Discount Awards

  • Article

The discount award (Get) identifies what the user receives. The discount award contains a target type, an award maximum, a catalog expression, and a value type.

  • Target type defines the award target. There are three types of awards that can be given: item-level discounts, order-level discounts, and shipping discounts. The only shipping discount Commerce Server 2002 supports out-of-the-box is free shipping. A site developer must make custom changes to your site for percentage off and dollar off variations of the shipping discount.
  • Award Maximum determines the number of award items the user receives if the discount is applied. If the user basket contains fewer items than the award maximum, only those items in the basket will receive the award.
  • Catalog expression applies the discount award only if the expression evaluates to "True". The catalog expression is based on the product catalog. The discount catalog expression is evaluated against each item in the user basket. The expression must evaluate to "True" at least once for the discount to apply. For example:
    Condition (Buy) Award (Get) Offer
    Buy one pair of jeans Get one Turtleneck T-shirt At 50 percent off
    Buy an order over $500.00 Get Any pant in the Blue Jean category Free
    Buy one Camcorder model 123 Get one Memory card
    OR
    two Camcorder stands    		 40 percent off

For information about creating catalog expressions, see Creating a Catalog Expression.

  • Value type defines the award value. The award values are percent off discounts, and dollar off discounts.

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    • You can create zero (0) dollars off discounts, however, Commerce Server 2002 does not support zero (0) percentage off discounts.

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  • Both AND and OR cumulative conditions are allowed in the Catalog Expression Builder, but only the OR condition is supported for discounts. The AND condition is not supported and should not be used.

There are multiple ways you can award the discount to the user. Commerce Server supports three types of awards:

  • Item-level discounts apply to specific products in the basket. You can apply multiple discounts to a single line item or to a single order.
  • Order-level discounts apply to all products in a shopping basket.
  • Shipping discounts apply to the shipping charges that users pay to have the items they order delivered to their address. The only shipping discount Commerce Server 2002 supports is free shipping. A site developer must make custom changes to your site for percentage off and dollar off variations of the shipping discount.

The following sections describe the types of discount awards that are available:

Order Subtotal Discount

Free Shipping

Order Subtotal Discount

The Order Subtotal Discount applies discounts to the order subtotal. An order subtotal discount is an order-level discount that applies to all products in a shopping basket. For example, free shipping is a type of order-level discount: you can give users free shipping for all products in their basket. Order-level discounts delivered with Commerce Server are free shipping, and a percentage or dollar amount off the total price. You cannot apply multiple discounts to an order-level discount. Order-level discounts have an implicit limit of 1.

To handle refunds properly, order-level discounts should be distributed across all line items. Commerce Server 2002 distributes percentage off discounts and dollar off discounts. For information about distributing order-level discounts see Distributing Order-level Discounts.

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  • If you want to restrict a particular item from participating in an order-level discount (for example, an item in high demand), see the "OrderLevelDiscountApply" component at <drive>:\Program Files\Microsoft Commerce Server 2002\SDK\Samples\Order Processing\OrderLevelDiscountComponents. This component allows you to specify the name of a key that specifies whether the item can receive an offer.

    This feature does not apply to item-level discounts, but can be added with custom configuration work.

Free Shipping

The Free Shipping property applies free shipping as a discount award to all products ordered. Shipping discounts apply to an order at the cumulative level, as apposed to an item specific level, which makes them similar to an order-level discount. A site developer must make custom changes to your site for percentage off and dollar off variations of the shipping discount.

Multiple Ship-to addresses

Commerce Server 2002 supports multiple ship-to addresses. For example, a user can buy a number of items, and have them shipped to multiple addresses.

Shipping discount and interaction policies

The following example explains how interaction policies of the shipping discount and the order-level discount are linked to each other. For information about discount interaction policies, see Multiple Discounts.

Discount Condition (Buy) Award (Get) Priority
Discount 1 Buy an order subtotal greater than $300.00 Get an order-level discount of $20.00 10
Discount 2 Buy a Camcorder Get free shipping 20

The following is in the user basket:

Item Quantity Unit price Extended price
Camcorder 1 200.00 200.00
Digital Camera 1 300.00 500.00
Total     700.00

Discount 1 will apply first because it has a priority of 10. The shipping discount is a cumulative discount, so the shipping discount and the order-level discount are linked using Commerce Server common discount interaction policies. Therefore, Discount 1 blocks any further awards, and Discount 2 will not be applied.

See Also

Multiple Discounts

Creating a Discount

Discount Examples

Discount Conditions

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