Sexual Behavior and References in Program Promotions Aired During Sweeps and Nonsweeps Periods

A content analysis of on-air progmm promotions ap- pearing on the ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox networks was conducted to ascertain the degree to which promotional spots contain sexual acts or language, and whether the networks increase their use of sexual images and words in promos aired during sweeps. A total of 171 hours of prime time programming were videotaped over a three- month period in the fall of 1990. A total of 1,705 promotional spots were present between and within the programs. Analyses revealed that one in five promotions contained sexual acts or references. The most commonly-occurring sexual incident was kissing. An average of one verbal or visual instance of intercourse occurred every three hours. Depictions of or comments about sexual responsibility includ- ing STDs and pregnancy prevention were rarely in evidence. There were more sexual incidents per hour in nonsweeps promotions than in promotions aired during sweeps. Sex was more prevalent in promo- tions for dramas and movies, and NBC program advertisements were the most sex-laden.     

Consumer research on sales promotions: A state‐of‐the‐art literature review∗

Many research traditions have dealt with consumer psychology and behaviour vis‐à‐vis sales promotions The consumer‐oriented approach seeks to identify the heavy users of promotions and to track their purchasing strategies involving the choice of a promoted brand The aim of the theory‐oriented research traditions is to test the explanatory power of various cognitive, attitudinal, behavioural and economic frameworks, be it to explain why and how consumers react to sales promotions or to understand when companies should promote This article exposes the specificity of each research tradition, its principal results and the most promising areas for future research     

Price Awareness and Consumers’ Use of Deals in Brand Choice

There is evidence that consumer knowledge of prices is limited, implying that, on occasions, consumers may not be fully informed of prices when making a brand purchase. On such occasions, how do consumers make their brand choice decision? One possibility is that consumers use their expectation of prices. This raises an interesting question. To what extent is brand purchase either a function of preferences and posted prices or, of preferences and expectation of brand prices? Another important issue relates to the role of displays and features in simplifying consumer brand choice. First, do promotions cause consumers to restrict their attention to only promoted brands? Second, do promotions affect the price aware consumers more than the price unaware consumers? Our study uses scanner data on ketchup and peanut butter categories to answer the foregoing questions. We find that between 40 and 50% of the purchases are made by consumers using expectations of prices rather than posted prices. Consumers using price expectations may be thought of as being “unaware” of prices. We also find that promotions cause some consumers to focus exclusively on promoted brands, and this effect is greater on the price aware consumers than on the price unaware consumers. Our findings have an important bearing on the rationality of consumer expectation of prices, especially of the promoted brands. Price aware consumers act as a check against firms promoting without accompanying price cuts.     

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.     

Assessing the Impact of Price Promotions on Consumer Response to Online Stockouts

The recent growth of e‐commerce technologies has disrupted the traditional retail environment, leading to more consumers shopping online. While the manner in which consumers shop is changing rapidly, our understanding of how changing consumer behaviors affect retail supply chain management is lacking. In particular, our understanding of how consumers react to stockouts in an online shopping environment remains unclear. Making the challenge even more difficult is the fact that price promotions are heavily used to attract consumers in an online retail environment where consumer switching costs are low. This research develops a theoretical framework, based on expectation‐disconfirmation theory, to explain the effect of price promotions on consumer expectations of product availability and their reactions to stockouts in an online retail environment. Surprisingly, our findings suggest that consumers are actually less dissatisfied with a stockout of a price promoted item than a nonprice promoted product and are less likely to switch to another retailer's website. These findings may suggest that price promotions actually create a type of switching cost in the online retail environment, leading to interesting implications for researchers and supply chain managers.     

Multiple unit price promotions and their effects on quantity purchase intentions

Consumers often encounter multiple unit price promotions whereby a price reduction is presented as a reduced total price for multiple units of the same item (e.g., an item regularly priced at $1.25 each is promoted as “5 for $5”). In a series of experiments, we find that the positive effect of these promotions on quantity purchase intentions is contingent on the magnitude of the quantity specified in the offer and the rate of product consumption. However, offer effectiveness is not influenced by highlighting single unit prices, the unrestricted nature of these promotions, or aggregate savings. As predicted by the selective accessibility explanation, the effect of multiple unit price promotions on quantity purchase intentions is shown to be mediated by accessing anchor-consistent knowledge. An agenda for further research and the implications of our findings for retail practice are discussed.     

Consumer and Retailer Promotions: Who is Better Off?

