This week, an enquiry plan inspired by a true tale that happened to a friend of mine. Don’t worry, it’s not another piece about shops doing fake discounts on Black Friday, (quite the opposite).
Plus, get an oracy question for every student, every week, for the rest of the school year with our two-term Sticky Questions package.
Discounts and Deceit: Stimulus
It’s the “Black Friday” time of year in most countries. This is when, for an unspecified period that certainly covers days that aren’t called Friday, shops reduce the prices of some products in the hope of flogging them before Christmas.
You’re browsing an online store where you come across a product you want to buy. To get 10% off, the website asks you to add the code BLACKFRIDAY10 at the online checkout.
However, being a cold November day, your finger flips on the keyboard and you accidentally type in BLACKFRIDAY20.
To your surprise, your shopping cart is updated with 20% off.
Question: Would you try BLACKFRIDAY30, even if you didn’t intend to use it?
Curiosity gets the better of you, and you type in BLACKFRIDAY30 into the voucher-code box. Your item now has 30% off. It also works with BLACKFRIDAY40, 50 and 60, all the way up to 100. Clearly, someone has programmed an algorithm to reduce the amount by the number at the end of the voucher code.
Optional context: It’s likely students will ask what kind of retailer it is, so you could add some details of your own, and then twist the tale into a parallel shopping universe to see if it would affect their decisions. Does it change anything if:
- The store is a major retailer?
- The store is a small, family-run outfit?
- The store has recently been in the newspapers for advertising items as discounted when they were never really full price in the first place?
- You tell lots of your friends about this loophole, therefore giving the retailer more customers?
- You were told about the voucher code algorithm from someone who works there, who want to give their friends a bit of money off?
Further questions:
If everyone agrees that flexing up to a certain % discount is wrong, what makes it wrong? Arrange the below on pieces of A3 paper around the room and ask students to stand next to the one they agree with the most.
- It’s punishing an innocent mistake
- It’ll make you more likely to do it again
- It’ll lose money for the retailer
- It’s breaking the rule of “do not steal”
- Something else?