Require Slight Effort to Get Discounts

Should discounts be easy to redeem?

Generally, yes — but you can increase redemptions by enforcing a trivial step (Zhang et al., 2025).

• Enter a promo code
• Fill out a CAPTCHA
• Answer a single question

It worked in various contexts:

• Products: clothes, coffee, earbuds, vitamins
• Channels: email, Facebook, Instagram
• Prices: $16 to $200
• Cultures: USA, UK, Singapore

Why It Works

• Self-Responsibility. Customers feel entitled to these discounts.
• Behavioral ROI. Customers feel smart if they expend little effort for big savings.

How to Apply

• Pseudo-Loading. Try a loading animation (e.g., Reducing Price…) even if you don’t need it. Your discount is so big that it requires computational effort.
• Hold to Receive. Perhaps mobile users should hold a button for a few seconds (vs. a mere click) to redeem a discount. In one study, interactions on iPhones seemed more desirable when they required more haptic pressure (Liu et al., 2023).
• Promo Codes. Generally, 15% off is more effective when you give customers a code to enter in the checkout instead of showing the reduced price on the product page. Customers who see the final price while shopping often fixate on how much they’re paying, wheres customers with a promo code fixate on how much they're saving while shopping (Jia et al., 2024).

Requirements

• Trivial Effort. It’s tempting to assume that effort implies value: Hmm, this discount must be high if I need to work for it. But this explanation didn’t occur in the study: Discounts were less appealing with significant effort because it lowered the behavioral ROI.

• Jia, H., Huang, Y., Zhang, Q., Shi, Z., & Zhang, K. (2024). Final price neglect in multi-product promotions: How non-integrated price reductions promote higher-priced products. Journal of Consumer Research, 50(6), 1097-1116.
• Liu, Y., Jiang, Z., & Choi, B. C. (2023). Pushing yourself harder: The effects of mobile touch modes on users’ self-regulation. Information Systems Research, 34(3), 996-1016.
• Zhang, K., Allard, T., Agrawal, N., & Bagchi, R. (in press). The token-effort effect: Trivial redemption effort increases price promotion effectiveness. Journal of Marketing Research.