Entertainment Coupons are a popular method of restaurant advertising. These books contain coupons for hundreds of local restaurants and are often sold to consumers as part of a fundraising campaign for a charity. Consumers are likely to use the book in one of two ways: to save money while maintaining their previous frequency of dining out, or to use the savings to increase the number of times that they can dine out with their fixed disposable incomes. Most coupon books are purchased by consumers. Consumers that have purchased a coupon book should be inclined to use coupons from it more frequently than consumers that have received a coupon book for free. Purchased coupon books involve a sunk cost that the consumers may try to recover through the savings the coupons provide. The impact of sunk costs may be reduced for coupon books with charitable ties; however, unless consumers consider the entire purchase price to be a charitable donation, there will still be costs involved in acquiring the coupons. An experiment was designed to test the effects of purchased vs. free coupon books and coupon books with and without charitable ties. Consumers using coupons from the purchased books were more likely to switch restaurants than were consumers that used a coupon from a free coupon book. The experiment showed few other loyalty effects; however this lack of effect may have been caused by the simulated method of implementing loyalty.

Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Alfred P. Sloan School of Management, 1981. / Bibliography: leaves 62-63. / by Judith Ann Hee. / Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Alfred P. Sloan School of Management, 1981.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of North Texas, Aug., 2007. / Title from title page display. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.S.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1994. / Vita. Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 144-152). Also available via the Internet.

Coupons are one of the most popular and attractive tools of promotion. Redeeming coupons makes shoppers feel that they are doing something good for their family's budget, because coupons offer 'savings.' On the other hand, a coupon might have several negative effects on purchase behavior as well, which might 'devalue' the promoted product in the consumer's perception. But a review of the literature shows a lack of attention afforded to the above-mentioned aspects of coupon redemption. In addition, the consumer's coupon redemption behavior is moderated by several factors drawn from research in the fields of market pricing, economics and psychology, each of which have contributed to the current study in their own way. Finally, there does not exist any substantive research as to why coupon redemption rates have been on the decline, despite an increase in distribution of coupons. Therefore, this research not only fills existing gaps in the literature but also enriches it by synthesizing views from different academic disciplines. This dissertation concentrates on grocery products. Data is collected from about 2500 adults, primarily residing in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The conceptual framework is based on the theory of reasoned action, which suggests that an individual's beliefs influence his/her attitude towards the consequences of actions, and attitudes, in turn, influence the individual's actions. Toward this end, the model incorporates intention to redeem coupons, intention to keep or spend savings and intention of how to spend savings from coupon redemption as the dependent variables, and several other independent variables. Behavioral independent variables are measured using items borrowed from established scales, as well as those developed exclusively for the current study. Standard statistical tools such as factor analysis and accepted measures of reliability and validity (Cronbach's alpha) are applied and reported, while structural equation modeling has been used to re-validate certain findings. Multivariate regression is applied for testing the hypotheses. Results indicate that several psychological (e.g. arousal-seeking, novelty-seeking tendency), socio-economic (e.g. income effect, opportunity cost) and behavioral factors (e.g. savings propensity, switching behavior) influence the individual's intention to redeem a coupon. The current research offers several academic and managerial implications, while providing promising prospects for further studies.

In 2010, an innovative consumer consumption model emerged and companies like Zipcar and Groupon were important examples that demonstrated how rapidly new collaborative ventures were able to attract venture capital funding and attract members. The term “collaborative consumption” became part of the Internet lexicon and demonstrated that such sites and services were more than a way of promoting and selling products; rather, it is a marketing reflection of the ways in which it is now possible to interact and to share ideas and creative initiative in this digitally connected, globalized world. This report will examine the background of collaborative consumption and provide a pilot study examining its use across two cultures (USA and China), the life style and attitudinal variables that characterize those who use it. The discussion will also include the impact of this collaborative behavior on the role of advertising agencies as well as informed guesses about future growth of this retail and networked phenomenon. / text

