Effect Of Hidden Gift Promotion On Online Store Loyalty In The Context Of Electronic Commerce

In recent years,the rapid development of electronic commerce has gradually attracted academic and practice people's attention.With the efforts of marketing academics and practice,some traditional marketing theories applied to the electronic successfully,and some new theories was found,which have been guiding the health development of the Chinese e-commerce market.However,we also found that there are many differences in the electronic commerce market and the traditional market,and some of the theories and the knowledge of practice found in the tractional market are not suitable in the electronic commerce market,and even conflict,which has become one of the focus of the scholars.The traditional marketing theory foud that:(1)promotion(including gift promotion)can bring short-term positive effect,in other words,the promotion before buying can promote consumers to purchase more and use less time to make decision;(2)but the promotion has not positive effect on the behavior and attitude after purchase(customer loyalty,the relationgship between customer and company,brand preference,brand reputation,brand image,perceived quality etc.),and even has negative effect.In the context of electronic commerce,shopping is no longer a crunching type of business due to the separate of purchase decision making and product picking in time and space,which gives online stroe opportunity to do some gamesmanships.The hidden gift promotion is the use of this opportunity.Differently with other promotions,online stores often give some gift hiddenly to the customer with the product bought by the customer.Consumers may suddenly find that buy a T-shirt get a bracelet freely,or buy a cosmetic get a sample of high-grade freely,or buy a computer get a notbook and a sign pen freely,which will not only give customers a feeling of a light and pleasant surprise,but also bring value in the use of follow-up.The aim of the hidden gift promotion is not to promote consumers to buy more and use less time to make decision,which is the aim of traditional promotions,because consumers have made purchase decisions before getting the gift.But hidden gifts do bring value to the consumer(such as the sense of surprise to open the packaging,the subsequent use of value).Since there is no short-term promotion effect,does the obtaining of no expected be able to bring long-term results?What kind of gifts are able to better achieve the purpose?Exploring the answers to the two questions constitute the main research content of this paper.On the basis of literature research,drawing on previous research results,this paper constructed a theotetical model,in which hidden gift promotion as the antecedent variable(vs.no gift),and online stores loyalty as the outcome variables,and the charactertstics of the gift(value of the gift,usefulness of the gift,hedonic/utility of the gift)and the relationship between the promoted product and the gift(complementary/substitution relationship,brand relationship,and hedonic/utility fit relationship)as the moderator variables.The immediately data(when consumers open the package and read to leave,let him/her fill the questionaire)was used to verify the main hypothe,and the memory data(let sonsumer fill the questionare after recalling the last experience of onling shopping)was used to verify the hypothesis of the moderator variables.The empirical results show that:under the background of e-commerce,compared with no gifts,online store's hidden gift promotion has a positive impact on consumer's online store loyalty.But the conditions of this conclusion is extremely rigorous:(1)the conclusion is correct only when the gift's value is low,and the gift's usefulness is high,and the gift is practical product;(2)the conclusion is correct only when the relationship between promoted product and gifts is complementary or alternative,and promoted product and gift have the same brand,and promoted product and gift have the same hedonic(practical)attributes.There may be three innovations in this paper:firstly,the research objec may be an innovation.Although hidden gifts promotion has been widely used by marketing practitioners,but this kind of market behavior has not been enough attention.Secondly,the research method may be an innovation.In this paper,we both used the immediathly data and memory data,which is rare in the research literature of promotion.Finally,the research conclusions may be an innovation.This paper argues that the hidden gift promotion has a long-term effect,which is a challenge to the traditional promotion theory.This paper has important significance in both theory and practice.On the one hand,the conclusion of this research has an important theoretical significance,because it not only challenged the traditional promotion theories,which remedied the shortcoming of traditional marketing theory can not explain the emerging market behavior;but also used many variable to clarified the boundary conditions to ensure the correct of the conclusion according to many moderator variables;besides,expanded the use scope of the expectation-confirmation theory.On the other hand,the conclusion of this research also has an important practical signigicance,because it can expaline the behavior of online stroe give gift to customer hiddenly,and it also guide the marketer to use the hidden gift promotion better.