The long-term effects of promotions on sales are increasingly linked to the supposed shift of economic power within channels from manufacturers to retailers. However, formal knowledge about how they influence channel decisions under different promotional arrangements and the distribution of channel profits remains very sparse. In this paper, I develop two 2-period models to investigate the impact on channel decisions and profits of manufacturer-controlled and retailer-controlled promotions targeted at consumers. My findings indicate that retailers always invest in retailer promotions, while manufacturers may find it optimal to not invest in consumer promotions. Economic power shifts from manufacturers to retailers when consumer promotions significantly expand the baseline demand in the long-term. Otherwise, manufacturers remain more powerful. Trade promotions or other profit-transfer mechanisms may be indispensable in easing conflicts over who should undertake promotions, especially when these promotions substantially increase future sales.     

Consumer perceptions of monetary and non-monetary introductory promotions for new products

Abstract

Little research has examined how consumers respond to sales promotions in new product categories. This article fills this gap by integrating research on reference prices with literature on sales promotions for new product categories. Existing research suggests that consumers respond more favourably to non-monetary promotions (e.g. extra free promotions) than monetary promotions (e.g. price discounts) because non-monetary promotions are framed as segregated gains rather than reduced losses. However, both kinds of promotions are widely used in practice, suggesting the importance of other contributory factors. With a consumer experiment on a national panel of consumers, this research demonstrates that extra free product promotions are most preferred for existing products, and introductory low-price promotions are preferred for innovative products. The moderating effect of a product's innovativeness is explained via a new relationship in the marketing literature, whereby perceived risk mediates the relationship between perceived innovativeness and a consumer's tendency to stockpile.     

Promotions and Purchase Decisions in Private Clubs

Abstract

This study investigated the use of price discount promotions at private clubs. The purpose was to determine whether the promotions led club members to purchase the promoted food entree items when dining at the club, and the effect of the promotions on the purchase of regular or non-promoted food and beverage items. Over three-fourths of the members who cited the promotion as a reason for visiting the club purchased one or more regular price items. Members visiting the club for the promotion spent more money on regular price items than on promoted items. Moreover, the majority of promotional purchases were made by members who did not visit the club in response to the promotional advertisement.     

And now a word from our sponsor: Do consumers perceive advertising on traditional television and online streaming video differently?

Despite the increasing popularity of online streaming television (OTV), there is little information regarding how perceptions of the new medium differ from traditional television (TV) viewership. The research employed online interviews among young adult viewers of OTV and traditional TV to determine whether young adult consumers (aged 18–34) regard advertising viewed within online TV programming differently than they regard advertising viewed within traditional TV programming. While advertising has long been accepted by American consumers as a necessary element of most mass communication, this research suggests that viewers of OTV programming do not regard advertising as a means to subsidize the cost of online content. Rather, young adults appear to regard advertising as an intruder in the OTV environment. Furthermore, the results indicate that Ducoffe's Advertising Value model (1995) does not predict attentiveness to advertising viewed within the OTV context. Therefore, while OTV advertising may be held to a higher creative standard than traditional TV advertising, there is no indication that entertainment value contributes to an improved attitude toward advertising in the OTV environment.     

Brand-Pack Size Cannibalization Arising from Temporary Price Promotions

This study investigates how price promotions for one pack-size of a brand steal sales from the other pack-sizes of the same brand. To do so, the study examines twelve grocery product categories (seven US, three UK, two Australian). The analysis finds heavy cross-pack cannibalization. On average, 22 percent of the sales uplift for a promoted brand-pack size comes from other pack sizes of the same brand. Cross-pack cannibalization most typically occurs in the week of the promotion, but also transfers future week's sales away from the non-promoted pack size in 31 percent of cases. The study finds higher cannibalization is associated with packs that sell for a higher dollar value than others sold under the same brand; whereas higher price-per-weight, a packaging difference, and the item having a larger relative share of sales in the brand portfolio, are linked to lower cannibalization. Also examined is the impact of pack-size cannibalization on promotion profitability for retailer PLs. That analysis finds PL price promotions have generally negative impacts on PL profits, and that pack-size cannibalization exacerbates this negative outcome. The results suggest both retailers and manufacturers should carefully consider pack-size cannibalization when evaluating the outcome of temporary price promotions. The study also provides some evidence-based recommendations from which managers can attempt to minimize such cannibalization.     

Do Promotions Increase Store Expenditures? A Descriptive Study of Household Shopping Behavior

An important question for retailers is whether promotions induce households to increase their in-store expenditures or merely reallocate a predetermined shopping budget. Should expenditures be fixed, retailers might decrease their profitability when running promotions by displacing expenditures from high margin to lower margin products. Using household level store receipts and an extended AIDS model, we provide evidence that while household expenditures do increase with promotions, there is also a significant reallocation of expenditures among the different categories. This implies that retailers have to choose carefully which products are promoted, if promotions are to increase profits.     

Retailers' and manufacturers' price-promotion decisions: Intuitive or evidence-based?

