Glossary
Buy X, get Y.
BXGY is the promotion family 'buy X items, get Y free or discounted' — BOGO is its most famous member. Every one of them hides an exact effective discount.
effective discount = Y ÷ (X + Y) × 100
buy 2
get 1 free
buy 2, get 1 free is really a 33% discount across the basket.
at a 45% gross margin it keeps 17.5% — $7 of gross profit on $40 of revenue.
The discount in disguise
"Buy two, get one free" does not sound like a discount, which is exactly why it works. But every BXGY offer has a precise effective rate: the free units divided by everything that leaves the shelf. Buy one get one is 50% off. Buy two get one is 33%. Buy three get one is 25%. If you would never put the whole store at half price, hesitate before running a BOGO — it is the same event wearing a friendlier name. The disguise does earn its keep, though. Because the sticker price never moves, the offer protects perceived value instead of teaching customers to wait for markdowns, and it lifts units per transaction and average order value in the same stroke.
When it beats a straight discount
Reach for BXGY when you want volume, not just conversion: a 33% coupon moves one unit, while buy two get one moves three. It is also the cleanest way to clear slow stock — the Y item does not have to match the X, so a bestseller can pull a sluggish SKU out the door as the giveaway. What it never escapes is the margin math. On a product with a 45% gross margin, a straight BOGO collects one unit of revenue and pays two units of cost — you lose money on every redemption. Run the arithmetic above before the promotion runs you.
Made with care by Astral Commerce