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Effort justification for fun activities?: The effect of location-based mobile coupons using games
Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 54 (2020) 102029
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Effort justification for fun activities?: The effect of location-based mobile coupons using games Hee Jin Kim a, Hayeon Song b, * a b
Department of Global Business at Gachon University, South Korea Department of Interaction Science, Sungkyunkwan University, South Korea
A R T I C L E I N F O
A B S T R A C T
Keywords: Mobile coupon Coupon Game Effort justification Mobile marketing
Based on the effort justification explanation, this study tested whether consumers perceive the value of mobile coupons differently depending on how they received them. A 3 (activities to receive a coupon: none vs. online survey vs. game) x 2 (product type: hedonic vs. utilitarian) between-subject design experiment (N ¼ 200) was conducted. Findings suggested that game condition, compared to others, resulted in a higher perceived coupon value. A significant conditional indirect effect was found such that games enhance positive affect especially when the product type was utilitarian, and enhanced positive affect results in further boosting the perceived coupon value.
1. Introduction The mobile phone is one of the most popular personal communica tion devices. Smartphone ownership has increased dramatically – a 35% increase since 2011 – and 96% of American adults owned a cellphone as of 2017 (Pew Research Center, 2017). As mobile dependency is growing, smartphones serve as an essential connection to online information. Accordingly, mobile phone-based marketing is promising. Because of mobile phone’s highly interactive nature, more engaging promotion activities are possible, which is significantly different from traditional one-way communication from marketers. Recently, positioning tech nologies equipped in the smartphone have further pushed the bound aries of mobile marketing. Called location-based services (LBS), it uses geographical positioning information to enable location-specific pro motion (Rao and Minakakis, 2003). With LBS, mobile advertising and coupons can be more effective in that consumers can receive relevant, targeted, and interactive information specific to their location or con sumption context. Mobile coupons are e-coupons delivered through mobile devices. According to Banerjee et al. (2010), mobile coupons have some impor tant characteristics that differentiate them from traditional paper cou pons. First, mobile coupons have location specificity because they can be sent to potential customers located within a specific geographical zone, usually at or near a store. Second, they represent time-specificity, as they can be forwarded at a relevant time (e.g., point-of-purchase, weekend
for movie tickets). Third, they can be personalized depending on con sumers’ interests or product categories. Lastly, they represent easy and safe storage. In general, there are two different ways of mobile coupons delivery: pull (user generates the request for a coupon) and push (company generates the request for a coupon). When using push based coupons, sending a bunch of free coupons anytime and anywhere may not attract individuals. Unlike pull-based information, push-based information re quires strategies to attract individuals who may not have much interest in the brand. With the help of novel technology equipped in mobile phones, shoppers can receive targeted push coupons based on either their previous shopping behaviors (“behavior-based push”) or their location information (“location-based push”)(Dub� e et al., 2017). In that way, the customers can get highly personalized promotion messages about the right product (what) at the right time (when) at the right place (where). Recent studies have compared the effectiveness of various types of coupons. For example, Liu (2017) found that location-based pull cou pons increased coupon redemption about 18%, while location-based push coupon increased it 25%. In a field experiment with 6329 users’ observations with novel technology, Molitor et al. (2018) showed that out-of-store push coupons significantly enhance the likelihood to visit and to purchase in the promoted stores compared to both pull coupon and control group. What still not clear is how the coupons should be received. When
* Corresponding author. International Hall B307, Sungkyunkwan-ro 25-2, Jongno-gu, Seoul, 110-745, South Korea. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (H.J. Kim), [email protected] (H. Song). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretconser.2019.102029 Received 19 July 2019; Received in revised form 27 November 2019; Accepted 20 December 2019 0969-6989/© 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 54 (2020) 102029
customers can get readily available free coupons that they need, it is likely that their perceived value of the coupon as well as the product will be negatively affected. Porter (1993), for example, found that offering free coupons is not a good idea even in the direct mail-out coupon context. He compared three groups: one that received a coupon without any requirements, one that received a coupon only after completing a questionnaire, and one that received no coupons. The results showed the highest sales level in the questionnaire group, followed by the free coupon group and the no coupon group. Porter explained that some logical conditions that allow the individuals to “earn” the offer should be provided to avoid wrongly imputing low value to the coupon or sus pecting the offer to be “too good to be true” (see Table 1). In the context of mobile coupons, we believe offering coupons in compensation for customers’ effort will increase their perceived value of the coupon, which results in stronger intention of coupon redemption. This hypothesis is underpinned by the effort justification explanation (Aronson and Mills, 1959). The concept of effort justification, derived from the theory of cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957), is that one gives greater value to outcomes that require greater effort to obtain in order to justify the greater effort. That is, individuals tend to value highly those goals or items which have required considerable effort to achieve. In a classic study conducted by Aronson and Mills (1959), in dividuals experienced either severe or mild initiation to join a discussion group. Those who were in the severe initiation condition had to read embarrassing materials (sexually explicit passage) out loud, while par ticipants in the mild initiation condition read much less embarrassing materials. When asked to rate the discussion group, the severe initiation group reported a significantly higher liking score compared to the mild initiation group. That is, manipulating the effort required to join the group altered individuals’ perceived value of the outcome of their behavior. Aronson and Mills (1959) explained that those who under went severe initiation tried to reduce dissonance by increasing their valuation of the discussion group. Similarly, in Festinger and Carlsmith (1959)’s experiment, partici pants were given a very boring task and asked to tell potential partici pants that the experiment was interesting. Participants received either $1 or $20. The results showed that participants who were paid $1 evaluated the task as more interesting than those who were paid $20. It was explained that the participants who were paid $1 could not justify their actions for a payment as low as $1, so they changed their perception of the task to reduce the dissonance. Many studies have consistently supported effort justification in various contexts including psychotherapy (Cooper and Axsom, 1982) and weight loss (Axsom and Cooper, 1985). A more recent study revealed that effort justification occurs even among animals (Lydall et al., 2010), supporting the idea that a complex cognitive process may not be required for behavior-induced attitude change (Egan et al., 2007; Lawrence and Festinger, 1962). Similarly, the concept of effort heuristic (Kruger et al., 2004) argues that people use effort as a heuristic for quality. The more effort that is
invested in an object, the better it is deemed to be. In an experiment conducted by Kruger et al. (2004), participants rated higher quality, value, and liking the work based on their appraisal of time and effort spent on the work. Despite the fact that mobile coupons usage is growing rapidly and will continue to grow, there is a lack of studies regarding mobile cou pons. Specific strategies and their effects have not been empirically tested. In particular, limited information is available regarding what the most effective ways to deliver mobile coupons. Thus, the goal of this study is to empirically test the effectiveness of mobile coupons based on the effort justification theory. Specifically, this study has the following three purposes: (a) to identify effective ways to deliver mobile coupons by comparing three different ways to offer mobile coupons (i.e., free coupon, game, and survey); (b) to investigate if there are any differences depending on the product type; and (c) to further identify the factors affecting the perceived coupon value and reveal the underlying mech anism of the relationship among those variables. 