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The Users That Are Eligible for Discount

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Updated 6/1/2025

Asked by 1 Company

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The Users That Are Eligible for Discount

What is this problem about?

Marketing automation relies on identifying the right audience for the right promotion. "The Users That Are Eligible for Discount" is a database problem where you are tasked with writing a query to retrieve the IDs of users who meet certain promotional criteria. These criteria might include having made a purchase within a specific date range or having a total lifetime spend above a certain amount. The goal is to return a clean list of unique user IDs.

Why is this asked in interviews?

This the Users That Are Eligible for Discount interview question is commonly seen in assessments for data analyst or business intelligence roles, such as at Analytics quotient. it tests your proficiency with SQL's SELECT, WHERE, and potentially DISTINCT clauses. It also evaluates your ability to translate a business requirement (eligibility) into a technical filter.

Algorithmic pattern used

This problem follows the Database interview pattern.

  1. Use SELECT DISTINCT user_id to ensure each eligible user is listed only once.
  2. Apply the relevant filters in the WHERE clause.
  3. If the criteria involves aggregates (like total spend), you might need to use GROUP BY and HAVING instead of just WHERE.
  4. Order the results if specified (e.g., ORDER BY user_id).

Example explanation

Requirement: Users who spent > $50 and are active in Dec 2022. Table:

  • User 1: $60, 2022-12-01 (Eligible)
  • User 2: 40,20221205(Notenough40, 2022-12-05 (Not enough )
  • User 1: $10, 2022-12-10 (Already eligible)
  • User 3: $100, 2022-11-15 (Wrong month)

Result: [1].

Common mistakes candidates make

The most frequent mistake in "The Users That Are Eligible for Discount coding problem" is neglecting the DISTINCT keyword, which results in duplicate IDs in the output. Another error is using HAVING for filters that should be in the WHERE clause, or vice versa. Finally, incorrectly formatting date strings can lead to empty result sets in certain SQL dialects.

Interview preparation tip

Practice translating word problems into SQL conditions. Pay close attention to keywords like "unique," "at least," and "within the range." Understanding the difference between filtering individual rows (WHERE) and filtering groups (HAVING) is essential for more complex database questions.

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