ATG - Promotions 101

What is Promotion?
A Promotion is an item created in the BCC that contains information about a possible discount that some (or all) users on your site may be able to get. Promotions specify a discount amount, and a conditional rule.

There are two types of Promotions:
 1) Global 

• Automatically granted to all users
•  If order qualifies, discount is given

 2) Individual 

• Not automatically granted to all users
• Something (typically a Scenario) has to grant the Promotion to the user before they can get the discount

What happens at User "Profile" component level?

• When a user comes to your site, ATG will create a "Profile" component for this user. 
• This ATG Profile component sticks around for the entire user session. It goes away when the user terminates their session. 
• This Profile contains a property called "activePromotions" – this is a list of 0 or more Promotions that this user has been given. 
• Each time your order is repriced, the code looks in Profile.activePromotions plus all Global Promotions to see which promotions the user is eligible for and reprices the order accordingly.

 How a user gets promotion(s)?

•  If you create a Global Promotion, all users will automatically be given the Promotion (remember: they may not qualify – but it is always in their list of "possible promotions")
•  If you create an Individual Promotion, the associated Promotion must first be "given" to the user. If the Individual Promotion is not in the Profile.activePromotions property, the user will not get the discount even if they qualify.
• If a Scenario adds a Promotion to the user's Profile.activePromotions property, but the user doesn't actually qualify for it, a discount will not be given when the order is repriced

There are a number of ways Individual Promotions can be granted to the user. 

Commonly used one's are:

1. Scenarios   -  Create a Scenario such as: If order.total is >= 50$, give user promotion: 10Off50, or if user logs in, and Profile.age > 62 and today is Wednesday, then give user a 20SeniorWednesday promotion 
2. Coupons - User enters a coupon code associated with Promotion 10Off50. The Promotion is added to Profile.activePromotions