When sales promotions make consumers experiencing financial restrictions purchase more or less: the role of decisional conflict

Abstract Sales promotions are common tools in marketing, used to attract more customers and increase sales. Yet, there is no systematic academic research that investigates what type of customers prefer which types of sales promotions. Addressing this research gap, we examined how consumers with financial restrictions, who would be more vulnerable to attractive offers in the marketplace, respond to different sales promotions. The findings from four experimental studies showed that consumers with financial restrictions were less likely to use the sales promotion when the sales promotion was based on high-low pricing (vs. everyday low-pricing), and when the sales promotion was for a limited (vs. not limited) period of time. However, consumers with financial restrictions were more likely to use the sales promotion when it was buy-one-get-one-free (vs. buy-one-get-one-X% off) sales promotion. We showed that decisional conflict explained the responses of financially restricted consumers to different types of sales promotions.