Impact of sales promotions on consumer purchasing patterns for non-durable goods

Abstract

This thesis investigates the impact of sales promotions on consumer purchasing patterns in Turkish non-durable goods sector and aims to distinguish between purchasers of promoted consumer non-durables from non-purchasers, along certain psychographic and demographic parameters. The primary objective of this research is to identify the factors underlying the impact of sales promotions on consumer purchasing patterns for non-durable goods and to investigate how consumers differ in their responses to different promotion types under a diverse set of promotional conditions. The study also attempts to present a framework for identifying the deal-prone consumer segments and to reveal how dalprones differ from non-deal-prones in terms of certain psychographic and demographic variables. A self-administered, undisguised and structured questionnaire is utilized to measure consumers' responses to sales promotions. The research questionnaire consists of a number of Likert type questions, some multichotomous fixed alternative questions, and a few open-ended questions. The questionnaire is applied to a sample of 270, which is drawn from the population of consumers of non-durable goods; 197 questionnaires have been found eligible for inclusion in the statistical analyses. The data collected are analyzed with the Statistical Package for Social Sciences using frequencies, cross-tabulations, t-tests for independent and paired samples, one-way analyses of variance, discriminant and factor analyses. The results of the study show that, purchasing a promoted product is associated with deal-proneness. Purchasers of promoted products are more deal-prone, more responsive to the advertisements of promoted products and more likely make unplanned promotional purchases when compared to non-purchasers. Another significant finding is that, there is an inverse relationship between deal-proneness and brand-loyalty, that is, deal-prone consumers are found less likely to be brand-loyal. Interestingly, liberal consumers are found to be more deal-prone, to make impulsive purchases and to substitute brands. On the other hand, female consumers are found more likely to buy promoted products. Moreover, deal-proneness is found to decrease with increased age and education and to increase with increased levels of income. Finally, price discounts, bonuses (gifts, free extra products), and free samples are found to be the most preferred types of consumer-oriented sales promotions. The study ends with implications for managers and for researchers.