Analysis of Sales Promotion Effects on Household Purchase Behavior

Table 6.4: Frequency distribution <strong>of</strong> social class (see Table A3.1 for the
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exact operationalization <strong>of</strong> social class)
Social class Frequency Relative frequency
High 23 12 %
Above average 58 29 %
Average 38 19 %
Below average 70 35 %
Low 11 6 %
Both the high and low social classes are a part <strong>of</strong> the household analysis data set, which is
important when we want to derive whether social class is an important driver <strong>of</strong> sales
promotion response (as will be discussed in detail in the next chapter).
Besides household demographics and socio-economic factors, purchase process
characteristics also can play an important role in household sales promotion response. For
example number <strong>of</strong> shopping trips and amount spent on groceries could be related with
promotion response. On average, households visit a grocery store 39 times a year, ranging
between 12 to 98 times (with a standard deviation <strong>of</strong> 18). The total amount <strong>of</strong> money per
household spent on groceries equals, on average, about 16,000 guilders per year.
These general descriptive statistics serve as the starting-point <strong>of</strong> the empirical part
<strong>of</strong> this research, which is focused on studying the effects <strong>of</strong> sales promotions on household
purchase behavior. Table 6.5 contains some aggregate information on promotion response.
The percentage <strong>of</strong> sales purchased on promotion for the six product categories included in this
study for two years (2000 and 2001) can be found in the table. The numbers represent the
aggregated percentages based on the entire retail panel.