% off or £ off? It depends on your price point

"25% off" and "£30 off" can represent the same discount on a £120 jacket. But they don't feel the same.

Research found that people consistently respond better to whichever framing makes the discount number look bigger - regardless of what the actual saving is.

The rule

Price above £100: Use amount off. "£30 off" beats "25% off" on a £120 jacket because 30 > 25.

Price below £100: Use percentage off. "25% off" beats "£7.50 off" on a £30 product because 25 > 7.5.

Most people don't calculate the exact saving - they compare the number in the discount to some intuitive sense of "big." A larger number feels like a better deal, even when the math says otherwise.

The "was X% higher" trick

You can push this further using a reframing technique: calculate your discount as a percentage of the sale price, not the original price.

If a product drops from £10 to £8, the usual way to frame it is: "now 20% off" (£2 / £10 = 20%). The alternative: "was 25% higher" (£2 / £8 = 25%). Mathematically equivalent. Psychologically, 25 beats 20.

This works any time the percentage doesn't exceed 100 - beyond that the effect disappears.

Store-wide vs product-specific promotions

One final wrinkle: for store-wide discounts (Black Friday, site-wide sale), percentage framing wins because it removes limits. "Everything 20% off" triggers a "the more I spend, the more I save" mindset.

For specific product discounts (£5 off this one item), amount off wins because it's concrete and shows a specific saving.

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Research: Gonzalez, E.M., Esteva, E., Roggeveen, A.L. & Grewal, D. (2015). Journal of Business Research, 68(8). EGADE Business School & Babson College.