To encourage shoppers to purchase more and in higher quantities, merchants will often offer quantity discounts on certain products, also known as bulk pricing. Bulk pricing involves offering a particular item or group of items at a lower price based on the number ordered. This is particularly useful to wholesalers and merchants who sell items that are typically bought in large quantities.
You can offer bulk pricing for both individual products using Bulk Pricing Rules, and for whole categories of products (including multiple categories) using Automatic Promotions.
Note: Pricing changes can take up to 10 minutes to appear on the storefront. See our FAQ on price changes for more information.
Requirements
In order to create bulk discounts, you must have the following permissions enabled on your user account.
- For product-level bulk discounts:
- Manage Products
- Create Products
- Edit Products
- Product Options
- Manage Brands
- For category-level bulk discounts:
- Manage Promotions
- Add Promotions
- Edit Promotions
How Bulk Pricing Works
Bulk pricing allows you to set quantity-based discounts for individual products or to all products in a category. Once enabled, these discounts will be visible on the cart page after a customer adds the minimum quantity to their cart.
There are three different types of bulk discounts that can be applied to products: % Discount, $ Off/Unit, and $ Fixed Amount.
% Discount takes a percentage off the total product price when the quantity threshold is met ("Order 2 or more, get 10% off").
If your products have modifier options that adjust the price when selected, the percentage discount will apply to the adjusted price of the product. For example, if you have a $20 product with a modifier option that adds $5 to the price, and you create a percentage discount that takes 10% off the price when a customer orders 2 or more, 2 products with the modifier option applied would cost $45.
$ Off/Unit subtracts a fixed amount from the price of each unit when the quantity threshold is met ("Save $7 on each when you buy 2 or more"). Using the product and modifier option in the example above, if you create a $ Off/Unit discount that takes $7 off each product when a customer orders 2 or more, 2 products with the modifier option applied would cost $36.
$ Fixed Amount specifies a fixed price for each unit when the quantity threshold is met ("Get 2 for $15 each"). This discount type is not available for category-level bulk discounts.
The fixed amount discount type overrides the total product price, even when a modifier option is selected that would increase the price. Using the product and modifier option in the example above, if you create a fixed amount discount that sets the product price to $15 when a customer orders 2 or more, 2 products with the modifier option applied would cost $30. However, pick list modifiers will still add to the total product price if a fixed amount bulk discount is applied.
Creating Bulk Pricing Rules for a Product
Bulk pricing discounts can be managed under the Pricing section when adding or editing a product. Click Show Advanced Pricing to view bulk pricing fields, among other pricing product fields.
Using the legacy Products v2 experience? See Adding Products: Bulk Pricing for instructions pertaining to the v2 experience.
1. Select the type of discount you want.
2. Under Min Quantity, enter the lowest quantity of your lowest pricing tier. For example, if orders of 2-4 get one discount and orders of 5+ get a deeper discount, you would enter "2" to represent the lowest end of your first tier. When creating another tier, you would enter "5".
3. Enter the % discount, fixed price per unit, or $ off. The Unit Price column will update automatically. Alternatively, if you have a unit price in mind, you can update that column and the % Discount/Fixed Amount/$ Off/Unit column will adjust accordingly.
4. For additional tiers, click +Add tier and repeat steps 2 and 3.
5. Save your changes. When you view the product in your store, you will notice a "Buy in bulk and save" message near the Add to Cart button. This message may appear differently, based on your store’s theme.
When a customer triggers a product-level bulk discount, the discounted unit price and total will be visible in the cart.
Bulk Pricing for All Products in One or More Categories
We recommend using an Automatic Promotion to offer bulk pricing across an entire category of products. This is useful if you want to offer the same kind of bulk pricing rule incentive across multiple, similar products in one or more categories.
Discount rules also offer other advanced functionality. You can:
- limit the bulk discount to a particular customer group
- set a start and stop date for the discount
- limit the number of times the discount can be used
- manually activate/deactivate the discount at any time
Creating a Cart-Level Tiered Quantity Discount
1. Go to Marketing › Promotions and click + New automatic promotion.
2. Give the promotion a name, and for Choose a Promotion Type, select Category discount.
3. Select Apply a tiered discount to applicable products based on the quantity of items ordered within one or more categories.
4. Select the categories you want the discount to apply to.
5. Specify the Discount type (Amount off or Percentage off), Minimum quantity, and Discount value. Click the + button to add a new line and the ✕ button to remove a line.
6. Adjust your other discount settings like Customer Groups, Duration, and Activation. Save your changes when you’re done.
When a customer triggers a cart-level quantity discount, the default unit price and total will appear crossed out in place of the discounted prices in the cart.
For more information on applying rules and settings in an Automatic Promotion, see Creating Automatic Promotions.
The standard editor supports promotion types not available on the legacy editor. See Automatic and Coupon Promotions (Standard Editor) for more information.
FAQ
Can I assign bulk pricing to products using a CSV import file?
No. However, you can use the API to assign bulk pricing outside of the BigCommerce control panel
Is there a limit to how many bulk pricing rules you can apply to your product?
You can have up to 50 rules for each product. Any rules created after that limit will not be saved.
Can I set bulk pricing for variants?
Variant-level bulk pricing is possible using Price Lists.
Does the price on the product page change or update?
No. The price on the storefront product page does not dynamically adjust based on the currently selected quantity. However, the subtotal presented on the cart page does reflect the discounted sum.
Can I compile a list of all products with bulk pricing rules?
No, bulk pricing rules are only visible when adding or editing an individual product, and cannot be viewed when exporting products or editing them in bulk.
