Terms of Trade · Edition 2: The trading pack
Basket abandonment
Definition
The share of baskets started that are not converted to an order in the same session, reported as a percentage. Most of it is browsing, comparison and interruption; the smaller share is a checkout that failed the customer, and only that share is worth spending on.
Field note
Basket abandonment is a cunning ploy by consumers to solicit discount codes from unsuspecting retailers.
Board question
How much of last quarter’s margin went out in recovery codes to customers who were going to buy anyway?
Applied through
The Review walks the basket and the checkout as a customer does; Commercial Discipline in the Cat’s Whiskers reads the recovery discount as marketing spend, which is what it is.
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