Research On The Effect Of Price Promotion On Customers'quality Perception And Purchase Behavior

Price promotion is the most popular promoting methods used by many companies in order to boost sales,but it is used too often everywhere. Many researches have focused on the definition of Price promotion,the perceived price and purchase intention of different promoting methods and promoting frequence,the relationship between price and quality perception.But researches from perceived quality are relatively limited.This article investigates the effect of price promotion on perceived quality and pruchase intention from perceived quality angle. Perceived quality is customers'feeling of product quality, they always base their quality perception on perceived quality when lacking other quality indicating factors. Perceived quality is a very important factor deciding customers'purchase,the decrease in perceived quality will result in lower purchase intention.We reseach the effects of price promotion from perceived quality viewpoint and creat a model basing on relating researches in order to have a thicker understanding of the effect of price promotion on perceived quality.We collect the data through our investigation,then test the hypothesis by AMOS software.We find that discount has greater effect on lowering customers'reference price and perceived quality,frequent deep price promotion has negative effect on customers'reference price ,perceived quality,perceived store image and purchase intention.Brand,perceived quality,perceived store image all have positive effect on reference price.In additon, perceived store image can cause more customer purchase.Our research can help companies greatly improve the efficiency of promoting resources.The main creativity of this thesis lies in three aspects:First,focusing on Chinese customers,the conclusion is more appliable to China's reality. Although many scholars have done a lot of researches on price promotion,most of them are beased on foreign customers'hehavior,there is few articles on the basis of Chinese consumers.As we all know that,culture is an important factor affecting consumption,the difference of consumption hehavior is vivid under different cultural circumstance .Especially,China is a typical oriental country which has much different consumption culture from western country.There is the need to base researches focusing on Chinese consumers.Only when we do this,we can truly reflect the effect of price promotion in China,providing appliable tactics for companies in promotion decisions.Secondly,research on Chinese special price promotion methods deeply.Price promotion has many methods,coupon is widely used in foreign countries,but it is not so popular in China.Refunds has the most popularity in China,especially in general merchandise.Refunds is different from coupons,it is a kind of coupon under special requirement.Because refunds is Chinese particular promotiong method,western scholars haven't done a lot of researches on it.This thesis has a thorough investigation of refunds from theoretical point,focusing on the changes of customers'quality perception and reference price under refunds.We find that customers don't have price illusion effect under refunds promotion,but they have higher quality perception and willing to pay higher price.These conclusions will have great value for companies in promoting ways adopting.Finally,this thesis first reseatch price promotion in China from quality perception angle.In the literatures I have reviewed,only few articles are about this aspect.Quality perception is a better standard used by customers to evaluate quality,qualtiy perception has great impact in product purchase.Price promotion has an effect on customers quality perception through price cutting,which affects customers purchase intention,there is positive relationship between them.This is the basis of our research.This thesis researcchs price promotion from quality perception angle,providing that the companies should take quality perception into consideration when using price promotion in order to boost products sales on the basis of price cutting.This thesis is divided into eight parts.In the first part,we draw the main theoretical proposition that whether price promotion has effect on quality perception and purchase intention,how the working system is from the phenomena that the widely-used price promotion doesn't generate significant effect on products sales.Then ,we piont out the purpose and meaning of our research.In the second part,through reviewing of relating articles we find that there is only a few researches on price promotion from perceived quality angle,further confirming meaning of this thesis and making preparations for concept decision and model setting.In the third part,on the basis of relating researches,we give out hypothesises and model of our thesis,defining and weighing variables in the modle.In the fourth part,we developed questionnaire on existing ones.The fifth part is mainly about sample designing and practical investigation.We prove the rationality of our questionnaire through reliability test and validity test in pre-investigating samples.In the sixth part,we have relating analysis of setting model,testing hypothesises through AMOS software and illustrating our test results.In the seventh part is about the revelation of this thesis and advice for companies when adopting price promotion.In the last part,we summarize the shortcomings in this thesis and give the direction of future research.