A Math Geek's 2¢ on goSawa's New Rewards Catalogue

Today, deals site goSawa announced its latest rewards scheme:

1. Purchase deals
2. Get 2 points for every $1 spent
3. Use points to redeem rewards

There are 16 available gift options, ranging from a 2000-W Tchibo hair dryer to a half-hour horseback riding adventure. Mathematics geek that I (self-professedly and unabashedly) claim to be, I wanted to understand the logic (if any) behind the number of points required per gift as a function of its retail value. Luckily, goSawa made the job of hunting down retail values easy, as every single one of the gifts on offer (except item 14--see below) was run as a deal in the past, and a quick Google search could unearth it.

Here's a preliminary list:

Item	Reward description	Points required	Deal price ($)	Value ($)	Points/ dollar (deal)	Points/ dollar (value)
1	30-minute horseback riding adventure	1000	11	22	91	45
2	1-month dance lessons	1500	10	75	150	20
3	3-hour bike rental	600	5	10	120	60
4	1-hour Waterfront Segway rental	1050	20	40	53	26
5	15-minute Segway training	630	8	17	79	37
6	8-hour sailing cruise trip for 2	1300	100	240	13	5
7	Day of adventure, outdoor activities	900	15	30	60	30
8	1-night bungalow accommodation + activities	1800	60	120	30	15
9	Discover scuba diving	1400	50	100	28	14
10	PADI scuba diving course with int'l certificate	1900	125	250	15	8
11	Sony Cyber-Shot DCS-WX7 digital camera	3000	144	240	21	13
12	Thierry Mugler leather wallet	1700	21	70	81	24
13	Thierry Mugler leather briefcase	2000	30	100	67	20
14	6-month diet plan for couples	1800
15	1-night stay for 2 in deluxe room + breakfast	1700	85	170	20	10
16	Tchibo 2000-W hair dryer	2000	29	65	69	31

With the data organized thus, I was able to then compute a few indicators of interest, including how many points you would accumulate had you bought said item when it was advertised, or conversely how much money you needed to spend on goSawa before you earned it. Another way to look at it is how many units of the gift item you'd need to buy (at the deal price) to earn a free unit (buy X get 1 free). Check it out:

Item	Points earned for deal purchase	Required spend value on goSawa to earn one free unit ($)	Number of units X needed to purchase to receive one free unit (Buy X get 1 free)	Reward Worthiness Index
1	22	500.00	45	22.73
2	20	750.00	75	10.00
3	10	300.00	60	30.00
4	40	525.00	26	13.13
5	16	315.00	39	18.53
6	200	650.00	7	2.71
7	30	450.00	30	15.00
8	120	900.00	15	7.50
9	100	700.00	14	7.00
10	250	950.00	8	3.80
11	288	1500.00	10	6.25
12	42	850.00	40	12.14
13	60	1000.00	33	10.00
14		900.00
15	170	850.00	10	5.00
16	58	1000.00	34	15.38

The final column is a normalized index I came up with, called Reward Worthiness, which measures the ratio of "required spend value on goSawa to earn one free unit" to "retail value" of the item. In other words, how inflated is the point tag markup on this gift? You want this figure to be as close to unity (1) as possible. Glancing at the RWIs above, items 6, 10, and 15 are your best bets in terms of how many points you have to earn to get the gift relative to the gift's value. Items 3, 1, and 5, in that sequence, are the biggest rip-offs. Don't waste your time saving for them. Simply go out and buy.

At any rate, goSawa's initiative is a nice way of rewarding and encouraging its most active scoopers. To what extent this rewards system will give it an edge over its competitors (and there are many) is difficult to say.