How an old pizza metaphor helps us look forward

Written by Brook Schaaf

Veterans of the industry may recall a certain figure who, years ago, made much of disparaging coupon sites. Interestingly, this individual worked in sales for an agency that worked with no shortage of coupon and reward sites (which I can say with confidence because FMTC identifies the relationships of most enterprise players with our MerchantSync product).

This individual’s anti-coupon stance was perhaps best epitomized by an oft-repeated metaphor: that using a coupon or deal site was like handing a discount to someone as they came into your pizza parlor — in other words, he believed that you shouldn’t offer a deal to someone who was “going to buy anyway.”

This came to mind with a Twitter thread that recently popped up. A user was nostalgic for the old paper coupons that came with Domino’s Pizza orders. I personally recall similar coupons for most fast food orders we made back in college. Apparently they are gone, or at least less frequent in this user’s market … and they are sorely missed.

This supports a point raised during a podcast I joined recently (coming soon!) — namely, that discounting is part of the conversation between a seller and a buyer; absent the discount, the buyer may feel like something is missing. 

So it’s up to the seller to determine what the right economics are, then to figure out distribution for an offer, which the affiliate channel probably does better than any other online.

Just imagine if you could place a flyer into the hands of any hungry customer looking for a deal right before they ordered something to eat.