Meta-Analysis of the Long- and Short-Term Effects of Sales Promotions on Consumer Behavior

ABSTRACT

This article presents a meta-analysis aiming to assess the short- and long-term effects of sales promotions on consumer behavior. We found 221 studies addressing this relationship. Our final sample provided 139 observations. First, the results revealed a significant relationship between sales promotion and both purchase intentions and sales volume. Second, we identified significant and positive connections with brand loyalty, perceptions of quality, consumer attitudes, and switching costs for consumers. Third, we noted that the sample type, the number of promoted products and sample size partially moderated the relationship between sales promotion and short/long-term effects.     

Joint Private Safety Standards and Vertical Relationships in Food Retailing

In recent years, it has become common for downstream firms to impose Joint Private Standards (JPSs) on upstream producers. In this paper, we present an original model of a vertical relationship, explaining the incentives for and the effects of such JPSs with an example concerning food safety. The risk of a food crisis is endogenously determined. Using the concept of cartel stability ( d’Aspremont et al., 1983 ), it is shown that liability rules are crucial for JPSs to emerge, that a JPS can become a minimum quality standard, and that a more stringent JPS does not necessarily reduce the market risk.     

A welfare comparison of ad valorem and unit tax regimes

This paper strives to merge two strands of the literature. The first group of papers compares ad valorem and unit taxes in a tax competition framework in terms of welfare. The second group of papers regards capital income taxes as a conjunction of taxes on pure profits and taxes on capital income. We find that, given decreasing returns to scale, there always exists a level of the share of deductible capital costs strictly smaller than one, such that for all values larger than this threshold, an ad valorem tax regime unambiguously Pareto-dominates a unit tax regime.     

Monetary Policy,the Composition of GDP and Crisis Duration in Europe

This paper analyzes the effects of changes in interest rates on the composition of production in 10 European countries during the boom period of the 2000s. We find that output elasticity differs across industries and across countries for similar industries. The paper suggests that in the run-up to the 2008 crisis, the European Central Bank's low interest rate policy affected the allocation of resources across industries. This may explain the sluggish overall recovery from the crisis in Europe.     

Knowledge transfer among the small businesses of a Brazilian cluster

This study verifies how knowledge is transferred among small businesses operating in industrial clusters, how this competitive resource circulates and is accessed within the cluster. Interfirm cooperation, industrial support institutions, workforce mobility and social ties, concepts highlighted in the literature as dimensions of the knowledge transfer process, were used to structure the survey instrument, which was applied in the cluster that leads Brazilian furniture exports. Questionnaire responses were received from 198 firms and submitted to factor analysis. Conclusions and theoretical contributions of the study are that: (i) the knowledge transfer process is multi-dimensional; (ii) knowledge transfer can occur in clusters even in the absence of interfirm cooperation; (iii) the dimensions of the process can be combined in various ways to facilitate knowledge transfer; (iv) this combination may differ from cluster to cluster; and (v) producers are more likely than suppliers to perceive and access knowledge available in the cluster.     

Surprise,Surprise. Ambient Media as Promotion Tool for Retailers

Ambient media evoke surprise with the aim of gaining the attention of consumers who are overexposed to traditional types of advertising. No study has yet considered the effects of unanticipated ambient media. To bridge this gap, the present article reports a field experiment entailing the manipulation of three types of ambient media that create different levels of surprise. The analysis combines observation data for 2,464 passersby, survey data from 305 respondents, and sales figures for 730 days. The results show that surprising ambient media draw attention, promote positive attitudes toward the ad, and stimulate word of mouth. Most importantly, ambient media increase purchase intention and sales revenue. Robustness checks ensure that the model is stable across several conditions, such as time of day or weather conditions. Follow-up studies further reveal that surprise elicits positive effects via two processes; the amplification of accompanying evaluations and the interplay of attention and incongruence resolution. The paper provides guidance for retailers wishing to design surprising ambient media that improve consumer attitudes and profitability.     

Deriving conditional and unconditional marginal effects in log earnings equations estimated by Heckman's procedure

Although the Heckman approach has often been used in empirical analysis, the marginal effects, necessary to interpret the effect of the regressors on the dependent variable, appeared to be overlooked. Using the Heckman approach, general expressions are derived for calculating the conditional and unconditional marginal effects. Based on a sample of Brazilian women, the conditional and unconditional return to education are calculated for the logarithm of earnings equation estimated by Heckman's procedure, comparing them to the marginal effect of education obtained without correcting for selectivity bias. The same analysis is carried out for a discrete variable ‘black’.     

Ads for Mature Consumers: The Importance of Addressing the Changing Self-View Between the Age Groups 50+ and 60+

This paper investigates how to address mature consumers in advertisements in an appropriate, appreciating, and effective way. A 2 × 2–experiment with 125 consumers suggests that the more the advertisement model reflects the self-concept of the respondent on the dimensions of activity and modesty, the more positive is the attitude toward the ad. The study reveals differences between different age groups within the over-50s, which reflect a shift of values from modesty to activity. Although all mature consumers tend to prefer advertisement models that represent the concept of activity, this effect is stronger for the group 50+ than for the group 60+.     

Financial Globalization,International Business Cycles and Consumption Risk Sharing*

In spite of two decades of financial globalization, consumption‐based indicators do not seem to signal more international risk sharing. We argue that the fraction of idiosyncratic consumption risk that gets shared among industrialized countries has actually increased considerably over the period 1980–2000 and, in particular, during the 1990s—from around 30 to more than 60 percent. However, standard consumption‐based measures of risk sharing—such as the volatility of consumption conditional on output or international consumption correlations—have been unable to detect this increase because consumption has also been affected by the concurrent decline in the volatility of output growth in most industrialized countries since the 1980s. First, the volatility of output at business‐cycle frequencies has declined by more than has the volatility of permanent fluctuations. Since consumption reacts mainly to permanent shocks, it appears more volatile in relation to current changes in output. This effect seems to have offset the tendency of financial globalization to lower the volatility of consumption conditional on output. Second, because the variability of permanent global shocks has also fallen, international consumption correlations have also generally not increased as financial markets have become more integrated.     

Urban water demand with fixed volumetric charging in a large municipality: the case of Brisbane,Australia*

This paper uses suburb‐level quarterly data to model residential water demand in Brisbane, Australia, from 1998 to 2003. In this system, residential consumption is charged using a fixed annual service fee with no water entitlement followed by a fixed volumetric charge per kilolitre. Water demand is specified as average quarterly household water consumption and the demand characteristics include the marginal price of water, household income and size, and the number of rainy and warm days. The findings not only confirm residential water as price and income inelastic, but also that the price and income elasticity of demand in owner‐occupied households is higher than in rented households. The results also show that weather, particularly summer months and the number of rainy days, exerts a strong influence on residential water consumption.