A trade buyer orders ninety units of a line he stocks regularly. He has ordered roughly that quantity for two years.
At one hundred units the price per unit drops noticeably. He has never seen the tier table, because it is not on the website and his account manager mentions it occasionally.
Ten more units would have cost him very little and saved him money overall. He would have taken them every time. The distributor has been quietly losing volume on every order for two years.
What actually drives a price break
Three things. The handling cost per unit falls with quantity, the administration per order is fixed, and a larger order is a cheaper order to serve.
Component 1: fixed cost per order
Picking, packing, paperwork and invoicing happen once regardless of size, so a larger order spreads them across more units.
Component 2: handling per unit
Full cases and full pallets cost far less to handle than broken quantities, which is why the tiers frequently sit at packing thresholds.
Component 3: the carriage threshold
Where delivery becomes free above a value, this is effectively another break and it should be displayed alongside the others.
A worked example at ninety units
The buyer pays the mid tier unit price across ninety units and pays carriage, because he has not reached either threshold.
The same order at one hundred units
The unit price drops for the whole order and carriage disappears. The additional ten units cost him a small fraction of their value once both effects are counted.
What the buyer sees without a tier table
A price. No indication that another threshold exists a short distance above where he is, and no reason to increase the order.
What the buyer sees with one
The current tier, the next tier and precisely how many units away it is. This converts a large proportion of orders upward at the point of ordering.
Why the prompt matters more than the table
A static page is rarely consulted. A message at the moment of ordering, saying that ten more units reduces the price, is what actually changes behaviour.
Why the carriage threshold should be shown too
Buyers respond even more strongly to free delivery than to a unit discount, and both should be visible in the same place.
Why tiers should be account specific
Where negotiated pricing exists, a buyer should see their own tiers rather than a public table that does not apply to them.
Why this reduces cost as well as raising revenue
Fewer, larger orders cost less to pick, pack and deliver, which is the ground in minimum order and pricing questions from trade buyers.
Why availability must be shown alongside it
An upsell to a quantity that is not in stock damages trust, which is the ground in stock and lead time questions from retail buyers.
Show the next price break at the point of ordering
An assistant that explains the published tiers, shows the next threshold and what it saves, includes the carriage threshold and passes larger quantity questions to the sales team recovers volume that has been quietly lost on every order for two years. The tier mechanics sit in trade pricing and tier questions, and the discount handling in how to handle discount and coupon questions with a. See pricing, run the numbers on the chatbot ROI calculator, and the sector view sits under wholesale distribution.