EFFECTS OF EXAGGERATED PRICE REDUCTIONS, TENSILE PRICE CLAIMS AND CONDITIONAL CLAUSES IN SALE ADVERTISEMENTS

Abstract

This study investigates the effects of plausible versus exaggerated price reduction, objective versus tensile claims, and the presence/absence of conditional clauses on the individual's responses towards a SALE advertisement. Despite the prevalence of tensile claims and conditional clauses in SALE advertisements, little has been documented on them. Hence, this study will contribute additional insights to the decision problems faced by the marketing practitioner in his price promotions. Experiments were conducted on 230 second year Computer Science students using SALE advertisements for the products of sports shoes and computers. The measurement scales were confirmed by factor and reliability analyses. Analysis of variance was used to analyse the data collected. A complementary general survey on consumers' sentiment towards SALE promotions was conducted to render more scope and support to the experimental study. The 200 completed survey questionnaires were analysed via the computation of the mean scores for the variables studied. T-tests were used to determine if significant differences existed between males and females responses. Results from the experiments revealed that consumers were attracted to exaggerated price claims despite their low credibilities, and that objective claims were preferred over tensile claims. Conditional clauses were found to affect the informational value of price claims made in the advertisements. Survey results reflected that consumers generally held negative perceptions of SALE promotions. Non-price factors such as brand and assortment of SALE merchandise and the retailer's reputation played important roles in consumers' decisions to respond to a SALE advertisement. Significant differences were found in some of the perception variables between the male and female responses.