IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/jouret/v96y2020i4p578-589.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Consumer Reactance to Promotional Favors

Author

Listed:
  • Bertini, Marco
  • Aydinli, Aylin

Abstract

Promotional favors are an increasingly popular but seldom researched form of price promotion where the receipt of the saving by consumers depends on an action on their part that is nonmonetary in nature, such as completing a questionnaire, posting a review, or making a referral. This paper shows that the tactic can backfire, in the sense that consumers spend less than they would in response to a standard (unconditional) discount. We document this effect across five experiments. Experiment 1 is a field test. Experiments 2–5 replicate the result in more controlled settings, trace it to a process of psychological reactance, and address plausible alternative explanations. Finally, we review the contributions of our work and propose avenues for future research.

Suggested Citation

  • Bertini, Marco & Aydinli, Aylin, 2020. "Consumer Reactance to Promotional Favors," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 96(4), pages 578-589.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:jouret:v:96:y:2020:i:4:p:578-589
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jretai.2020.03.002
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022435920300154
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jretai.2020.03.002?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Clee, Mona A & Wicklund, Robert A, 1980. "Consumer Behavior and Psychological Reactance," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 6(4), pages 389-405, March.
    2. Leonard Lee & Dan Ariely, 2006. "Shopping Goals, Goal Concreteness, and Conditional Promotions," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 33(1), pages 60-70, June.
    3. Qiang Lu & Sridhar Moorthy, 2007. "Coupons Versus Rebates," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 26(1), pages 67-82, 01-02.
    4. Yuxin Chen & Sridhar Moorthy & Z. John Zhang, 2005. "Research Note---Price Discrimination After the Purchase: Rebates as State-Dependent Discounts," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 51(7), pages 1131-1140, July.
    5. Fitzsimons, Gavan J, 2000. "Consumer Response to Stockouts," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 27(2), pages 249-266, September.
    6. Inman, J Jeffrey & Peter, Anil C & Raghubir, Priya, 1997. "Framing the Deal: The Role of Restrictions in Accentuating Deal Value," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 24(1), pages 68-79, June.
    7. Grewal, Dhruv & Ailawadi, Kusum L. & Gauri, Dinesh & Hall, Kevin & Kopalle, Praveen & Robertson, Jane R., 2011. "Innovations in Retail Pricing and Promotions," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 87(S1), pages 43-52.
    8. Ran Kivetz, 2005. "Promotion Reactance: The Role of Effort-Reward Congruity," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 31(4), pages 725-736, March.
    9. Ying Zhang & Jing Xu & Zixi Jiang & Szu-Chi Huang, 2011. "Been There, Done That: The Impact of Effort Investment on Goal Value and Consumer Motivation," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 38(1), pages 78-93.
    10. Ailawadi, Kusum L. & Gedenk, Karen & Langer, Tobias & Ma, Yu & Neslin, Scott A., 2014. "Consumer response to uncertain promotions: An empirical analysis of conditional rebates," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 94-106.
    11. Simon J. Blanchard & Kurt A. Carlson & Jamie D. Hyodo, 2016. "The Favor Request Effect: Requesting a Favor from Consumers to Seal the Deal," Journal of Consumer Research, Oxford University Press, vol. 42(6), pages 985-1001.
    12. Juliano Laran & Amy N. Dalton & Eduardo B. Andrade, 2011. "The Curious Case of Behavioral Backlash: Why Brands Produce Priming Effects and Slogans Produce Reverse Priming Effects," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 37(6), pages 999-1014.
    13. Laurin, Kristin & Kay, Aaron C. & Proudfoot, Devon & Fitzsimons, Gavan J., 2013. "Response to restrictive policies: Reconciling system justification and psychological reactance," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 122(2), pages 152-162.
    14. Gavan J. Fitzsimons & Donald R. Lehmann, 2004. "Reactance to Recommendations: When Unsolicited Advice Yields Contrary Responses," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 23(1), pages 82-94, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Cabano, Frank G. & Attari, Amin, 2023. "Don’t tell me how much to tip: The influence of gratuity guidelines on consumers’ favorability of the brand," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 159(C).
    2. S. Wiley Wakeman & George Tsalis & Birger Boutrup Jensen & Jessica Aschemann-Witzel, 2022. "Seeing the Issue Differently (Or Not At All): How Bounded Ethicality Complicates Coordination Towards Sustainability Goals," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 178(2), pages 325-338, June.
    3. Bhatt, Siddharth & Pai, Dinesh R. & DelVecchio, Devon, 2023. "The dark side of multiunit discounts: Multiunit discounts reduce rest of basket revenue," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    4. Tang, Jiansheng & Zhou, Jiamin & Zheng, Chundong & Jiao, Sijing, 2022. "More expectations, more disappointments: Ego depletion in uncertain promotion," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    5. Stefan F. Bernritter & Paul E. Ketelaar & Francesca Sotgiu, 2021. "Behaviorally targeted location-based mobile marketing," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 49(4), pages 677-702, July.