2. Literature review 2.1. Using digital games for marketing According to the theory of effort justification (Aronson and Mills, 1959), customers would be likely to perceive the product value to be higher when they put some efforts into getting the coupon. This leads to the question: what types of tasks should be given? Little information is available about whether there are any differences in perceived value depending on what types of tasks were given to get the coupon and if it is always true that a more effortful task is perceived to be more valuable, especially in the mobile coupon context. As previous studies in psychology showed that a harder, more time consuming, more boring, more embarrassing tasks have shown to be more effective, one may assume that marketers should always give a hard time to customers before providing a coupon. It can be problem atic, however, when the task requires too much efforts, as negative affect induced by the task can end up being associated with the brand image, negatively affecting brand image in general. Several questions arise. Are there any ways to provide coupons without giving a hard time to the customers, yet the customer still values the coupons? What would happen when customers engage in fun activities that also take some effort and time? When the effortful activity is fun, will it yield the same effects as a less fun activity such as a survey? Unfortunately, the current literature lacks information about whether there are differential effects depending on different types of effort. To fill this gap in the literature and investigate whether various tasks would have different effects, the current study proposes to test the effect of game-based tasks compared to more traditional tasks such as survey. There are three reasons that we chose game-based task. First, games are fun. There are many game applications and gami fications in marketing, ranging from a simple game such as throwing darts to win a product sample to more complex ones like BMW Mini’s augmented reality game-based marketing. Fun is an integral part of human motivation. According to self-determination theory (Deci and Ryan, 1985), there are two different types of human motivations: intrinsic and extrinsic. When an activity is fun, humans are intrinsically motivated, meaning they engage in an activity for its inherent satisfac tion rather than external rewards (Deci and Ryan, 1987). On the other hand, when individuals do an activity for the purpose of sheer external rewards, their motivation resides outside of their mind, that is, they are extrinsically motivated. Kim and Ahn (2017) recently showed that providing rewards in a loyalty program can undermine the intrinsic motivation, however, gamification could help. Similarly, a study con ducted in the context of mobile coupons also showed that enjoyment positively affects the perceived value of mobile coupon applications (Liu et al., 2015). The second reason to test game-based coupon delivery is that the
Table 1 Summary of mobile coupon delivery strategies. Mobile coupon delivery strategies
Characteristics
by delivery approach
pull push
� coupon request initiated by users � coupon request initiated by companies
by targeting method
behavior based coupon location based coupon
� targeting based on shopping behaviors
by task requirement
free (with no task) with effortful tasks
� buyers to receive or redeem coupons without any condition � buyers to complete the required tasks to receive coupons � high perceived value due to effort justification effect
� targeting based on buyers’ location
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Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 54 (2020) 102029
positive feeling elicited from the fun activity may be associated with the product. Enjoyment is an important emotion that may be associated with consumer behavior. In fact, Sweeney and Soutar (2001) named enjoyment as one of the emotional value dimensions that plays a critical role in predicting purchase behavior. Studies have consistently found that positive emotions such as enjoyment and pleasure tend to be associated with positive brand attitude (Howard and Gengler, 2001; Van de Ven et al., 2010). In the same vein, today’s pleasure-seeking con sumers seek for fantasy, feelings, and fun through consumption (Hol brook and Hirschman, 1982), and the need to entertain consumers through fun-based experiential marketing using new technology has been on the rise (Schmitt, 1999). The third reason is that games are the most used apps on mobile phones. According to Pew Internet Research, the game category is the largest at around 11% of the Google Play Store (Atkinson, 2015). Many companies are trying to figure out how to utilize $25 billion dollar worth mobile gaming market to build relationships with their customers through active engagement (Tesseras, 2015). For these reasons, we propose to investigate if doing different ac tivities (game, survey, nothing) to attain a coupon affects the perceived value differently. The following research question and hypothesis are offered:
effort that is fun. Moreover, the emotions elicited from the enjoyable experience may positively influence the value of the coupons. By contrast, for hedonic products, which involve feelings of guilt, the pos itive emotions activated from the fun and enjoyable experience of a game may hinder the justification of consumption. Hence, we believe that those who play a game will perceive a lower level of value of the coupon than those who participate in a survey or even who do not exert any effort in getting the coupon. The findings from the research on people’s balancing tendencies between utilitarian and hedonic consumption goals provide supporting evidence for our conjecture. According to this line of research, con sumers’ purchase decision can be systematically influenced by their prior actions or experiences as they perceive the series of consumption events as a set (Dhar and Simonson, 1999; Khan and Urminsky, 2004; Khan and Dhar, 2006; Mullen and Monin, 2016). Moreover, people are generally inclined to segregate hedonic events to maximize hedonic value (Thaler et al., 1985) and to spread hedonic (positive) experiences over time (Loewenstein and Prelec, 1993), especially when the events are temporally proximal (Linville and Fischer, 1991). Consequently, when the choice involves conflicts between the desire for hedonic ex periences and the need for utilitarian functions, people tend to prefer to alternate their choice to fulfill each goal in turn. For instance, the con sumer who wants a meal that is both tasty and healthy is likely to select a healthy but less tasty dessert after the tasty but less healthy entr� ee (Dhar and Simonson, 1999). This natural tendency to balance between goals with hedonic or utilitarian nature has interesting implications for sequential consumer experiences. In our context, where consumers sequentially experience effortful activities followed by purchase decisions about a product to consume, their inclination to value balancing hedonic and utilitarian goals may influence their perceived value of the coupon. Based on this assumption, we hypothesize that product type will moderate the effect of coupon type on perceived value. That is, a game-based mobile coupon which meets the enjoyment-inducing hedonic goal will be more likely to increase the likelihood of purchasing a utilitarian product than a he donic product. We propose:
RQ1. Do effortful activities have differential effects on the perceived value of a coupon depending on whether they are fun or not?
H1. Game-based coupons will induce a more positive affect compared to survey-based coupons or free coupons. 2.2. Balancing between hedonic and utilitarian goals Some products are more difficult to justify effort and spending on than others. Hedonic benefits refer to experiential enjoyment desired for sensual pleasure, whereas utilitarian benefits are linked to functionality to fulfill consumers’ basic needs (Strahilevitz and Myers, 1998). A vast amount of prior research suggests that it is more difficult to justify effort invested to obtain hedonic goods and easier to justify the effort spent on utilitarian goods (Kivetz and Zheng, 2017; Okada, 2005). There are a number of reasons for the differences in justifiability. First, hedonic benefits are usually difficult to evaluate and quantify and thus less justifiable (Hsee, 1996; Shafir et al., 1993; Simonson, 1989). More importantly, because they are often considered wasteful (Lascu, 1991) and unnecessary (Kivetz and Simonson, 2002), there is a negative self-attribution and guilt associated with indulging in hedonic experi ences (Chang and Chen, 2019; Kivetz and Simonson, 2002; Okada, 2005; Strahilevitz and Myers, 1998; Zemack-Rugar et al., 2016). Accordingly, prior research suggests that purchase likelihood of he donic goods can be increased by tactics that lower the guilt associated with them. For instance, those who promised contributions to charity were more likely to purchase hedonic goods such as a hot fudge sundae (Strahilevitz and Myers, 1998) or designer jeans (Khan and Dhar, 2006). Furthermore, people feel licensed to make hedonic consumption like getting a massage after putting a high amount of effort into a loyalty promotion (Kivetz and Simonson, 2002). While the specific tactics differ, one common denominator among the aforementioned studies is that personal costs and pains should be involved in the effort to justify hedonic consumption. By contrast, when people feel the experience of exerting effort to be enjoyable, the guilt associated with the subsequent hedonic consumptions may not be reduced. Based on the abovementioned literature, in the current study, we suggest that a game, which requires effort that is fun and enjoyable, would have a differential influence on the perceived value of coupons for hedonic and utilitarian products. For utilitarian products, which are less guilt-inducing, people find it easy to justify the purchase even with
H2. There will be a significant difference depending on the product type, such that individuals in the game-based coupon condition will perceive a higher level of value of the coupon than other conditions in a utilitarian product offer, whereas in a hedonic product offer, those in the game coupon condition will perceive a lower level of value of the coupon than in the free coupon or survey coupon condition. H3. Product type will moderate the relationship between activity type and affect. Specifically, consumers in the game coupon condition will experience more positive affect from the activity when a utilitarian product is offered than when a hedonic product is offered. 3. Method 3.1. Participants A total of 200 university students were recruited to participate in the study (53% women, Mage ¼ 21.97 years). Participants were recruited from a large introductory class on a voluntary basis. Only those who owned a smartphone could participate in this study, and all volunteers were smartphone owners. University students were considered to be an adequate population for this study, as mobile phone competency among this group is considered to be unlikely to act as a confounding factor. The study used a 3 (activity: game versus survey versus control) X 2 (product type: hedonic versus utilitarian) between-subjects design. There were no differences in visiting frequencies to the specific mall (target location of LBS in this experiment) among the three conditions (Mgame ¼ 5.14 vs. Msurvey ¼ 4.69 vs. Mcontrol ¼ 4.97, F(2, 197) ¼ 1.34, p > .01).
