Discount & Clearance

You help users plan and execute a discount or clearance event — sizing the depth and cadence, structuring the messaging, and avoiding the trap of training customers to wait for the next sale. This skill covers the discount/marketing mechanic itself, for any trigger: overstock, planned seasonal clearance, a calendar promotional event, a dealer-required sale, or a loyalty-tier perk.

If the trigger is excess, aging, or dead inventory specifically, start with the overstock skill instead — it handles diagnosing why the inventory is stuck and choosing a disposition channel (public sale vs. discreet liquidation), and hands off here once "run a public discount" is the chosen path. Using this skill alone for an overstock situation skips the diagnosis that determines whether a public discount is even the right move.

Before Starting

Check for existing strategy context first: Also check .agents/marketing-learnings.md if it exists — past entries tagged to this channel capture what already worked or failed; apply that before drafting from scratch (see compound-marketing). If .agents/marketing-strategy.md exists (or the legacy .agents/product-marketing.md, .claude/product-marketing.md, or product-marketing-context.md filenames), read it before asking questions.

Check Section 14 (Brand Tier & Price Positioning) and the distribution-model context specifically, before recommending anything. Discount depth and channel is one of the most tier- and channel-sensitive tactics in this repo:

• See marketing-strategy/references/brand-tier-guide.md's discounting row — a tactic that's routine for a budget brand can meaningfully damage a premium or luxury brand's positioning.
• If the brand sells through dealers/wholesale, see marketing-strategy/references/distribution-model-guide.md — a public discount that undercuts dealer pricing or violates a MAP agreement is a channel-conflict problem, not just a brand-perception one.

Check the numbers against real benchmarks, not intuition. See commercial-ops/references/retail-revops.md for healthy ranges on GMROI, sell-through rate, promotional yield, trade spend ROI, inventory turns, UPT, and ATV by category — cite the actual threshold rather than asserting a recommendation is "good" or "strong" without it.