Promoting Pi Day: Consumer Inferences About Special Day-Themed Promotions

Using marketing promotions to attract customers is so prevalent that it takes something special for a given promotion to stand out (Kalwani and Yim 1992). In the Internet age, firms can ensure that a promotion is distributed on a specific day and thus offer more promotions around “special days” (e.g., a 31.4% discount for Pi Day on March 14th) in addition to typical holiday promotions (e.g., standard Christmas discounts). Are such special day-themed appeals effective? This research explores the effectiveness of special day-themed promotions and outlines important boundary conditions for their effectiveness. Research on marketplace metacognition demonstrates that consumers often think about and draw inferences from marketers’ actions and intentions (Wright 2002). For example, consumers reward marketers with an increased willingness-to-pay for products when they infer that marketers put extra effort into designing product displays (Morales 2005). Based on the metacognition literature more generally, which shows that people are particularly likely to draw inferences about unexpected/atypical experiences (Schwarz 2004), we argue that consumers are likely to draw inferences about atypical special day-themed promotions compared to standard promotional events. Specifically, we expect consumers to infer that that the marketer is creative when they encounter a special day-themed promotion (subject to boundary conditions). Consumers then reward marketers for their creative effort with more positive evaluations of the promotion and increased purchase intentions.