INFLUENCE OF DISCOUNTS ON CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

Abstract

Sales promotion techniques are instruments that seek to increase sales of products and brands, usually in a short time (Wierenga & Soethoudt, 2010), because they act in the consumer’s mind as a benefit to him, creating thus consumer behaviour (Yusuf, 2010).Understanding the variables that affect consumer behaviour and the decision-making process is not just the work of big corporations (AILAWADI, BEAUCHAMP, DONTHU, GAURI, and SHANKAR, 2009), but also of professionals seeking to find the key areas of marketing studies. Among the variables that affect the consumer’s purchase decision is the price, which has a significant influence on communication factors concerning the advantages of purchasing a product or hiring a service. Price can be accompanied by a “discount,” which increases the perceived value of the product for the purchaser. The value is based on the consumer’s perception of the benefits of the product vis-à-vis the price. Many factors influence the consumer’s perception of value, such as the following: the initial price, the consumer’s attitude to the product, the expertise of the consumer, and previous experience of the product.A price discount is a very prevalent marketing strategy to attract consumers by providing an extra value or incentive, which encourages consumers to purchase the promoted products immediately (Yin and Huang 2014). In marketing research, theoretical models have been developed to investigate the relationship between price and customers’ perceptions of products, and two well-known models in the pricing literature are the price–quality–value model (Monroe and Krishnan 1985) and the means-end model (Zeithaml 1988). According to these models, price increases both perceived quality and perceived sacrifice (the sacrifice of paying more), and the trade-off between perceived quality and perceived sacrifice affects perceived value.