How Stores Decide That "70% Off" Number

A Discount Percentage Always Needs a Reference Point

Seventy per cent off means nothing on its own; it is a comparison between a current price and a stated original price. The entire discount depends on how that original price was set, which is a decision the retailer controls.

Because the reference point is chosen, not fixed by any external standard in most markets, the same product could legitimately carry a 20% or a 70% discount depending only on which starting price the retailer picks to display.

MSRP Is Often a Suggested, Inflated Ceiling

A manufacturer's suggested retail price is exactly that, a suggestion, and many brands set it deliberately high knowing most retailers will never actually sell at that figure, treating it instead as a ceiling for markdown math.

When a discount is calculated against MSRP rather than a retailer's own recent selling price, the resulting percentage can look dramatic while the actual cash difference from a typical sale price stays modest.

Anchor Pricing Shapes How a Shopper Judges Value

Anchoring is a well-documented decision bias where the first number a person sees strongly influences how they judge every number after it. A high crossed-out price sets that anchor, making the sale price feel like a bargain by comparison.

Retailers rely on this because the brain compares relatively, not absolutely; a AED 500 item marked down from a AED 1,500 anchor feels far more attractive than the same AED 500 item shown with no anchor at all.

Margin Structure Determines How Deep a Discount Can Realistically Go

Every category carries a different typical markup between wholesale cost and retail price. Categories with wide margins, like fashion or certain accessories, can absorb a headline 70% cut and still sell above cost; thin-margin categories cannot.

This is why a 70% discount on a branded jacket is structurally plausible while the same percentage on groceries or basic electronics would often mean selling below cost, which retailers rarely do at scale outside true clearance.

Clearance Discounts Follow Different Logic Than Promotional Discounts

A genuine end-of-season clearance discount reflects a retailer's need to free up shelf space and recover some value from stock that isn't moving, which can push real percentages very high on specific slow-selling items.

A promotional discount, by contrast, is a marketing decision applied to items that are still selling normally, and its percentage is chosen to drive traffic rather than to solve an inventory problem, which is a meaningfully different starting motive.

The Same Item Can Carry Different Original Prices Across Channels

A retailer's own website, its physical store, and third-party marketplaces can each list a different original price for the identical product, which means the discount percentage calculated on each channel can differ even when the sale price is the same.

This channel variation is a practical reason why comparing only the percentage shown, rather than the final price in AED across two or three sources, can lead a shopper to a worse deal despite a bigger-looking number.

Round, Punchy Numbers Are Chosen for Cognitive Ease

Discount tiers cluster around easy-to-process numbers like 30%, 50%, and 70% far more than they land on odd figures like 34% or 68%, because round numbers process faster in a shopper's mind and read as more decisive.

This is a deliberate pricing psychology choice, not a coincidence of how costs happen to work out, and it means the roundness of a number is itself a small signal that the figure was chosen for effect rather than derived from a precise cost calculation.

Pre-Inflated Prices Ahead of a Sale Are a Documented Retail Practice

Consumer protection investigations in multiple countries have documented cases where a retailer raises a product's price shortly before a sale begins, so the discounted price shown during the sale isn't actually lower than what the item sold for weeks earlier.

This practice, sometimes called price inflation before a markdown, is exactly why independent price-history tools exist, letting a shopper see the real trend rather than trusting the two numbers printed on a single tag.

Some Markets Regulate Reference Prices, the UAE and Saudi Arabia Do Less So

The European Union's Omnibus Directive, for example, requires retailers to disclose the lowest price charged in the preceding thirty days before applying a discount claim, closing much of the room for inflate-then-discount tactics.

The UAE and Saudi Arabia have consumer protection frameworks covering misleading pricing broadly, but neither currently enforces a specific prior-price disclosure rule as detailed as the EU's, which puts more responsibility on the shopper to verify independently.

A Discount Percentage Says Nothing About Whether the Item Is Well Priced

A 70% discount on an overpriced item can still leave the final price above what a comparable product costs elsewhere at full price, while a modest 15% discount on an already competitively priced item can be the better absolute deal.

This is the core distinction between a discount and a good price: one describes a change relative to a chosen reference, the other describes the actual number a shopper pays compared to the wider market.

High-Low Pricing Is a Deliberate, Named Retail Strategy

Retail economics literature describes high-low pricing as a documented strategy: set a high initial price, run frequent discounts back toward the level the item would sell at anyway, and let the discount itself function as the marketing hook.

This differs from an everyday-low-price model where a retailer sets one honest price and rarely discounts, meaning the presence of frequent, large discounts is itself a signal of which pricing strategy a given retailer follows.

