双语阅读：欢迎来到“促销经济”

In the competitive online marketplace, coupon codes¹ and loyalty programs² are ubiquitous. But at what cost?

1.code文章源自西贝博客-https://qinghe.me/welcome-to-the-promoconomy.html

• n. 法典, 法规, 章程
• 密码, 电码
• 代号, 编码
• vt. 将…译成电码

举个例子：文章源自西贝博客-https://qinghe.me/welcome-to-the-promoconomy.html

• The coded message was indecipherable.
• 这份用密码写的消息译不出来。

2.loyalty programs文章源自西贝博客-https://qinghe.me/welcome-to-the-promoconomy.html

忠诚计划是一种用以赢得顾客忠诚度的市场营销手段， 在不同国家和地区可能有不同的称呼，但都是通过给常使用某公司服务的顾客提供优惠、返利及会员卡等来吸引顾客再次进行消费。 申请忠诚计划会员卡通常需要使用到客户的姓名、住址等私人信息，申请完成之后，商家会将众多客户的信息集成到一起来进行市场调查，从而制定相应的销售策略。而通过返点等措施，忠诚计划也会涉及到虚拟货币等金融领域。文章源自西贝博客-https://qinghe.me/welcome-to-the-promoconomy.html

在竞争日趋激烈的电商市场，优惠码和忠诚计划真的是随处可见。那么，这些又有什么开支呢？文章源自西贝博客-https://qinghe.me/welcome-to-the-promoconomy.html

For die-hard shoppers, the recession in the late 2000s was defined by promotions: daily deals, flash-sale sites and steep³ discounts that went beyond half-off markdowns. At times, it felt like the whole world was on sale.文章源自西贝博客-https://qinghe.me/welcome-to-the-promoconomy.html

3.steep文章源自西贝博客-https://qinghe.me/welcome-to-the-promoconomy.html

• adj. 陡峭的；夸大的；不合理的；急剧升降的
• vt. 浸；泡；使…充满
• vi. 泡；沉浸
• n. 浸渍；峭壁

举例说明：文章源自西贝博客-https://qinghe.me/welcome-to-the-promoconomy.html

• There was a steep rise in prices.
• 价格暴涨。

对于那些死磕的买家，上实际末的经济萧条却被各种促销所覆盖：每日优惠、闪购网站还有各种“狂甩”，似乎所有的价格都是腰斩，瞬间让人觉得整个世界都在卖。文章源自西贝博客-https://qinghe.me/welcome-to-the-promoconomy.html

A decade later, the promotional landscape looks a lot different. Today you can download Honey, a browser extension that searches for and inputs promo codes for you (and can read and apply a coupon at checkout). Or have a mobile app called Shop It To Me give a gentle nudge when the price of that Self Portrait dress you’ve been eyeing finally drops.文章源自西贝博客-https://qinghe.me/welcome-to-the-promoconomy.html

十年后，现在的促销景象看起来大有不同。今天，你可以下载浏览器打折插件，让你瞬间找到你想买的商品到底哪里可以找到优惠代码。或者你手机上也可以下载一个应用程序，在上面找找到底你所钟爱的产品到底在哪个网站价格更低或者看到它的跌幅。

And Snapchat and Instagram are reshaping promotions entirely, occasionally rewarding online purchases of Milk Makeup Glow Oil with chic carryalls or posting $5 delivery credits for Postmates.

在Snapchat和Instagram上你可以可以看到各种网站的促销信息，甚至，连看快递的打折券都可以在上面找的到。

Groupon’s still Groupon, albeit a shell of what it used to be. And mall stores are as thirsty as ever, with the year-round sales (and often dismal⁴ earnings) to prove it. But they’re more apt to trumpet their sales by text or mobile app than Valpak paper coupons.

4.dismal

那个团购网站还是那个团购网站，虽然换了个壳子。那些个购物商场依旧是如饥似渴，每年的促销活动也似乎毫不顾忌它的盈利能力，但是，并没有发现他们在促销方面有丝毫减弱的情况出现。

These days, the promotions come directly, and often custom tailored, to you. But at what cost?

这些天，你的手机上会收到非常个性化的促销信息（似乎是专为你定制的），那么又有什么成本吗？

The lure⁵ of relevant deals is conditioning us to give up our personal information, said Joseph Turow, a professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania who studies marketing and digital privacy. “This is such a habit-forming activity that you begin to say, ‘Well, if I do it for shopping, I’ll do it for the government,’” he said.

