Loyalty effects of coupon books on new restaurant customers

Abstract

Entertainment Coupons are a popular method of restaurant advertising. These books contain coupons for hundreds of local restaurants and are often sold to consumers as part of a fundraising campaign for a charity. Consumers are likely to use the book in one of two ways: to save money while maintaining their previous frequency of dining out, or to use the savings to increase the number of times that they can dine out with their fixed disposable incomes. Most coupon books are purchased by consumers. Consumers that have purchased a coupon book should be inclined to use coupons from it more frequently than consumers that have received a coupon book for free. Purchased coupon books involve a sunk cost that the consumers may try to recover through the savings the coupons provide. The impact of sunk costs may be reduced for coupon books with charitable ties; however, unless consumers consider the entire purchase price to be a charitable donation, there will still be costs involved in acquiring the coupons. An experiment was designed to test the effects of purchased vs. free coupon books and coupon books with and without charitable ties. Consumers using coupons from the purchased books were more likely to switch restaurants than were consumers that used a coupon from a free coupon book. The experiment showed few other loyalty effects; however this lack of effect may have been caused by the simulated method of implementing loyalty.

Notes

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Thesis Completion

2002

Semester

Spring

Advisor

Harris, Judy

Degree

Bachelor of Science (B.S.)

College

College of Business Administration

Degree Program

Marketing

Subjects

Business Administration -- Dissertations, Academic;Dissertations, Academic -- Business Administration

Format

Print

Identifier

DP0021715

Language

English

Access Status

Open Access

Length of Campus-only Access

None

Document Type

Honors in the Major Thesis

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