Promotion Has a Negative Effect on Brand Evaluations—Or Does It? Additional Disconfirming Evidence

Abstract

Early research on the effect of promotion suggested that a brand using that element of the marketing mix would be evaluated lower and therefore have a reduced repurchase probability. Though that hypothesis refers to a change in brand evaluation at the individual level, tests of it typically have been performed with repurchase probabilities at the aggregate level. Recent work by Neslin and Shoemaker shows that it is possible to observe a decrease in aggregate repurchase probability due to promotion even if individual-level repurchase probabilities are unchanged. Though their evidence does not directly test the hypothesis of a negative effect for promotion, it does provide an alternative explanation for observed results. The authors expand their work by directly testing the hypothesis of a negative effect for promotion and by performing that test on the underlying construct, brand evaluation. After initial measurement of shoppers’ evaluations, brands in test categories were promoted for three months. At the end of the promotion manipulation period, brand evaluations were remeasured. The hypothesis that overall evaluation of promoted brands would decrease is rejected.