What a 0.8% Sales Uptick Can’t Fix

Every marketer knows a discount can buy a sale. Joan Kiddon, a partner at The Blake Project, argues the more important question is what that discount teaches the customer. When deals become the main story, the promotional price quietly becomes the real price and the full price starts to look inflated.

The incentive trap

The auto industry has a polite word for continuous discounting: incentives. Cash, financing and lease offers can be sensible occasional tools. Nissan’s offers pages, for example, list vehicle-specific rebates and financing deals. The danger begins when those incentives stop supporting the brand and become the reason shoppers choose it.

Kiddon draws a sharp line between a conquest sale and a quality sale. Winning a buyer from a competitor with a cash concession may help this month’s volume. It does not show that the buyer prefers the product, will return, or will pay anywhere near full price next time.

McDonald’s 0.8% and the experience gap

McDonald’s is a useful test. In the second quarter of 2026, U.S. comparable sales rose 0.8%, with positive check growth partly offset by fewer comparable guest visits. In plain terms: people spent a little more per order, but fewer people came in. A low-price offer can trigger a visit; it cannot repair a weak experience on its own.

Kiddon, who worked on the 2003-2005 McDonald’s turnaround, says the brand’s response then was a pricing strategy, not a reflex. The team built a three-tier structure while the ‘i’m lovin’ it’ campaign took hold:

• Value tier: Dollar Menu items, limited-time offers and value meals
• Core tier: affordable mainstay products that would not be discounted
• Premium tier: a limited selection of higher-priced items

The point was to offer access without teaching customers that everything on the menu should be marked down.

Sweetgreen resets the offer instead of the coupon

Sweetgreen shows the same logic outside fast food. Customers had come to see its bowls as expensive, partly because a simple starting price could become a $20-plus lunch after add-ons. Rather than stacking another discount, the company introduced lower-priced wraps, increased some portions and clarified what people get when they customise a bowl. Management also acknowledged that earlier promotions brought in diners who often did not become regular full-price customers.

Protect the reference price

The underlying mechanism is reference price. When promotions repeat, shoppers update what they believe the product is worth. The deal price becomes the anchor and the regular price loses credibility. Nissan faced this after its 1999 turnaround began: Kiddon notes customers perceived a value gap of more than $1,000 between comparable Nissan and Toyota models, and dealers often had to discount to close it. The ‘Bold & Thoughtful’ brand idea could not do its work while the brand was being sold as discounted metal.

None of this means ending all offers. But Kiddon’s advice is to make the message ‘this is a great brand at a great price’ rather than ‘this is a great deal for this brand’. The two statements train different expectations.

Source: Branding Strategy Insider