A Study On Effects Of Consumers’ Promotion Expectations On Purchase Decision:Mechanisms And Resolving Strategies

Marketing by creating festival day on network raises a Domino effect, looming an unprecedented pressure to merchants. To stimulate consumption by creating festival days not only causes consumers become exhausted, but also enhances their requirements and expectations. Continuous promotions generate consumers’ promotion expectations imperceptibly, causing their loss aversion and making them conservative and hesitating. As a result, consumers may delay their purchase or switch to other brands, which behaviors will run counter to merchants’ intentions. However, previous studies focused mainly on the formation of promotion expectation, and studies on effects of this psychology are still in the preliminary stage. Especially, there is little research that identifies the mechanism of promotion expectation and introduces regulatory mechanisms to further study. Given that promotion expectations bring seriously negative effects and that this problem has not been paid enough attention, this research attempts to discuss the influence of promotion expectation on purchase decision and to reveal the mechanisms in which consumer emotions such as anticipated regret and competitive arousal are included. The main concents of this research are as follows:Study1: the direct effect of consumer promotion expectation on purchase decision. Research results further confirm that the promotion expectations and its consistency with actual promotion have interactive effect on consumer purchase decision, including purchase time, brand choice and purchase volume.Study2: the indirect effect of consumer promotion expectation on purchase decision: anticipated regret mediates. Research results further confirm:(1) promotion expectations negatively influence postpone purchase and positively impact purchase volume through anticipated action regret;(2) promotion expectation can positively impact on current purchase but not on brand promotion and purchase volume.Study3: the indirect effect of consumer promotion expectation on purchase decision: competitive arousal moderates. Research results further show that increase in competitive arousal can strengthen the mediate effect of anticipated regret between promotion expectation and current purchase, resulting promotion expectation positively effect on current purchase. And increases in competitive arousal can promotion the mediate roles of anticipated action regret and anticipated inaction regret between promotion expectation and purchase volume.Finally, according to the conclusion, this study proposes suggestions that relate to how to prevent consumers to promotion expectations and how to reduce the negative effects of promotion expectations. Research conclusions enrich the research fields of promotion expectation and expand the research vision of promotion expectation, expecting to provide rewarding guidance to merchants.