Consumer price promotions account for more than half of many manufacturers' marketing budgets, and require a significant time investment to manage. Amidst the considerable research on price promotions, little academic attention has been paid to how manufacturers and retailers make price-promotion decisions. Based on in-depth interviews with a broad range of managers, this study investigates factors that influence price-promotion decisions in durable and consumer goods industries. Findings suggest that (1) intuition and untested assumptions are the main inputs into these decisions; (2) practitioners lack solid empirical evidence to guide their actions, and their beliefs are often in stark contrast with academic knowledge about the effectiveness of price promotions; and (3) price promotions are typically not evaluated against the objectives according to which they were justified, impeding appropriate feedback for future decisions. Research priorities are outlined to advance evidence-based decision-making in this area.     

Every step counts: When physical movement affects perceived value

Physical movement is an important contextual factor during customer's decision-making. Yet, little is known about how movement can affect customer's response to mobile promotions, or how it can influence the search and evaluation of products in a retail setting. Across three studies, this research shows that physical movement improves the perceived value of products and promotions for customers with a predominant locomotion motivation. Such effects are mediated by engagement. One implication is that retailers may increase engagement for individuals with a predominant locomotion motivation by playing mobile adverts when cellular sensors indicate movement.     

A process model of the effects of price promotions on brand image

This article introduces a model to explain the process by which consumer satisfaction or dissatisfaction with price promotions can influence brand image. Specifically, the model explores conditions under which consumers experience satisfaction or dissatisfaction with price promotions, predicts ways that consumers might engage in various levels of attributional processing about price promotion satisfaction or dissatisfaction, and examines how consumer attributions of price promotion satisfaction or dissatisfaction influence brand image. Managerial implications and directions for future research are also offered. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Effects of game‐product congruity on in‐app interstitial advertising and the moderation of media‐context factors

Advertising has become one of the major sources of game apps revenues and interstitial ads, in particular, are the most used monetization method among the types of in‐game mobile ad formats. Interstitial ads overlaid on top of a mobile game app have more obvious advertising intent and a higher degree of forced exposure and perceived intrusiveness. This study examined how the degree of congruity (high vs. moderate vs. low) between the promoted products in interstitial ads and the mobile game app environment affects consumers’ responses. The moderating effects of media‐context factors (i.e., excited– or calm–happiness game types and game immersion) were further assessed. The results of two experiments revealed that game‐product congruity lead to better consumers’ responses toward ads and advertised products. The positive effects of game‐product congruity were more salient when consumers played calm–happiness games and were less immersed in the game. Theoretical implications on integrating perspectives across disciplines such as schema theory, happiness, and immersion within the media‐context framework, as well as practical suggestions are discussed.     

中国高新技术产业和标准互促国际化问题研究

技术标准国际化和对应产业国际化成长之间相互促进.依据波特国家优势论、战略性贸易理论、新兴古典贸易理论三大贸易理论的逻辑分析揭示出,中国应凭借人口和市场规模优势,通过厂商培育、战略性扶持、贸易效率改善、产业联盟组建、经贸合作策略,推动本国后天形成内生性、战略型高新技术比较优势产业.并以此促进高新技术标准国际化.     

Effects of Consumers’ Efforts on Price and Promotion Fairness Perceptions

This research examines how consumers’ efforts as a nonmonetary sacrifice influence their price and promotion fairness perceptions in the context of price promotions. Multiple studies using different price promotion tactics demonstrate that consumers’ perceived level of effort to obtain a reduced price negatively influences their fairness perceptions when they deny the promoted price. Exploring the underlying mechanisms of this effect, we show that the amount of effort consumers exert to obtain a promoted price leads to their feeling of deservingness and entitlement. When the promoted price is denied, this feeling of entitlement is violated, causing unfairness perceptions to occur. The research demonstrates that, in addition to retailers’ actions such as price changes, consumers’ actions, in the form of their effort input, are also an important determinant of fairness perceptions.     

Application of Expectation Confirmation Theory to Consumers’ Impulsive Purchase Behavior for Products Promoted by Showgirls in Exhibits

Vendors and agencies rely on showgirls to promote their products or services. However, customers’ time and money available, cost savings, and increasing utilitarian motivation are their basic concerns. The model extended the expectancy confirmation theory (ECT) constructs (cost saving, utilitarian motivation, time available, money available, and impulsive purchase) to investigate customer impulsive purchases of products promoted by showgirls in exhibits. The study successfully found the precursors of impulsive purchase products promoted by showgirls in the exhibits with 445 data with Amos 18.0. Beyond the current impulsive purchase issue, the reasons for customers’ purchase without thinking include, in descending order: interaction with showgirls, promotions, the desire of purchase, and sensation seeking. Practical implications are presented, along with suggestions for future studies.