The sour truth about the real cost of discounting

Discounting feels like growth. The dashboard lights up, conversion spikes, and the team celebrates. But look at the twelve months, not the sale week, and a different picture emerges.

This report, produced by marketing effectiveness expert James Hurman with Klaviyo, analyses thousands of brands across global and ANZ markets to show what discounting is actually doing to the brands that rely on it, and what the ones growing faster are doing differently.

What’s inside:

• Why the brands discounting hardest are growing the slowest
• How the majority of discount events generate negative contribution profit, and why deep discounters are hit hardest
• Why sitewide sales don't clear slow stock; they discount your hero products to your best customers
• What happens to revenue in the weeks after a discount ends, and why the post-sale crash is the number that matters
• How the rise of AI shopping makes a strong brand more valuable, not less, and what that means for your pricing strategy
• A practical framework for tapering off discounting without going cold turkey