The Effect of Online Sales Promotion Strategies on Consumers' Perceived Quality and Purchase Intention: A Moderating Effect of Brand Awareness

Along with the explosion of Internet user, Internet has been considered as the new channel for companies implementing their sales promotion activities. Consequently, this study seeks to offer insight into how popular online promotions (price-discount, coupon and free shipping) influence consumer's quality perception and purchase intentions. Moreover, brand awareness was expected to moderate the relationship between promotion and consumer responses. To achieve this objective, a 3 (promotion: price-discount / coupon / free shipping) x 2 (brand: well-known / fictitious brand) between-subjects factorial design experiment was conducted. The participants were 210 college students. The results revealed significant main effects for promotion and brand awareness on consumers' perceived quality. Specifically, in contrast with coupon promotion, price-discount revealed greater impact on consumer's perceived quality. In addition, well-known brand has successfully played a moderating role in the relationship between promotions and consumer responses. The research finding suggested that promotional strategies used by well-known brand are more possible to result in more favorable responses. Findings from this study will be able to provide useful knowledge for online sellers to choose appropriate sales promotion tools to successfully induce consumer's purchase intentions.