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Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 54 (2020) 102029
3.2. Procedure
3.5. Measures
Recruited participants were invited to a lab that has computers and mobile phones on a scheduled time. Upon arrival, participants were randomly assigned to one of six conditions and seated in front of a computer monitor that showed the scenario of the assigned condition. They were informed that they were going to evaluate a coupon pro motion soon to be executed at the central mall on the campus. Then, participants received instruction on the computer screen. First, they were asked to imagine that they were walking through the oncampus mall. To strengthen the participants’ sense of being on the location, a photo of people walking through the on-campus mall was presented together with the instruction. Next, participants were instructed that they received a text message on their mobile phone while they were walking through the on-campus mall. The instruction visualized the situation by showing a picture of a mobile phone screen containing the text message “Coupon promotion for the customers who are visiting our on-campus mall right now! You can use the coupon at [Dunkin Donuts or Office Mate] in our on-campus mall.” Participants then received different instructions depending on the assigned condition. Participants in the game condition were informed that they would be able to get the coupon after playing the game. They received a mobile phone to play the game and general instructions for how to play the game. They were asked to play two rounds and report their higher score. Those who were in the survey condition were told that the coupon would be given after participating in a short online survey via mobile phone. Using the provided mobile phone, participants answered six questions about their satisfaction with the stores and res taurants in the on-campus mall. After completing the tasks, participants received a $0.50 coupon to use for either a donut purchase at Dunkin Donuts (hedonic condition) or stationery at Office Mate (utilitarian condition), corresponding with the products previously shown on the mobile text message. People in the control condition received a discount coupon without doing any activ ities. On receiving the coupons, participants were provided with a questionnaire about their evaluations of coupon value, redemption intention, affective states, and manipulation checks.
The questionnaire included items measuring the following variables. Positive affect (α ¼ 0.93) was measured with 2 items adopted from Tauer and Harackiewicz (1999; e.g., happy, excited). Perceived value (α ¼ 0.88) was measured with three items on a 7-point sematic differential scale (i. e., “the coupon is valuable”, “the coupon offers what I have wanted”, “the coupon is attractive”) adopted and modified from O’Brien and Jones (1995). Intention to redeem a coupon (α ¼ 0.83) was measured with three items (i.e., “I will definitely use the coupon”, “I will visit the store to use the coupon”, “I will use the coupon when I visit the store”). For the manipulation check, we measured three variables including perceived efforts (α ¼ 0.93) (“I put a lot of effort”, “It was important for me to do well in this study”, “I worked hard while I was participating in the promotion event”, “I did not put much effort”; adopted from McAuley et al., 1987), enjoyment (α ¼ 0.94) (e.g., enjoyable, entertaining, fun, satisfying), and product type (same with the one used in the pretest). 4. Results 4.1. Manipulation check Enjoyment. In order to see if the participants perceived the mobile game as enjoyable and the survey as non-enjoyable effort, we first compared participants’ enjoyment ratings on the two activities with the test value set at 4.0 (mid-value of a 7-point scale). The results of a onesample t-test show that the mobile game was perceived as enjoyable (Mgame ¼ 5.65, t(68) ¼ 12.14, p < .01) but the mobile survey was not (Msurvey ¼ 4.18, t(66) ¼ 1.04, p > .10). We then compared the enjoyment rating between the two activities. The t-test results confirmed that enjoyment was higher in the game condition than in the survey condi tion (t(134) ¼ 6.74, p < .01). Perceived effort. To confirm if the respondents perceived the pro cess of receiving the coupon as effortful, we ran a series of one-sample ttests with perceived effort as the dependent variable for the three con ditions (game, survey and control condition). The results revealed that perceived effort spent to receive a coupon was significantly higher than mid-value (4.0) in all three conditions (Mgame ¼ 5.84, t(68) ¼ 15.02, p < .01; Msurvey ¼ 5.20, t(66) ¼ 8.07, p < .01; Mcontrol ¼ 5.19, t(63) ¼ 7.56, p < .01). To further assess if participants in the game and survey condi tions perceived a greater level of effort invested than those in the control condition, a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted. While the results from the omnibus test showed significant differences among conditions (F(2, 197) ¼ 5.77, p < .01), the post-hoc comparison using Bonferroni correction indicated that only the game condition resulted in significantly higher perceived effort than the control condi tion (p ¼ .01). No difference was found between the perceived effort of the survey and control conditions (p ¼ 1.00). Product type. We analyzed the responses on hedonic versus utili tarian characteristics of the products offered for coupon promotion using a one-sample t-test with the test value set at 4.0 (mid-value of a 7point scale). The results indicate that donut was perceived as hedonic (Mdonut ¼ 3.19, t(106) ¼ -7.56, p < .01), whereas stationery was perceived as utilitarian (Mstationery ¼ 5.26, t(92) ¼ 10.61, p < .01).
3.3. Apparatus In the game condition, we used a game called “Piano Tiles” (https ://www.silvergames.com/en/piano-tiles for computer version) in which players have to tap black tiles in tune with the songs that play in the background. This game was selected because (a) it is easy and fun to play, so even individuals with low game play competency can enjoy it quite easily; (b) it is not necessary to explain how to play the game because it is so intuitive (even the game does not have the instruction); (c) game play time is quite short and easy to control, as the game has to end when the song ends; and (d) previous performance does not affect the next game. 3.4. Pretest of selections for the product categories To select the product to use for coupons, a separate group of 36 university students were recruited (61% women, Mage ¼ 24.09 years old). A total of six hedonic and utilitarian categories of products which are sold at on-campus stores were included in the test (i.e., donuts, cake, ice cream, photocopying service, stationery, and bottled water). The participants rated the products on two bipolar scales referring to hedonic-utilitarian ratings which were anchored at 1 ¼ hedonic to 10 ¼ utilitarianism and 1 ¼ enjoyable to 10 ¼ functional. To control the attractiveness of the coupon, we also asked how much they are willing to use a 50-cent discount coupon for each product if it was available to be used in an on-campus store. Based on the analysis, we selected donuts from Dunkin Donuts (M ¼ 3.53) for a hedonic product and stationery from Office Mate (M ¼ 8.28) for a utilitarian product.
4.2. Perceived value by the type of activities The central question of the current research is whether consumers perceive the value of mobile coupons differently when they exert their efforts in enjoyable activities (e.g., playing a mobile game) compared to when they put efforts into non-enjoyable activities (e.g., participating in surveys). To examine the effect of activity types on perceived value, a one-way ANOVA was performed. The omnibus ANOVA indicated a significant influence of activity type on the perceived value (F(2, 197) ¼ 4.44, p ¼ .01). Contrast tests show that those who played the mobile game before receiving a coupon perceived higher value than those who 4
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Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 54 (2020) 102029
participated in the survey (Mgame ¼ 4.42 vs. Msurvey ¼ 3.42, F(1, 197) ¼ 0.17.03, p < .001). However, there was no significant difference in the perceived value across game (Mgame ¼ 4.42) and control conditions (Mcontrol ¼ 4.32, F(1, 197) ¼ 0.17, p > .01).
To test H1, a one-way ANOVA was conducted on positive affect. The results indicated a significant effect of activity type on the affect (F(2, 197) ¼ 30.53, p < .001). Consistent with H1, contrast tests revealed that participants in the game condition reported higher scores in positive affect than those who took the survey (Mgame ¼ 5.21 vs. Msurvey ¼ 3.54, F (1, 197) ¼ 56.06, p < .001) and those in the control condition (Mcontrol ¼ 3.95, F(1, 197) ¼ 31.17, p < .001).
the coupon redemption intention was higher when they played the game than when they took the survey or did nothing. Specifically, contrast tests revealed significant differences between the game and survey conditions (Mgame ¼ 5.55 vs. Msurvey ¼ 4.54; F(1,194) ¼ 8.70, p <. 01) as well as between the game and control conditions (Mcontrol ¼ 4.63; F (1,194) ¼ 7.11, p < .01). The redemption intention between the control and survey groups did not show statistical differences (F(1,194) ¼ 0.08, p > .10). On the contrary, for the hedonic product, no statistical dif ferences were found between the responses from the game and survey conditions (Mgame ¼ 4.79 vs. Msurvey ¼ 4.83; F(1,194) ¼ 0.02, p > .10). However, participants in the control condition (Mcontrol ¼ 5.38) reported marginally higher redemption intention that those in the game condi tion (F(1,194) ¼ 3.59, p ¼ .06) and in the survey condition (F(1,194) ¼ 2.87, p ¼ .09) (see Table 2 for the summary of descriptive staticstics).
