Rant: Fool's gold
Vanessa Ko
Here's a primary-level mathematics question: a customer who becomes a member of a cosmetic brand's loyalty club gets one point for every HK$8 spent; after amassing 1,000 points, the customer receives a coupon valued at HK$80 to spend on the product range. How attractive, exactly, is this deal?
When this string of figures was presented to me at a cosmetics counter recently, I deduced that if I spent HK$8,000 on cosmetics at this chain of stores (alas, my bill came to just HK$200), I would be rewarded for my frivolity and patronage with a whopping 1 per cent discount.
Is this company trying to be esoteric, with formulas full of eights, to confuse superstitious customers into earning the points needed for the pot of gold at the end? A pot that is worth a miserly HK$80.
This promotion brings to mind incentive rewards sometimes offered by my bank. Some years ago, it offered customers who increased their balance by HK$100,000, and kept the money in their account for at least two months, a HK$100 supermarket coupon. In whose reality is that an attractive offer?
Would anyone who had HK$100,000 spare to park in a bank account really covet a HK$100 supermarket coupon? And when they go to said supermarket, would they then be tempted by those buy-two-bags-of-crisps-get-10-cents-off promotions?
Cheapskate Hong Kong companies should stop insulting customers with their half-hearted promotions. There may be deeper psychological reasons why these types of offer succeed, but this town is good at maths. In the eyes of some, these incentives just work to tarnish the brands.