Currently, coupons are the most popular and relied-upon form of consumer sales promotion in the United States (Schultz et al., 1993). The primary purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between discount coupons and repeat purchase in pizza restaurants. The objective of the study was to determine whether the relationship between pizza coupon usage and repeat purchase behavior exists. The variables, such as demographics and psychographics, were used to examine and describe those who make repeat purchases. Also, this study examined which type of coupon distribution resulted in the most frequent redemption. A survey instrument was utilized to gather information. Consumers in Blacksburg, Virginia were the sample for this study due to the ease of following up the questionnaire and obtaining addresses of consumers. The questionnaire was mailed to them asking about their frequency of coupon usage, and whether coupons increase the frequency of restaurant visits. This study will be beneficial to pizza restaurant marketers because the results from this study demonstrated that: 1) a relationship between coupon usage and frequency of repeat purchases of pizza exists; 2) a relationship between pizza coupon usage and the usage of coupons when trying a new restaurant exists; 3) a relationship between pizza coupon usage and age is statistically significant even though the analysis does not indicate which age groups are significantly different; 4) a relationship between income and frequency of pizza coupon usage is not statistically significant. The results show that respondents preferred to redeem coupons when coupons were given in the form of a dollar off and pizza coupons were most often redeemed when they were distributed through direct mail. About 78 percent of the respondents did not receive coupons through door-hanging. The results are useful for pizza restaurant managers for market segmentation and designing coupon promotions. / Master of Science

This dissertation investigated the effects of price and various forms of discounts on buyers' subjective evaluations of products. The role that price plays in product evaluations was examined from both the economic and behavioral perspectives, and a conceptualization derived from these two perspectives was reviewed. This original price-perceived quality conceptualization was extended using transaction utility theory. Based on the extended price-perceived quality model, hypotheses were developed to posit the relationships that the extrinsic cues of price and forms of discounts have with the constructs of perceived quality, perceived sacrifice, perceived value, willingness to buy, acquisition value, transaction value, and redemption effort. Also, the relationship among these constructs as posited by the extended conceptualization was examined. The research was conducted in three phases. The first phase determined the product and price levels to be used in the final stage of the research; the second phase checked the reliability of the indicators to be used in the final stage of the research; and, in the final phase, a 4 x 4 between subjects design was used to test the research hypotheses. PACKAGE was used to test the reliability of the indicators for each construct in both the pretest and fmla data collection stages. The analysis for the experiment incorporated ANOVA, Duncan's multiple comparisons, trend analysis, and LISREL to test the significance of the proposed relationships. In general, the analysis provided good support for the hypothesized effects. The principal exceptions being the posited relationships of perceived quality and perceived value with the independent variable forms of discounts. Also, the relationships of several of the dependent variables with transaction value were weak leading to speculation of the role that transaction value has in buyers' subjective product evaluations. Finally, the major findings of the research were discussed with respect to the theoretical, methodological, and managerial significance. Limitations and directions for future research were also discussed. / Ph. D.

In direct marketing, understanding the response behavior of consumers to marketing initiatives is a pre-requisite for marketers before implementing targeting strategies to reach potential as well as existing consumers in the future. Consumer response can either be in terms of the incidence or timing of purchases, category/ brand choice of purchases made as well as the volume or purchase amounts in each category. Direct marketers seek to explore how past consumer response behavior as well as their targeting actions affects current response patterns. However, considerable heterogeneity is also prevalent in consumer responses and the possible sources of this heterogeneity need to be investigated. With the knowledge of consumer response and the corresponding heterogeneity, direct marketers can devise targeting strategies to attract potential new consumers as well as retain existing consumers. In the first essay of my dissertation (Chapter 2), I model the response behavior of donors in non-profit charity fund-raising in terms of their timing and volume of donations. I show that past donations (both the incidence and volume) and solicitation for alternative causes by non-profits matter in donor responses and the heterogeneity in donation behavior can be explained in terms of individual and community level donor characteristics. I also provide a heuristic approach to target new donors by using a classification scheme for donors in terms of the frequency and amount of donations and then characterize each donor portfolio with corresponding donor characteristics. In the second essay (Chapter 3), I propose a more structural approach in the targeting of customers by direct marketers in the context of customized retail couponing. First I model customer purchase in a retail setting where brand choice decisions in a product category depend on pricing, in-store promotions, coupon targeting as well as the face values of those coupons. Then using a utility function specification for the retailer which implements a trade-off between net revenue (revenue – coupon face value) and information gain, I propose a Bayesian decision theoretic approach to determine optimal customized coupon face values. The optimization algorithm is sequential where past as well as future customer responses affect targeted coupon face values and the direct marketer tries to determine the trade-off through natural experimentation. / text