Price Discrimination Using In-Store Merchandising
通过五个实地测试，比较店内优惠券和直接降价（特价）对零售商增量销售和利润的影响，发现优惠券平均使品牌销售额增加35%，利润增加108%，并开发了零售商优化品类利润的决策框架。
The authors compare the effectiveness of in-store coupons and straight off-the-shelf price discounts (bonus buys), in generating incremental sales and profits for the retailer. In five field tests, they find that, on average, in-store coupons lead to a 35% greater increase in the promoted brand's sales than bonus buys offering the same level of discount. Because redemption rates average 55%, in-store coupons produce a 108% greater increase in dollar profits than bonus buys. Both promotion vehicles have the same effect on the rest of the category, so coupons lead to higher overall category sales and profits. The authors develop a unified decision framework for a retailer maximizing category profits, that considers the trade-offs involved in using coupons and bonus buys in response to bill-back trade deals. Their empirical application in the ready-to-eat cereal category shows that the retailer passes through larger amounts of a trade deal when using in-store coupons. As a consequence, at the optimal discount level, unit category sales and dollar category profits are substantially higher with coupons. Robustness checks show that the findings hold over a wide range of parameter values and are, thus, generalizable.