Consumer Skepticism and Promotion Effectiveness
Résumé
Over time, consumers have developed a strong knowledge and mistrust toward stimuli from various commercial sources: Advertising, salespersons, and more recently promotional pricing techniques supposed to reduce their everyday spending. Three experiments demonstrate that consumer skepticism toward sales promotions has a detrimental effect on promotion effectiveness through two mechanisms: The discounting of savings (“too good to be true”) and the reduced purchase intention of promotional offers.