Examples of monetary and non-monetary promotions are
used as stimuli for both the pretests and the main experiment.
The stimuli for monetary promotions are shelf-price
discounts and price packs, and for non-monetary
promotions they are sweepstakes and free gifts. Price packs
are monetary promotions that offer savings through multiple
packs (e.g. two for the price of one) or enlarged packs (e.g.
contains 50 per cent more) (Tellis, 1998). It is appropriate to
focus on these promotion techniques for several reasons.
First, they correspond to those used in earlier research and
thus, consistency can again be maintained (e.g. Dhar and
Hoch, 1996; Huff and Alden, 1998). Second, they are
commonly used in Australia and are also commonly observed
for the pre-selected product categories. By contrast,
alternatives such as coupons are inappropriate since coupon
usage is relatively low in Australia. Loyalty programmes are
also unsuitable given that there are few loyalty programmes
for the product categories selected for this study. The nature
of the pre-selected promotion techniques (i.e. monetary or
non-monetary) was verified in a pretest (see the Appendix).
Specific examples of the four promotion techniques are
used in the main experiment. They are drawn from currently
offered promotions in the product categories to ensure
realism. This involved the use of a combination of secondary
data and judgment. Specifically, the examples are derived
from reviews of weekly supermarket catalogues and from
direct observations in supermarkets. Judgment is then applied
to determine the most typical examples representing each
promotion technique. Consideration is also given to the fact
that monetary promotions will be preferred over non-monetary promotions of the same nominal value; this is
because of the claim that consumers prefer immediate over
delayed benefits (d’Astous and Jacob, 2002) and the greater
effort required to secure the benefits of non-monetary
promotions. Thus, another criterion for identifying the
examples of each promotion technique is that the nominal
value of non-monetary promotions has to be greater than
monetary promotions.