Sales Promotions as a Currency

Every time I go to the electronic department in any store, I find myself searching the shelves for something that will catch my eye. Although I am usually taken to products of companies which I know will give me the most reliable “bang for my buck”, I am also a sucker for sales promotions. If something is on sale it’s hard to resist not weighing it in my decision. One of my favorite sales promotions is the instant rebate. Knowing that I’m going to save money here and now at the time of my transaction is instant gratification. The evil brother of the instant rebate, the mail-in rebate, might have the same discount effect but is less desirable due to the fact that it takes weeks for it to actually hit my wallet. Plus filling out the paper work involved and making photocopies of the sku and proof of purchase tags is up there as one of the most tedious tasks known to mankind. But there is something that balances out the sales promotion spectrum, the coupon. You know what you’re getting when you have the coupon, as long as you read all the fine print, you have a guaranteed sale of that item for that price. It’s kinda like the instant gratification but you don’t get the notion of saving at the store, you get it before you leave the house. Even if the store doesn’t have that item in stock, most of the time if you take it to another retailer, that store will sometimes honor that coupon and if you’re lucky even offer a discount on top of that. BestBuy and McDonalds have teamed up to in a sales promotion effort with their Monopoly sweepstakes that combine the prizes of McDonalds food, cash prizes, gifts from Bestbuy, and Bestbuy Bucks. Each time you buy a value meal from McDonalds you are ensured at least one Bestbuy buck and a two game pieces for the Monopoly board. What a marketing ploy, combining to things Americans desire, electronics and greasy food. Does the BestBuy buck hold more value than the American dollar?