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Short-Asking with Long-Encouraging (SALE): A simple method to increase purchase quantity

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Abstract

Marketers often use messages such as “Stock up and save” to encourage consumers to buy more units of a product. Governments use messages such as “Store at least a two-week supply of water and food” to encourage consumers to stock up on essentials for emergencies. This research finds that these messages may not work as effectively as hoped and introduces a method that can increase consumers' purchase quantity in these situations. Dubbed as SALE (“Short-Asking with Long-Encouraging”), this method couples a “long-encouraging” statement (e.g., “Stock up for two weeks”) with a “short-asking” statement (e.g., “Think about how many you will consume in one day”) in an advertisement. Two field studies, four lab experiments and a survey with salespeople demonstrated the effectiveness and novelty of SALE and identified the mechanism, moderators and boundary conditions of the effect.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank the editor, the AE, the four reviewers and the managing editor for their insightful advice and generous help. The authors thank Qiqi Zhi for her great assistance in Study 1. The authors thank their respective schools for the research support. The first author also thanks Daniel Mochon, Dilip Soman, Harish Sujan, Mita Sujan and Robert Meyer for their helpful suggestions, as well as Simin Li, Matt Story and her family for their wise encouragement and inspiration.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Freeman School of Business, Tulane University, 7 McAlister Drive, New Orleans, LA, 70118, USA

    Zoe Y. Lu

  2. Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business, 1 East Chang An Ave, Beijing, 100738, China

    Christopher K. Hsee

  3. Booth School of Business, University of Chicago, 5807 S Woodlawn Ave., Chicago, IL, 60637, USA

    Christopher K. Hsee

  4. Lee Business School, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 4505 S Maryland Pkwy., Las Vegas, NV, 89154, USA

    Kaiyang Wu

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  1. Zoe Y. Lu
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Correspondence to Zoe Y. Lu.

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The authors declare no conflicts of interest in conducting the present research and preparing the present manuscript. The authors thank their respective schools for research support. This research received no grant from any other funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.

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Lu, Z.Y., Hsee, C.K. & Wu, K. Short-Asking with Long-Encouraging (SALE): A simple method to increase purchase quantity. J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-023-00975-x

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