The role of attributions in consumer perceptions of retail advertisements promoting price discounts

This study examines whether information in an advertisement promoting a price discount is capable of affecting attributions made about the price reduction and whether these attributions, in turn, affect consumer perceptions and evaluations of the sale. Findings show that price image of the retail advertiser had a strong effect on attributions pertaining to the merchant and a marginal effect on product attributions. The attribution variables, in turn, explained significant amounts of variance in criterion variables measuring consumer perceptions of value, attitude toward the ad, and shopping intentions, beyond the variance explained by the store and discount claim variables manipulated in the study. These results suggest the importance of the role of attributions made by consumers when exposed to ads promoting discounts.     

All at once or one at a time? The effect of simultaneous versus sequential discount presentation on store patronage intentions

Retailers often employ store flyers, be they in print or digital form, to drive store traffic. A fundamental difference in the presentation of multicomponent information, such as the multiple discounts presented in flyers, is whether the components are displayed simultaneously (all at once) of sequentially (one at a time). Yet a little extant research examines how these different presentations affect individuals' responses to retailer price promotions. Three experiments demonstrate that a sequential display of price discounts is associated with more positive store patronage intentions. Evidence, gleaned by both measuring and manipulating the process by which the discounts are evaluated, implicates a greater sense of accumulating benefit with each successive discount when presented sequentially as the driver of the cross-format difference in patronage intentions.     

When do amount-off discounts result in more positive consumer responses? Meta-analytic evidence

Extant research has examined the effects of amount-off discounts on consumer responses, but the empirical findings are inconsistent. This study presents a meta-analysis of 19 studies and 86 effect sizes (N = 12,003) calibrating the effects of discount frames on consumer responses. Amount-off discounts are found to lead to positive consumer responses through positive changes in attitudes. Analyzing various moderators’ impacts shows that amount-off discounts have different effects depending on the product price level, the product type, and the price promotion mode. For instance, amount-off discounts tend to be more effective than percentage-off discounts when the price is high, when the product type is material, and when the price promotion mode is a discount.     

A simultaneous model of multiple-discrete choices of variety and quantity

In many categories, consumers purchase discrete quantities of multiple varieties. For example, when doing grocery shopping for cereals, consumers may purchase in each category three units of brand A, four of brand B, and one of brand C. These decisions are often influenced by nonlinear pricing strategies such as quantity discounts. Modeling such multiple-discrete choices is challenging, as they violate assumptions of standard choice models. In this research, the author introduces a computationally attractive choice model that simultaneously captures 1) variety, 2) discrete quantity, and 3) nonlinear pricing strategies, such as quantity discounts. The model assumes that consumers maximize variety of the choice outcome, while taking into account constraints on utilities of alternatives. Application of the proposed model to two datasets demonstrates the superior fit compared to several rival models. Counterfactual analyses demonstrate that the model is a valuable tool for assortment and pricing decisions.     

基于抵消性权力的家电产品价格机制动态博弈分析

我国家电产品零售价格一直持续下降,有学者认为其原因为巨型零售商向消费者让利,并用抵消性权力理论给出了解释。然而"让利给消费者"并非是巨型零售商获取最大利润的必经之路,它们完全可以通过与家电制造商签合理的定价协议以获取最大收益。本文给出了家电零售价格下降的另一可靠的说法:家电价格下降并非家电零售巨头主动让利给消费者,而是零售巨头对制造商的压制,使价格机制在"上游制造商——下游零售商——消费者"这一个整体系统中运作,其中存在于这个系统中的那些零散的小型零售商对最终零售价的下降起了关键作用。     

It's Not All Relative: The Effects of Mental and Physical Positioning of Comparative Prices on Absolute versus Relative Discount Assessment

In the context of three experiments, the authors examine the manner in which consumers compare a sale price to an explicit reference value. They find that a comparison of sale price to regular price may be more likely to involve an absolute (dollar amount) assessment, whereas a comparison of sale price to a competitor's price may be more likely to involve a relative (percent) assessment. The authors also find that vertical (i.e., columnar) placement of prices may result in a greater tendency to estimate discounts in relative terms. Conversely, horizontal (i.e., side-by-side) placement may result in a greater tendency to compute absolute numerical difference. The results provide important implications for retail managers in terms of framing and communicating price discounts.     

化肥价格变化对粮食价格的影响研究--基于省际动态面板数据模型的系统GMM检验

基于我国粮食价格与化肥价格变动趋势的分析,运用2006年~2017年省际动态面板数据模型和系统GMM方法,实证检验了化肥价格变动对粮食价格的影响。结果表明:化肥价格变动对粮食价格存在显著的正向影响,在考虑化肥价格影响下,农业生产服务、种子等农资价格对粮食价格也存在显著的正向影响,机械化农具和农药价格对粮食价格不显著,"价补分离"政策对粮食价格存在显著负向影响。因此,在化肥减量行动背景下,适度调控化肥价格,避免化肥价格上升挤占粮农利润,大力发展农业生产性服务业和种子业,继续实行"价补分离"政策,提高补贴精准性,减少农民投入成本。     

The expected benefit as determinant of deal-prone consumers' response to sales promotions

This study proposes that the responses of more and less deal-prone consumers to price discounts and premiums depend on the promotional benefit level. At low and moderate benefit levels, low deal-prone consumers show a higher evaluation for price discounts than for premiums but if the benefit is high, deal proneness does not bias the higher evaluation of price discounts. An experimental study shows that low deal-prone consumers are concerned with obtaining price discounts. Taken together, these findings suggest that consumers more concerned with obtaining promotions do not always prefer price discounts.     

