I bought fast food for a group of people last night. The menu pricing was significantly higher than ordering through the app, which also allowed me to attach a digital coupon.
The pricing within the app is what I would expect to pay, or what I believe is “fair” or “reasonable” for chicken nuggets, French fries, and cheeseburgers.
On the other hand, I have cut my fast food consumption by at least half over the last few years because the published menu prices have skyrocketed.
What possible benefit would a fast food restaurant derive from publishing high prices to the casual customer and drastically reducing them within the app?
They have to be realizing a net loss of customers with this model, right?
In: Economics
To expand on the data comment – it’s super useful for their own internal purposes. They can log things like how many people look at product X but order something else, search the menu for something they don’t have/is out of season, etc.
In addition…
1. If you’re at the store you’re already at the store and you’ve decided “I’m having [restaurant]” today. Similar to how having a loyalty card for a particular gas station means you’re more likely to go to that station which offsets any costs associated with rewards programs, having an app on your phone to get special deals and prices makes it more likely you’ll go there versus elsewhere.
2. It makes it easy for apps to advertise directly to you for basically free. Think notifications for deal alerts or just nagging you to buy their food. Some percentage of that turns into sales.
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