Buy One Get One free (BOGO) strategy is one of the common schemes of sales promotions. And we use it widely throughout the world. In fact, the BOGO scheme achieved a high degree of momentum and popularity amongst purchases.
According to one study in South East Asian countries, 42.7% of buyers showed their satisfaction under the BOGO scheme and 46.8% demonstrated their repurchase intentions. The recent study displayed an important level of BOGO scheme in e-commerce strategies. Put simply, online store owners engaged in BOGO schemes may focus on such attributes as value-added products and quality to rocket their revenues.
So what is a BOGO? According to the general definition, BOGO is a sales promotion, in which an item is offered for free. Or that item is sold at a discounted price when another item is sold at full price.
And what is a BOGO strategy? A BOGO strategy is to offer the user a product free of charge or at a reduced price in exchange for the purchase of another item at a full price.
Alright! We already discussed the definition of BOGO and BOGO strategy. Let’s jump into how our market divides BOGO types.
1 How many types of BOGO strategies are there?
As we defined that BOGO is a strategy to buy a product at full price when another item is given for free or is purchased at a discounted price. So basically, there are two main types of BOGO defined in the market: Money promotion and Non-monetary promotion.
Spend at least 2 minutes to look at our table below to discuss with us how you understand BOGO types. We summarize based on the study of Consumer Reflections on “Buy One Get One Free” (BOGO) Promotion by K. Jayaraman and Mohammad Iranmanesh.
Types | Techniques | Description |
Monetary Promotion | 1. Price Cut 2. Free Product | 1. Save 50 EUR with our coupon | Weekly special | Up to 70% discount 2. Buy one get one for free |
Non-monetary Promotion | 1. Free gift 2. Lucky Draw | 1. Buy this shirt and get a free hat! 2. Free ticket to watch new movie |
1.1 What are the differences
It’s debatable whether the GET of a free product/gift or a product purchased at a reduced price will attract more customers. Some of us will prefer to purchase a product with a gift offered than to purchase one and get one product at a reduced price. When the word “FREE” is noticed in the label, it usually catches the attention of our consumers and gives them a feeling of excitement as a reward.
However, other people have a prejudice against the FREE concept as a reward. In fact, sales promotions like offering “free” are not defined amicably by a group of consumers. To explain more clearly, this group of consumers do not get the idea why retailers offer a FREE product or gift because it does not make any profits to their stores.
This topic is discussed widely. According to our Shopify experts at Feeniks team, it depends a lot on what types of products they sell. The reason is that the perception toward high-end products and mid-end products are different amongst consumers. It also relies on the fact that if your consumers perform multi-product purchases, they would be keen on BOGO Buy One Get A Free One as they want equal savings.
2 How does BOGO strategy help you to rocket sales?
Jumping into the advantages that BOGO strategy brings to Online businessmen and Online consumers.
- For online store owners:
- A Bogo campaign will help you to get rid of less favoured products in your inventory while still making profits.
- It attracts new customers to their website while engaging current customers.
2. For online consumers:
- Online purchasers have a feeling of excitement and keep them re-purchase the next time.
3 How do you implement effectively a BOGO strategy into your marketing activities?
Based on our B2B experiences of working with many Shopify store owners, our team would recommend a number of BOGO strategies that could be implemented in your marketing activities, whether to implement a Discount BOGO or a Free BOGO.
3.1 Based on the price of the product sold
Selling a high-priced product, i.e: TV or electronic products is different than selling a low-priced product, i.e: food & beverages. So are the BOGO strategies.
Expensive products are defined by their quality, looks, value… There’s a lot that will go through to make a decision to buy or not. And unfortunately, some groups of customers judge these groups of products by their price tags and chose not to buy them. Therefore, when you apply a BOGO strategy to high-priced products, a strategy of price cut (fixed price or percentage) would be ideal than a free BOGO, since they will question whether your products are qualified and what you would get as benefits.
Also with low-priced products such as yoghurt, and milk. etc, a FREE Bogo strategy would be perfect. Just to make sure you’re selling goods that you can still financially benefit from in return.
3.2 Based on the inventory management
Yup! What I’m talking about here is Non-stock up products and Stock-up products.
Non-stock-up products are products that stock of the material will not be booked under inventory. For instance, milk or yoghurt.
With those non-stock-up products, we highly recommend implementing a FREE Bogo strategy so that you don’t need to worry about product returns.
In contrast, with stock-up products, we suggest a price cut (30% to 50%).
Final Thoughts
Understood an increasing demand for BOGO deals and BxGy deals, our team WizzCommerce launched the BOGO+ app (officially published on Shopify App Store), with a smart upsell & discount feature of setting multiple buy x get y quantity breaks and customising BOGO badges based on colours or positions.
In the meantime, please learn what BOGO+ is and how it helps you to implement your BOGO strategy into your online store.
It’s Thao! Thanks for reading!
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