Drivers of the synergy between price cuts and store flyer advertising at supermarkets and discounters

Research output: Journal contributionsJournal articlesResearchpeer-review

Authors

Despite retailers’ intense use of both price cuts and store flyer advertising, it is still unclear whether and when it is beneficial for retailers to combine the two promotion tools at the same time as opposed to using them separately. We systematically investigate synergies between price cuts and store flyers for a broad set of 488 brands from 44 consumer packaged goods categories across six leading German retailers. We find that a clear majority of the brands benefit from positive synergies and hence, combining price cuts and store flyer advertising is recommended, especially at supermarkets. This synergy can be strong. For instance, a 15 % price cut without store flyer support at a supermarket, on average, increases sales by 11 %, and medium spending on store flyers for the brand at its regular (non-promoted) price results in a sales lift of 8 %. The combined use of both tools, however, increases sales by 52 %, much more than the sum of their separate effects (11 % + 8 % = 19 %). Yet, there is also substantial variance in the synergy, which we explain with retailer format (supermarkets versus discounters) as well as various brand and category characteristics. Our findings have important implications for the coordination of promotion activities by retailers.

Original languageEnglish
JournalInternational Journal of Research in Marketing
Volume40
Issue number2
Pages (from-to)455-474
Number of pages20
ISSN0167-8116
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 06.2023
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Elsevier B.V.

    Research areas

  • Discounters, Price cuts, Store flyers, Supermarkets, Synergy
  • Management studies