4.4. Moderation by product type
4.5. Moderated mediation by affect
Perceived value. H2 suggests that people who play fun games to receive a coupon will perceive higher value for utilitarian products but not for hedonic products. The results of a two-way ANOVA on the perceived value of the coupon partially support H2. There was a main effect of activity type (F(2,194) ¼ 7.42, p < .01) but no significant effect of product type (F(1,194) ¼ 0.09, p > .10). More importantly, the results revealed a significant two-way interaction between activity and product type (F(2,194) ¼ 5.44, p < .01). To understand the nature of the inter action effect, a series of planned contrast tests were conducted. The results gave partial support for our predictions. For the utilitarian product, the results accord with the hypothesis. The respondents who played the game to receive coupons reported a higher value perception of the coupons than those who completed the survey (Mgame ¼ 4.97 vs. Msurvey ¼ 3.46; F(1,194) ¼ 37.32, p < .01) and those who received coupons with no effort (Mcontrol ¼ 3.99; F(1,194) ¼ 7.89, p < .01). Of note, respondents in the control condition reported higher value perception toward the coupons than those in the survey condition (F (1,194) ¼ 4.57, p ¼ .03). For the hedonic product, unlike our expecta tion, the perceived value did not show significant differences between the game and survey conditions (Mgame ¼ 3.97 vs. Msurvey ¼ 3.99, F (1,194) ¼ 0.00, p > .10). In addition, both game (F(1,194) ¼ 4.18, p ¼ .04) and survey groups (F(1,194) ¼ 3.70, p ¼ .06) showed lower perceived value than the control condition (Mcontrol ¼ 4.63)(see Fig. 1). Intention to redeem a coupon. A 3 X 2 ANOVA on the coupon redemption intention showed a similar pattern of result with that of perceived value. A significant interaction between activity and product type (F(2,194) ¼ 5.48, p < .01) was found. For the utilitarian product,
Our theorization posits that the positive affect experienced from playing a mobile game mediates the subjective value perception of the coupons. Furthermore, H3 predicts that the indirect effect of positive affect on perceived value will be contingent on the hedonic-utilitarian nature of the product for which the coupon promotion is held. To test our hypothesis, we employed a moderated mediation analysis (Hayes, 2013) in which the independent variable was activity type, the mediator was affect, the moderator was product type and the dependent variable was perceived value. Note that two separate tests were conducted that included a pair of categorical variables as bootstrapping analysis does not allow multi-categorical independent variables. The results support H3. First, the test among the participants in the game and the free conditions showed that affect mediated the effects of the two-way interaction of activity and product type on perceived value (indirect effect ¼ 0.51; 95% CI [-1.00, 0.16 ]). Specifically,
4.3. Affect by the type of activities
Table 2 Descriptive statistics for key results. Activity
Game
Perceived Effort 5.84 (1.02) Affect 5.21 (1.15) Coupon for Stationery (Utilitarian product) Perceived Value 4.97 (1.66) Redemption Intention 5.55 (1.35) Coupon for Donut (Hedonic product) Perceived Value 3.97 (1.26) Redemption Intention 4.79 (1.34)
Fig. 1. Moderating influence of activity type and product type on perceived value. 5
Survey
Control
5.20 (1.12) 3.54 (1.29)
5.19 (1.26) 3.95 (1.45)
3.46 (1.43) 4.54 (1.34)
3.99 (1.46) 4.63 (1.50)
3.99 (1.21) 4.83 (1.32)
4.63 (1.23) 5.38 (1.23)
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Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 54 (2020) 102029
strengthens the effectiveness of game-based mobile coupons and high lights the importance of further investigating them. Second, positive affect elicited by playing a game has a significant mediation effect on the attitude toward the coupon. Our results showed that a game-based mobile coupon enhances positive affect more than any other conditions. The heightened positive affect via game play, then, further enhances the perceived value of the coupon. This is consistent with the findings in previous studies (Howard and Gengler, 2001; Van de Ven et al., 2010) in that enjoyment and the associated positive affect influences brand attitude positively. This result indicates that using a game as a task to provide coupons can not only help justify the value of the outcome but also provide positive affect that may further enhance customers’ brand experience and build positive attitude toward the brand. Third, the current study also showed an underlying mechanism of why and how a game-based mobile coupon can enhance the perceived coupon value. As expected, game-based coupons work better when the product to promote was utilitarian, whereas survey-based coupons enhanced the perceived coupon value for hedonic products. This study provides both theoretical and practical contributions. Theoretically, this study expands the application of the effort justifica tion theory by showing evidence that fun activities can also successfully justify efforts. Previous studies with the theoretical underpinning of effort justification showed that being offered for free can hurt the perceived value of a coupon (Porter, 1993). The rationale is that when customers receive coupons without doing anything, they may experi ence a cognitive dissonance between the amount of effort exerted to obtain the coupon and the perceived value of it. This dissonance could be resolved by increasing or decreasing one’s perceived value of the coupon. Thus, it is suggested that certain tasks should be given so that customers can justify the value of the coupon. However, there is a dilemma here. When a coupon is obtainable only after completing a task requiring some level of effort, customers may experience negative affect which may also be associated with the coupon as well as the product. In addition, providing a coupon only after competing effortful tasks can activate extrinsic motivation instead of intrinsic, which can further undermine the possibility of a positive brand experience (Kim and Ahn, 2017). Thus, it is meaningful that our findings show that the efforts exerted in fun activities such as a game can also be perceived as
conditional indirect effects excluded zero for both utilitarian (indirect effect ¼ 1.04; 95% CI [0.64, 1.52]) and hedonic products (indirect effect ¼ 0.53; 95% CI [0.27, 0.87]). Next, the same test was run on the re sponses from the game and survey conditions only, revealing a signifi cant moderated mediation effect (indirect effect ¼ 0.28; 95% CI [-0.55, 0.02]). Conditional indirect effects for both products were significant for both utilitarian (indirect effect ¼ 0.65; 95% CI [0.42, 0.88]) and hedonic products (indirect effect ¼ 0.37; 95% CI [0.18, 0.59]) (see Figure 2 and 3). 5. Discussion Mobile coupons have the capacity to provide very personalized coupons for the right product at the right place at the right time using location-based technology. Recent studies have demonstrated the effectiveness and importance of location-based push coupons in com parison to other types of mobile coupons (Liu, 2017; Molitor et al., 2018). Push coupons are initiated by the providers, not consumers. Thus, delivery method should be carefully considered. Only limited in formation is available, however, to guide delivery of these coupons. The current study investigated the effect of ways to deliver a mobile coupon especially focusing on location-based push coupons. The findings demonstrate that having the customer play a game before offering a coupon should be effective because of two reasons: effort justification and positive affect. In particular, we sought to answer the following questions: (a) When the mobile coupon is offered after playing a game, is the game, as a fun-based task, perceived to be “effortful” enough to justify the value of the coupon? (b) If a game-based mobile coupon is effective in promoting the perceived coupon value, is it because the fun experience of playing game enhances the positive affect? (c) What are the underlying mechanisms explaining the rela tionship between the mobile coupon and perceived value? There are three primary findings. First, a game-based mobile coupon is an effective tool to ensure that customers perceive a higher value of the coupon compared to no-fun-task-based or no task-based mobile coupons. Our findings showed that individuals who played a game showed a higher level of perceived value compared to those who did nothing. Interestingly, their perceived value was even higher than that of those who did the online survey to get the coupon. This further
Fig. 2. Result of the moderated mediation model of game and survey for affect, product type and perceived coupon value (Note. Unstandardized regression coefficients are reported). 6
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Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 54 (2020) 102029
Fig. 3. Result of the moderated mediation model of game and control for affect, product type and perceived coupon value (Note. Unstandardized regression coefficients are reported).
place for the right product can be welcome regardless of how it was delivered. Finally, this study suggests that mobile coupon designers should consider the product type. Our findings suggest that game-based coupons work especially well for utilitarian products, while survey-based coupons justify the hedonic products better. Several limitations in this study warrant further research. First of all, there are several boundary conditions that the readers should be aware of. The findings of this study apply only to location-based push mobile coupons, and what we have found in this study may not be applied to other coupon promotion contexts. Moreover, there may be differences in the perceived value of a coupon depending on the discount rate offered by the coupon, the type of game, or game play time. For instance, prior research suggests that the contextual influences on the value of the discount promotion are only effective when the discount depth is moderate (i.e., between 10% and 30%; Biswas et al., 2013). A significant increase or decrease of the objective value of the coupon may invalidate the influence of efforts on perceived value. We believe future studies should be conducted to test the effect in various contexts. Second, we used a very short online survey in the experiment, and it seemed like individuals did not perceive that they put much effort into answering it. Typically, the length of an online survey is quite short when coupons are offered only after doing the survey. To make the study more realistic and believable, we utilized a 10-question online survey which could easily be finished in a couple of minutes. A lengthy survey questionnaire or other tasks which require more effort may have different results. Lastly, we believe we can strengthen the generalizability of our findings by testing in the populations with different ages. The current study was conducted among university students who are competent with mobile games. Thus, future research should also test if a game-based coupon will be received as well by older, less tech-savvy consumers. In conclusion, this study highlighted the effectiveness of game-based mobile coupons and provided empirical evidence for when and how perceived coupon value can be enhanced. As mobile phones provide various opportunities for marketing, we hope future investigations would further reveal the effectiveness of mobile coupons in promoting more enjoyable and engaging experiences that can enrich companies’ relationships with customers.
