If your product sits on a retailer's shelf, there will be weeks when it's on special and you had very little say in it. The dates come from the retailer's promo calendar. The mechanic, the ticket and the catalogue placement are theirs too. Sometimes the first you hear about the exact price is when a customer tags you in a photo of the shelf.
Meanwhile, your own social channels have to decide what to do. Shout about it? Ignore it? Something in between?
This piece is for brands that supply retailers: supermarkets, hardware chains, pharmacies, department stores. Some of you only sell wholesale. Some of you also sell through your own website. Both get covered here, because the second group has an extra problem to solve.
Why it's awkward
In New Zealand, being on promotion is close to normal for a lot of products. Nielsen data reported in 2015 put 56.9% of NZ grocery sales on promotion, well ahead of Australia (42%), the US (36.7%) and the UK (33.4%) (Supermarket News). That figure is now dated, but the Commerce Commission's 2025 preliminary findings still described promotional pricing here as more pronounced than in other markets, with fewer everyday low price offers (Commerce Commission).
Suppliers are paying for a lot of it. The Commission has identified more than 50 types of supplier payments to the major supermarkets, worth around $6 billion a year, including promotional support (Commerce Commission). That's roughly 26% of the major retailers' combined sales revenue (Commerce Commission).
So you get the volume, but very little of the control. How often you're on deal, how deep the discount goes and how it's presented are all decided elsewhere. Your customer doesn't separate "the brand is discounting" from "the retailer is discounting". They see your product cheaper, and they remember.
That memory has a cost. A study of Heinz and its competitors by Erdem, Keane and Sun found that about a quarter of the sales lift from a temporary price cut was borrowed from future sales, because frequent discounting lowered how people valued the brand (INFORMS). Regular deals train people to wait for the next one, which is fine if you margin accounts for this.
The promotions don't always pay off in the moment either. Nielsen's analysis of around 212 million promotions across seven markets found nearly 60% made a net loss for the manufacturer (Food Manufacture). Your social activity can't fix the economics of a promotion, but it can help decide whether the promotion builds the brand or just moves stock.
If you also sell direct, your website just became the dearest place to buy you
Hybrid brands, selling through stockists and their own site, have a sharper version of the problem. When a retailer runs your product at 30% off, your website is suddenly the most expensive option. Anyone who finds you through your social content and clicks through to buy will notice.
You have three realistic choices:
Match the price on your own site. Keeps direct customers happy, but you're now funding the discount twice.
Hold your price. Protects margin and RRP. Expect some abandoned carts and the odd comment asking why you're dearer than your stockists.
Redirect. Point people to the retailer for the duration with a "where to buy" link or store finder. You lose the direct sale and the customer data, but the retailer sees you sending traffic their way.
Retailer relationships belong in that calculation. Research by Van Crombrugge, Cleeren and Breugelmans across nearly 2,000 UK and French retailers found that when a brand launched its own direct channel, retailers cut their orders by 19% on average. Smaller specialist retailers were the most likely to pull back, while large chains reacted far less (Erasmus School of Economics). If your stockists include independents, undercutting them on your own site in the middle of their promotion is a quick way to lose shelf space.
Our usual advice is to hold your price and compete on things the retailer can't offer: bundles, exclusive sizes or variants, a free shipping threshold, a gift with purchase. Your site stays worth visiting, and you avoid a price war with your own stockists.
Three ways to respond on social
1. Amplify the deal
Post it, story it, tag the retailer, put the price front and centre.
Right for: low-consideration, high-frequency products where volume is the goal and price is already the main buying cue. Also right when the retailer has made social support part of the promo agreement.
The cost: your feed starts to read like a catalogue, and your audience learns that your real price is the promo price.
2. Stay quiet
Let the retailer run it and keep your channels on your usual content.
Right for: premium positioning, or products that are on promotion so often that mentioning every one would turn your feed into a list of deals.
The cost: missed volume, and possibly a category manager who noticed you didn't help.
3. Give the reason, let the retailer give the price
This is the default we recommend for most supplier brands. Your content sells the use, the moment or the problem solved. The deal sits in a story, a retailer tag, a pinned comment or a link sticker, rather than leading the post.
Say a cleaning brand is on promotion. It posts a two-minute bathroom reset video, and the caption closes with a line saying it's on special at the retailer this week. People who don't care about price still get something useful. People who were waiting for a deal get their nudge.
The research on price promotions keeps pointing the same way: frequent discounts lower the price people expect to pay and how they rate the brand, while content that adds value carries no such penalty. Option three lets you take the volume without making the discount your message.
Measuring a sale that happens in someone else's till
Most supplier brands can't see what their social activity does to retail sales, because the sale goes through the retailer's systems. You won't get perfect attribution, but you can build a reasonable picture.
Promo-period uplift against baseline. Compare sales during promotions you supported on social with similar promotions you didn't. Over a few cycles, patterns show up.
Clicks to retailer product pages. Put tagged links on stories, link stickers and your bio, pointing to the retailer's online listing. Online now makes up around 8% of the major NZ supermarkets' revenue (Commerce Commission), so this is a real signal as well as a proxy.
Retailer and loyalty data. Some retailers share sales or loyalty-card data with suppliers, sometimes as part of a paid retail media package. Ask what's available.
Engagement on promo-week content. Saves, shares and comments on your "reason" content during promotions, compared with your usual content.
Comments and DMs. "Which store has this?" is qualitative, but it tells you people are acting on the post.
Be upfront in your reporting about the gaps. A directional picture across several promotions is worth more than one campaign claimed as a win.
Make social support part of the deal
Trade promotion is already one of the biggest costs for consumer goods suppliers, commonly estimated at up to a fifth of revenue (EBSCO). If retailers also expect your social channels to back their promotions, that support has value. Bring it to the negotiation as something you're offering.
Things worth asking for in return:
Lead time. Confirmed dates, mechanic and price with enough notice to plan content properly. Two to four weeks is a fair ask.
Approved assets and wording. Product shots, ticket imagery and any messaging the retailer needs you to use, so you aren't guessing or creating compliance problems.
Reciprocal visibility. Will they tag, reshare or feature you on their channels? A retailer's social audience is usually far bigger than a supplier's.
Data afterwards. Whatever sales or uplift figures they'll share, so you can measure what your support was worth.
Clarity on other stockists. If you're promoting one retailer's deal, are you expected to stay quiet about another's?
In grocery, the Grocery Industry Competition Act sets rules on what the major supermarkets can charge suppliers for and requires them to deal in good faith (Commerce Commission). Know where you stand before you agree to anything.
Before your next promotion
Get the dates, mechanic and price confirmed in writing
Pick which of the three responses fits this product and this promotion
If you sell direct, decide whether you'll match, hold or redirect
Brief content that sells the reason, with the deal as a supporting line
Set up tagged links to the retailer's product page
Agree what the retailer will share, tag or report back
Compare results against your baseline and your last promotion
Being on someone else's shelf means someone else sets your price some of the time. Your social channels are one of the few places where you still set the story. Use them to make people want the product, and let the retailer give them the reason to buy it this week.
