@article{2019:aigner:using_cons,
title = {Using Consumer Empowerment to Increase the Effectiveness of Price Discounts},
year = {2019},
note = {Granting discounts is a prominent monetary pricing tactic employed to
boost sales. Extant research, however, provides contradictory results
on the effectiveness of varied degrees of discounts.
Better-performing, non-monetary promotion became the focal point. We
suggest a new format for reinforcing discount promotion which builds
on the idea of empowering consumers, who get involved in creating a
price discount. In two studies (N = 708), we show that these
“empowered price discounts” (EPDs) are more effective than their
(traditional) counterparts where the retailer selects the products to
be promoted. Improved consumers’ perceptions of promotional benefits
(in particular, the hedonic benefit “entertainment”) explain this
effect (which is disproportionately high for hedonic products), while
the discount level translates into higher promotional effectiveness
through increased utilitarian benefits (“monetary savings,”
“quality”). Conversely, EPDs reach a given degree of promotional
effectiveness with lower discount levels (and hence higher margins for
the retailer), compared to non-empowered discounts.},
journal = {Marketing ZFP},
pages = {48--66},
author = {Aigner, Andreas and Wilken, Robert and Geisendorf, Sylvie},
volume = {41},
number = {2}
}