ABSTRACT

Retailers may wish to foster high, but not excessively high, consumer purchase quantities of a product. Purchase quantity limits can be used to try to walk that fine line. Two commonly used approaches that retailers use to express purchase quantity limits – offer quantity limits and unit quantity limits – are studied in a setting where a product is offered for a discounted price. An example of a unit quantity limit (UQL) is ‘Limit 2,’ which simply restricts the consumer to a maximum purchase of two units of the discounted product. An offer quantity limit (OQL) of ‘Limit 2 Offers,’ for example, allows the consumer to take advantage of the presented price deal a maximum of two times. Since the price information may specify two or more units, the maximum number of units consumers are allowed to purchase when an OQL is present cannot be determined solely from the number included in the OQL verbiage – the price information must also be considered. A pilot experimental study and main experiment provide evidence strongly suggesting that consumers misunderstand OQLs. The fallacy would harm retailers desiring to stimulate high consumer purchase quantities from a promotion that includes a restriction. Specifically, consumers intend to purchase fewer units when confronted with an OQL rather than an equivalent UQL when one of the two restrictions is imposed on a multiple unit price promotion. This effect is attenuated when the numeric value of the OQL is not a multiple of the units in the price information. The present research is the first to examine how consumers react to OQLs relative to UQLs.

摘要

零售商不妨培养高但不是过高的消费者购买某种产品的数量。购买数量限制可用于尝试沿该细线走。在以折扣价格提供产品的环境中，研究了零售商用来表示购买数量限制的两种常用方法（报价数量限制和单位数量限制）。单位数量限制（UQL）的一个示例是“限制2”，它仅将消费者限制为最多只能购买两个单位的打折产品。例如，“限制2个要约”的要约数量限制（OQL）使消费者最多可以利用所提供的价格交易两次。由于价格信息可以指定两个或多个单位，存在OQL时，允许消费者购买的最大商品数量不能仅根据OQL字词中包含的数量来确定-还必须考虑价格信息。初步实验研究和主要实验提供了强有力的证据，表明消费者误解了OQL。谬论将损害希望从包括限制的促销活动中刺激大量消费者购买数量的零售商。具体而言，当对多重单价促销施加两个限制之一时，面对OQL时，消费者打算购买较少的商品，而不是同等的UQL。当OQL的数值不是价格信息中单位的倍数时，这种影响会减弱。