Quote:
Originally Posted by Pierre Menard
It's not a link to a list. It's a filter. You search for something, you get your list of search results, and then you click that to narrow the results to the ones that are discountable.
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Thank you for pointing out that the button concerned appears only when a search has been conducted. This is a shame as most sellers seem to want to publicise their bargains rather than hide them behind a search.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pierre Menard
Price comparison should never be based on what price you could get if you used a coupon. That's obviously ridiculous, especially based on how few people even realize the coupons exist, or know how to use them.
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With respect, Pierre, it is your statement that is obviously ridiculous. Price Comparison should always be based on the best price you can get, with or without coupons. That is the whole purpose of price comparisons. And if so few people know about them, why bother. Or better still, why not promote them and how to use them properly so more people find out and they actually work properly as marketing tools.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Pierre Menard
Coupons are, however, a great promotional tool for someone like myself, who is primarily a library user. I don't usually say, "I want to buy a book. Let me see how much it is at these various places. OK, let me wait until there are some coupons, and see how big of one I can get, and how much it would be then..." I say, "Oh look, I got a coupon. Let me see what I might get that I wouldn't otherwise have bought at all." They're a good marketing tool, and one that I personally hope never goes away (or doesn't get limited to useless pre-determined lists), but a terrible idea if you're relying on them as your main price competitive point.
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If I have a coupon, I say "Oh look, I've got a coupon. Let me see what I can buy with it." And on Kobo's site, there is no way I know of seeing all of the books eligible for promo codes. Perhaps now you have pointed it out I can do some sort of extremely wide search just to be able to use the search filter? But, in these days where marketing is so paramount, I ask a further question? That is "Is the discount real, or simply a marketing trick?" My above post strongly suggests the latter.
I too hope this marketing tool never vanishes. I just hope that in the future it offers genuine worthwhile discounts rather than a simple mirage.
Just for the record, I am not Kobo's enemy. Certainly I like Amazon and buy mainly from them. But I also like Kobo, and would like to buy more from them. I have an H2O with which I am very happy. I even like KEPubs and their default layout on the device. In fact, I often convert my books, bought mostly at Amazon, to this format for reading on my H2O. I would love to be able to buy at least some of my ebooks from Kobo. But it annoys the hell out of me that it appears even with a 35% off coupon Amazon's normal price is cheaper at least 50% of the time. And in the other cases the discount is actually trivial. Technically it may be 35% of the very high Kobo retail price on the particular book, but it is certainly not 35% of the Amazon price, or even close to it.
I'm afraid my view remains that these promo codes are little more than a marketing trick. One might pose the riddle, "When is a discount not a discount?"