5.lure

• n. 诱惑物；诱惑；饵
• vt. 引诱；诱惑

举个例子：

• Cheese is really a good lure for mice.
• 奶酪是很好的引诱老鼠的诱饵。

“那些促销的信息主要诱饵的主要目的就是让你把自己的个人信息全部交托出去”，来自宾夕法尼亚大学新闻传播学院专门研究市场和数字隐私的约瑟夫·图罗教授如是说，“这是一个让你养成的习惯的活动，如果这是为你的网购定制行为，那么，同样也可以为ZF定制”。他同样补充到。

He warned that it’s teaching you “that giving up your data is just a part of life.”

他警告说：“放弃你的个人信息也是生活中的一部分。”

How do promotions get to you? On email, text, social media and the web, promotions are lurking⁶ everywhere. People may go online or on apps to find deals, or get recommendations based on their history as they browse a store with its app open on their smartphones.

6.lurk

那么，促销可以给你什么呢？在邮件、信息、社交媒体和网络，促销信息无处不在。一旦人们联网了，或者在手机上稍微搜索一下任何信息，随之而来的各种促销就会如约而至。

Or people may be quietly, specifically targeted. “Some deals might get to us because a company that’s interested in promoting a certain type of thing has bought information about us from a data broker,” said Laura Moy, the executive director of the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown Law School.

或者人们比较安静，但他们仍旧可以成为目标，因为，有些公司可能会通过中介机构专门买来我们的个人信息开展促销活动，来自乔治敦法学院隐私与科技中心的行政主任劳拉·莫伊说到。

But many trade-offs are more transparent: you give us something, we’ll give you something. From the moment you log on to the site of Outdoor Voices, an athleisure brand, it touts⁷ an “exclusive birthday offer” in exchange for your email address.

7.touts

• vt. 招徕；兜售；刺探赛马情报
• vi. 兜售；招徕顾客；拉选票
• n. 侦查者；兜售者

举个例子：

• He’s been touting his novel around publishers for years.
• 他几年来一直到处找出版商兜售自己的小说。

但是很多权衡都是透明的，你给我们信息，我们给你一些信息。当你通过户外活动设备。现在的某些品牌，当你开启他们的设备的时候，他们可能会通过交换某些信息而给你赠送一些独家资源，比如：独一份的生日礼物。

Revolve Clothing offers 10 percent off for subscribing to its newsletter. Baggu, which makes those nylon bags beloved by Aidy Bryant, gives free shipping in the United States on orders over $30. According to Honey, the number of carts an average member finds a coupon for each year has increased 33 percent.

某些衣服品牌还可能会通过订阅他们的邮件来给你10%的优惠。根据某家信息统计公司的数据显示，通过这样的活动，有些人甚至可能通过这样的活动来获取更高的优惠，他们有的时候还会奖励你，比如，当你的购物额到达多少的时候，甚至全境包邮（美国的购物网站多数是不包邮的--译注）。

新促销

The New Deals

Offering freebies as enticements⁸ to build business is nothing new. Decades ago, blenders or toasters were synonymous with new bank accounts, and many can remember the days when credit card companies gave away T-shirts on college campuses. All of these required some sacrifice of personal data.

8.enticements

• n. 引诱;怂恿
• 引诱物

举个例子：

• Even if you are not addicted to the Internet or any other technology, you may be struggling with its enticement.
• 即使你尚未沉溺于网络或其他任何科技，你或许也正在努力抵抗它的诱惑。

通过免费的东西诱惑你进行商业活动已非新鲜事。十年前，开个银行账号会送你个破壁机或者吐司机，我相信大家印象，一些信用卡发卡机构会在你开卡的时候送你些体恤衫。所有的这一切，都需要你拿自己的个人信息来交换。

But now that information like Social Security numbers can be posted online, vulnerable⁹ to identity thieves and others around the globe, there is a lot more at stake.

9.vulnerable

• adj. 易受伤的, 脆弱的, 敏感的

举个例子：

• Migrant workers are vulnerable to exploitation.
• 流动工人易受剥削。

然而，现在，这些信息就如同你的社会安全码一样被放在网络上，那些专门盯着你的信息的人，会让这些信息愈显脆弱。

At one point, retailers and brands bet on batch-and-blast emails, dividing shoppers into broad categories and matching them with products based on their purchases. This worked well — except, of course, when the algorithm¹⁰ got it wrong.

