Pricing and commerce
Baseline price
Also called: Regular price
The normal, non-promotional price of a product, used as the reference for measuring discounts.
In practice
Without a baseline, every promotion looks like a price cut.
Choose a consistent reference
A baseline lets you distinguish a genuine discount from a change in the comparison point. Decide whether your analysis uses an observed regular price, a historical reference over a defined period, or a retailer-displayed reference price. Those are different measures. Record the method, time window, currency and product variant so a future analyst can reproduce the calculation.
Example: measuring a promotion
For an illustrative product with a baseline of 100 and a current offer of 80, the reduction is 20%, calculated as (100 − 80) ÷ 100. If the reference were instead 120, the reported reduction would be about 33%. Nothing about the current offer changed; only the reference changed. That is why a discount percentage without its baseline and date can be misleading.
Common pitfalls
Do not automatically treat a crossed-out price as an independently observed normal price. Keep promotional periods, loyalty offers and out-of-stock observations identifiable when deriving a baseline from history. Compare the same pack size and tax basis throughout. A baseline used for internal analysis is also distinct from the requirements that may apply to advertised discount claims; the calculation alone does not establish that an advertisement is compliant.
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