Coupons attract scarcity mindset people. If your product targets more time poor money rich growth mindset people, this is a bad fit.
My wife has a friend that did every Groupon known to man. She routinely signs up for gyms that have a 30 day special then quits. She says she wants to get in shape but can’t get over her own scarcity mindset to just pay for a regular gym continuously.
I apparently have gone from an extreme "scarcity mindset," when I was in my 20s with questionable job security, to a moderate "scarcity mindset" now that I'm in my late 30s with a higher income, better job security, and 10x more in savings. It's still moderate because I'm a government employee with a relatively low ceiling on what I can make; not much room for growth.
But this part: > It's still moderate because I'm a government employee with a relatively low ceiling on what I can make; not much room for growth.
Pretty firmly puts you in one bucket. You might have more money, but you are asserting that in your 30s your growth is limited. Someone with a growth mindset would not settle into that job & accept that life path. They'd be job hopping, running a side gig for extra income, squirreling away every last dime into investments so that they can immediately flip into private business at early retirement, etc.
Getty is an example of a really rich guy with scarcity mindset. My parents & in-laws were scarcity mindset.. which is how they retired at 59! People think it's a slur, it is not!
Maybe it's the "scarcity" and "growth" parts of the terminology that I take issue with, but I'm not sure what better descriptive terms would be. Edited to add: The more verbose descriptions that you wrote in your other comment make sense... "I'm going to make as much money as possible" vs "I'm going to spend as little money as possible"
Personal anecdotes - in college I wanted more spending money, so I ran a little eBay business related to my hobby. One of my roommates got big into MMORPG goods mining & selling. Our other roommates got into things like getting their baked goods for free by showing up to bakeries at closing time.
Later, at some point in our careers my wife & I found our industry to be stagnating and tried some side businesses. They didn't pan out after a couple years, so then we both switched industries/subindustries. We both change jobs every 4-5 years. I've had 5 jobs by 40, my wife 6.
But on the other hand we come from families where our moms didn't work and our dads worked the same jobs for 30 years.
For me, just like compounding interest makes a big difference in returns in terms of saving more earlier.. so does growth. If you settle into a stable safe job with 2-3% inflation raises, vs making sure you are always getting an average 5-10% raises, you would be shocked what it means to your compensation at the end of a 20 year period.
It's sort of a mindset difference between "I'm going to make as much money as possible" vs "I'm going to spend as little money as possible". Ideally someone can try to do both, but I've met near zero who meet that criteria.
It’s “scarcity mindset” vs. “abundance mindset”. In terms of ability to gain resources.
A scarcity minded person, such as myself, thinks that they should build extra buffer and not spend their resources, in case they need them in the future. If things go south, you might not be able to make money, so you should have extra somewhere to weather the storm. Resources flowing to you could become “scarce” (in your mind), so you’re cautious.
An abundance mindset person believes that they’ll always be able to find extra somewhere. They don’t need a big savings account because they’ll be able to figure out a way to make money, no matter the circumstance. Resources flowing to you are “abundant” (in your mind), so you are more carefree.
Neither is bad, they’re just different. If you’re older but still tucking away money and trying to not spend too much, etc, then you still have a scarcity mindset (like me).
I personally don’t know if my career will go away in the future, so I’m trying to build a nest-egg to be self sufficient regardless of my work, even though I have plenty of money in my budget to not think about it
> If you’re older but still tucking away money and trying to not spend too much, etc, then you still have a scarcity mindset
This does seem to become something of a problem when people earn and save prodigiously so that they can retire, but then never feel comfortable enough to actually retire and start spending down their savings. I don't want to be "the richest guy in the graveyard," dying at 80 with an 8-figure net worth (in today's dollars), but I see how that can happen.
My wife and I were the oldest child of scarcity mindset parents. For both of us it turned into a motivator to "not have to think about money" on the income side.
For me, the worst thing in the world was when I had to ask my parents for money, it was emotionally draining. I haven't asked my parents for a penny since I turned 20. They are generous in gifting money/things at time/place/amount/reason of their choosing, but I never wanted to have to ask again.
It drove me to want to have cashflow, and I started working when I was 14 under the table, officially W2 summers/weekends/after school from 16. I've really never stopped working, been doing my own taxes since I was 16.
My wife ended up with almost 6-figures of college debt ~20 years ago because her parents contributed very little & were sticking to a very strict budget to payoff their mortgage in under 15 years. After paying off the mortgage and retirement, they became much more generous. They bought themselves several (cheap) vacation homes and investment property. The impact on her though in her 20s was to feel very resentful of them for some time, fair or unfair as that is.
The secret to this stuff is boring - persistent, continuous effort. If you can't even maintain a regular gym membership, you will not get that effort in. She's been complaining for over a decade as she continuous this charade.
Maybe she’s actually staying more motivated to go this way, maybe her engagement is higher than if she paid. Or, maybe she’d love it if you gave her a gift and pre-paid for 6 or 12 months of membership somewhere? You could even tell her you got a deal, which is true regardless of what you pay. Valentine’s Day is here…
If you want to gift anything nice to family who is more scarcity mindset, you absolutely HAVE to talk up the deal/discount you got, or how you paid for it with points that were going to expire, or something. It's also better if the thing you are gifting has opaque pricing / is somewhat custom or uncommon so they can't just google the price.
Anyway.. everything turns into sales/marketing sometimes!
Services that say "prepay up-front and we'll never bill you" is a viable selling premise. Gift subscriptions are an obvious viable business that comes out of that model.
I wanted to get my father a gift subscription to the local newspaper, and they basically had no idea how to handle a fixed-term subscription-- all they could point to were recurring auto-pay setups.
However, after some time, the gym changed the policy to offer discounts for people who signed a contract—effectively make it more expensive for people to pay-as-you-go without easier cancellation. As of now, I can no longer find pricing on their website (maybe it's there, but I've looked around a while), nor any mention of their once-notable pay-as-you-go model. Instead, the gym's website now focuses on encouraging members to sign up for a personal trainer.
At least in this case, the gym showed that the "prepay and we'll never bill you" policy was, as you predicted, a headline-grabbing policy. But it appears that the owners decided it was more profitable to either cancel or de-emphasize the policy and promote the usual payment model for gyms, even at the cost of standing out from other gyms.
[1] https://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/small-bus...