“Give me your best price.”
Every online seller in Nigeria has heard it.
Sometimes the customer genuinely can't afford the original price.
Sometimes they're comparing you with three other sellers.
And sometimes they simply want to know if you'll reduce the price because they asked.
The dangerous response is always the same:
“Okay, ₦45,000 final.”
Sale.
Everybody is happy.
Or so it looks.
The problem is that discounts solve a lot of different problems, but they don't solve them equally well.
And if you use them for everything, you can end up teaching customers something you never intended to teach them:
Your original price isn't the real price.
A discount should have a job
A good promotion has a reason behind it.
Maybe you're clearing old inventory.
Maybe you're launching a new product.
Maybe you want to reward existing customers.
Maybe you're trying to increase the average order value with a bundle.
Maybe you have a slow period and want to create a temporary reason to buy.
Those are strategic uses.
“Sales are slow, so let's reduce everything by 20%” is different.
That's not really a strategy.
That's panic with a percentage attached.
And it's especially risky for small businesses because the discount comes directly out of the money available to cover inventory, delivery, advertising, staff and everything else the business pays for.
Here's why the maths gets ugly quickly
Imagine you sell a product for ₦50,000.
Let's say your gross profit before other operating costs is ₦15,000 per sale.
Now you offer 10% off.
The customer pays ₦45,000.
You've given away ₦5,000 of revenue, but that doesn't mean you've lost only ₦5,000 in some abstract sense.
You've cut one-third of that ₦15,000 gross profit.
To recover the ₦5,000 reduction, you now need additional sales.
That's the part many sellers miss.
A discount can make your product look more attractive while making each individual sale less valuable.
So the question isn't:
“Will a discount increase sales?”
Of course it might.
The better question is:
“Will the extra sales create enough additional profit to justify the discount?”
That is a business question.
Nigerian consumers are price-conscious. That doesn't mean they only buy cheap things.
There's an important distinction here.
People care about price.
They also care about whether the product is worth the price.
They care about trust.
They care about delivery.
They care about quality.
They care about whether the seller is legitimate.
They care about convenience.
They care about what happens after payment.
Visa's 2026 research found that 83% of Nigerian consumers surveyed had bought directly through social commerce, but trust remains a major issue: 57% of respondents who had experienced scams said the incident happened on social media.
So if your entire sales pitch is:
“CHEAPEST PRICE!!!”
you're competing on one of the easiest things for another seller to copy.
Someone can simply go lower.
Then you go lower again.
Congratulations.
You've entered a race where everybody gets poorer.
What if you sell the same thing as everyone else?
This is where positioning becomes useful.
Suppose ten Instagram sellers offer similar handbags.
Nine are saying:
“₦35,000 only.”
“₦33,000 today.”
“₦30,000 promo price.”
The tenth seller says:
“₦38,000. Genuine leather. Same-day dispatch within Lagos. Seven day exchange policy. See customer reviews below.”
That seller isn't necessarily going to win.
But they're giving the customer more information to judge the price against.
Price is no longer the only thing being compared.
This is what good positioning does.
It gives customers another reason to choose you.
Sometimes the best discount is not a discount
A seller wants to increase orders.
Instead of reducing a ₦20,000 product to ₦17,000, they could offer:
“Buy two and get free delivery.”
Or:
“Buy three, get ₦5,000 off.”
Or:
“Free gift with orders above ₦50,000.”
Or:
“Existing customers get early access.”
The economics are different.
You're not automatically reducing the value of the product itself.
You're encouraging a different buying behaviour.
That's useful because the goal of a promotion shouldn't always be “make this product cheaper.”
Sometimes the goal should be:
Make the total transaction more valuable.
Discounts can also train your customers
This is the part worth paying attention to.
If you run a 20% discount every weekend, customers eventually stop seeing 20% off as special.
It becomes normal.
Then the regular price starts feeling expensive.
So you run another promotion.
And another.
Eventually, your marketing calendar becomes a cycle of:
Price goes up.
Promotion starts.
Price comes down.
Promotion ends.
Sales slow.
Promotion starts again.
You've created a business where customers are constantly waiting for the next discount.
That's not loyalty.
That's conditioning.
A better promotion answers one simple question
What behaviour are you trying to change?
If customers aren't buying because they don't trust you, discounting won't fix the core problem.
If customers buy once but never return, a first-order discount may be less useful than a retention offer.
If customers buy one item when they could buy three, a bundle makes more sense.
If old inventory is sitting in your warehouse, a clearance sale may be exactly what you need.
If your product is genuinely overpriced relative to its value, then yes, your price may need to change.
But don't use a discount to avoid making a pricing decision.
That's how businesses end up permanently selling products at promotional prices.
The smartest sellers know what their discount is buying
Before running a promotion, write down what you expect it to achieve.
More first-time customers?
Higher average order value?
Faster inventory turnover?
More repeat purchases?
More referrals?
A specific seasonal sales push?
Then measure that result.
If you offer ₦5,000 off and acquire hundreds of customers who never return, you haven't necessarily built a great customer base.
You may have simply bought a lot of cheap transactions.
That's very different.
And once you start tracking things like average order value, repeat purchase rate and contribution margin, promotions become much easier to judge.
You stop asking:
“Did we sell more?”
And start asking:
“Did the promotion make the business better?”
That's the metric that matters.
So should you stop discounting?
No.
Discounts are useful.
Just don't let them become your personality.
Use them when they have a purpose.
Protect your margins.
Make your normal price believable.
Give customers reasons to value what you're selling beyond the number on the screen.
And when you do run a promotion, know exactly what you're trying to get in return.
Because a business can be very busy and still be making a terrible deal with its customers.
More orders are nice.
More profitable orders are better.
