A New Way to Haggle Online for Discounts

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Want to save even more on your online purchases? The secret to a bigger discount is not through a coupon code, special membership or sale-it might be in walking away. That's right, abandoning your shopping cart before purchase could actually get you additional savings from the retailer.

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According to reports on Time.com, Reuters and Reddit, retailers like Home Depot, Best Buy, Land's End and Zappos have begun emailing additional discounts to would-be customers after the shopper, for whatever reason, decided not to make a purchase. Just as you would threaten to walk away after haggling over the price of a bag at a flea market, the act of getting to the point of purchase and then deciding not to buy, will get you a lower price. Sound too good to be true? It's not; here's why from Reuters:

"In the online retail space, abandonment rates of shopping carts hover around 65 percent, according to an analysis by Baymard Institute of 14 recent studies. While that seems like a really huge number, it's a smaller figure that's more startling-a recent study by email marketer Listrak shows that only 14.6 percent of the top 1,000 retailers are doing anything about customer flight."

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In other words, whether people are avoiding purchase because the cost of shipping is too high or they'd rather continue to shop for deals, online retailers are missing out on a big chunk of commerce. So, if sending shoppers a 10% off coupon converts even a small number of shopping cart abandoners into buyers, it's worth it.

Want to try it yourself? The trick, according to an insider sourced by Time.com, is to get to the point of email entry (or login) before you leave, otherwise the retailer doesn't have any way to send you your discount. Additionally, sometimes the offers change (or maybe you won't get an offer at all) as retailers try to figure out the best way to get your business. For now, check out this list of e-tailers that will give additional discounts on Reddit. And, let us know in the comments below if this has happened to you.

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