sufficient to justify the value of the coupon. This research also supplements previous findings that show con sumers’ balancing tendency between hedonic and utilitarian benefits. Most prior studies have tested the effect by presenting two different products within a proximal time frame such as sequential consumption (e.g., main dish and dessert) or bundle packs (Dhar and Simonson, 1999; Khan and Urminsky, 2004; Khan and Dhar, 2006). Our study demon strated that the balancing effects can be applied in the context of the consumer’s experiences with promotional activities. Note that one condition for consumers to display balancing tendencies between two activities is the proximity of temporal distance between those events. As such, we believe the effect was particularly strong for a location-based coupon because the coupon usage occurred right after the pre-activities (i.e., game or survey in the current study) in the same space. The findings of the current study suggest practical implications as they provide a practical guideline for designing marketing strategies for mobile promotion. First, this study sheds light on game-based mobile promotions and suggests empirical evidence for why and how they are an effective method in marketing. Games are fun and elicit positive affect that can further enhance the perceived value of the promotion. Moreover, games can be utilized not just as a task before providing promotions but also as an experiential marketing opportunity. As mobile phone-related technology advances, the interactive experiences that games provide can be highly immersive. Marketers could use this me dium to build relationships with customers. We also provide novel knowledge to execute location-based mobile coupon promotions effectively. It is important to note that some of our findings are different from previous studies that utilized paper coupons. In our study, the control group of the free coupon condition showed unexpectedly high perceived value. One of the reasons to explain this is that location-based technology provides a coupon at the right place and the right time. Although no efforts were exerted, this situation may have enhanced the perceived value of coupon. Similarly, Unni and Harmon (2007)’s experiment showed that location-based mobile promotion has a high level of perceived value regardless of its type (push vs. pull), while location-based advertising showed significant differences depending on whether it was requested by the consumer or not. It is possible to conjecture that a promotion at the right time and the right 7
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Declaration of competing interest
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Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services journal homepage: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/jretconser
Effort justification for fun activities?: The effect of location-based mobile coupons using games Hee Jin Kim a, Hayeon Song b, * a b
Department of Global Business at Gachon University, South Korea Department of Interaction Science, Sungkyunkwan University, South Korea
A R T I C L E I N F O
A B S T R A C T
Keywords: Mobile coupon Coupon Game Effort justification Mobile marketing
Based on the effort justification explanation, this study tested whether consumers perceive the value of mobile coupons differently depending on how they received them. A 3 (activities to receive a coupon: none vs. online survey vs. game) x 2 (product type: hedonic vs. utilitarian) between-subject design experiment (N ¼ 200) was conducted. Findings suggested that game condition, compared to others, resulted in a higher perceived coupon value. A significant conditional indirect effect was found such that games enhance positive affect especially when the product type was utilitarian, and enhanced positive affect results in further boosting the perceived coupon value.
1. Introduction The mobile phone is one of the most popular personal communica tion devices. Smartphone ownership has increased dramatically – a 35% increase since 2011 – and 96% of American adults owned a cellphone as of 2017 (Pew Research Center, 2017). As mobile dependency is growing, smartphones serve as an essential connection to online information. Accordingly, mobile phone-based marketing is promising. Because of mobile phone’s highly interactive nature, more engaging promotion activities are possible, which is significantly different from traditional one-way communication from marketers. Recently, positioning tech nologies equipped in the smartphone have further pushed the bound aries of mobile marketing. Called location-based services (LBS), it uses geographical positioning information to enable location-specific pro motion (Rao and Minakakis, 2003). With LBS, mobile advertising and coupons can be more effective in that consumers can receive relevant, targeted, and interactive information specific to their location or con sumption context. Mobile coupons are e-coupons delivered through mobile devices. According to Banerjee et al. (2010), mobile coupons have some impor tant characteristics that differentiate them from traditional paper cou pons. First, mobile coupons have location specificity because they can be sent to potential customers located within a specific geographical zone, usually at or near a store. Second, they represent time-specificity, as they can be forwarded at a relevant time (e.g., point-of-purchase, weekend
for movie tickets). Third, they can be personalized depending on con sumers’ interests or product categories. Lastly, they represent easy and safe storage. In general, there are two different ways of mobile coupons delivery: pull (user generates the request for a coupon) and push (company generates the request for a coupon). When using push based coupons, sending a bunch of free coupons anytime and anywhere may not attract individuals. Unlike pull-based information, push-based information re quires strategies to attract individuals who may not have much interest in the brand. With the help of novel technology equipped in mobile phones, shoppers can receive targeted push coupons based on either their previous shopping behaviors (“behavior-based push”) or their location information (“location-based push”)(Dub� e et al., 2017). In that way, the customers can get highly personalized promotion messages about the right product (what) at the right time (when) at the right place (where). Recent studies have compared the effectiveness of various types of coupons. For example, Liu (2017) found that location-based pull cou pons increased coupon redemption about 18%, while location-based push coupon increased it 25%. In a field experiment with 6329 users’ observations with novel technology, Molitor et al. (2018) showed that out-of-store push coupons significantly enhance the likelihood to visit and to purchase in the promoted stores compared to both pull coupon and control group. What still not clear is how the coupons should be received. When
* Corresponding author. International Hall B307, Sungkyunkwan-ro 25-2, Jongno-gu, Seoul, 110-745, South Korea. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (H.J. Kim), [email protected] (H. Song). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretconser.2019.102029 Received 19 July 2019; Received in revised form 27 November 2019; Accepted 20 December 2019 0969-6989/© 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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customers can get readily available free coupons that they need, it is likely that their perceived value of the coupon as well as the product will be negatively affected. Porter (1993), for example, found that offering free coupons is not a good idea even in the direct mail-out coupon context. He compared three groups: one that received a coupon without any requirements, one that received a coupon only after completing a questionnaire, and one that received no coupons. The results showed the highest sales level in the questionnaire group, followed by the free coupon group and the no coupon group. Porter explained that some logical conditions that allow the individuals to “earn” the offer should be provided to avoid wrongly imputing low value to the coupon or sus pecting the offer to be “too good to be true” (see Table 1). In the context of mobile coupons, we believe offering coupons in compensation for customers’ effort will increase their perceived value of the coupon, which results in stronger intention of coupon redemption. This hypothesis is underpinned by the effort justification explanation (Aronson and Mills, 1959). The concept of effort justification, derived from the theory of cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957), is that one gives greater value to outcomes that require greater effort to obtain in order to justify the greater effort. That is, individuals tend to value highly those goals or items which have required considerable effort to achieve. In a classic study conducted by Aronson and Mills (1959), in dividuals experienced either severe or mild initiation to join a discussion group. Those who were in the severe initiation condition had to read embarrassing materials (sexually explicit passage) out loud, while par ticipants in the mild initiation condition read much less embarrassing materials. When asked to rate the discussion group, the severe initiation group reported a significantly higher liking score compared to the mild initiation group. That is, manipulating the effort required to join the group altered individuals’ perceived value of the outcome of their behavior. Aronson and Mills (1959) explained that those who under went severe initiation tried to reduce dissonance by increasing their valuation of the discussion group. Similarly, in Festinger and Carlsmith (1959)’s experiment, partici pants were given a very boring task and asked to tell potential partici pants that the experiment was interesting. Participants received either $1 or $20. The results showed that participants who were paid $1 evaluated the task as more interesting than those who were paid $20. It was explained that the participants who were paid $1 could not justify their actions for a payment as low as $1, so they changed their perception of the task to reduce the dissonance. Many studies have consistently supported effort justification in various contexts including psychotherapy (Cooper and Axsom, 1982) and weight loss (Axsom and Cooper, 1985). A more recent study revealed that effort justification occurs even among animals (Lydall et al., 2010), supporting the idea that a complex cognitive process may not be required for behavior-induced attitude change (Egan et al., 2007; Lawrence and Festinger, 1962). Similarly, the concept of effort heuristic (Kruger et al., 2004) argues that people use effort as a heuristic for quality. The more effort that is
