free gift, online shopping, Promotional Gift, internet retail businesses
The lure of a free gift to boost internet sales is not new. A quick scour on the internet will pull up a plethora of sites claiming to give a free gift to encourage online shopping on their website. There are normally conditions set that must be met before customers can qualify for the free gift, but this is quite normal. It is reasonable for a business that exists to generate sales. There are thousands of internet retail businesses competing for the same consumers, so how can a business effectively using a free gift to attractive potential customers?
Before writing this article I searched on the internet for “free gifts”. It generated results such as sellers of mobile phones offering free Sims or air time, obviously only if you buy a mobile phone through them. Amazon offered a £15 Promotional Gift Certificate when you buy an iPod touch – the cheapest is £166,20. The gift certificate can only be used on Amazon website of course, but as previously pointed out, businesses exists to generate sales.
With Christmas looming on our doorsteps, the rush to acquire the special present for love one has generated intense competition in the beauty industry. As perfumes lead the way in sales, companies are using free gifts as baits to attract customers to their range of designer perfumes. Superdrug encourages customers to simply add any Beckham Intimately Yours for Him fragrance to their basket and they will send you a Beckham Intimately Yours for Him body lotion with your order, free of charge. Or you could choose a Boss fragrance and they will send you a Boss cap with your order. Not to be outdone by their competitor, Boots offers a free No7 Black Christmas Evening Bag gift with purchases of over £22 online or in store. They claim this gorgeous gift is worth £37, so this is quite a deal.
The Christmas period is a time when people who generally tend to spend more are also looking to shop in places where they can get the best value for their money. Most offers require that you spend something to get your hands on a free gift but the savvy consumers will recognise a bad deal when s/he sees one. They are instantly put off by offers of free gifts that look more like scams. For example if they have to spend £100 to get a gift worth £1 even the most unaware consumer will not be enticed by this.
Another put off is when the conditions to get the free gift is akin to going one round on an army obstacle course. If the condition is that they must introduce 50 people to your website in order to qualify for the free gift worth £10, then this is not much of an incentive. Nobody wants to work for a free gift that is not even worth the minimum wage of even some of the most under-developed economies!
To sum up "There's no such thing as a free lunch" is a popular adage that gives the idea that it is impossible to get something for nothing. But a free gift can be considered free when it is useful, easy to acquire, and in proportion to the expense to the customer.
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Online Shopping, UK Shipping Address, Deliver UK Parcels, UK Mail Forwarding
International Transactions on the Internet – The Visa difference
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