The promotion trap: Why discounting in a downturn backfires | Consumer Pulse: The Crisis Series Ep.5

📉 Price promotions feel like growth. But a lasting lift? That happens in just 2–3% of cases. When times get tough, most brands lean harder on promotions, and the long-run data suggests that's often the opposite of what builds a brand. In the fifth episode of Consumer Pulse: The Crisis Series, Professor Marnik Dekimpe (Research Professor of Marketing, Tilburg University) joins Richard Herbert to separate short-term wins from long-run brand health. 🎥 In this episode, Marnik explores: • The promotion trap: across thousands of brands, price promotions create a lasting sales lift in only 2–3% of cases, and repeated deals train shoppers to buy on price, the one battleground where Private Label wins • Whether Private Label has a ceiling: a 50+ country, 3,000-market study finds it does, but most markets (the UK aside, already more than 50%) haven't hit it, so there's still room for PL to grow • Three moves to defend against it: keep investing in radical innovation, resist the promotion trap, and strengthen distribution, even if that means selling through the hard discounters 💡 The takeaway? In a downturn, the instinct is to discount. Marnik's research points the other way: protect innovation, protect your reference price, and widen distribution. Counter-intuitively, selling a national brand through hard discounters lifts both sales and brand equity for the vast majority of brands. When the pressure's on, are you building the brand for the long run, or just renting sales by the promotion? 📺 Watch the full series:    • Consumer Pulse – Crisis Series   ▶️ Earlier episodes: Koll on FMCG volumes    • What Happens to FMCG Volumes When Prices R...   Pauwels on innovation    • Should Brands Cut Innovation in a Recessio...   Steenkamp on Private Label    • Shoppers Switch to Private Label in a Down...   van Heerde on pricing    • How inflation makes shoppers twice as pric...   📩 Get in touch: understand@europanel.com 👉 Follow @Europanel for more shopper insights and brand growth inspiration. Consumer Pulse: The Crisis Series brings together leading industry and academic experts to explore how global crises affect FMCG markets. The goal isn't to predict the future, it's to help brands, retailers and category teams make better decisions in uncertain times. #FMCGInsights #ConsumerPulse #BrandGrowth #PrivateLabel #ShopperBehaviour #CategoryManagement #RetailStrategy