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Do Store Flyers Work? Implications for NBs and PLs from a Subgroup Analysis with Experimental Data

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Advances in National Brand and Private Label Marketing

Part of the book series: Springer Proceedings in Business and Economics ((SPBE))

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Abstract

Store flyers are one of the key media featuring retail and brand promotions. However, the importance attributed to store flyers is not matched by an understanding of how customers respond to them. To shed light on flyer effectiveness, we employ a field experiment to estimate the response of 5000 retail customers to store flyers. We perform an Intention-To-Treat analysis and a Subgroup Analysis as post-hoc analyses with the aim of identifying unusual or unexpected treatment effects. Empirical evidence questions the effectiveness of untargeted flyer distribution. Subgroup Analysis provides further insights at customer segment level.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For more details of problems with averages, see Kravitz et al. (2004) and Longford (1999).

  2. 2.

    Papers by Gibson (2003) and Peck (2003, 2005) are examples of applications of Cluster Analysis (CA) in the field of social experiments.

  3. 3.

    All customers involved in the experiment own a loyalty card and have a valid postal address.

  4. 4.

    The flyer we used had a validity of 14 days and a length of 32 pages. It featured 268 products: 84.7 % were national brands (13.1 % were market leader brands, 14.1 % were follower brands and the remaining 57.5 % belonged to other competitors), and 15.3 % were private labels. Eighty-four percent of the price cuts advertised were in the range 15–39 %.

  5. 5.

    Data on past purchase behavior in the last 6 months, subscription to the retailer newsletter and registration on the retailer website were collected and used.

  6. 6.

    Pseudo-T, Root-Mean-Square Standard Deviation, Cubic Clustering Criterion, R2 and Pseudo-F.

  7. 7.

    To estimate effects, we employed a negative binomial regression for count outcomes (e.g. store visits, number of products) and a t-test on the log-transformed continuous outcomes (e.g. amount spent).

  8. 8.

    Peck (2003) called this problem “external validity variety of selection bias”.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economics, University of Parma, Parma, Italy

    Marco Ieva & Cristina Ziliani

  2. Department of Statistics, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy

    Ida D’Attoma

  3. Faculty of Economics and Business, Agrifood Campus of International Excellence ceiA3, University of Almería, Almería, Spain

    Juan Carlos Gázquez-Abad

Authors
  1. Marco Ieva
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  2. Ida D’Attoma
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  3. Cristina Ziliani
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  4. Juan Carlos Gázquez-Abad
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Marco Ieva .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Business Administration, University of Granada, Granada, Spain

    Francisco J. Martínez-López

  2. Department of Economics and Business, University of Almería, Almería, Spain

    Juan Carlos Gázquez-Abad

  3. Department of Marketing, Tilberg University, LE Tilburg, The Netherlands

    Els Gijsbrecht

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Ieva, M., D’Attoma, I., Ziliani, C., Gázquez-Abad, J.C. (2016). Do Store Flyers Work? Implications for NBs and PLs from a Subgroup Analysis with Experimental Data. In: Martínez-López, F., Gázquez-Abad, J., Gijsbrecht, E. (eds) Advances in National Brand and Private Label Marketing. Springer Proceedings in Business and Economics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39946-1_16

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