When Countdown have their any 2/3/4/? for $whatever deals, these are always (or nearly always) only the minimum number you need to buy to get the deal. E.g. if it's 4 for $5, you don't have to buy 4 or 8. You can buy 4,5,6,7,8,9…. and you'll still get the same price per unit. You'll notice the prices are generally always dividable by the number of items, especially obvious with 3. E.g. it'll be $4.98 rather than $4.99 or $5.00. Maybe not a big difference but especially with something like confectionary or if you're targetting a certain dollar value it can be useful to know you don't need exact multiples. As an aside, I've found it's not uncommon you may actually pay more for 2 than you would for 3 with these sort of deals with confectionary and other items with high regular prices.
This compares to Pak'n'save at least those in Henderson area who AFAIK always implement their deals as requiring multiples of the exact number.
I've known this for I think over 2 years as it's easy to notice when using the self check-out or if you pay close attention when the clerk is scanning, and I guess also when ordering online (never done that) so probably many already know this. But guess there are some who still don't know. I'm not sure if they've always done this, I seem to recall I first noticed them being $4.98 for 3 about 4-5 years ago but didn't think much of it at the time. It makes sense from the store's POV, less customer confusion and surely minimal advantage to forcing customers to buy exact multiples.
So the promotional price still only becomes available after the minimum quantity, but you can then add any single incremental amount above that? That's good to know, will have to try it out next time, cheers.