Analysis of Sales Promotion Effects on Household Purchase Behavior

Table 7.3: Relationship promotion response and social class, looking for possible
interaction effects with promotion type
SOCIAL CLASS
H2a:Tthe positive relationship between social class and promotion response is stronger for
in-store promotions than for out-<strong>of</strong>-store promotions.
In-store promotions Out-<strong>of</strong>-store promotions
B S.E. Sig Exp(B) B S.E. Sig Exp(B)
D (low) -0.7367 0.1252 0.0000 0.4787 -0.3728 0.2287 0.1030 0.6888
C (middle) 0.3117 0.0763 0.0000 1.3657 0.1140 0.1395 0.4139 1.1207
B-,B+,A
(high)
0.4250 0.0711 0.0000 1.5296 0.2589 0.1327 0.0512 1.2955
Test results: The positive relationship between social class and promotion response is
stronger for in-store promotions than for out-<strong>of</strong>-store promotions.
These results provide empirical support for the more flexible budget argument. Households
with higher social standing use in-store promotions a lot, they have more freedom to enact
on impulses. In addition to this analysis where the categorical variables are incorporated in
the logistic regression model in deviation from their average, extra analyses are carried out
in which the categorical variables are incorporated relative to one category <strong>of</strong> each variable
(results are not reported). Based on the results from these last analyses, we can conclude
that households from higher classes do use in-store promotion more than low- class
households (p-value 0.00), whereas this difference is not significant for out-<strong>of</strong>-store
promotions (p-value 0.07). Households <strong>of</strong> higher standing do not use out-<strong>of</strong>-store
promotions significantly more or less than households from lower standing. The positive
relationship between promotion response and social class is therefore especially the result
<strong>of</strong> in-store promotions. Generally speaking, lack <strong>of</strong> income does not seem to be a
promotion response driver, but a more than sufficient income does seem to <strong>of</strong>fer the
freedom to act on impulse. Our findings are thus in accordance with Inman and Winer
(1998) who concluded that higher income households have a higher probability to act on
impulse and in-store promotions could guide these impulse decisions.
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