The Effect of Price Discount Rate According to Brand Loyalty on Consumer's Acquisition Value and Transaction Value

브랜드애호도에 따른 가격할인율의 차이가 소비자의 획득가치와 거래가치에 미치는 영향

In recent years, one of the major reasons for the fierce competition amongst firms is that they strive to increase their own market shares and customer acquisition rate in the same market with similar and apparently undifferentiated products in terms of quality and perceived benefit. Because of this change in recent marketing environment, the differentiated after-sales service and diversified promotion strategies have become more important to gain competitive advantage. Price promotion is the favorite strategy that most retailers use to achieve short-term sales increase, induce consumer's brand switch, in troduce new product into market, and so forth. However, if marketers apply or copy an identical price promotion strategy without considering the characteristic differences in product and consumer preference, it will cause serious problems because discounted price itself could make people skeptical about product quality, and the changes of perceived value might appear differently depending on other factors such as consumer involvement or brand attitude. Previous studies showed that price promotion would certainly increase sales, and the discounted price compared to regular price would enhance the consumer's perceived values. On the other hand, discounted price itself could make people depreciate or skeptical about product quality, and reduce the consumers' positivity bias because consumers might be unsure whether the current price promotion is the retailer's best price offer. Moreover, we cannot say that discounted price absolutely enhances the consumer's perceived values regardless of product category and purchase situations. That is, the factors that affect consumers' value perceptions and buying behavior are so diverse in reality that the results of studies on the same dependent variable come out differently depending on what variable was used or how experiment conditions were designed. Majority of previous researches on the effect of price-comparison advertising have used consumers' buying behavior as dependent variable. In order to figure out consumers' buying behavior theoretically, analysis of value perceptions which influence buying intentions is needed. In addition, they did not combined the independent variables such as brand loyalty and price discount rate together. For this reason, this paper tried to examine the moderating effect of brand loyalty on relationship between the different levels of discounting rate and buyers' value perception. And we provided with theoretical and managerial implications that marketers need to consider such variables as product attributes, brand loyalty, and consumer involvement at the same time, and then establish a differentiated pricing strategy case by case in order to enhance consumer's perceived values properl. Three research concepts were used in our study and each concept based on past researches was defined. The perceived acquisition value in this study was defined as the perceived net gains associated with the products or services acquired. That is, the perceived acquisition value of the product will be positively influenced by the benefits buyers believe they are getting by acquiring and using the product, and negatively influenced by the money given up to acquire the product. And the perceived transaction value was defined as the perception of psychological satisfaction or pleasure obtained from taking advantage of the financial terms of the price deal. Lastly, the brand loyalty was defined as favorable attitude towards a purchased product. Thus, a consumer loyal to a brand has an emotional attachment to the brand or firm. Repeat purchasers continue to buy the same brand even though they do not have an emotional attachment to it. We assumed that if the degree of brand loyalty is high, the perceived acquisition value and the perceived transaction value will increase when higher discount rate is provided. But we found that there are no significant differences in values between two different discount rates as a result of empirical analysis. It means that price reduction did not affect consumer's brand choice significantly because the perceived sacrifice decreased only a little, and customers are satisfied with product's benefits when brand loyalty is high. From the result, we confirmed that consumers with high degree of brand loyalty to a specific product are less sensitive to price change. Thus, using price promotion strategy to merely expect sale increase is not recommendable. Instead of discounting price, marketers need to strengthen consumers' brand loyalty and maintain the skimming strategy. On the contrary, when the degree of brand loyalty is low, the perceived acquisition value and the perceived transaction value decreased significantly when higher discount rate is provided. Generally brands that are considered inferior might be able to draw attention away from the quality of the product by making consumers focus more on the sacrifice component of price. But considering the fact that consumers with low degree of brand loyalty are known to be unsatisfied with product's benefits and have relatively negative brand attitude, bigger price reduction offered in experiment condition of this paper made consumers depreciate product's quality and benefit more and more, and consumer's psychological perceived sacrifice increased while perceived values decreased accordingly. We infer that, in the case of inferior brand, a drastic price-cut or frequent price promotion may increase consumers' uncertainty about overall components of product. Therefore, it appears that reinforcing the augmented product such as after-sale service, delivery and giving credit which is one of the levels consisting of product would be more effective in reality. This will be better rather than competing with product that holds high brand loyalty by reducing sale price. Although this study tried to examine the moderating effect of brand loyalty on relationship between the different levels of discounting rate and buyers' value perception, there are several limitations. This study was conducted in controlled conditions where the high involvement product and two different levels of discount rate were applied. Given the presence of low involvement product, when both pieces of information are available, it is likely that the results we have reported here may have been different. Thus, this research results explain only the specific situation. Second, the sample selected in this study was university students in their twenties, so we cannot say that the results are firmly effective to all generations. Future research that manipulates the level of discount along with the consumer involvement might lead to a more robust understanding of the effects various discount rate. And, we used a cellular phone as a product stimulus, so it would be very interesting to analyze the result when the product stimulus is an intangible product such as service. It could be also valuable to analyze whether the change of perceived value affects consumers' final buying behavior positively or negatively.

현대에 있어 동질적인 품질과 편익을 제공하는 제품을 가지고 다수의 기업들이 시장점유율 증대와 고객확보를 위하여 치열한 경쟁을 벌이고 있는 가운데 가격할인은 기업이 즐겨 사용하는 촉진수단이다. 가격할인은 단기적 매출향상, 소비자의 브랜드전환, 신제품의 시장침투 등의 목적을 달성하기 위하여 사용된다. 실제로 과거의 실증연구에 의하면 다양한 형태의 가격할인이 판매증대에 효과적이며 가격할인은 소비자의 지각가치를 증가시킨다고 하였다. 하지만 할인된 가격은 제품의 품질을 의심하게 하거나 낮게 평가하는 부정적인 효과가 있다는 사실이 밝혀졌으며, 모든 제품카테고리와 모든 구매상황에 대하여 가격할인이 소비자의 지각가치를 향상시킨다고 볼 수 없다. 이에 따라 본 연구에서는 브랜드애호도의 차이가 있는 제품을 대상으로 가격할인율에 따라 소비자의 지각가치에 어떠한 영향을 미치는지를 연구함으로서 브랜드애호도의 조절효과를 분석하였다. 브랜드애호도가 강한 제품에 대한 지각획득가치와 지각거래가치는 가격할인율이 낮을 때 보다 큰 경우에 증가할 것으로 예측하였으나 분석결과 유의적인 차이가 없는 것으로 나타났는데, 이것은 브랜드애호도가 강한 경우에는 가격할인에 의한 지각희생의 감소량이 크지 않았고 브랜드 자체에 대한 신뢰도와 속성에 대한 만족도가 높기 때문에 가격인하가 브랜드선택에 큰 영향을 미치지 않았다는 것을 의미한다고 할 수 있다. 반면 브랜드애호도가 약한 제품에 대한 지각획득가치와 지각거래가치는 가격할인율이 낮을 때 보다 큰 경우에 감소한 것으로 나타났다. 이는 브랜드애호도가 약한 경우에는 제품으로부터 획득하게 되는 편익에 대한 만족도와 신뢰도가 낮은데 이러한 특성을 고려해보면 가격할인이 클 때에 제품의 품질과 편익을 더욱 평가절하하거나 심리적으로 지각희생의 크기가 증가됨에 따라 지각가치가 감소되었음을 의미한다고 할 수 있다.