Culture at the ethnic-group level and the congruency
framework
There are mixed findings in regard to the congruency
framework of sales promotion effectiveness. First, the
preference for monetary promotions was found to dominate
over the preference for non-monetary promotions across all
product types. Furthermore, with only a few exceptions, the
covariates of gender, age and income were all insignificant in
accounting for the choice of promotions. All of this is
consistent with Chandon et al.(2000). Furthermore, these
results were evident across all cultural groups at all levels of
analysis and thus the impact of culture appears to be minimal
here. For management this again suggests standardisation
strategies might be effective under certain circumstances.
Interestingly, the direction of congruency effects between
product and promotion types was opposite to that described
by Chandon et al. (2000). In the current study, hedonic
products were associated with the choice of monetary
promotions while utilitarian products were associated with
non-monetary promotions. Wang (2004) too has reported
results that seemingly contradict some aspects of the original
study.
The fact that results might differ across studies suggests
that product managers must exercise considerable caution
when applying the congruency framework – it is possible a
range of factors will affect the direction of the congruency
relationships and these factors need to be teased out. For
instance, a possible explanation for our results is that nonmonetary
promotions are preferred for utilitarian products because they provide consumers with the experiential benefits
that are not provided by the product itself. Anecdotally, this is
supported by the use of non-monetary promotions for some
utilitarian products, such as the loyalty programme for
Unilever’s Omo laundry detergent and online competitions
for Kellogg’s Coco Pops. On the other hand, monetary
promotions may be preferred for hedonic products because
they can reduce the guilt associated with hedonic
consumption (Kivetz and Simonson, 2002). Something
similar occurs when charitable donations are examined:
donations are more likely when tied to the purchase of
(hedonic) luxuries than to (utilitarian) necessities (Strahilevitz
and Myers, 1998). Managers need to think through
implications such as these before making assumptions about
the direction of congruency effects.