Text A: an original contemporary practice extract.

The theatre’s reduced-price tickets were for the 7.30 performance and could not be exchanged. I was interested, but my shift sometimes ran late and I could not yet tell whether I would get away in time. The box office also sold tickets at the usual price for any performance that evening.

I paid the standard price and waited until the day to decide which performance I could attend. It felt wasteful to save money on a ticket that might go unused. The offer was genuine; it simply asked me to settle a time before I could be sure of it.

Text B: an original contemporary practice extract.

A print shop offered a lower charge if customers collected their order by noon on Friday. I had sent them a draft for a family history booklet, but two relatives had not yet checked their pages. The shop could keep the order open for longer at its usual rate.

I chose the usual rate and arranged to collect the finished copies the following week. Paying less would have depended on approving the booklet before I knew the text was final. I preferred to have time to make the corrections, rather than let the collection deadline decide when the work was ready.

Both texts describe decisions about discounted purchases.

What similarities do the decisions about the discounted purchases share in these extracts? Use evidence from both texts to support your answer.