On Tuesday, February 04, 2014 14:07:18 a l wrote: > I like the idea of group and discount membership but there are somethings > that I don't understand the logic of in this proposal. > "I suggest that we change it to 15% off the total when you buy 2-6 months, > and a 20% discount for 7-12..........You > couldn't directly buy 5 months" > > If the discount is a % from 2-6 months why can I not apply it to all month > values that fit within the range 2-6? Having to buy 3 months and then > purchase 2 months separately doesn't make sense as described. A lesser > criticism is I think 2 months is to few to begin applying the discount. I > understand the want to streamline the processing so that when a couple buys > 2 months they get the group discount but if this discount is going to be > applied across the board to all membership 2 months for one person I think > the 3 month minimum has served us well and doesn't warrant changing. It > also removes the drive to purchase in advance if the discount is the same > for 2 and 6 months. I'm not sure why by 3-6 seems like a smoother break.
1. I'm not a fan of people purchasing months in advance to get the discount, as it results in lower revenue. The staggered plan I described attempts to mitigate any reduction in revenue by providing break points for common group sizes while allowing deviations from the break points to still be cheaper than without the break points. 2. Starting at 2 months implements the "family discount" that brought up the discussion in the first place. Thinking about our demographics, I think young couples without children (or just without child members) is a not- insignificant portion. 3. Using your example of buying 3 months and then 2 months isn't described by my proposal. 4 months plus a single is. To buy 5 months, you'd pay: * 4 months for $119 * 1 month for $35 * Total of $154 * No discount would be $175 * The current flat 10% discount would make that 157.5 * A flat 15% discount would make it $148.75 The staggering means $21 less revenue. Without staggering, it'd be either $17.5 or $26.25 less revenue. $21 is $0.5 cheaper than the midway of $21.5. It is an effective discount of 12%. Here's a table of effective discounts, opportunity costs, per-person dues, and how much more it costs than a lower package: Qty Disc. Cost Dues Delta 1 0% $0 $35 $35 2 15% $10.5 $29.75 $24.50 3 10% $10.5 $31.50 $35 4 15% $21 $29.75 $24.50 5 12% $21 $30.80 $35 6 15% $31.5 $29.75 $24.50 7 12.86% $31.5 $30.50 $35 8 15% $42 $29.75 $24.50 9 20% $63 $28 $14 10 18% $63 $28.70 $35 11 19.09% $73.5 $28.32 $24.50 12 20% $84 $28 $24.50 13 18.46% $84 $28.54 $35 14 19.29% $94.5 $28.25 $24.50 15 18% $94.5 $28.70 $35 The limit of this function as months purchased approaches infinity is 20%. I feel that the table above is a reasonable approximation of peak discounts with what I feel are common group sizes. Two people is a couple, four is an average family, six is a company's engineering team. While I was generating the data for this, I think we should consider the original intent of this discussion: to permit groups of people to pay for memberships in bulk and get a benefit for doing so. It shouldn't be to encourage getting people to prepay for months in advance, since that does all kinds of weird things with the accounting and being able to forecast our budget. My idea for preventing that is to only apply these discounts when the memberships are going towards different people in the same month. I'm in favor of keeping the current 10% discount for folks who buy at least three months in advance. > > On this topic, to simplify dues payment, should the student and senior > discounts be the same price? Sounds good, I don't see a reason why not. > > Hopefully this topic gets thoroughly discussed at tonights meeting, I think > it could use some more discussion since only 4 people have put in their > thoughts. Yes, please! > > regards, > Andrew L _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] https://synhak.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
