The catch in time-limited sales tactics

16 December 2019

For The Conversation: Professor Daniel Zizzo explains the sales tactics behind digital 'time-limited' offers. 

As Christmas shopping ramps up, you may be getting a lot of emails offering you attractive discounts for a short period only. You may see flash sales or special deals that exhort you to “buy now” to avoid missing out.

These digital “time-limited” offers, as they are called, are actually an old sales tactic.

Those in the game of selling cars, for example, have long used the trick of alluding to that other very interested buyer who’s likely to return and snap up the bargain that’s before you. Telephone salespeople routinely offer deals that must be accepted during the call. Want time to think about it? Too bad.

Online time-limited sales work on the same basis, but with technology taking it to a whole new level. Now retailers can bombard you with offers that are highly customised and super-short – a deal, perhaps, for something you might have been searching online for, and now available at a discount only until midnight.

But for these tactics to work, our research suggests, requires finding a Goldilocks zone between being too pushy and not all. Time needs to be limited to deter you from searching elsewhere for a better deal. But paradoxically you also need enough time to convince yourself that buying is the best decision.

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