Redemption Rate Inconsistencies
It is difficult to get an account of redemption rates from most rebate companies, partly due to a reluctance on the part of rebate fulfillment houses to release confidential business information. Among different sources, radically different numbers on both ends of the spectrum can be cited. Part of the reason is that most "redemption rates" do not distinguish whether they are calculated as part of total sales or incremental sales.
- PMA, a marketing firm, estimated that in 2005 $486.5 million worth of rebates were redeemed. The redemption rates averaged 21.1% when calculated as a percentage of total sales, and 67.6% when calculated as a percentage of incremental sales. They go on to note “These statistics reveal that redemption rates calculated as a percentage of total sales can be misleading when diluted by non-incremental sales, consequently making redemption rates appear lower than they truly are.”
- Not all buyers remember to mail the coupons, a phenomenon known in the industry as breakage, or the shoebox effect. Though it can be used interchangeably with breakage, slippage is the phenomenon when a consumer has their rebate fulfilled but they lose or forget to cash the check. Some rebate companies could tout a higher "redemption rate" including the breakage, while not calculating the potential slippage of uncashed checks.
Read more about this topic: Rebate (marketing)
Famous quotes containing the words redemption and/or rate:
“Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.”
—Bible: New Testament, Luke 21:28.
“I don’t know but a book in a man’s brain is better off than a book bound in calf—at any rate it is safer from criticism. And taking a book off the brain, is akin to the ticklish & dangerous business of taking an old painting off a panel—you have to scrape off the whole brain in order to get at it with due safety—& even then, the painting may not be worth the trouble.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)