10.algorithm

运算法则：在数学和计算机科学/算学之中，算法/算法/算则法（Algorithm）为一个计算的具体步骤，常用于计算、数据处理和自动推理。精确而言，算法是一个表示为有限长列表的有效方法。算法应包含清晰定义的指令用于计算函数。

从一点上将，零售商和各类品牌更希望通过批量邮件处理系统可以通过你的购物历史来向你推送相应的产品。这样的操作方法还是很起作用的，当然了，如果运算法则错了，那这些推送也就没什么用了。

But Larry Thomas, the managing director of insight and growth at Accenture, a business-services company, said that successful promotions in the future will be even more finely tuned, offering whatever is most relevant to a shopper at any point in time.

但是负责埃森哲的洞察力和增长的管理经理拉里·托马斯说，未来的营销策略会更加精准，客户需要什么，会非常精确地给不同的需求方。

“If a hair-product brand knows it’s going to rain, and that you have hair that curls, it can recommend certain products to prevent that from happening,” Mr. Thomas said. “Google is a key platform behind that as well as Facebook.”

托马斯同时还说：“如果一家头发护理品牌知道一会会下雨，而你恰巧正好做了卷发，他们会给你推荐相应的产品来让你预防发型被毁的产品。”谷歌目前正是这类平台，而脸书也紧随其后。

First, the brand needs to know what type of items you buy, through purchase data (online or e-commerce), retail partnerships or third-party data, which Digiday loosely defines as any information collected by an entity that doesn’t have a direct relationship with you.

首先，这个品牌需要知道你要买什么产品，通过购物数据（在线或者电商）、零售数据或者第三方数据，而这些数据可能不是直接的用户信息，但是他们却的确与你紧密相关。

Paying search and social-media companies can help marketers refine their pitch¹¹. “Search history and interaction with accounts and posts online can provide context to the consumer’s purchase behavior,” Mr. Thomas said. And location-enabled services can help tailor product recommendations to the weather.

11.pitch

• n. 球场
• 音调, 音高
• 程度; 强度; 高度
• 沥青
• 颠簸
• 斜度, 坡度
• 商贩摊位, 艺人表演场地
• 推销商品的话
• vt. 投, 掷, 扔
• 为…定音调
• 用人们易懂的方式表述
• vt. & vi. 搭(帐篷), 扎(营)
• (使)突然向前倒下
• vi. 颠簸
• 向下倾斜

举个例子：

• They that touch pitch will be defiled.
• 近墨者黑。

通过付费搜索和社交媒体公司可以帮助市场推广者改进他们的销售计划，搜索习惯和客户互动信息让他们知道客户正在寻找什么，托马斯说，基于位置信息可以非常精准地告诉你当地的天气情况。

Despite the obvious privacy concerns, shoppers have come to expect such intrusions and, as academics like Dr. Turow have studied, shrug them off. Indeed, in a 2018 Global Consumer Pulse study of nearly 30,000 consumers, Accenture found 47 percent are frustrated when a company doesn’t use their personal information to fine-tune engagement. And 43 percent “prefer” (Accenture’s wording) to do business with a company that uses their data to customize promotions and pricing.

尽管个人信息是令人关切，但是对于买家来说，他们仍然希望看到这样的信息，图罗博士的学术研究表明 了这一现象，摆脱他们吧。事实上，2018年全球我消费者动向调查显示，他们通过研究3玩命消费者发现，47%的消费者有些公司不通过他们的个人信息进行针对性的互动而感到非常困惑。43%（埃森哲方面表示）的公司希望通过他们的数据来进行促销和产品定价。

Dr. Turow’s research presents a bleaker picture. When it comes to resignation, consumers’ behavior is statistically unpredictable: Sometimes people will take a discount, sometimes they won’t. “What it reflects is a sense of futility about this,” he said.

图罗博士的研究也看到了一张令人不解的图片，当进行邮件退订的时候，消费者的行为也是不好预测的：有些时候，人们会享受送给他们的折扣，而有些时候不会。那么，这就说明，这样的推送是无效的，他同时表示。

“The problem in the old days was you didn’t necessarily know who was who, so you were trying to figure out who to give a discount to and who not to,” said David Bell, president of Idea Farm Ventures. “Now you can be much more targeted in your approach and relevant.”

