As the world-renowned bar and nightlife expert Jon Taffer says, “People get used to discounts. They don’t get used to free.”

Black Friday was extended from a single day to a full week. The same happened with Cyber Monday, and now it seems like we’ll have endless discounts until Christmas. 

Here’s how I think about discounts.

5% 10% 15% - I don’t even get out of bed in the morning for these. This level of discount is negligible unless you’re talking about a high-dollar item of say $1000+.

20% - Now you at least have my attention. Doesn’t mean I’m going to buy, but I will at least peruse your wares.

25% 30% 35% 40% 50% - This is the sweet spot of discounts. BOGO (a term I despise) is essentially a 50% off deal.

60%+ I find discounts above 50% to be suspect. I saw a Facebook ad for some digital product that was 90% off. 90%?? Why was it so expensive to begin with? Or is this just some marketing ploy like the one where they tell you “all these extras are a retail value of XX?” You can’t buy those extras separately, so how do they have a retail value? 

Amazon pulled a similar stunt on Prime Day proclaiming that a book was discounted by 60% when you compared the current price with the LIST price. But the actually price on any other day of Amazon is still less than the LIST price.