Commercial tokens

A token used to give a free beer at an event

Commercial tokens are one of the four kinds of token on the Byteball platform. Like social tokens, commercial tokens on the Byteball platform are intended to be backed by real-world goods and services. These are discount/rebate tokens being honoured by businesses, rather than personal tokens being honoured by individuals. But unlike social tokens, commercial tokens in a different form are already in widespread use.

Who would use commercial tokens on Byteball?

The current commercial coupon market seems to be fairly mature and work quite well. Generally, it would seem like a bridge too far for Byteball to get anywhere.

However, there is one way to get a foot in the door. A man and his wife, both Byteball fans, maybe run a small beauty salon in their town. They use family tokens with their younger kids, while their teenage son has started a thriving social tokens community at the local high school. Being very familiar with issuing, trading and redeeming tokens, and having a captive audience while receiving beauty treatments, it is fairly easy to introduce their customers to the various Byteball token systems. Some people are interested and get free textcoin discount "coupons", some are not.

Additional help

A customer new to Byteball, especially one new to crypto, will need some hand-holding. Give them maybe 100,000 bytes (worth a few cents) to both look like a lot and cover 1-200 transaction fees. To redeem their "10% discount" token they just pay it in via a QR code either displayed by the cash register or on the cashier's hand-held device.

Grass roots

It is always going to start with one Byteball fan using the platform with their friends and family, and not just sitting on their GBytes wishing the price would go up more.

Good faith

The real world dictates the need for terms and conditions. A printed coupon or one online has space for things like "Not valid with any other offer" or "Not valid on Saturdays/Sundays" or "Only one per person per day" or whatever. In a local community, a business can have a printed notice by the cash register spelling out the conditions.

These tokens/coupons, issued in good faith, are intended to increase custom, not provide fodder for dishonest people who love to "game the system" when they can.

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Below this point is all copy/paste from Wikipedia

Coupon promotion

In marketing, a coupon is a ticket or document that can be redeemed for a financial discount or rebate when purchasing a product.

Customarily, coupons are issued by manufacturers of consumer packaged goods or by retailers, to be used in retail stores as a part of sales promotions. They are often widely distributed through mail, coupon envelopes, magazines, newspapers, the Internet (social media, email newsletter), directly from the retailer, and mobile devices such as cell phones. Since only price conscious consumers are likely to spend the time to claim the savings, coupons function as a form of price discrimination, enabling retailers to offer a lower price only to those consumers who would otherwise go elsewhere. In addition, coupons can also be targeted selectively to regional markets in which price competition is great.

Types and uses

There are different types of values applied to coupons such as discounts, free shipping, buy-one get-one, trade-in for redemption, first-time customer coupons, free trial offer, launch offers, festival offers, and free giveaways. Similarly, there are different uses of coupons which include: to incentive a purchase, to reduce the price of a particular item or items, provide a free sample, or to help allow marketers better-understand the demographics of their customer.