Tips for Promoting Sales with Price Match Guarantees

Price match guarantees can help a business create trust. Use these marketing ideas to build business using price match guarantees.

Price match guarantees could help you win over unsure customers and create competitive advantages.

Price match guarantees will only impact profit margins in the case of returns, making them a low-risk way to attract new customers and close more deals based on consumer confidence. Find out how to successfully promote sales with price match guarantees to gain an advantage over the competition, without sacrificing profitability in the process.

More shoppers than ever have smartphones and other mobile devices that allow them to comparison shop on the fly. They might find something they want in your store but discover a lower price available from a nearby or online competitor and make their purchase elsewhere. Price match guarantees can keep these best-price-shopping customers in your store and help you close the deal with these savvy, price-sensitive shoppers.

3 Types of Price Match Guarantees

Businesses in a variety of industries use price match guarantees to reinforce shopper confidence. Here are some of the common types and conditions routinely found in price matching guarantees:

• Matching the advertised price of a competitor for exact brand/model product type
• Matching the advertised price of a competitor for equivalent product or service
• Refunding the difference if a customer finds a lower advertised price within a given period of time (such as 30 days)

In years past, shoppers looking for price match promises from a favorite retailer might comb newspaper circulars for discounts or coupons. Now, in the digital age, consumers can quickly search through competitor’s ads, websites, emails, offers and coupons while in your store to see if a lower-priced alternative is available.

What’s more, price changes are becoming increasingly dynamic and even responsive, with retailers having the ability to gauge consumer interest based on mobile activity and extend instant discounts or coupons in real time. This presents a challenge for retailers who have attracted customers with price-matching guarantees, and can seriously cut profit margins.

If you use price-matching offers and guarantees, it might be time to tweak your policies so that the gains you achieve are not undone by lost profits. For instance, some of the variables you might want to include in your price matching guarantee are:

• Time limits or expiration dates
• Applies only to exact match products or services
• Applies only to competitors pricing within a certain distance, such as a 50 mile radius
• Has a threshold based on your profit margins, such as matching competitors pricing up to a certain percentage or dollar amount)
• Applies only to regular pricing of competitors (i.e., does not apply to special offers, coupons, or discounts of competitors)
• Requires documentation that proves the price difference, such as a receipt, catalog, web page or ad

Make sure that all the employees authorized to honor price matching are trained so that they know when it’s appropriate to price match or to honor a request for a partial refund (the difference between the lower price your customer could have paid somewhere else and what they paid at your store). Most price match promises come with limitations; for instance, 30 days after purchase.

Another option for price matching is to extend not a discount or refund to shoppers, but a gift card or credit to be applied to future purchases. In this way, you are virtually ensuring a return shopping trip in which the customer will likely buy more than they might have otherwise, knowing that a portion of their bill is already paid.

A guarantee to meet or beat competitors pricing on a product or service you offer can help to allay concerns a customer might have about feeling they overpaid if they find a lower price elsewhere. Be sure that your price matching guarantee makes sense for your business and the bottom line, so that lost profits do not negate the gains you make in the process.