A fancy steak house in a shopping mall offers a 20 percent discount to employees of other stores in the mall, provided that they eat before 6:00pm or after 8:00pm.

(a) What is the likely explanation for this discount not being offered to everyone?

(b) Why is this discount restricted to particular hours?

Answers and explanations:

A) By choosing to attend workers from different stores in the same mall during a determined time frame, the steak house is segmenting its customers. The workers may have different consuming habits than regular customers of the restaurant. In that case, the restaurant can focus on developing an assistance method for the mall's workers and others for its regular consumers according to each one's needs.

B) The discount might be restricted to particular hours because from 06:00 p. m. until 08:00 p. m. is possible when the steak house receives more of its regular customers. They may be trying to give special attention to this type of clientele and that is why they are trying to promote other types of customers from the store to visit the steak house but in different schedules.