As e-commerce has been gaining traction over the past few years, the frequency of sale campaigns has also been increasing.
At first, it was sale periods like the Great Singapore Sale (GSS) and Black Friday/Cyber Monday.
Then, there are monthly sale campaigns like 11.11, 12.12, and etc.
Now, we even have the ’25th of every month’ sale on e-commerce platforms like Shopee and Lazada.
We’re so accustomed to having sale campaigns ongoing every few weeks that, whenever possible, we try to time our purchases to coincide with these campaigns.
At least, I do.
But the question, then, is: are the prices of items really the lowest during these campaigns?
After all, we’re taking the merchants’ word for it that prices are slashed during sale campaigns.
For the most part, I think it’s true.
But I’ve encountered a handful of situations where the price of a product was actually higher during the sale campaign.
Here’s just one example of such a case on Shopee:
The date shown in the image is 18 Jan, which isn’t a major sale campaign, but it was supposed to be a sale in some way.
Nonetheless, it goes to show that making purchases during a sale campaign doesn’t necessarily snag you the best deal.
To get the lowest price, it’s helpful to add the item to your cart first and monitor the price of the item you intend to buy for a while.
Find out what the price is like when it’s on flash sale, during a sale campaign, and etc.
This will help you make a more “educated” decision on when is a good price to buy rather than taking it for granted that items are always the cheapest during sale campaigns.
In general, I think big-ticket items tend to be significantly cheaper during sale campaigns.
This is because in addition to discounts, there tends to be upsized vouchers that are only available during sale campaigns, which makes the discount even larger.
Whereas for cheaper items, the vouchers released during sale campaigns aren’t usually much better than the vouchers that are available on a regular day.
So the final price of the item may not necessarily be lower during a sale campaign.
Have you ever experienced this? Let me know in the comments below!