[Irishsteve]

Depends. We had a system that someone would favourite a product they are interested in, and when it went on a meaningful discount (20% or more) we would send them a notification letting them know. This had pretty good engagement compared to just shooting notifications out.

[JoshTriplett]

If a user specifically uses a feature that asks for notifications about a product, then you're just doing what the user asked you to do. The problem comes in when sending such notifications without them being requested by the user, which includes if the user "favorited" a product but that "favorite" operation had nothing to do with requesting promotions of that product. ("This is a thing I like" is not an invitation for spam about buying it; "Help me buy this" is an invitation for desired messages about buying it.)

[Irishsteve]

I'd say its a grey area in our case. The user isn't using a "tell me when discounts happen" feature, but rather a favourites feature where some of our marketing said to favourite things to get a discount.

Another instance but via notification was that someone would lose their product if they didn't complete the transaction (24 hours notice). This wasn't a lie - we reserved inventory for 24 hours for a buyer as it was a unique product. Versus something like booking which is eternally telling me someone else is about to reserve the room I'm considering renting.

[JohnFen]

> The user isn't using a "tell me when discounts happen" feature

Then that's a plain abuse of push notifications, in my view. If the user didn't ask for marketing messages, they shouldn't be pushed.

[Irishsteve]

I'm in Europe. They have to tell us they want marketing messages otherwise its against the regulations and would result in fines. We followed those rules!