| Abstract: | Increased use of promotions that target different market segments makes the study of consumer characteristics associated with the response to promotions more noteworthy. This article assesses the effect of a common segmentation criterion, consumer deal proneness, on consumers' responses to promotions of more and less relative and absolute value. The results of a pair of experiments indicate that deal‐prone consumers are sensitive to the value of a promotion relative to other available promotions only in a condition of high absolute dollar savings. The findings help integrate conflicting views of deal proneness into a framework in which deal proneness serves as a heuristic to limit or heighten processing of promotion‐related information depending on the promotion environment. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. |