invested in an object, the better it is deemed to be. In an experiment conducted by Kruger et al. (2004), participants rated higher quality, value, and liking the work based on their appraisal of time and effort spent on the work. Despite the fact that mobile coupons usage is growing rapidly and will continue to grow, there is a lack of studies regarding mobile cou pons. Specific strategies and their effects have not been empirically tested. In particular, limited information is available regarding what the most effective ways to deliver mobile coupons. Thus, the goal of this study is to empirically test the effectiveness of mobile coupons based on the effort justification theory. Specifically, this study has the following three purposes: (a) to identify effective ways to deliver mobile coupons by comparing three different ways to offer mobile coupons (i.e., free coupon, game, and survey); (b) to investigate if there are any differences depending on the product type; and (c) to further identify the factors affecting the perceived coupon value and reveal the underlying mech anism of the relationship among those variables. 2. Literature review 2.1. Using digital games for marketing According to the theory of effort justification (Aronson and Mills, 1959), customers would be likely to perceive the product value to be higher when they put some efforts into getting the coupon. This leads to the question: what types of tasks should be given? Little information is available about whether there are any differences in perceived value depending on what types of tasks were given to get the coupon and if it is always true that a more effortful task is perceived to be more valuable, especially in the mobile coupon context. As previous studies in psychology showed that a harder, more time consuming, more boring, more embarrassing tasks have shown to be more effective, one may assume that marketers should always give a hard time to customers before providing a coupon. It can be problem atic, however, when the task requires too much efforts, as negative affect induced by the task can end up being associated with the brand image, negatively affecting brand image in general. Several questions arise. Are there any ways to provide coupons without giving a hard time to the customers, yet the customer still values the coupons? What would happen when customers engage in fun activities that also take some effort and time? When the effortful activity is fun, will it yield the same effects as a less fun activity such as a survey? Unfortunately, the current literature lacks information about whether there are differential effects depending on different types of effort. To fill this gap in the literature and investigate whether various tasks would have different effects, the current study proposes to test the effect of game-based tasks compared to more traditional tasks such as survey. There are three reasons that we chose game-based task. First, games are fun. There are many game applications and gami fications in marketing, ranging from a simple game such as throwing darts to win a product sample to more complex ones like BMW Mini’s augmented reality game-based marketing. Fun is an integral part of human motivation. According to self-determination theory (Deci and Ryan, 1985), there are two different types of human motivations: intrinsic and extrinsic. When an activity is fun, humans are intrinsically motivated, meaning they engage in an activity for its inherent satisfac tion rather than external rewards (Deci and Ryan, 1987). On the other hand, when individuals do an activity for the purpose of sheer external rewards, their motivation resides outside of their mind, that is, they are extrinsically motivated. Kim and Ahn (2017) recently showed that providing rewards in a loyalty program can undermine the intrinsic motivation, however, gamification could help. Similarly, a study con ducted in the context of mobile coupons also showed that enjoyment positively affects the perceived value of mobile coupon applications (Liu et al., 2015). The second reason to test game-based coupon delivery is that the
Table 1 Summary of mobile coupon delivery strategies. Mobile coupon delivery strategies
Characteristics
by delivery approach
pull push
� coupon request initiated by users � coupon request initiated by companies
by targeting method
behavior based coupon location based coupon
� targeting based on shopping behaviors
by task requirement
free (with no task) with effortful tasks
� buyers to receive or redeem coupons without any condition � buyers to complete the required tasks to receive coupons � high perceived value due to effort justification effect
� targeting based on buyers’ location
2
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Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 54 (2020) 102029
positive feeling elicited from the fun activity may be associated with the product. Enjoyment is an important emotion that may be associated with consumer behavior. In fact, Sweeney and Soutar (2001) named enjoyment as one of the emotional value dimensions that plays a critical role in predicting purchase behavior. Studies have consistently found that positive emotions such as enjoyment and pleasure tend to be associated with positive brand attitude (Howard and Gengler, 2001; Van de Ven et al., 2010). In the same vein, today’s pleasure-seeking con sumers seek for fantasy, feelings, and fun through consumption (Hol brook and Hirschman, 1982), and the need to entertain consumers through fun-based experiential marketing using new technology has been on the rise (Schmitt, 1999). The third reason is that games are the most used apps on mobile phones. According to Pew Internet Research, the game category is the largest at around 11% of the Google Play Store (Atkinson, 2015). Many companies are trying to figure out how to utilize $25 billion dollar worth mobile gaming market to build relationships with their customers through active engagement (Tesseras, 2015). For these reasons, we propose to investigate if doing different ac tivities (game, survey, nothing) to attain a coupon affects the perceived value differently. The following research question and hypothesis are offered:
effort that is fun. Moreover, the emotions elicited from the enjoyable experience may positively influence the value of the coupons. By contrast, for hedonic products, which involve feelings of guilt, the pos itive emotions activated from the fun and enjoyable experience of a game may hinder the justification of consumption. Hence, we believe that those who play a game will perceive a lower level of value of the coupon than those who participate in a survey or even who do not exert any effort in getting the coupon. The findings from the research on people’s balancing tendencies between utilitarian and hedonic consumption goals provide supporting evidence for our conjecture. According to this line of research, con sumers’ purchase decision can be systematically influenced by their prior actions or experiences as they perceive the series of consumption events as a set (Dhar and Simonson, 1999; Khan and Urminsky, 2004; Khan and Dhar, 2006; Mullen and Monin, 2016). Moreover, people are generally inclined to segregate hedonic events to maximize hedonic value (Thaler et al., 1985) and to spread hedonic (positive) experiences over time (Loewenstein and Prelec, 1993), especially when the events are temporally proximal (Linville and Fischer, 1991). Consequently, when the choice involves conflicts between the desire for hedonic ex periences and the need for utilitarian functions, people tend to prefer to alternate their choice to fulfill each goal in turn. For instance, the con sumer who wants a meal that is both tasty and healthy is likely to select a healthy but less tasty dessert after the tasty but less healthy entr� ee (Dhar and Simonson, 1999). This natural tendency to balance between goals with hedonic or utilitarian nature has interesting implications for sequential consumer experiences. In our context, where consumers sequentially experience effortful activities followed by purchase decisions about a product to consume, their inclination to value balancing hedonic and utilitarian goals may influence their perceived value of the coupon. Based on this assumption, we hypothesize that product type will moderate the effect of coupon type on perceived value. That is, a game-based mobile coupon which meets the enjoyment-inducing hedonic goal will be more likely to increase the likelihood of purchasing a utilitarian product than a he donic product. We propose:
RQ1. Do effortful activities have differential effects on the perceived value of a coupon depending on whether they are fun or not?