The Effectiveness of Sales Promotion Tools among Indian Consumers: An Empirical Study

Marketers use sales promotions to boost sales. Sales promotion tools vary in their effectiveness to elicit different sales responses. Companies have a specific goal when they choose to use any promotional tool. Many researchers believe that sales promotions are zero sum game. Unlike in the West, in India brand loyalists outnumber price buyers by 200%. This paper investigates the effectiveness of select sales promotional tools in generating different buying behaviors. The study reveals that sales promotions, in India, do not help in category expansion. They are effective measures for inducing brand switching, stock piling, and purchase acceleration.     

To Whom,When, and How Much to Discount? A Constrained Optimization of Customized Temporal Discounts

Customized temporal discounts are price cuts or coupons that are tailored by size, timing, and household to maximize profits to a retailer or manufacturer. The authors show how such discounts allow companies to optimize to whom, when, and how much to discount. Such a scheme allows firms to send just enough discounts just prior to the individual's purchase of a rival brand. To do so, the authors model household purchase timing and brand choice in response to discounts and use Bayesian estimation to obtain individual household parameters. They illustrate the model on a Japanese data set having price cuts, a US data set having coupons, and another US data set having discounts. They formulate the optimization task of customized temporal coupons as a constrained multiple-knapsack problem under a given budget. They use simulations of the empirical contexts to obtain optimal solutions and to assess improvement in profits relative to existing practice and alternate models in the literature. The proposed model yields increase in profits of 18–40 percent relative to a standard model that optimizes the value but not timing of discounts.     

Some characterizations of stockpiling behavior under uncertainty

The objective of this note is to gain new theoretical insights into stockpiling phenomena. The model used to derive our results envisions consumers as responding optimally to uncertainties in the promotion environment. We show that, all else being equal, consumers will stockpile a promoted product more intensely: (i) the lower the availability of deal opportunities, (ii) the smaller the expected deal discount, and (iii) the lower the uncertainty about the deal/regular price, provided that dealing occurs with high/low frequency.     

An Empirical Analysis of the Impact of Promotional Discounts on Store Performance

The received wisdom, reflected in popular marketing textbooks, is that featuring deeply discounted items will generate additional store traffic for retailers that in turn will lead to increased sales and profits. However, there is surprisingly little systematic evidence about the impact of these deep discounts on aggregate store traffic, sales, and profits. In this paper, we study the effects of promotional discounts and their characteristics on various store performance metrics employing a store level dataset pooled over 55 weeks and 24 stores. Many findings of our study lend credence to the continued popularity of such promotions by retailers. We find that feature promotions build store traffic, especially when the categories being featured are high penetration, high frequency. Also, promotions of branded items are found to be more effective than promotions of unbranded items. Discounting on more items in a category leads to lower store margins suggesting that the cost of discounting a large proportion of items in a category may not be justified by the profits generated by the sale. Using the coefficients from our model estimates, various counterfactuals provide insights into strategic change in level of discounts across categories. We discuss several implications of our findings for retailers.     

Sampling,discounts or pay-what-you-want: Two field experiments

Free sampling and price discounts are important, popular promotional tools used to attract new customers by reducing their risk of trial. The authors investigate pay-what-you-want (PWYW) as an alternative promotional tool to free sampling and price discounts in two field experiments. The authors find significant differences in perceived promotional characteristics and relevant performance measures, such as trial and repeat purchases by new customers. The entertaining and innovative character of PWYW induces many people to try it. PWYW may yield a higher repeat purchase rate of new customers, and sellers using PWYW benefit from higher word-of-mouth behavior. Finally, PWYW yields the highest promotional revenues.     

A Partially Observed Model for Micromovement of Asset Prices with Bayes Estimation via Filtering

A general micromovement model that describes transactional price behavior is proposed. The model ties the sample characteristics of micromovement and macromovement in a consistent manner. An important feature of the model is that it can be transformed to a filtering problem with counting process observations. Consequently, the complete information of price and trading time is captured and then utilized in Bayes estimation via filtering for the parameters. The filtering equations are derived. A theorem on the convergence of conditional expectation of the model is proved. A consistent recursive algorithm is constructed via the Markov chain approximation method to compute the approximate posterior and then the Bayes estimates. A simplified model and its recursive algorithm are presented in detail. Simulations show that the computed Bayes estimates converge to their true values. The algorithm is applied to one month of intraday transaction prices for Microsoft and the Bayes estimates are obtained.