Discounts for students

Students should be encouraged in every way possible to continue with their studies and to earn outstanding grades.

This is not the responsibility of parents and educational institutions only. All members of society should support students and create an awareness across the country that being a student is like being a star. Products and service providers represent a very important segment of the society and they should play a vital role in supporting students through their means.

Products such as stationery, personal computers, printers and other paraphernalia that students need during the course of their studies should be offered at prices lower than those sold to other regular customers. In addition, it would be great if personal services such as health insurance, transportation tickets, restaurants, health club membership and the likes are offered also at attractive rates to students. Some movie theatres in certain countries provide discounts too. Girls would love receiving discounts in saloons and students living in dorms can benefit from discounts on furniture and other items, so that they can make their rooms much fancier if such discounts were offered to them.

Easier

Generally, in countries where student discounts are given, it is mainly offered on personal services and not products. That is because if discounts were offered on products such as clothing, it is difficult to ascertain whether the student is buying the product for himself or herself or if it is being bought for a different end user.

While it is much easier to provide discounts on personal services as there is no disparity between the time the service is offered and the time the service is used. Accordingly, the service provider can be pretty sure that the service is being provided for the student himself or herself. Providing discounts for students is not a new phenomenon. Many countries are familiar with the concept and they have reached a stage were they ask the providers of products and services to offer such discounts to the students.

In our country, at present, the market players are not interested in engaging much with community work since they are concentrating mainly on making plans on how to work out reasonable inflation in prices.

I call the attention of the public, private services and service providers to draw special attention to their dealings with students as they should allocate a small portion of their marketing budget to support students all around the country. I assure them that their contribution won't go in vain and it would reward them back with potentially very knowledgeable and intellectual workers.

Hanan Esmail Al Sahlawiis a UAE columnist.