Published Online:August 2024
Product Name:The IUP Journal of Marketing Management
Product Type:Article
Product Code:
Author Name:Tseng Chung-Hui, Lou Yung-Chien and Tseng Yi-Ping
Availability:YES
Subject/Domain:Marketing
Download Format:PDF
Pages:19
Most previous studies have shown that free gifts positively increase promoted product sales. However, will any characteristic of the gift hurt the promoted product, and how does it happen? This study has two purposes. First, the study sheds light on the brand preference of the promoted product being hurt in a gift promotion setting and examines the causes—gift quality and perceived brand fit. Second, a mental mechanism of the negative effect of a gift quality on the promoted brand preference was explored by applying perspectives of Expectancy-Disconfirmation Theory (EDT) and the Halo effect. Two experimental studies were developed. Study 1 confirmed that the lower gift quality, but not brand unfit, hurt the brand preference of the promoted product. Study 2 further examined its mental process and found two mediators between gift quality and promoted brand preference (i.e., expectancy disconfirmation of gift quality and preference toward the gift promotion mix). It supports the EDT and the Halo effect being applied to explain the mental mechanism.
Giving free gifts is a popular tool to increase promoted product sales. Past studies have investigated product- or consumer-related factors to facilitate a successful gift promotion strategy. Product-related factors include functional relatedness of the gift (Foubert et al., 2018), transaction value (Kovacheva et al., 2021), transaction utility (Shen and Xiang, 2019), and product-gift fit (Park and Yi, 2019). Consumer-related factors include perceived ownership and loss (Lee and Yi, 2017), promotion-proneness (Crespo-Almendros and Del Barrio-García, 2016), and the need for cognition (Jones, 2015). Most previous studies have shown that free gifts “positively” increase promoted product sales.