Promotional Dopamine Highs
As a retailer, your key objective is to generate sales and profitability, while of course keeping your customers happy and highly engaged with your brand.
Anything that can be employed as part of your retail toolkit for increasing sales should be harnessed for sure. Retail promotions are one of those all important tools; but did you know that there is actually scientific evidence for why we as shoppers find that we just can’t resist purchasing when a promotion is involved?
You’ve heard of a ‘runner’s high’, well it has been shown that both the anticipation and receiving an unexpected reward, such as a retail promotion, releases one of the body’s four other feel good hormones – dopamine. Otherwise known as the rewarding chemical, this happiness hormone is a powerful chemical messenger in the brain. The release affects how we feel and behave. In the case of dopamine, exclusive or time sensitive promotions can create a sense impulsiveness’ , motivating a shopper to make that all important purchase. So as a retailer, promotions have to be a powerful component of your retail arsenal to consider.
What better way to encourage new and repeat sales than by using one of the body’s natural chemicals and responses to generate excitement and a sense of urgency to purchase!
The Techy Bit
So now we know a bit about the science behind the strategy that can fuel your profits, the challenge is successfully managing such promotional campaigns across your business. Promotions have advanced over the years and today they can be complex, especially when you are also using personalised promotions (which by the way, further heighten the emotional trigger and anticipation to motivate shoppers to make repeat purchases).
In 2025, the digital outreach of social media and email marketing channels provides far reaching opportunities to keep customers informed about current events in store, new product lines, trending products, benefits and seasonal promotions. With the many events scattered throughout the calendar year, there is no shortage of opportunity to remain relevant and competitive with special offers or the like. But throw into the mix unexpected world events or just the unpredictable British weather, you have a plethora of situations where you may want to react quickly with a new promotion or adjust an existing one to remain relevant and competitive.
Of course, in a multichannel and social world, creating and processing retail promotions seamlessly and quickly across both your brick and mortar locations, online channels and market places can be both a time consuming and daunting task. In addition being able to respond and react to resulting promotional traction can be of great benefit. Well, the good news is that having the right connected technology stack in place facilitates this process for you.
From setup, automated scheduling, application of promotions to specific product lines, locations and channels, the right technology allows control at the push, or ‘click’ of a button (well, maybe a few).
In addition, recording sales against promotional activity closes the loop allowing you to later analyse the effectiveness of your applied strategies.
Unified Retail Promotions
Eurostop’s Unified Commerce solution allows you to do all of the above and includes a multitude of promotional types, such as
- Buy one, get one free
- Two for the price of one
- Buy one get second for percentage off
- Buy a specified combination of items, receive a gift or free product
- Three for two, four for three etc.
- Money off
- Product range at same price or flat rate
- Basket promotion or spend and save threshold offer
- Tiered promotion or graduated spend and save incentive.
But our Promotions engine is powerful and the options don’t end there. You can either use the Wizard to guide you through the process or setup the promotion yourself, with fine control of promotional criteria available to open a multitude of potential promotional types. The technology will allow you to manage and implement your promotional strategy with ease across the business.
Analyse Promotional Performance
The unified commerce system allows you to view the impact of your promotional campaigns and adjust your strategy accordingly.
If you would like to find out more about how Eurostop’s Promotions module can assist you, please get in touch and speak to one of our retail experts who will be happy to discuss your needs and demonstrate how we can keep both you and your customers extremely happy.
