Working with Buy X Get Y discounts

Buy X Get Y discounts in Kentico E-commerce Solution are a cross-selling tool which allows you to increase sales of chosen products. The Buy X Get Y discounts application facilitates a number of shopping scenarios, such as:

• buy some of specified products, get the cheapest product for free, e.g., buy 3 pieces of clothes, get the cheapest one for free, or
• buy some of specified products, get a specific other product for free or with a discount, e.g. buy a computer, get Steve Jobs (E-book) for free, or buy Adidas Zebra Crew T-Shirt, get one more with a 50 % discount.

To set up a basic Buy X Get Y discount:

1. Open the Buy X Get Y discounts application.
2. Click New Buy X Get Y discount.
3. Type a Name for the discount.
4. Specify “Buy” conditions. Buy conditions indicate the products that customers need to add to their shopping cart to be eligible to get products for free or with a discount.
   • Buy any– select products to select individual products; select products in departments to select specific departments.
   • Products or Departments – depending on your choice in Buy any, click Select products or Select departments to select either products or departments.
   • Minimum unit quantity – specify how many units customers need to add to their shopping cart to be eligible for the discount.
5. Specify “Get” conditions. Get conditions define what products customers get for free or with a discount.
   • Get – select cheapest unit for discounted amount to automatically apply the discount to the cheapest product from the set specified in “Buy” conditions; select specific product for discounted amount to define a product that will be added to the customer’s order as a gift.
   • Specific product – appears if you selected specific product for discounted amount in Get.
   • Discount – select percentage to apply the discount in percent or fixed amount to apply the discount in a specific amount of money in the main currency.
   • Amount – specify an exact value of the discount either in percent or in fixed amount according to Discount.
6. Click Save.

Now, you have a completed Buy X Get Y discount. Whenever a customer fulfills “Buy” conditions, they will get the discount which you have just specified in “Get” conditions. You can find the newly added discount with the lowest priority (the highest number) at the end of the Buy X Get Y discount list. To create more complex Buy X Get Y discount, see all parameters below.

Buy X Get Y discounts shopping examples

Example 1 – buy one item, get another one free (in other words, buy two items for the price of one): Customer adds two pairs of jeans to their shopping cart. The system automatically applies a 100% discount on one of the items. If a customer adds only one pair of jeans to their shopping cart, another pair is not added automatically.

Example 2 – buy multiple items, get the cheapest one free: Customer adds multiple different books to the shopping cart. The system evaluates which item has the lowest price (before applying other discounts) and applies a 100% discount on that item. See a specific example. The example is also applicable with a discounted product instead of a free one.

Example 3 – buy one item, get a gift: Customer adds a tennis racket to their shopping cart. The system automatically adds a pack of tennis balls (with 100% discount) to the shopping cart. If the customer adds the balls first and then the racket, the system applies a 100% discount on the set of balls which has already been added. See a specific example.

Changing Buy X Get Y discount priority

Buy X Get Y discounts are applied based on their priority. The discount priority is stated with a number. The lower the number is, the higher priority the discount has.

1. Open the Buy X Get Y discounts application.

2. Click on the number in the column Priority in the row of a discount.

3. Change the number to the desired one. The number must be greater than one.

   Use greater intervals between priority numbers. If you want to add a new discount inbetween two already existing, you can add the new discount more easily between 10 and 20 than between 1 and 2. If you already have only small gaps, you can also use decimals.

4. Press Enter or click on the green confirmation button () next to the number.

5. (Optional) Edit () individual accounts and change the Apply lower priority discountsas necessary. If cleared, no other Buy X Get Y discounts are applied to the shopping cart.

Buy X Get Y discounts are now applied based on the priority that you assigned to them. Note that other discounts of a different type (e.g., volume discounts, product discounts) are still applied.

Example – Buy X Get Y discount priority

You want to set 10 % discount to any book and additional 5 % discount to bought Steve Jobs (E-book).

1. Create a new discount for any book.

   • Name: Buy a book, get 10 % off
   • Buy any: products in departments
   • Departments: Books
   • Amount: 10 %

2. Set the priority of the created book discount to 20.

3. Create a new discount for Steve Jobs (E-book).

   The system doesn’t sum Buy X Get Y discounts to the same product. If you want to have an additional discount to a product, you have to create a new discount with the total discount amount and assign it a higher priority (a lower number).

   • Name: Buy Steve Jobs, get 15 % off
   • Products: Steve Jobs (E-book)
   • Amount: 15 %
     • That is 10 % for any book and the additional 5 % discount for Steve Jobs (E-book).

4. Set the priority of the created Steve Jobs discount to 10.
   

Now, when you put a book to the shopping cart, the first discount for books applies. When you put Steve Jobs (E-book) to the shopping cart, the second discount applies.

Displaying Buy X Get Y discounts data on pages, in invoices, and e-mails

You can use the Shopping Cart Totals web part with transformations to display Buy X Get Y discounts on a page, e.g., in the shopping cart. To promote Buy X Get Y discounts on various pages, you can also use your custom web parts.

In invoices and e-mailes, you can use the following macros to display Buy X Get Y discount data. Note that in code Buy X Get Y discounts (along with order discounts) are called OrderRelatedDiscountSummaryItems.

• OrderRelatedDiscountSummaryItems – a collection of Buy X Get Y discounts and order discount applied to items in a particular shopping cart instance. The collection’s items hold following values:

  • Value – the amount saved after applying the discount, e.g., 50 % of the price of a product.
  • Name – the name of the discount as specified in the Buy X Get Y discounts application.

To extract the value-name pairs from the OrderRelatedDiscountSummaryItems collection, use the following macro:

{% OrderRelatedDiscountSummaryItems.ApplyTransformation("Ecommerce.Transformations.Order_OrderRelatedDiscountsContent", "Ecommerce.Transformations.Order_OrderRelatedDiscountsHeader", "Ecommerce.Transformations.Order_OrderRelatedDiscountsFooter") %}

The default installation of Kentico contains ready-to-use transformations with Buy X Get Y discounts in mind. The parameters of the ApplyTransformation method used in the code example are names of the default transformations. The default transformations are stored in the E-commerce transformations page type.

Reference

Buy X Get Y discounts API

Buy X Get Y discounts are called MultiBuyDiscounts in the API. The API comprises the following objects:

• MultiBuyDiscountInfo – stores information about the discount
• DiscountSummaryItem – simplified view on the discount data, contains only the name and value of the discount
• ShoppingCartInfo.OrderRelatedDiscountSummaryItems property – collection of DiscountSummaryItem objects applied to products in the current shopping cart