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

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

“Pay 80%” versus “get 20% off”: The effect of novel discount presentation on consumers’ deal perceptions

Consumers often undervalue price promotions because they discount the discounts. In this research, we examine the effect of using a novel type of discount presentation (e.g., “Pay 60% of the regular price”) on deal evaluations, and compare it to that of an equivalent discount presentation commonly used in the U.S. (e.g., “Get 40% off the regular price”). In three experiments we show that the former discount presentation results in higher perceived savings and higher purchase likelihood than the latter. Using process measures, we demonstrate that this effect is due to increased systematic processing induced by the novelty of the discount presentation, which improves calculation accuracy and hence decreases the underestimation of discounts. We also report a boundary condition of the effect of discount presentations on deal evaluations by showing that it is eliminated when consumers do not need to expend effort to accurately process price information. Copyright Springer Science + Business Media, LLC 2006Discount presentation, Deal perception, Pricing, Systematic processing,