Last year's price

A thirty per cent sticker on a Cairo shelf this month often brings the price back to exactly what the shopper paid for the same pack a year ago.

Not roughly. Exactly. The currency moved, the cost moved, the shelf price followed in two or three steps, and the November promotion happens to undo one year of it. I managed brands through a devaluation and saw this land more than once: the promotional price and last year's regular price were the same number.

The imported playbook cannot see it. It comes from markets where the reference price is the one printed above the strike-through. Was two hundred pounds, now one forty; the customer reads the gap and feels the gift. That is what the red sticker is for.

In a currency that has been moving, nobody believes the number above the line. The reference price is the one the shopper remembers, set the last time the pack felt fairly priced, which may be a year or two ago. They do not compare one forty to two hundred. They compare one forty to what they last paid without wincing, and if the two match, the sticker has not given them anything. It has stopped taking for a moment.

That changes what the promotion is for. In a stable market a discount buys a little extra volume against a settled anchor. Here it buys a pause. For three weeks the price on the shelf and the price in the customer's memory agree, and the shopper stocks up, less because the deal is good than because the argument has stopped.

Then the promotion ends, the shelf goes back to two hundred, and the argument resumes where it left off, with the customer now holding evidence that one forty was possible.

In a devaluing currency a discount is not a gift. It is a temporary truce with a number the customer has not agreed to forget.