Discount pricing – the strategy of reducing regular prices through quantity, seasonal, cash or promotional discounts, coupons, customer loyalty programs and the like – plays an important role in retail pricing and is widespread business practice in virtually all retail industries in Austria....

Austrians widely expected prices to fall on account of EU accession, participation in the Single Market and the resulting stepped-up competition. In hindsight, this assessment was partly correct. In the course of the decade from 1995 to 2004, the inflation rate dropped by half to 1.5% per annum...