Bundling Can Mask a Discount's True Depth

When a discount is applied to a bundle of two or three items rather than one, the advertised percentage can apply unevenly across the bundle, meaning one item is barely discounted while another absorbs most of the stated markdown.

Breaking a bundle down to its per-item value, when the retailer allows that comparison, gives a more accurate read of where the real saving in a bundled 70%-off offer actually sits.

Seasonal Timing Drives How Aggressive a Discount Can Get

A product nearing the end of its season, such as summer clothing in late autumn or last year's phone model just before a new release, faces genuine pressure to sell quickly, which supports deeper and more credible discounts than an item still mid-season.

Recognising where a product sits in its own seasonal cycle helps a shopper judge whether a steep percentage reflects real clearance pressure or is simply timed to a promotional calendar unrelated to that item's actual sell-through need.

Flash Sales Compress the Anchor Effect Into a Countdown

A flash sale combines anchor pricing with time pressure, showing a high reference price alongside a countdown timer, which research on decision-making shows reduces how carefully a shopper evaluates whether the underlying reference price was fair to begin with.

The urgency element is a separate psychological lever from the discount math itself, and recognising the two as distinct tactics, one about the number and one about the clock, helps a shopper resist reacting to either alone.

Loyalty Tiers Add a Second, Hidden Discount Layer

Some retailers stack a further member-only percentage on top of an already advertised discount, meaning the headline 70% figure isn't the full picture for shoppers enrolled in that retailer's loyalty program.

This layered structure means comparing the same headline discount across two retailers without accounting for loyalty stacking can understate how much one of them actually saves a repeat customer.

Store Brand and Private Label Items Follow a Different Discount Logic

A retailer's own private-label products don't carry an external MSRP to discount against, so their reference price is set entirely in-house, which typically makes the discount percentage on these items more directly tied to actual margin than a branded item's discount is.

This is a useful contrast: private-label discounts tend to be smaller but more consistently real, while branded items are more prone to inflated reference pricing precisely because an external MSRP gives more room to manipulate.

Screenshotting a Price Before a Sale Is the Simplest Verification Habit

Taking a screenshot of a product's listed price a few days or weeks before a sale creates a personal, undeniable record of what that item actually cost before any discount claim, independent of whatever price appears once the sale banner goes up.

This habit costs nothing and takes seconds, and it directly counters the specific tactic of raising a price shortly before applying a markdown for the sale.

Price History Tools Automate What Screenshotting Does Manually

Independent browser extensions and price-tracking websites log a product's price over weeks or months automatically, showing a graph that instantly reveals whether a current discount is genuinely lower than recent history or simply lower than an inflated pre-sale spike.

These tools exist precisely because manual price tracking is impractical at scale, and using one before a significant purchase turns an assumption into a checkable fact within a couple of minutes.

Cross-Shopping the Same Item Reveals the Real Market Price

Checking the same or a directly comparable product across two or three retailers, rather than judging one store's discount in isolation, reveals the actual price range the market is willing to sell that item for right now.

A 70% discount that still lands above what a competitor charges at full price, with no discount at all, is the clearest possible signal that the percentage is doing more marketing work than pricing work.

Discount Signage Rules Are Largely a Matter of General Consumer Protection Law

Both the UAE and Saudi Arabia have general consumer protection laws prohibiting misleading commercial practices, which can in principle cover a falsely inflated original price, but enforcement in practice tends to be complaint-driven rather than proactively audited storewide.

This means a shopper who believes a specific discount claim is misleading generally has a route to report it, though the burden of noticing and raising the issue sits mostly with the shopper rather than a routine regulator check.

Marketplace Third-Party Sellers Complicate the Reference Price Further

On multi-seller marketplaces, the original price shown for a discount can be set by an individual third-party seller rather than the platform itself, and different sellers of the identical item can show different reference prices for the same product listing.

This adds a layer worth checking specifically on marketplace platforms: comparing the discount claim of the specific seller a shopper is buying from, not just the platform's general search page price, against other listings of the same item.

A Retailer's Discount Depth Often Signals Its Broader Pricing Strategy

A retailer that runs deep, frequent discounts across most of its catalogue is very likely operating a high-low pricing model where the everyday price already assumes a future markdown, while a retailer that rarely discounts is more likely pricing honestly at a single, lower baseline.

Noticing this pattern over repeated visits to the same retailer is a more reliable long-term signal of trustworthy pricing than evaluating any single sale event in isolation.

