“Right” on the day: How the timing of date‐specific promotions influences consumer responses

Abstract

While it is common for companies to send greetings that include special promotions to their customers on special days (e.g., birthdays, holidays, etc.), consumers express mixed responses to such date-specific promotions. Building upon the persuasion knowledge model, the present work examines the conditions under which sending date-specific promotions lead to favorable consumer responses. In four studies, we demonstrate that consumers respond to date-specific promotions more positively when they are sent in advance than when they are sent on specific days, especially for companies perceived as less warm (vs. warm). Sending promotions on the exact day elicits an ulterior motive inference from consumers regarding the company, which can be alleviated by sending promotions in advance. We further find that this effect is weakened when the message includes only greetings without highlighting specific promotional information. These findings have important implications for marketers regarding how firms should design date-specific promotions and communicate with their customers.

Ask for Reviews at the Right Time: Evidence from Two Field Experiments

“…Our study is among the first to reveal the temporal impact of review reminders on the likelihood and quality of review postings. Extending prior research on the role of timing in marketing interventions (Deng, Jin, and Xu 2022; Li et al 2021; Sahni, Narayanan, and Kalyanam 2019), we differentiate immediate review reminders from delayed ones and provide a theoretical lens to understand the contrasting effects across these interval classifications. Furthermore, most studies have focused on various marketing activities and timings in prepurchase contexts.…”

“…A stream of research examines the role of timing in marketing interventions, such as mobile coupon promotions (Danaher et al 2015;Deng, Jin, and Xu 2022;Luo et al 2014;Tong, Luo, and Xu 2020) and retargeting advertisements (ads, hereinafter) (Bleier and Eisenbeiss 2015b;Li et al 2021;Sahni, Narayanan, and Kalyanam 2019).…”

Walls have ears: Word‐of‐mouth diffusions in targeted promotions decrease targeted customer retention

“…When market transparency was low, companies used to conduct promotions implicitly, assuming that information asymmetry would be in their favor and that customers would not notice other customers' discount offers (Colliander et al, 2016). Previous research on targeted promotions has primarily focused on their positive effects on targeted customers (Grewal et al, 1998; Homburg et al, 2008; Lacey et al, 2007; Zhang & Mick, 2019) (Column “a” in Figure 1), as well as strategies to improve their effectiveness (Deng et al, 2022; Fruchter & Zhang, 2004; Lee & Yi, 2019).…”

The contribution of self‐disclosure to promotional response: Examining the roles of deservingness and social class

“…This study contributes to the literature in at least four ways. First, our work contributes to the marketing promotions literature (Deng et al, 2022;Dickinger & Kleijnen, 2008;Gonzalez, 2016;Hock et al, 2020;Kim & Krishnan, 2019;Li et al, 2022), especially the literature on promotional games as we mainly focus on consumer response to promotional games involving pure luck, by identifying a consumer-related factor--self-disclosure as one new antecedent to consumer promotional response. While previous research have proposed two streams of factors, promotions-related and consumer-related features, it does not offer insights into the impact of a consumer-related behavioral factor--self-disclosure on promotions effectiveness.…”

“…Researchers have identified several influencing factors, which can be broadly categorized into two main streams. The first stream focused on consumer‐related features, such as coupon proneness (Dickinger & Kleijnen, 2008; Gonzalez, 2016; Liu et al, 2015), consumer‐retailer relationships (Kim & Krishnan, 2019), past purchase behavior, past coupon redemption behavior and browsing behavior (Li et al, 2022), et al The second stream was zero in on promotions‐related features, such as the promotion type (Ding & Zhang, 2020; Hock et al, 2020), the coupon discount structure or frame (Hanson et al, 2021; Yuan et al, 2022), the timing of promotion (Deng et al, 2022), location and time of the delivery of the m‐coupon, and its expiration date (Danaher et al, 2015), promotional favor requests (Bertini & Aydinli, 2020; Blanchard et al, 2016), purchase volume (Cai et al, 2016), redemption efforts (Dickinger & Kleijnen, 2008; Gonzalez, 2016). While extant research has provided these important insights, firms continue to demand that marketers increase the effectiveness of promotions (Mead et al, 2020).…”