[eluser]kgill[/eluser]
[quote author="Vik" date="1240522579"]Here's an interesting question. I got an email today from someone interested in using my website, asking whether there was a discount for multiple people in one household subscribing to the site. I think it's a great idea.
The question is, is there a way to do it? How do I make sure that the multiple people using the site, are really in the same household?
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Does it matter if they're in the same household or not? Why not just offer a group discount, they purchase some number like 3 or more subscriptions at the same time they get x% off the order. The whole idea of a group discount is that you sacrifice a little profit that will be offset by the increased sales.
Using Fuzzy's numbers, Ma & Pa decide they want a subscription @ $10 each you're looking at $20, but if they see that they buy one more for little Timmy they get say 15% off, they're likely to fork out the extra so their order comes to 25.50 and you end up with 5.50 more than you would have had to start because without the discount little Timmy wasn't ever going to get a subscription.
As far as reselling - is the demand for your service that great that someone is going to try and resell accounts? Honestly, who buys black-market food diary memberships? I just don't see it being a problem and if some really do get resold the amount would be well within acceptable losses.
The idea of a referral system is good but it doesn't work for a family, for Dad to get his discount he has to register first then they need to go through the check-out again for his wife and provide his referral number and then register each of the kids providing the referral again, figuring on an avg. family of 4 that's a lot of work for 3.44 of savings.
If you really want to make things worth their while link the accounts when they're purchased together, rather than have 4 separate accounts allow the 4 to see each others lists (would also discourage reselling), with a click of a button the person responsible for purchasing groceries could have everyone's stuff pulled together in one list and thus pick up the stuff for the week for everyone. Adding to that, since most families do not each eat a different thing for dinner allow them to push out foods to everyone else's list, a "this is what I'm planning on making this week" sort of thing; that way the other family members can plan their snacks and such accordingly. Of course all these extra features would need to be weighed against the demand for such things.