Discount Fatigue Can Distort a Shopper's Own Sense of Normal

When a retailer discounts constantly, shoppers gradually recalibrate what they consider a normal price to the discounted figure, which means the retailer's inflated reference price stops even functioning as a psychological anchor and instead just becomes background noise.

This is a useful reason to periodically reset expectations by checking a completely independent source, like a price-comparison site, rather than relying on memory of what a specific retailer usually charges.

A Sale Price That Never Changes Is a Contradiction Worth Noticing

If a specific product is discounted at the same percentage or price for months without interruption, the discounted figure is functionally the everyday price, and the crossed-out original is doing nothing but decorative anchoring.

Tracking whether a sale price actually fluctuates over time, rather than staying fixed indefinitely under a permanent-looking sale banner, is a strong test of whether that discount reflects anything real.

Retailers Test Discount Levels the Way They Test Any Other Price

Large retailers run controlled pricing experiments, showing different discount percentages to different customer segments or regions to see which figure converts best, meaning the 70% a shopper sees may itself be the output of a data-driven test rather than a fixed policy.

This is worth knowing mainly because it explains why the same product can be discounted differently for different people at the same time, which is not a pricing error but a deliberate, ongoing optimisation process.

A Genuinely Good Discount Still Passes an Independent Value Test

Regardless of the percentage shown, a discount is worth trusting when the final price compares favourably to the item's price history and to comparable products elsewhere, both checks that exist entirely outside the retailer's own signage.

This reframes the shopper's job from reacting to a number chosen by the retailer to independently confirming a price using sources the retailer doesn't control.

What Actually Matters Is the Final Number, Not the Percentage on the Tag

A shopper's real goal is a low final price for a product they actually need, not a large percentage on a sign. Treating the discount figure as marketing copy and the price-history check as the real decision-making tool reorders priorities correctly.

Applied consistently, this shift means a 20% discount verified against real price history can be a better decision than an unverified 70% claim, because only one of the two numbers has been checked against reality.

Comparison Sites Aggregate What a Single Store Won't Show You

Independent price-comparison sites pull listings for the same product across multiple retailers into one view, which does in a few seconds what manually visiting several stores would take much longer to accomplish.

This kind of aggregation is one of the most direct counters to a single retailer's chosen anchor price, because it replaces one store's framing with a wider market snapshot the shopper controls.

A Discount's Wording Can Blur Whether It's Off MSRP or Off a Prior Sale

Signage that simply says 70% off without specifying off what, MSRP, a previous sale price, or last month's price, leaves the reference deliberately ambiguous, which is itself worth noticing as a gap in the claim.

Retailers that specify the comparison clearly, such as compared to our price in October, are giving the shopper more to verify against, which is generally a sign of a more defensible discount claim.

Consumer Watchdog Reports Are a Useful Cross-Check for Repeat Offenders

Media investigations and consumer protection bodies occasionally name specific retailers found to have used inflated pre-sale pricing, and checking whether a retailer has appeared in this kind of reporting adds useful context before a large purchase.

This isn't foolproof, since many retailers using the tactic are never singled out publicly, but it is a free, quick check worth running for any purchase significant enough to warrant the extra few minutes.

Discount Framing Changes Depending on Whether an Item Is Essential or Discretionary

Shoppers scrutinise discretionary purchases like electronics or fashion far more carefully than routine, essential purchases, and retailers are aware that discount psychology works especially well on items bought somewhat impulsively.

Being aware of this gap in one's own scrutiny is itself useful: the categories where a shopper is least likely to check are often the same categories where verification matters most.

A Discount Claim Earns Trust Cumulatively, Not From a Single Sign

No single piece of evidence, one screenshot, one comparison, one price-history graph, proves a discount is fully genuine on its own, but combining two or three of these checks builds a reasonably confident picture in a few minutes.

Treating discount verification as a quick, layered habit rather than a one-off decision is what actually protects a shopper's budget over many purchases, not scrutinising any single sale perfectly.

Sources

1. Wikipedia: Anchoring (cognitive bias) — Background on the anchoring effect that explains why a high reference price shapes a shopper's judgment of a sale price.
2. Investopedia: Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) — Explains what MSRP is and why it functions as a suggested ceiling rather than a fixed market price.
3. European Commission: Consumer rights and the Omnibus Directive — Background on the EU rule requiring disclosure of the lowest prior-30-day price before a discount claim, used here as a contrast to lighter UAE/Saudi rules.
4. Wikipedia: Psychological pricing — Overview of pricing tactics including high-low pricing and round-number discounting referenced throughout this article.