Do What Others Get Have an Affect on the Way Consumers Buy? How This Affects a Company’s Approach to Targeted Promotion.

Series of experimental testing by marketing experts suggests that consumer’s preferences for a firm were affected strongly by an overall set of prices they offered not only to them, but, other groups of potential purchasers as well. This was found to be largely caused by a betrayal effect that strikes the consumer when a firm offers promotions to switchers as opposed to their loyalty to the company. They found that consumers also prefer their favored firm less if another firm offers promotion or price decreases to their loyal customers causing what is called a jealousy effect. These findings strongly suggest that consumers focus on not only th

Some companies may be able to stay with offering switchers better deals because of the industry that they are in: where information flow is slow or where the free exchange of information has barriers for example, stricter internet based privacy laws. Some companies are able to use an explanation of motives other than profit gain as a reason for their price differential. Other companies just hide the fact that price offers differ.

Through the emphasis of research in this area of marketing there are more than only two segments of consumers “switchers and loyals”. Businesses must compete with one another for multiple customer segments and competitors each with their own quirks. Promotions themselves come in many forms as well, making it a complex task to market to consumers. But, it seems that these two are the main characters and both seem to care what deals the other is getting. Businesses are addressing this with many approaches by either giving promotions to more than one segment but varying t

Some topics in this essay:
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