager "Ready to Download" category has a few items that were purchased just because they were the cheapest option for a qualifying purchase for some discount when I had a cart full of other items. Spend $3 for an extra 10% off of $50 worth of other stuff. I can do middle-school math. If I never download the item, it isn't really clutter.
However, I think the recent trend has been for rather expensive qualifying items within a narrow range--Fewer of those cheap texture expansions for items I don't own or plan to buy and more new items and bundles costing at least $15. I generally pass those deals by without giving them a second thought.
Indeed, it is those newer products and bundles that I was initially thinking of. Usually I get a promo email touting large discounts and when I get to the store page with the promotion details I find that the 65% (or, more regularly 50% recently) is conditional on the purchase of a new product or a bundle. Those old deals where you could but a cheap texture and qualify for a stacked discount seem to have been phased out. I have to say that I did indulge those sales.
I mean, really: "Select DAZ Originals" are on sale every day and usually the same items at varying discounts. As for 55% ... not worth consideration as they will be 75% off on another day.
I don't like them either. I almost never participate. I like a straight sale - no gimmicks, no strings, no prerequisites. % off and only that and I'm good ;)
Same, then again I am used to the sales gimmicks at DAZ and working in retail I see all kinds of gimmicks there as well, so i just buy what I want, when I want it.
When it says buy X of today's new items to get %discount on some older stuff, I just scroll on by, if today's items are not something I would have bought anyway.
But sometimes there are conditions like "any" new item, and you can find a low priced item that costs less than the amount you would save on the item you wanted to buy anyway. Then that is a good deal. But you have to be willing to spend the time investigating the selection.
Sometimes there are conditions like an extra discount if you buy 2 or more from a select list of items. Sometimes that list has free items. Add one of those free items (even if you don't want it or already own it) to the cart with an item from the list that you do want, and get the item you do want for less.
If there's things in both categories I want to get anyways and the deal is good enough, I'll do it, but I won't go out of my way and buy things unnecessarily just to get the discount.
I just find all these schemes an annoying waste of time. I, perhaps more than most, appreciate a good deal and a generous discount and, occasionally, there are some spectacular deals to be had but do I want to spend (literally) hours scrolling through pages and pages of things I will never consider buying just to find that gem? And that gem is probably not to be found anywhere that day.
Maybe better filters would help. I think a start would be to be able to filter things included in a sale in the same way that the store as a whole can be filtered. Then a reconsideration of what makes a good and effective filter is probably needed.
If the conditions interest me, I'll buy. That's as far as I've ever thought about it, and certainly not a situation I'd ever think to complain about.
Yep, same.
Same. Has to be something I want, for both the requirement and the reward, and be a good deal. That's all I care about.
I've been complaining about the "buy 3-4+ of today's new releases" type of deals a few times in the sales thread... I find those silly. Even if they unlocked a worthy deal (which they don't 99% of the time), the chance of finding 3-4 new releases in one day worth buying is pretty much zero, while the buy-in is way too high (40-50$) to make any deal worthwile.
On the other hand having to buy 1-2 new releases (ANY new releases, or at least from the 3 day promo period) or having to buy 3-4 releases from a large selection for max discount are fine.
At the end of the day, this just makes me buy less new relases than I would. Unless they're from a PA I'm particularly fond of, or simply must have, without a proper incentive, they just go into wishlist.
The other thing with these is where they break bundles and the bundle counts as one item. The bundle needs to count as though you are buying its content. There was one occasion, possibly more, where it was not possible to access the sale if you bought the bundle (it was the Gothic bundle IIRC).
So here's one.
https://www.daz3d.com/choose-your-character
I bought this bundle because I wanted it, but I don't want anything else there. I don't want the accesories really, but it's cheaper to buy the bundle than the other two items alone. I had no interest at all in any other new releases that day.
That meant that I decided not to even look at the swimwear / intimate items, becuase I felt that I was being excluded from a better deal on them because I bought a bundle. I could buy the suit and the accesories for less money and qualify for the deal. Really? How does that make sense? If they aren't going to give me the deal I think I shoiuld get, I won't bother to see what I'm missing out on...
Really the only fair way to do this is to say spend xxx or more to qualify, although I hesitate to make a suggestion that makes things more complicated than they already are...
But this is not something that worried me too much. Just an explanation to anyone reading this that might be interested in how customers think as to why I didn't even look at a sale that could well have contained something I might have bought.
Yes, the very narrow selection is a very essential part of the problem. If at least the new releases were more varied, then the chances of finding something interesting would be higher. But then, it would still have to be SO interesting as to make me pay the high initial price, before any sales start happening. And there are not many themes or assets for which I'd do that.
That about summs it up.
there is nothing inherently wrong with them they are conditional for both the seller and the buyer, just wish they would advertise them slightly more transparently on the front page i.e the word free being used a bit loosely.
This whole "with any new release" actually makes me wait with purchases recently. I nowadays tend to never buy DAZ+ upon release but rather wait as I might "need" them for "together with any new release"-offers.
I think the crux of the matter is that there might be items that are desireable at the advertised discount but when that discount is conditional on another purchase - most likely of something not so desireable and also not so discounted - then disappointment ensues. I can't see how that amounts to a good marketing strategy when the result is disappointed potential customers. The reaction "Ah, nice ..." followed by "Oh, no!" can't be good, can it? Or maybe it is a facet of marketing strategy that is just over my head, which is entirely likely. However, several of the responses here indicate that I am not alone in thinking that way.
Just had a look at the today's sales promo (Fantastic Fits) and every single one of them is conditional. Plus there's an orange banner for DAZ+ members and that too is an offer conditional on buying something else. Another day, another sale another one I can completely ignore.
Same for me... the positive thing about is, that I've got more of my budget available to spend on other shops which don't follow this "buy 4 to get 10% off extra for one of these.." strategy