    6. Nigam, Achint & Dewani, Prem & Behl, Abhishek & Pereira, Vijay, 2022. "Consumer’s response to conditional promotions in retailing: An empirical inquiry," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 144(C), pages 751-763.
    7. Karl Akbari & Udo Wagner, 2021. "Playing When Paying and What Happens Next: Customer Satisfaction and Word-of-Mouth Intention in Gambled Price Promotions," Schmalenbach Journal of Business Research, Springer, vol. 73(2), pages 243-271, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. De Vries, Eline L.E. & Zhang, Sha, 2020. "The effectiveness of random discounts for migrating customers to the mobile channel," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 272-281.
    2. Trampe, Debra & Konuş, Umut & Verhoef, Peter C., 2014. "Customer Responses to Channel Migration Strategies Toward the E-channel," Journal of Interactive Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 257-270.
    3. Thorbjørnsen, Helge & Dahlén, Micael, 2011. "Customer reactions to acquirer-dominant mergers and acquisitions," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 28(4), pages 332-341.
    4. Tian, Jing & Chen, Rong & Xu, Xiaobing, 2022. "A good way to boost sales? Effects of the proportion of sold-out options on purchase behavior," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 156-169.
    5. Dailey, Lynn C. & Ülkü, M. Ali, 2018. "Retailers beware: On denied product returns and consumer behavior," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 202-209.
    6. Debora Dhanya Amarnath & Uma Pricilda Jaidev, 2021. "Toward an integrated model of consumer reactance: a literature analysis," Management Review Quarterly, Springer, vol. 71(1), pages 41-90, February.
    7. Janice Y. Jung & Barbara A. Mellers, 2016. "American attitudes toward nudges," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 11(1), pages 62-74, January.
    8. Sharma, Dheeraj & Verma, Varsha, 2014. "Psychological and economic considerations of rewards programs," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 21(6), pages 924-932.
    9. Nguyen Pham & Naomi Mandel & Andrea C. Morales, 2016. "Messages from the Food Police: How Food-Related Warnings Backfire among Dieters," Journal of the Association for Consumer Research, University of Chicago Press, vol. 1(1), pages 175-190.
    10. Uzma Khan & Alexander DePaoli, 2024. "Brand loyalty in the face of stockouts," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 52(1), pages 44-74, January.
    11. Cabano, Frank G. & Attari, Amin, 2023. "Don’t tell me how much to tip: The influence of gratuity guidelines on consumers’ favorability of the brand," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 159(C).
    12. Gong, Xiushuang & Zhang, Honghong & Fan, Yafeng, 2021. "To conform or deviate? The effect of resource scarcity on consumer preference for minority-endorsed options," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 437-446.
    13. repec:cup:judgdm:v:11:y:2016:i:1:p:62-74 is not listed on IDEAS
    14. Shapiro, Stephen L. & Drayer, Joris & Dwyer, Brendan, 2020. "An examination of consumer reactance to daily fantasy sport and sport gambling regulatory restrictions," Sport Management Review, Elsevier, vol. 23(5), pages 797-809.
    15. Wenxia Guo & Kelley Main, 2012. "The vulnerability of defensiveness: The impact of persuasion attempts and processing motivations on trust," Marketing Letters, Springer, vol. 23(4), pages 959-971, December.
    16. Bleier, Alexander & Eisenbeiss, Maik, 2015. "The Importance of Trust for Personalized Online Advertising," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 91(3), pages 390-409.
    17. Kristen E. Duke & On Amir, 2023. "The Importance of Selling Formats: When Integrating Purchase and Quantity Decisions Increases Sales," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 42(1), pages 87-109, January.
    18. Chaudhuri, Malika & Calantone, Roger J. & Voorhees, Clay M. & Cockrell, Seth, 2018. "Disentangling the effects of promotion mix on new product sales: An examination of disaggregated drivers and the moderating effect of product class," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 90(C), pages 286-294.
    19. Ringler, Christine & Sirianni, Nancy J. & Gustafsson, Anders & Peck, Joann, 2019. "Look but Don’t Touch! The Impact of Active Interpersonal Haptic Blocking on Compensatory Touch and Purchase Behavior," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 95(4), pages 186-203.
    20. Jia Li & Rachel McCrary, 2022. "Consumer communications and current events: a cross-cultural study of the change in consumer response to company social media posts due to the COVID-19 pandemic," Journal of Marketing Analytics, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 10(2), pages 173-183, June.
    21. Tasoff, Joshua & Letzler, Robert, 2014. "Everyone believes in redemption: Nudges and overoptimism in costly task completion," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 107(PA), pages 107-122.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:jouret:v:96:y:2020:i:4:p:578-589. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-retailing .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.