Are Horse Steaks Sold as Beef Steaks:An Impact of Out-of-Stock of Promoted New Products on Consumer Response to Recommendations of Similar Alternatives
Since it has become a common marketing strategy used by many global manufacturers or retailers to promotion new products'dynamic sales and diffusion through all kinds of promotion tools,they also usually bring about the phenomenon of out-of-stock of new prod-ucts,which in turn has an important impact on consumers'cognitive valuation and purchase making-decision.At present,there have been many work on promotion and out-of-stock respectively,but still are scant of attention to and research on how out-of-stock of promoted new products impacts consumer response to recommendation of similar alternatives.Their deficiency or absence has not only an adverse influ-ence on richness and integrity of such theoretical systems as product promotion,out-of-stock of new products,and phantom-induced effect,but also to some extent to which gives rise to some negative effects on business'new product marketing,consumers'response to out-of-stock and regulators'normative governance etc.Based on both information processing theory(e.g.quality inference theory)and protection motivation theory(e.g.bait and switch theory),this article constructs a moderated dual-mediation model to deeply explore whether,how and when out-of-stock of promoted new products impacts consumer response to recommendation of similar alternatives and moreover conducts empirical tests through experiments method.Experiment 1 used Philips mini power bank as experimental goods to test the direct and mediation effects of out-of-stock of new products on consumer response to recommendation of similar alternatives,as well as further to confirm their robustness through recruiting the candidates of Master of Business Administration(MBA)as experimental subjects.Experiment 2 used Midea sweeping robot as experimental goods to further test the moderation effect of consumer need for cognition on the dual-mediation mechanism underlying the impact of out-of-stock of promoted new product on consumer response to recommendation of similar alternatives.The statistical methods or tools used include ANO-VA,regression analysis,and Bootstrap,etc.The experimental results revealed that:(1)Out-of-stock of promoted new products does not necessarily produce a"similar substitution effect",but more likely impacts negatively consumer response to rec-ommendation of similar alternatives,and moreover out-of-stock of dis-counted new products would yield much more negative effect than out-of-stock of gifted new products,regardless of the disturbing effect of such concomitant variables as product familiarity and experiment ma-nipulation;(2)Quality inference and bait and switch would commonly and full mediate the effect of out-of-stock of promoted new product on consumer response to recommendation of similar alternatives,namely the former played a positive mediator but the latter did a negative so,as well as shopping smartness,sunk cost and psychological envy not be-came possible potential alternative explanations;(3)Consumer's need for cognition would effectively moderate the joint duel-mediation ef-fects of quality inference and bait and switch,namely when confronting with out-of-stock of gifted new products high need for cognition was easier to make the mediation of quality inference dominant,but when confronting with out-of-stock of discounted new products low need for cognition was easier to do the mediation of bait and switch so.These findings are significant for deepening and enriching such theo-retical systems as product promotion theory,new product out-of-stock theory and phantom-induced effect as well as information processing theory and protection motivation theory.Furthermore,they also have some important implications for manufacturers'effective operation on new product sales,consumers'rationale treatment toward the out-of-stock of promoted new products and regulators'normative government over the commercial operations of manufacturers or retailers.
Out-of-Stock of Promoted New ProductsQuality Infer-enceBait and SwitchNeed for CognitionConsumer Response to Recommendation of Similar Alternatives
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