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This paper aims to examine the impact of hotel discount strategies on consumers’ emotional and behavioral responses in the presence of differential levels of involvement in discount acquisition.

Discount strategies and the high- and low-involvement variables were fully cross-examined, yielding a 2 × 2 factorial quasi experimental design. In all, 120 surveys were collected, and multivariate analysis of variance was used for data analysis.

The results suggest that fenced discounts that require consumers to accept restrictions to receive a discount generated more positive emotion and stronger behavioral intention. Moreover, an interaction effect was found between consumer’s involvement and discounts on emotional and behavioral responses toward discount-acquiring experience. Highly involved consumers resulted in more positive emotional and stronger behavioral responses (e.g. pride, gratitude, word-of-mouth and retention) from obtaining a fenced discount that requires consumers’ efforts or sacrifices. On contrary, consumers with low involvement tend to appreciate more of a fixed discount given to anyone without restrictions.

Hotels should implement a fenced discount when they design discounts targeting at high-involvement consumers. For low-involvement consumers, a fixed discount appears to generate more positive emotion and stronger behavioral intention.

The study enhances the theoretical understanding of consumers’ emotional and behavioral responses toward discount-acquiring experience with different levels of involvement.

Multi-unit discounts (MUDs, e.g. “3 for $4”) typically increase sales relative to other discounting frames. This study demonstrates the value of MUDs by showing that positive multi-unit price/quantity signals are potent enough to match and even exceed the sales produced by larger discounts on single items. However, there is reason to believe that MUDs can produce neutral effects in some cases (e.g. among consumers interested in only single-unit purchases) and even negative effects in others. In addition, the study considers whether MUDs can, in some cases, reduce purchase quantities by signaling smaller-than-otherwise-planned purchase amounts and/or lower-quality products.

The effectiveness of MUDs is tested in both the field and lab. Study 1 models purchase quantities stemming from 2,374 purchases of discounted items at a mass retailer. Purchased products ranged in type from pantry items to apparel and electronics, and ranged in price from 44¢ to $99.99. There were 1,530 single-unit discounts, 596 two-unit discounts and 248 discounts, involving three or more units. Study 2 consists of a laboratory experiment that overcomes the shortcomings of Study 1 by accounting for non-purchasers, controlling for product classes and testing whether smaller MUDs can lead to lower purchase quantities for larger-purchase-quantity products.

The results of both the field study and the laboratory experiment indicate that MUDs’ monetary cue (savings) and purchase-quantity cue (volume) increase purchase quantities. Generally, purchase quantities increased monotonically with the number of units offered in the discount. In fact, the quantity cue is so effective that it can increase sales enough as to substitute for larger discounts. However, in some instances, MUDs can decrease intended purchase quantities. The negative effect of MUDs is the most pronounced for larger unit deals, offering deeper discounts on perishable goods.

This research is the first to demonstrate that the power of the signals provided by MUDs may be so positive as to lead them to be more effective than discounts of substantially larger value but also so negative as to render them less effective than single-units discounts. This negative outcome poses a threat beyond those typically associated with discounts, in that rather than consumers simply discounting a discount, in which case the discount remains positive even if their impact at the margin wanes, the MUD frame may actually reduce sales.

The standard approach in measuring demand responses and consumer preferences assumes particular parametric models for the consumer preferences and demand functions, and subsequently fits these models to observed data. In principle, the estimated demand models can then be used (i) to test consistency of the data with the theory of consumer behavior, (ii) to infer consumer preferences, and (iii) to predict the consumer's response to, say, new prices following a policy reform. This chapter focuses on an alternative, nonparametric approach. More specifically, we review methods that tackle the earlier issues by merely starting from a minimal set of so-called revealed preference axioms. In contrast to the standard approach, this revealed preference approach avoids the use of parametric models for preferences or demand. The structure of the chapter is as follows. First, we introduce the basic concepts of the revealed preference approach to model consumer demand. Next, we consider issues like goodness-of-fit, power, and measurement error, which are important in the context of empirical applications. Finally, we review a number of interesting extensions of the revealed preference approach, which deal with characteristics models, habit-formation, and the collective model.

The purpose of this study is to assess the presence of deceptive advertising practices in wine retailers’ e-mails and, if identified, to analyze the extent and content of these deceptive advertisements.

The study follows an observational research design to examine the accuracy of two claims that were made in 258 marketing e-mails from two major wine retailers in New Jersey, USA: (1) that all wines have 90+ scores; and (2) that these wines are offered at a deeply discounted price.

The study found that only 3.9% of cases accurately supported both major claims made: the wines having 90+ scores and being offered at a discounted price. Both claims were inaccurate in 64.7% of cases. Nearly half (49.3%) of the advertised wines had concealed critic’s scores below 90 points. Recipients were told they could save 37.2% by purchasing from the advertising retailer, but they could have actually saved 12.7% more by buying the wines elsewhere.

The study’s limitations include the small sample size. Variations between different wine retailers and their advertising practices require further investigation.

Advertised discounts and scores may be inaccurate or incomplete, causing consumer confusion and disappointment, erosion of wine advertisements’ as well as wine retailers’ and wine experts’ credibility.

Deceptive advertising can erode consumer trust and lead to unfair practices. Consumers may make purchasing decisions based on misleading information. Deceptive practices create an uneven playing field, giving businesses that engage in them an unfair advantage, hindering market transparency and ethical businesses. Policymakers should develop regulations to protect consumers and ensure fair competition.

An investigation of deceptive advertising practices in the wine industry has not been done before. This exploratory study contributes to consumer awareness and highlights the importance of truthful and transparent marketing practices.

The purpose of this study is to compare the impact of multi‐period pricing, as an example of more dynamic pricing and discounting strategy with that of a present less dynamic alternative on customer satisfaction and consumers' willingness to make trade‐offs between price and remaining shelf‐life.