H1. Game-based coupons will induce a more positive affect compared to survey-based coupons or free coupons. 2.2. Balancing between hedonic and utilitarian goals Some products are more difficult to justify effort and spending on than others. Hedonic benefits refer to experiential enjoyment desired for sensual pleasure, whereas utilitarian benefits are linked to functionality to fulfill consumers’ basic needs (Strahilevitz and Myers, 1998). A vast amount of prior research suggests that it is more difficult to justify effort invested to obtain hedonic goods and easier to justify the effort spent on utilitarian goods (Kivetz and Zheng, 2017; Okada, 2005). There are a number of reasons for the differences in justifiability. First, hedonic benefits are usually difficult to evaluate and quantify and thus less justifiable (Hsee, 1996; Shafir et al., 1993; Simonson, 1989). More importantly, because they are often considered wasteful (Lascu, 1991) and unnecessary (Kivetz and Simonson, 2002), there is a negative self-attribution and guilt associated with indulging in hedonic experi ences (Chang and Chen, 2019; Kivetz and Simonson, 2002; Okada, 2005; Strahilevitz and Myers, 1998; Zemack-Rugar et al., 2016). Accordingly, prior research suggests that purchase likelihood of he donic goods can be increased by tactics that lower the guilt associated with them. For instance, those who promised contributions to charity were more likely to purchase hedonic goods such as a hot fudge sundae (Strahilevitz and Myers, 1998) or designer jeans (Khan and Dhar, 2006). Furthermore, people feel licensed to make hedonic consumption like getting a massage after putting a high amount of effort into a loyalty promotion (Kivetz and Simonson, 2002). While the specific tactics differ, one common denominator among the aforementioned studies is that personal costs and pains should be involved in the effort to justify hedonic consumption. By contrast, when people feel the experience of exerting effort to be enjoyable, the guilt associated with the subsequent hedonic consumptions may not be reduced. Based on the abovementioned literature, in the current study, we suggest that a game, which requires effort that is fun and enjoyable, would have a differential influence on the perceived value of coupons for hedonic and utilitarian products. For utilitarian products, which are less guilt-inducing, people find it easy to justify the purchase even with
H2. There will be a significant difference depending on the product type, such that individuals in the game-based coupon condition will perceive a higher level of value of the coupon than other conditions in a utilitarian product offer, whereas in a hedonic product offer, those in the game coupon condition will perceive a lower level of value of the coupon than in the free coupon or survey coupon condition. H3. Product type will moderate the relationship between activity type and affect. Specifically, consumers in the game coupon condition will experience more positive affect from the activity when a utilitarian product is offered than when a hedonic product is offered. 3. Method 3.1. Participants A total of 200 university students were recruited to participate in the study (53% women, Mage ¼ 21.97 years). Participants were recruited from a large introductory class on a voluntary basis. Only those who owned a smartphone could participate in this study, and all volunteers were smartphone owners. University students were considered to be an adequate population for this study, as mobile phone competency among this group is considered to be unlikely to act as a confounding factor. The study used a 3 (activity: game versus survey versus control) X 2 (product type: hedonic versus utilitarian) between-subjects design. There were no differences in visiting frequencies to the specific mall (target location of LBS in this experiment) among the three conditions (Mgame ¼ 5.14 vs. Msurvey ¼ 4.69 vs. Mcontrol ¼ 4.97, F(2, 197) ¼ 1.34, p > .01).
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Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 54 (2020) 102029
3.2. Procedure
3.5. Measures
Recruited participants were invited to a lab that has computers and mobile phones on a scheduled time. Upon arrival, participants were randomly assigned to one of six conditions and seated in front of a computer monitor that showed the scenario of the assigned condition. They were informed that they were going to evaluate a coupon pro motion soon to be executed at the central mall on the campus. Then, participants received instruction on the computer screen. First, they were asked to imagine that they were walking through the oncampus mall. To strengthen the participants’ sense of being on the location, a photo of people walking through the on-campus mall was presented together with the instruction. Next, participants were instructed that they received a text message on their mobile phone while they were walking through the on-campus mall. The instruction visualized the situation by showing a picture of a mobile phone screen containing the text message “Coupon promotion for the customers who are visiting our on-campus mall right now! You can use the coupon at [Dunkin Donuts or Office Mate] in our on-campus mall.” Participants then received different instructions depending on the assigned condition. Participants in the game condition were informed that they would be able to get the coupon after playing the game. They received a mobile phone to play the game and general instructions for how to play the game. They were asked to play two rounds and report their higher score. Those who were in the survey condition were told that the coupon would be given after participating in a short online survey via mobile phone. Using the provided mobile phone, participants answered six questions about their satisfaction with the stores and res taurants in the on-campus mall. After completing the tasks, participants received a $0.50 coupon to use for either a donut purchase at Dunkin Donuts (hedonic condition) or stationery at Office Mate (utilitarian condition), corresponding with the products previously shown on the mobile text message. People in the control condition received a discount coupon without doing any activ ities. On receiving the coupons, participants were provided with a questionnaire about their evaluations of coupon value, redemption intention, affective states, and manipulation checks.
The questionnaire included items measuring the following variables. Positive affect (α ¼ 0.93) was measured with 2 items adopted from Tauer and Harackiewicz (1999; e.g., happy, excited). Perceived value (α ¼ 0.88) was measured with three items on a 7-point sematic differential scale (i. e., “the coupon is valuable”, “the coupon offers what I have wanted”, “the coupon is attractive”) adopted and modified from O’Brien and Jones (1995). Intention to redeem a coupon (α ¼ 0.83) was measured with three items (i.e., “I will definitely use the coupon”, “I will visit the store to use the coupon”, “I will use the coupon when I visit the store”). For the manipulation check, we measured three variables including perceived efforts (α ¼ 0.93) (“I put a lot of effort”, “It was important for me to do well in this study”, “I worked hard while I was participating in the promotion event”, “I did not put much effort”; adopted from McAuley et al., 1987), enjoyment (α ¼ 0.94) (e.g., enjoyable, entertaining, fun, satisfying), and product type (same with the one used in the pretest). 4. Results 4.1. Manipulation check Enjoyment. In order to see if the participants perceived the mobile game as enjoyable and the survey as non-enjoyable effort, we first compared participants’ enjoyment ratings on the two activities with the test value set at 4.0 (mid-value of a 7-point scale). The results of a onesample t-test show that the mobile game was perceived as enjoyable (Mgame ¼ 5.65, t(68) ¼ 12.14, p < .01) but the mobile survey was not (Msurvey ¼ 4.18, t(66) ¼ 1.04, p > .10). We then compared the enjoyment rating between the two activities. The t-test results confirmed that enjoyment was higher in the game condition than in the survey condi tion (t(134) ¼ 6.74, p < .01). Perceived effort. To confirm if the respondents perceived the pro cess of receiving the coupon as effortful, we ran a series of one-sample ttests with perceived effort as the dependent variable for the three con ditions (game, survey and control condition). The results revealed that perceived effort spent to receive a coupon was significantly higher than mid-value (4.0) in all three conditions (Mgame ¼ 5.84, t(68) ¼ 15.02, p < .01; Msurvey ¼ 5.20, t(66) ¼ 8.07, p < .01; Mcontrol ¼ 5.19, t(63) ¼ 7.56, p < .01). To further assess if participants in the game and survey condi tions perceived a greater level of effort invested than those in the control condition, a one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted. While the results from the omnibus test showed significant differences among conditions (F(2, 197) ¼ 5.77, p < .01), the post-hoc comparison using Bonferroni correction indicated that only the game condition resulted in significantly higher perceived effort than the control condi tion (p ¼ .01). No difference was found between the perceived effort of the survey and control conditions (p ¼ 1.00). Product type. We analyzed the responses on hedonic versus utili tarian characteristics of the products offered for coupon promotion using a one-sample t-test with the test value set at 4.0 (mid-value of a 7point scale). The results indicate that donut was perceived as hedonic (Mdonut ¼ 3.19, t(106) ¼ -7.56, p < .01), whereas stationery was perceived as utilitarian (Mstationery ¼ 5.26, t(92) ¼ 10.61, p < .01).
3.3. Apparatus In the game condition, we used a game called “Piano Tiles” (https ://www.silvergames.com/en/piano-tiles for computer version) in which players have to tap black tiles in tune with the songs that play in the background. This game was selected because (a) it is easy and fun to play, so even individuals with low game play competency can enjoy it quite easily; (b) it is not necessary to explain how to play the game because it is so intuitive (even the game does not have the instruction); (c) game play time is quite short and easy to control, as the game has to end when the song ends; and (d) previous performance does not affect the next game. 3.4. Pretest of selections for the product categories To select the product to use for coupons, a separate group of 36 university students were recruited (61% women, Mage ¼ 24.09 years old). A total of six hedonic and utilitarian categories of products which are sold at on-campus stores were included in the test (i.e., donuts, cake, ice cream, photocopying service, stationery, and bottled water). The participants rated the products on two bipolar scales referring to hedonic-utilitarian ratings which were anchored at 1 ¼ hedonic to 10 ¼ utilitarianism and 1 ¼ enjoyable to 10 ¼ functional. To control the attractiveness of the coupon, we also asked how much they are willing to use a 50-cent discount coupon for each product if it was available to be used in an on-campus store. Based on the analysis, we selected donuts from Dunkin Donuts (M ¼ 3.53) for a hedonic product and stationery from Office Mate (M ¼ 8.28) for a utilitarian product.
4.2. Perceived value by the type of activities The central question of the current research is whether consumers perceive the value of mobile coupons differently when they exert their efforts in enjoyable activities (e.g., playing a mobile game) compared to when they put efforts into non-enjoyable activities (e.g., participating in surveys). To examine the effect of activity types on perceived value, a one-way ANOVA was performed. The omnibus ANOVA indicated a significant influence of activity type on the perceived value (F(2, 197) ¼ 4.44, p ¼ .01). Contrast tests show that those who played the mobile game before receiving a coupon perceived higher value than those who 4
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Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 54 (2020) 102029
participated in the survey (Mgame ¼ 4.42 vs. Msurvey ¼ 3.42, F(1, 197) ¼ 0.17.03, p < .001). However, there was no significant difference in the perceived value across game (Mgame ¼ 4.42) and control conditions (Mcontrol ¼ 4.32, F(1, 197) ¼ 0.17, p > .01).
