An Examination of the Incidence of Purchase Quantity and Timing Acceleration

One potential cause of sales increases for consumer nondurables during promotional periods is purchase acceleration. That is, a promotion may cause consumers to buy larger quantities of a product (quantity acceleration) and/or purchase the product sooner than they normally would (timing acceleration). A number of stud- ies, using a number of different types of products and consumer promotions, have examined the phenomenon but the results have not consistenlly shown that purchase acceleration occurs or is large enough to be perceptible. This study, using rather strict definitions of quantity and timing acceleration, finds evidence of considerable purchase quantity and timing acceleration by households in four product categories. These findings suggest that manufacturers may be overestimating the prof- itability of their promotions. A portion of the sales increase in promotional periods has been borrowed from future periods, where presumably some of the purchases would have been non-promo- tional, higher-margin purchases.