来自IFV风投的老板大卫·贝尔说：“以往，你不知道哪些信息是匹配的，应该把哪些信息发送给哪些人，所以，哪个时候你不知道谁喜欢打折券，而谁又不喜欢，然而现在不同了，你知道如何去定制自己的产品促销信息。”

Welcome, in other words, to the “sale for some.” The perpetually moribund apparel brand Perry Ellis last year teamed up with Bluecore, a retail marketing platform in New York, to tweak its messaging based on “discount affinity,” or a customer’s propensity to shop sales.

欢迎，换言之就是“卖出更多”，一家来自美国纽约的促销平台公司表示，他们可以根据你的社交媒体信息向你推送适合你的消费指南。

With its technology embedded in Perry Ellis’ site, Bluecore could automatically detect a change in prices, which it knew to show to shoppers who had either purchased or interacted with a product in the past (that is, reviewed but didn’t purchase).

在他们的网站上，他们可以很容易知道，哪些产品的价格有所变化，从而展示给买家，哪些是他们曾经官洲却没有买的。

It also identified shopping trends, like customers who buy, or were more likely to buy, with discounts. Those keeping a budget were exposed to more discounts, while spendthrifts rarely saw the brand devalued. The campaign outperformed Ellis’s traditional blasts, and its open rate was 102 percent higher than that of traditional campaigns.

同样，这样的方法也可以来预测“血拼”趋势，就如同谁买了，或者谁想通过折扣券来购买。对于那些有消费预算的人来说，他们也会给出折扣，“剁手党”们很少会发现这个品牌被低估了其价值。

The retailer Express ran a Bluecore campaign in May 2018 that recommended shoppers a variety of products in the same fit but different colors based on previous purchases or items they had browsed online. The emails featured imagery of clothes that would complement the look, not unlike a personal shopper.

通过这样的活动，2018年的时候他们发现，向消费者推荐某些他们曾经浏览过的商品而没有成交时，他们会通过焦点大图发送到买家的邮箱，通过这样的方式让他们感受到不同，从而促成成交。

“Someone who buys camisoles in bulk may get a ‘buy one, get one free’ promo,” said Sherene Hilal, the vice president of product marketing at Bluecore. “You get to send fewer emails to customers, which they love, and the brand is actually showing you the best products.”

“那些买了女士背心内衣的顾客会被提醒到'买一增一'”的提醒，某一应用程序的副总裁说到，“客户买到商品后，你就会给他们发比较少的邮件，实际上，这一品牌的产品正在向你展示着它的产品质量。”

Bluecore said that such feats of personalization are hard for legacy stores to pull off and therefore not the norm. But souping up value for loyal customers has proved effective, Mr. Thomas said.

托马斯先生说，某一品牌的应用程序通过个性化的信息定制来给他们的忠实客户推送相应的消息，这对于他们来说是很有效的。

Consider NikePlus evolving its membership perks in the past year to include free expedited shipping and merchandise, or Rimmel developing a “Shazam for makeup” app that recommends products based on scanned images of faces, or Target expanding its Cartwheel app and Target Circle loyalty program.

你同时也会发现，那些通过会员账号订阅的电商网站他们可以给你提供免费的商品寄送服务，例如某一个应用程序，可以通过扫描图片中的人脸扫描来获取该用户曾使用过的化妆品，通过这样的方式来增加客户的忠诚度。我

Those that simply sell stuff are increasingly the minority.

但以这种方式进行产品销售的增长量不是个大数目。

优惠码和宣传单页的消亡

The Demise of Coupons and Circulars

As any millennial short on cash will tell you, the economic downturn and the rise of e-commerce helped inure them to deals. The generation’s predilection for shopping online, the deal frenzy¹² of the recession, the necessity of finding discounts, given their flat incomes and student-loan debt, and the dominance of Amazon have all been factors in building what one might call the “promoconomy.”

