Should you offer cash or stock as rebate incentives to customers?

Members are divided on rebate structure. The core tension: cash incentives are straightforward and immediate for customers, while stock incentives keep product in circulation and may be more beneficial for the supplier's inventory and sales volume.

- **Cash rebates** — one member's colleague advocated for cash as a better customer incentive, implying easier uptake and clearer value perception - **Stock rebates** — initial questioner assumed stock would be more beneficial, likely due to inventory management and margin advantages - **Ideal approach** — one experienced member noted "try getting cash for stock, that's the utopia," suggesting the sweet spot is negotiating situations where you receive cash from customers while offering them stock incentives—maximizing cash position while moving product

The discussion did not include detailed case studies, conversion rates, or customer type comparisons (on-trade vs. off-trade, for example). Members appear to operate on intuition about which structure works best rather than shared hard data.