ESSO Discount Promotion: Fill up for EXACTLY 70 € – who comes up with such a thing?
It is an old wisdom in pricing: many discount strategies are anything but well thought out – for example when Deutsche Bahn tries to dissuade me from buying a Flex-Ticket with a price advantage of 1.25 euros. A current example of a hardly comprehensible discount idea is the ESSO discount promotion: anyone who fills up for EXACTLY 70 euros receives a discount of 5 euros on the next refuelling.
What is actually being rewarded in this ESSO discount promotion? The customers’ play instinct? The sensitivity in handling the fuel pump? Should I refrain from filling up completely in order to be able to redeem the 5 euros? Will I become an ESSO regular customer as a result? How annoyed would I be if the tank is already full at 67 euros? And with our Toyota, we have never filled up for 70 euros, the little one doesn’t have such a huge tank. Am I being discriminated against because I don’t drive an SUV?
It seems to be true what pricing expert Hermann Simon said many years ago: very many discount systems are not really well thought out. This ESSO action apparently belongs to them.