Pricing

Twenty or 25 percent off, once considered a hefty discount, is practically nothing nowadays, as most consumers must be enticed further to open their wallets or purses.

As a small business owner, Nancy Rhodes is always looking for a bargain. So with a commercial real estate crisis gripping her hometown of Phoenix, she took advantage of desperate landlords to open a temporary store with a short-term lease and a steep discount on rent.

Forecasters expect a better holiday season for U.S. retailers, but say the price will be more discounts to get consumers shopping.

The National Retail Federation expects holiday sales to rise 2.3% over last year to $447.1 billion, the biggest increase in three years, in part because of more aggressive pricing strategies. The tone was set by the discount-driven back-to-school shopping season, which wrapped up in September with strong sales of children's and teen clothing, according to MasterCard Inc.'s SpendingPulse unit that tracks payment by cash, check and credit card.

This Halloween is the third in a row for which marketers and retailers are playing up discounts, deals and bargains rather than goblins, ghosts and vampires.

Retailers need to get their “promo mojo” in order to woo shoppers this holiday season, said analysts from retail consultancy Kantar Retail.

My boss thinks that free shipping and 20 percent off promotions are the key to competing with brands online. My team thinks we're giving our business away for free. Who's right?

Social promotions such as those offered by deal-of-the-day website Groupon are wildly popular with shoppers, but they might not be as big a hit for businesses, according to a recent study by Rice University's Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business. Groupon promotions were profitable for 66 percent of the businesses surveyed for the study, but they were unprofitable for 32 percent. More than 40 percent of the respondents indicated they would not run such a promotion again.

Wal-Mart, the world’s largest retailer, is adding thousands of items to its shelves, including inexpensive ones, and is asking dollar-store suppliers to create small, under-a-dollar packages for its stores, too. In areas with high unemployment, Wal-Mart is grouping together its less than $1 items in a clear challenge to the dollar stores.

Posies Cafe signed up with Groupon several months ago. If Groupon could promise to deliver a certain minimum number of customers, Posies would sell them $13 worth of products for $6. Nearly 1,000 people bought the Groupon in the one day it was advertised, swamping the small coffee shop for three months. Posies' owner said that the volume of sales coupled with the steep discount threatened her business, forcing her to spend $8,000 of her personal savings to pay her employees and the rent.

Wal-Mart is experimenting with allowing customers to buy merchandise online and have it delivered free to urban FedEx locations, a bid to boost sales in big cities where the retailer has little to no store presence.