How Barter is more Efficient Than Discounting

Businesses offer discounts for a variety of reasons, some of these are:

• To fill downtime in their appointment book
• To sell off excess stock
• To increase the number of customers and generate new customers
• To extract some value from their spare capacity.

Discounting is the only tool available to most businesses to achieve this but it involves sacrificing some of the profits for the business and if conducted too frequently can lead to the business being known as a perpetual discounter, which detracts from the normal business because customers would rather wait for the next sale before making a purchase. This can turn into a vicious circle of perpetually discounting to achieve the level of sales needed to sustain the business.

When a business is a member of Yewtrade, they have the additional option of selling their goods or services on the trade exchange for their full value in return for trade pounds. For example, the business receives 100 trade pounds for £100 worth of goods or service. The business can then use these trade pounds to purchase goods and services it needs from another Yewtrade member. The cash that would have ordinarily been used for this expense remains in the business’s bank account.

Trading on the exchange is a far more profitable option for any business and so businesses should think trade before they think discount.