Desperate times call for drastic measures – how about ‘Buy one, Get one free!’ – for cars?

OK, we’ve seen ‘two for one’ price offers in the retail sector before, and it’s pretty much a standard promotional tactic in the FMCG sectors, but using this approach to sell cars, and new ones at that – well, that’s pretty extreme.

Just another example of how the credit crunch has taken hold all over the world, this ‘buy one new car, get one free’ offer was run in the UK where last month, new car sales were down 23%, the biggest fall in 17 years.

However, what really caught my eye about this, wasn’t that it was yet another doom & gloom, credit-crunch story, it was how it was also a remarkable demonstration of how consumers react to offers differently, and real proof of the need to ‘test’ offers to the market (something that DM agencies always try to get their clients to do).