12.frenzy

• n. 狂怒；狂暴；暴怒
• vt. 使发狂；使狂怒

举个例子：

• In a frenzy of hate he killed his enemy.
• 他在一阵痛恨之下杀死了他的敌人。

新千年以后，经济下行和电商的崛起，会促进商品的销售。新一代更希望通过网络购物，疯狂购物的消退，对于那些收入不高，学生贷和被亚马逊所占据的推广信息被称之为：“促销经济”。

“They can’t even afford to buy full price if they want to,” said Sucharita Kodali, an e-commerce analyst at Forrester Research. And according to a study by Harris Group, millennials are spending less on physical products and more on experiences like restaurants and travel, so retailers feel extra pressure to offer enticements.

某家电子商务分析师SK说，如果他们想买，他们甚至都不能接受全价商。根据HG公司的一项研究报告，我千禧年一代花很少的前去买实体商品，而更多地会花在吃饭和旅游上，这让那些零售商们倍感压力。

“The one easy lever you can turn on tomorrow is a sale,” Ms. Kodali said. “E-commerce has just made the promotional landscape so much more nimble¹³ than it ever was.”

13.nimble 

• adj. 敏捷的；聪明的；敏感的

举个例子：

• He is a nimble climber.
• 他是个敏捷的登山者

能够让你获得更多的就是明天有个好的销售情况，K小姐说，电子商务可以 让这种具有革新性的产品推销显得更加便捷。

By their nature, paper coupons and circulars were infrequent, which did little to drive loyalty. Now that shoppers can buy nearly anything, “retailers are looking more at lifetime loyalty versus just getting the sale done,” said Charlie Graham, the founder of Shop It To Me. “Companies got burned by coupons being put online.”

就其性质而言，纸质版的优惠代码宣传单页不是那么频繁，而且不能让消费者更加忠诚。现在消费者们可以购买几乎任何东西。“零售商更加希望得到那些非常重诚的客户，而非一走了之。”SITM公司的创始人这样说到，“那些把优惠代码放在网上的公司更加受益了。”

看清促销游戏

Sitting Out the Promotion Game

In an environment where discounts have become almost ubiquitous, it makes sense that some direct-to-consumer brands would try to stand out by eschewing promotions altogether.

在一个到处都充满优惠代码的世界里，对于那些将优惠码直接送到客户手里的品牌更加能够获得市场的青睐。

It’s not uncommon to see a “reactivating” promotion for, say, 15 percent off your next order, as the underwear brand Tommy John offers, or a free gift with your first purchase of Ouai Haircare products. But there’s a danger to creating a “cheapening element,” as Mr. Bell calls it, when you give too much away.

TJ品牌内衣在促销的时候给出了这样的优惠，下一订单优惠15%或者购买QH护发产品时获赠一个小礼物。对于品牌来说，不能打折太多，因为，给人一种比较廉价的体验是比较危险的行为，贝尔先生说。

For trendy direct-to-consumer start-ups that are already paying through the nose to get noticed on Facebook, Google and Instagram, that means never going on sale, period. That’s why you won’t find a coupon for Emily Weiss’s beauty young company, Glossier, or Allbirds, which makes sneaker-like wool shoes.

对于那些快时尚品牌来说，他们已经通过诸如脸书、谷歌和Ins的平台给消费者提供了足够的打折信息，因此，不需要再进行额外的折扣信息，这也是为什么你发现有些品牌基本不会做太多的折扣的原因。

“As soon as you start competing on price, you’re competing with the Amazons of the world,” said Diana Ganz, a founder of the Groomsman Suit, an online suit company that prides itself on not offering discounts. (To be fair, its versatile suits cost less than $200.) “That is a game that nobody wins.”

“当开始进行价格战的时候，你就开始和亚马逊进行较量了。”一家进行电商销售但却很少打折的GS公司的创始人DG说到（为公平起见，他们的某件产品至少价值200美金。）“这个游戏没有赢家。”

Correction: Aug. 20, 2019

2019年8月20日 订正

An earlier version of this article misstated David Bell's current position. Mr. Bell is the president of Idea Farm Ventures; he left Wharton School of Business in 2018. An earlier version of this article also misstated the privacy policy of the web browser extension Honey, which searches the web for coupons. The tool does not share your data, it reads it and changes it to apply a coupon.

前述内容中对于大卫·贝尔先生的职位出现了错误描述，他是IFV创投公司的老板，于2018年年毕业于沃顿商学院。另外，关于某H插件安装到浏览器的时候，在你通过它搜所某件商品，它并不会分享你的数据，而是通过读取来申请优惠码。

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