How Discounts are Evaluated

The Orchestration Console allows you to manage discounts in various ways. Prior to selecting discount settings, use this topic to help you understand how discounts are evaluated and applied to orders.

There are two ways to reduce the price of an item:

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Using Price Lists in the Commerce Management application, product managers can set discounted prices for their products. When sales price lists are used, the customer's cart does not need to meet conditions in his cart. The rebate is applied automatically. To find out more, see Managing Price Lists.

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Using Campaigns in the Marketing application , a marketing manager can define conditions that automatically discount product prices when they are met. The customer's cart must meet certain conditions to get discounts. To avoid granting excessive discounts, this feature also enables marketing managers to exclude products that are already discounted through price lists.

Actual Discount Calculations

When a customer puts an item in their cart

The price engine examines current price lists and their priority sequence to calculate the price of the item. If a discount price list has precedence, the lowered price is applied.

The promotion engine analyzes potential promotions to determine whether any of them apply to the contents of the cart.

If the item is deemed eligible for a promotion, the discount granted by the promotion is applied to the price selected by the price engine (which could be a discounted price).

Excluding Discounted Items from Promotions

You can choose to exclude items discounted through price lists from a promotion when the promotion is built.

For example, when a promotion offers a 50% discount off the second item purchased, conditions typically state that this promotion does not apply to sale or clearance items.

There are two levels at which the Exclude Discounted Items option can be set:

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Promotion level - Any items that are part of a condition (the eligibility criteria for the promotion) or a reward (the discount granted by the promotion), that are already discounted through a price list, are not taken into account by the promotion engine.

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Reward level - All items, even those discounted through price lists, are considered when evaluating the promotion's conditions or eligibility criteria. However, the discount awarded by the promotion (the reward) will not apply to items already discounted through a price list.

For example:

A promotion states that adding 2 red shirts to your cart gets you a discount of 50% on 2 or less white shirts.

Cart contents:
Product A | Regular price: 15$ | Red t-shirt A
Product B | Price discounted through price list: 10$ | Red t-shirt B
Product C | Regular price: 20$ | White t-shirt C
Product D | Price discounted through price list: 15$ | White t-shirt D

Situation 1: No Exclude Discounted Items option set
When no Exclude Discounted Items option is set, Product A and B fulfill the promotion's conditions, so the reward, a 50% discount, is applied to Products C and D.

Situation 2: Exclude Discounted Items option set at the Reward level
When the Exclude Discounted Items option is set at the reward level, Products A and B still meet the promotion's conditions, but the 50% discount is only applied to product C. Product D is already discounted by a price list, so it is not eligible for the reward.

Situation 3: Exclude Discounted Items option set at the Promotion level
When the Exclude Discounted Items option is set at the promotion level, Product A (red t-shirt A) meets the promotion's conditions, but product B is not taken into account because it is already discounted through its price list. The promotion is not applied because the condition (purchasing two non-discounted red shirts) is not met.

REFERENCES

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Managing Promotions