This holiday season is a great time to be a shopper. Never before in recent retail history have there been as many deep discounts. As noted in the December 22nd issue of the Wall Street Journal, retailers are doing more to fight for the consumer dollar in today’s competitive holiday shopping season. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122990517140925283.html

Many big retailers like Toys "R" Us, Macy’s and H&M are discounting more than ever, and staying open for 24 hours through Christmas.  In addition, snowstorms across the country are causing retailers to further discount and incentivize consumers.

However, for both brands and retailers, what will be the result of their consumers being so accustomed to deep discounting? Consistently selling on price can be dangerous, so it’s important to keep your brand as the one that sells on brand promise and brand experience, rather than just price.

Out of all of the retailers and brands that are discounting, there remain several that have not, even in today’s economic climate. For example, you won’t find 60% off signs at the Apple Store, as Apple has continued to do a great job differentiating its brand and creating a brand promise.

So how does a brand or retailer start to build it’s brand promise again after the holiday hangover of deep discounting? Rich D’Amico, EGC Brand Strategist, notes, “Fortunately, the real values of the brand—the relationship between the customer and the product—will dictate the impact of discounting, even deep discounting, more than any other single factor.”

If the marketer has worked to keep real values based on attributes as the reason customers value the brand, discounting—even the deep discounting by retailers this year—only serve to present  the customer with a great opportunity to get a valued product for a lot less than the usual price. Just imagine how customers react when they feel that they got a “once in a lifetime bargain” on your product.

But customer behaviors are learned. If the discounting for even a very strong brand goes on and on, the consumer perception of that brand's price points begin to change and the value of the brand undergoes a change. Then that once-in-a-lifetime deal becomes the everyday price, and so goes the price perception of the brand.

While not many businesses seem to be able to avoid the difficulties accompanying the current economic downturn, there are actions that marketers can take to maintain the integrity of their brands, even with distribution channels discounting at every turn.

These include maintaining their wholesale price and using other devices like advertising to drive consumer demand, creating real promotions that pass on to consumers an incentive to buy but tend not to compromise the regular price of the product. Another tactic is to work with the distribution channel to minimize across-the-board panic selling by all retailers that extends well beyond the holiday season.