Deceptive deals or real savings? 51% of consumers say brands regularly float fake discounts

Deceptive deals or real savings? 51% of consumers say brands regularly float fake discounts

Lesley Simeon - May 17th, 2024

A fake or false discount can be understood as when a company artificially increases the price of a product before offering a discount, making it seem that the later price reduction is genuine. Consumers have called out several brands for offering, what they deemed to be, false discounts

A recent YouGov survey asked consumers across 17 international markets how often they think brands use the ‘fake discount’ tactic when offering discounts. The results reveal that more than half (51%) of all consumers across markets think businesses resort to the tactic regularly, while three in ten (30%) say brands do so occasionally. Less than one in ten (8%) consumers say brands float fake discounts rarely, while just 2% say they never do so.

Demographic data shows that more women than men say that brands offer fake discounts regularly (54% vs. 49%).

Britons are the most likely across markets (66%) to say brands regularly indulge in fake discount tactics. Mexicans (62%), Swedes (60%) and Spanish (60%) are also high on the list. In the US, more than half (52%) of all consumers say brands regularly offer fake discounts.

Last year, a French consumer association had alerted consumers about dubious discounts offered by brands during Black Friday.  In France, 56% of consumers think businesses regularly offer phony discounts and nearly a quarter (24%) think this happens occasionally.

Equal proportions of consumers in India (32%) and UAE (32%) also say brands regularly offer fake discounts. Consumers from both these markets (43% in the UAE, 40% in India) are the most likely to say businesses occasionally offer false discounts.

Nearly one in five (19%) Hong Kongers aren’t as suspicious of offers and discounts - they account for the largest proportion of consumers who say brands rarely offer fake discounts.

But 4% of consumers in both Indonesia and India see no harm done by brands, as far as discounts go. They say businesses never indulge in tactics like fake or false discounts.

Explore our living data - for free

Discover more retail content here

Want to run your own research? Run a survey now


Make smarter business decisions with better intelligence. Understand exactly what your audience is thinking by leveraging our panel of 26 million+ members. Speak with us today. 
Methodology: YouGov Surveys: Serviced provide quick survey results from
nationally representative or targeted audiences in multiple markets. The data is based on surveys of adults aged 18+ years in 17 markets with sample sizes varying between 500 and 2002 for each market. All surveys were conducted online in February 2024. Data from each market uses a nationally representative sample apart from Mexico and India, which use urban representative samples, and Indonesia and Hong Kong, which use online representative samples. Learn more about YouGov Surveys: Serviced.
Photo by Artem Beliaikin on Unsplash