Why you shouldn’t discount your psychology and therapy services (and when I do)

Hello and welcome to The Business of Psychology Podcast. 

Today I am talking discounting; the reasons you might want to do it, reasons it can be a pretty dangerous game, and the reason that I am doing it for the first time in a few years! 

Full show notes of this episode are available at The Business of Psychology

Links & References:

Episode 109: Ethical marketing in private practice. Scarcity, should we use it?

The Psychology of Discounts: 8 Researched-Backed Strategies for 2022 (Namogoo.com)

Start & Grow: The Complete Course for Psychologists and Therapists - Psychology Business School

Rosie on Instagram:

@rosiegilderthorp

@thepregnancypsychologist

Let's start with some behavioural science and the reasons we might want to discount.

Reasons to discount

• There is some evidence that discounting can give people a rush of oxytocin when they feel that they've had a good deal and actually that the excitement can last and promote better engagement with a product or service.
• There's evidence that 70% of millennials look for a discount before purchasing, and it might be the deciding factor in whether they go ahead.
• For lower cost items, there is also some evidence that it can increase the perception of value and quality. The “I only paid 20 pounds, but it's worth 50 pounds, so I love it even more” effect, or as I like to call it, the “Vinted” effect.
• It can drive that sense of scarcity and urgency if it's time limited, which means that people who are sitting on the fence or who wouldn't ordinarily make a purchase do so, and that can have ethical problems. You heard me talking about that in the scarcity episode of this podcast. It can be a good thing too, especially if you've got a product that people tend to procrastinate about buying and you want to help nudge them to make a decision that they would've made eventually anyway, but they might have put off for a while. 

None of those, you might have noticed, really apply to therapy services because we are not in the low cost bracket, and we're a service that people need to access when the time is right for them, not when a special offer is running. However, sometimes there are other unique reasons that we might want to consider using a discount for a therapy service specifically.

A Bridge to Price Increases

For example, we might want to use a discount in a therapy service as a bridge if we have to make a big price increase, and we know that our current clients might struggle with that. For example, and I'm sorry to say that this might apply to quite a lot of us at the moment, if your room rental has gone up by 20% and so have your energy bills, you might want to take a staged approach to passing that onto clients and discounting can help you