"Cheap" or "Discount " (American audience)?

[speedshopping]

Hi All,

We are based in the UK and are currently tinkering with the USA beta version of our website.

We are currently researching into the use of "cheap" vs "discount" for our American audience.

In the UK, most people looking for a bargain will tend to use variants of cheap, but can this be said about American users?

I know the word "discount" seems to be used more on USA websites, but is this word more popular than "cheap" in terms of looking for the lowest priced item?

Thanks in advance,
Wesiwyg

[bakedjake]

Depends on the industry, but if you're looking for an unresearched answer as part of an unscientific poll, as a user I use cheap more than discount.

I look for cheap hotels and cheap beer.
I look for discounted mattresses and discounted cars.

Anecdotally, "cheap" for low value purchases, and "discount" for high value purchases.

[Robert Charlton]

In B2C niches where I've had direct experience, "cheap" is searched quite a bit more than "discount", and is also significantly more competitive.

Anecdotally, "cheap" for low value purchases, and "discount" for high value purchases.

I agree. The word "cheap" can imply lesser quality. I would assume that cheap wine is inferior to discount wine. That said, [cheap wine] is likely to attract much more traffic. "Bargain" is another word sometimes used.

[Whitey]

Google's good at working things out in regional and normal search. Very often if you type in "discount" it will return results with "cheap" and vice versa, even if both words don't appear together on a website.

[lucy24]

There's regular (American) English, and there's advertising-speak. You gotta know which one to use.

Who's your market? Anyone with pretensions to upscaleness will turn away from a product labeled "cheap"-- even if they then brag to their friends about the cheap hotel they just found. It definitely has connotations beyond the simple sense of "inexpensive".

The word "discount" sometimes has a technical meaning, but afaik it isn't legally mandated. You can talk about discount prices all you like without having to point to some actual percentage, or circumstances around price reduction.

Neither one really grabs me. "Low Prices" or "Low-Cost" (adjective) also show up a lot. "Inexpensive" doesn't carry any quality connotations, but it's too neutral. You wouldn't use it in advertising. Besides, it's got too many syllables.

The word "value" itself is advertising-speak. Does "low value" mean somewhere on the scale leading to "worthless", or does it mean "a low-budget item" in the sense of, say, beer or socks as opposed to cars and house?

Oh, "budget" as an adjective. There's another one. Budget hotels.

In short: If you can find a vacationing American who works in advertising, grab them ;)

[buckworks]

I have never seen the phrase "low value" used in an ad. Never.

"Value-priced" or "priced for value" are phrases that appear in ads sometimes, although they don't show up as phrases that searchers actually use.

[netmeg]

I use "Bargain" "Discount" and "Low Cost" in my PPC ads, when appropriate. We try not to use "cheap" because of the perceived lesser value; for some products we're going up against Amazon. Let them be the cheapos.

Google seems to do a reasonably good job with synonyms here, so we are more focused on appearances than keywords.

[Planet13]

1) "Free"
2) "Cheap"
3) "Discount"
4) "Inexpensive"
5) "Bargain"

That's how I usually search for stuff if I want a deal.