MarketingSherpa Blog

Discounts abound at eretail sites this holiday season. The New York Times dubbed the price slashing “holiday price wars” in an article today. The article’s desperate tone underlines what many of us already know: the holiday shopping season is going to be rough.

Every consumer’s looking for a discount, which doesn’t bode well for premium brands. Price drops and coupons can diminish a brand’s boutique image. But some marketers are finding a way around the quandary.  

Shoe eretailer Zappos, the article mentions, moves shoes that do not sell in six months to 6pm.com, a site it acquired last year. Zappos never discounts and 6pm.com always discounts. Two separate brands, one great strategy. (We recently published an article on Zappos’ UGC newsletter)

For premium brands stuck between staying relevant during the half-priced holiday and maintaining their image, Zappo’s strategy seems like a great solution. Get someone else to sell your products at a discount, like affiliates, or buy another website with a different brand and discount there.

About Adam T. Sutton

Adam T. Sutton, Senior Reporter, MarketingSherpa
Adam generates content for MarketingSherpa's Email and Inbound Marketing newsletters. His years of experience in interviewing marketers and conveying their insights has spanned topics such as search marketing, social media marketing, ecommerce, email and more. Adam previously powered the content behind MarketingSherpa's Search and Consumer-marketing newsletters and carries that experience into his new role. Today, in addition to writing articles, he contributes content to the MarketingExperiments and MarketingSherpa blogs, as well as MECLABS webinars, workshops and summits.

Prior to joining MarketingSherpa, Adam was the Managing Editor at the Mequoda group. There he created content and promotions for the company's daily email newsletter and managed its schedule.

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Categories: Consumer Marketing, Email Marketing, Marketing Tags: brands, discounting, holiday, Zappos