
Despite being the most generous with discounts globally, US retailers are three times further away from consumers’ price expectations than they were in January 2023 as US consumers suddenly now expect 30% discounts while retailers remain willing to only offer 17% off full price.
SHOPTALK, LAS VEGAS, 26th March 2023: Nibble, the AI negotiation chatbot for ecommerce, has revealed that the gap between US retailers’ maximum promotional discounts and consumers’ discounting expectations more than tripled from January to February 2023, with US consumers now expecting 30% off listed prices, nearly double the discount that retailers can accept.
February 2023 pricing and discounting insights from Nibble:
- US online retailers’ average maximum discount has remained reasonably stable for the last 8 months at 17%, only fluctuating within a range of 4 percentage points.
- Compared to other regions, US retailers are the most generous with their discounts: retailers in EMEA offer only 15% and in Asia only 13%.
- Meanwhile, US consumers have been expecting gradually greater discounts ever since October 2022. But in February 2023, there was a dramatic jump in expectations from 21% to 30% discounts off marked prices – nearly double retailers’ maximum tolerance.
- The net effect is that the discount difference between retailers and consumers in the US more than tripled from January to February 2023 and is the greatest gap recorded.
- The disparity varies by sector and is widest for larger AOVs and highly discretionary purchases; Jewellery for example, suffers the highest consumer discount expectations (38%) and the greatest consumer-retailer gap – 18 percentage points
These insights are derived from the 30,000+ 1-1 conversations Nibble’s AI chatbot has every month with consumers across 43 countries, assessing their sentiment towards pricing and promotions and negotiating on purchases ranging from sub-$10 to $1000s. This creates the world’s only continuously updated dataset of consumers’ unfiltered and honest human reactions to online retailers’ pricing, uniquely gathered right at the point-of-sale.
This data is released every month in a special 30-minute live presentation – Nibble Table Talk – including what the latest negotiations with real customers show about current pricing and discounting trends, broken down by category, geography, AOV and more.
The Pricing Gap
AI negotiation data and the pricing insights that 1-1 consumer conversations creates
Earlier this month, Nibble was named to CB Insights’ Retail Tech 100 – the 100 most promising private retail tech companies in the world – and was hand-picked to join Shoptalk’s Shark Reef: a showcase of the 12 best early-stage retail tech solution providers, who will pitch and compete at Shoptalk Las Vegas on 26th March for $100,000 investment from Shoptalk Ventures.
About Nibble
Nibble is the award-winning AI chatbot that lets brands negotiate 1-1 with every customer for an instant win-win deal to make both retailer and customer smile.
Nibble’s automated and entertaining 1-1 negotiation has been proven to more than double conversion rates, measurably improve customer engagement and preserve margins.
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