How the perceptual fluency of price discounts and promotional cues affect consumer responses

We investigated the combined effect on consumers of the perceptual fluency of price discounts and the two promotional cues of discount duration and frequency. We proposed that consumers’ initial responses to price discounts would be maintained or modified depending on the processing fluency of discount information. Results from 2 experiments showed that when a promotional cue implied a short discount duration or low discount frequency and the discount information was difficult to process, participants perceived the duration as longer or the frequency as higher, and they evaluated the product less favorably if the discount information was difficult to process compared to if it was easy to process. On the contrary, when a cue implied a long discount duration or a high discount frequency, participants perceived the duration as shorter or the frequency as lower and evaluated the product more favorably if the discount information was difficult to process compared to if it was easy to process. We show conditions in which processing disfluency can be beneficial.