Misleading Discounts are Rampant in Czech E-Commerce
“Discounts are one of the most powerful tools too influence consumer purchasing behaviour,” says dTest director Eduarda Hekšová. However, a recent investigation by the czech consumer organization reveals widespread issues with how discounts are presented online.
dTest analysts monitored ten major e-shops across the food, drugstore, and electronics sectors for six months, tracking prices and discount practices at two-week intervals. The analysis encompassed 840 price records.
The study found that approximately 25% of tracked records featured problematic discount marking. alarmingly,over 80% of the time when an e-shop did present a product as discounted,the data was incorrect or misleading. Only 1.55% of listings displayed transparent, legally compliant discounts.
Current law requires retailers to display the lowest price offered for a product within the past thirty days alongside any discount. This prevents artificially inflating prices before a sale to exaggerate savings. Though, dTest found that retailers frequently disregard this requirement, fulfilling it only superficially or ignoring it entirely.
The most common issue centered around the “original” price, or reference price. In most cases, it was unachievable to verify if this price genuinely represented the lowest price from the preceding thirty days. A quarter of discounts omitted this information altogether, while others presented it unclearly – often in small print or separate from the main price display.
Shortcomings were also identified in discounts offered through loyalty programs and discount codes. Even when widely available, these offers often failed to include the legally required lowest price. In some instances, universally applicable discount codes were published without factoring the resulting price reduction into the reference price calculation.
Unclear Price Tags
A consumer survey conducted alongside the price analysis,involving visitors to dTest’s website and social media,revealed that over 80% of respondents were aware of the obligation for retailers to display the lowest price in the last 30 days.
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