The authors conducted interviews with three food retail managers in South Korea to gather practical information about the management of perishable foods, which informed the design of a survey in which consumers in South Korea were questioned about their perceptions of the two strategies, with respect to nine perishable food products in three categories. The data collected were analysed by one‐way ANOVA and the t‐test.

The findings of this research present an improved understanding of the impact of a multi‐period pricing strategy on consumer satisfaction and customer behaviour for perishable foods. The conclusions have the potential to significantly assist food retailers to understand the consumers' perspective on the benefits of a more dynamic pricing strategy.

The findings suggest that food retailers can enhance customer satisfaction by offering an earlier but lower discount, and increasing it as perishable food items approach their expiry date, rather than a higher discount when the expiry date is imminent.

The findings in this study are significant since they serve as the first step in measuring the value of dynamic pricing approaches that provide better trade‐off options between price and remaining shelf‐life from consumers' perspectives.

The purpose of this paper is to report the results of two experiments designed to examine the effect on consumers of the way in which price discount messages are expressed, or “framed”.

Both studies involved stated‐preference choice modelling experiments. The aim of the first experiment was to test the hypothesis that a price reduction framed in dollar terms is more effective for high‐priced items, whereas a price reduction framed as a percent discount is more effective for lower‐priced items. The aim of the second experiment was to determine which of four alternative ways of expressing the same 33 per cent price discount – cents off, percent discount, or one of two volume discounts – is most effective.

For two “low‐priced” items, potato chips and cola drinks, the framing of a price discount had little or no effect. However, for two ”high‐priced” items, stereos and computers, framing a discount in dollar terms was significantly more effective than expressing it as a percent off discount. For three fast moving consumer goods the most effective framing of the same price discount depended on whether the product concerned was amenable to stockpiling. For tinned spaghetti, which is relatively cheap and easy to store, volume discounting was more attractive than a monetary discount, whereas for bottled water and semi‐soft butter, which are more expensive and bulkier, the opposite was true.

For high‐priced products, it is better to express price discounts as dollars or cents off than as a percentage off; the opposite may be true for low‐priced products, but this is much less certain. However, if using a volume promotion, “buy x get one free” is likely to be more effective than “y for the price of x”.

A study is reported, which investigated Singapore consumers’ price thresholds and saturation points for price discounts. The study shows that consumers discount the offered price discount, i.e. they lower the dollar gain value. This discounting of discounts increases significantly with the increase in advertised discounts. Very similar patterns of responses are obtained for products and services. The study also indicates that the saturation point for price discounts of 20 to 30 percent is found to be the same in Singapore and the USA. However, a price threshold of less than 10 percent is found for Singapore consumers, compared to 15 percent in the USA. Frequent price promotions in Singapore may have lowered the products’ expected price and appear to lead consumers to defer purchases when regular prices are offered.

This paper analyzes: the psychological effects that the introduction of the Euro in Italy has on consumers; and their perception of Euro odd prices, that is those prices that fall just below a round number. The aim is to provide some answers to an important question for retailers: How profitable is using odd prices expressed in Euros instead of in the old currency? Results show that consumers, sometimes, prefer round prices rather than odd‐ending ones, although the latter elicits a discounted‐price image more than the corresponding round one. Moreover, consumers tend to underestimate odd prices during perception and to convert them into Lire through an approximation heuristic strategy. In certain choice sets, odd prices are likely to affect the consumers’ heuristics.

Most airlines utilize a revenue maximizing technique called yield management (YM), which allows the airlines to allocate their fixed capacity of seats to various fare categories in the most profitable manner possible. The discriminatory pricing goal is to sell only non‐discounted seats to the business travel segment. Suggests that yield management techniques may also be appropriate in certain retail settings where capacity (i.e. product inventory) is not necessarily “perishable” in the same sense as unsold seats on an airline flight however, its value may decline with the culmination of a well‐defined shopping period (e.g. the “Christmas holiday” shopping period). Examines how knowledge of customer price sensitivity as it pertains to this shopping period, coupled with the appropriate use of discount pricing, can maximize the revenue gained from sales of a seasonal product associated with a specific holiday.

While most marketing research on organic products refers to the premium price levels of organic products, little research exists on consumers’ behavioural responses to price promotions or discounts of organic products. The present study aims to fill this research gap.

To develop alternative hypotheses about consumers’ behavioural responses to price promotions of organic fast-moving consumer good (FMCG) products, the authors used the researcher-introspection method in a pre-study. To test the hypotheses developed based on the pre-study, the authors conducted a field experiment on online advertising of an FMCG sold in drugstores. In the field experiment, the authors exposed consumers to an online ad featuring either a price promotion (−20%) or the regular price of the product. The ads also varied in terms of whether they contained explicit organic claims or not, and whether they included implicit organic cues or not.

The price promotion increased the clickthrough rate of the ad both when combined with an explicit organic claim and when combined with the implicit cue of green product pack. The results suggest that consumers do not have significant suspicions about price promotions of organic products, but rather presume that the price promotion of an organic FMCG product is a periodical promotional action, similar to the price promotions for conventional, non-organic products. Also, consumers seem to assume that the regular prices of organic FMCG products are so high that the retailer/manufacturer can well afford periodic price discounts.

The present research shifts the focus of organic marketing research from the premium price levels to the effectiveness of price promotions and discounts. Further, the present results contrast with certain earlier studies that have questioned the effectiveness of price promotions for organic products.

The results have different implications for marketing managers of brands not yet providing organic product versions in the market, of brands producing non-organic products, which cannot easily be rendered organic, and of brands offering organic products in the market.

This is, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, the first empirical study and field experiment on price promotions of organic products, including explicit organic claims.