To test H1, a one-way ANOVA was conducted on positive affect. The results indicated a significant effect of activity type on the affect (F(2, 197) ¼ 30.53, p < .001). Consistent with H1, contrast tests revealed that participants in the game condition reported higher scores in positive affect than those who took the survey (Mgame ¼ 5.21 vs. Msurvey ¼ 3.54, F (1, 197) ¼ 56.06, p < .001) and those in the control condition (Mcontrol ¼ 3.95, F(1, 197) ¼ 31.17, p < .001).
the coupon redemption intention was higher when they played the game than when they took the survey or did nothing. Specifically, contrast tests revealed significant differences between the game and survey conditions (Mgame ¼ 5.55 vs. Msurvey ¼ 4.54; F(1,194) ¼ 8.70, p <. 01) as well as between the game and control conditions (Mcontrol ¼ 4.63; F (1,194) ¼ 7.11, p < .01). The redemption intention between the control and survey groups did not show statistical differences (F(1,194) ¼ 0.08, p > .10). On the contrary, for the hedonic product, no statistical dif ferences were found between the responses from the game and survey conditions (Mgame ¼ 4.79 vs. Msurvey ¼ 4.83; F(1,194) ¼ 0.02, p > .10). However, participants in the control condition (Mcontrol ¼ 5.38) reported marginally higher redemption intention that those in the game condi tion (F(1,194) ¼ 3.59, p ¼ .06) and in the survey condition (F(1,194) ¼ 2.87, p ¼ .09) (see Table 2 for the summary of descriptive staticstics).
4.4. Moderation by product type
4.5. Moderated mediation by affect
Perceived value. H2 suggests that people who play fun games to receive a coupon will perceive higher value for utilitarian products but not for hedonic products. The results of a two-way ANOVA on the perceived value of the coupon partially support H2. There was a main effect of activity type (F(2,194) ¼ 7.42, p < .01) but no significant effect of product type (F(1,194) ¼ 0.09, p > .10). More importantly, the results revealed a significant two-way interaction between activity and product type (F(2,194) ¼ 5.44, p < .01). To understand the nature of the inter action effect, a series of planned contrast tests were conducted. The results gave partial support for our predictions. For the utilitarian product, the results accord with the hypothesis. The respondents who played the game to receive coupons reported a higher value perception of the coupons than those who completed the survey (Mgame ¼ 4.97 vs. Msurvey ¼ 3.46; F(1,194) ¼ 37.32, p < .01) and those who received coupons with no effort (Mcontrol ¼ 3.99; F(1,194) ¼ 7.89, p < .01). Of note, respondents in the control condition reported higher value perception toward the coupons than those in the survey condition (F (1,194) ¼ 4.57, p ¼ .03). For the hedonic product, unlike our expecta tion, the perceived value did not show significant differences between the game and survey conditions (Mgame ¼ 3.97 vs. Msurvey ¼ 3.99, F (1,194) ¼ 0.00, p > .10). In addition, both game (F(1,194) ¼ 4.18, p ¼ .04) and survey groups (F(1,194) ¼ 3.70, p ¼ .06) showed lower perceived value than the control condition (Mcontrol ¼ 4.63)(see Fig. 1). Intention to redeem a coupon. A 3 X 2 ANOVA on the coupon redemption intention showed a similar pattern of result with that of perceived value. A significant interaction between activity and product type (F(2,194) ¼ 5.48, p < .01) was found. For the utilitarian product,
Our theorization posits that the positive affect experienced from playing a mobile game mediates the subjective value perception of the coupons. Furthermore, H3 predicts that the indirect effect of positive affect on perceived value will be contingent on the hedonic-utilitarian nature of the product for which the coupon promotion is held. To test our hypothesis, we employed a moderated mediation analysis (Hayes, 2013) in which the independent variable was activity type, the mediator was affect, the moderator was product type and the dependent variable was perceived value. Note that two separate tests were conducted that included a pair of categorical variables as bootstrapping analysis does not allow multi-categorical independent variables. The results support H3. First, the test among the participants in the game and the free conditions showed that affect mediated the effects of the two-way interaction of activity and product type on perceived value (indirect effect ¼ 0.51; 95% CI [-1.00, 0.16 ]). Specifically,
4.3. Affect by the type of activities
Table 2 Descriptive statistics for key results. Activity
Game
Perceived Effort 5.84 (1.02) Affect 5.21 (1.15) Coupon for Stationery (Utilitarian product) Perceived Value 4.97 (1.66) Redemption Intention 5.55 (1.35) Coupon for Donut (Hedonic product) Perceived Value 3.97 (1.26) Redemption Intention 4.79 (1.34)
Fig. 1. Moderating influence of activity type and product type on perceived value. 5
Survey
Control
5.20 (1.12) 3.54 (1.29)
5.19 (1.26) 3.95 (1.45)
3.46 (1.43) 4.54 (1.34)
3.99 (1.46) 4.63 (1.50)
3.99 (1.21) 4.83 (1.32)
4.63 (1.23) 5.38 (1.23)
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Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 54 (2020) 102029
strengthens the effectiveness of game-based mobile coupons and high lights the importance of further investigating them. Second, positive affect elicited by playing a game has a significant mediation effect on the attitude toward the coupon. Our results showed that a game-based mobile coupon enhances positive affect more than any other conditions. The heightened positive affect via game play, then, further enhances the perceived value of the coupon. This is consistent with the findings in previous studies (Howard and Gengler, 2001; Van de Ven et al., 2010) in that enjoyment and the associated positive affect influences brand attitude positively. This result indicates that using a game as a task to provide coupons can not only help justify the value of the outcome but also provide positive affect that may further enhance customers’ brand experience and build positive attitude toward the brand. Third, the current study also showed an underlying mechanism of why and how a game-based mobile coupon can enhance the perceived coupon value. As expected, game-based coupons work better when the product to promote was utilitarian, whereas survey-based coupons enhanced the perceived coupon value for hedonic products. This study provides both theoretical and practical contributions. Theoretically, this study expands the application of the effort justifica tion theory by showing evidence that fun activities can also successfully justify efforts. Previous studies with the theoretical underpinning of effort justification showed that being offered for free can hurt the perceived value of a coupon (Porter, 1993). The rationale is that when customers receive coupons without doing anything, they may experi ence a cognitive dissonance between the amount of effort exerted to obtain the coupon and the perceived value of it. This dissonance could be resolved by increasing or decreasing one’s perceived value of the coupon. Thus, it is suggested that certain tasks should be given so that customers can justify the value of the coupon. However, there is a dilemma here. When a coupon is obtainable only after completing a task requiring some level of effort, customers may experience negative affect which may also be associated with the coupon as well as the product. In addition, providing a coupon only after competing effortful tasks can activate extrinsic motivation instead of intrinsic, which can further undermine the possibility of a positive brand experience (Kim and Ahn, 2017). Thus, it is meaningful that our findings show that the efforts exerted in fun activities such as a game can also be perceived as
conditional indirect effects excluded zero for both utilitarian (indirect effect ¼ 1.04; 95% CI [0.64, 1.52]) and hedonic products (indirect effect ¼ 0.53; 95% CI [0.27, 0.87]). Next, the same test was run on the re sponses from the game and survey conditions only, revealing a signifi cant moderated mediation effect (indirect effect ¼ 0.28; 95% CI [-0.55, 0.02]). Conditional indirect effects for both products were significant for both utilitarian (indirect effect ¼ 0.65; 95% CI [0.42, 0.88]) and hedonic products (indirect effect ¼ 0.37; 95% CI [0.18, 0.59]) (see Figure 2 and 3). 5. Discussion Mobile coupons have the capacity to provide very personalized coupons for the right product at the right place at the right time using location-based technology. Recent studies have demonstrated the effectiveness and importance of location-based push coupons in com parison to other types of mobile coupons (Liu, 2017; Molitor et al., 2018). Push coupons are initiated by the providers, not consumers. Thus, delivery method should be carefully considered. Only limited in formation is available, however, to guide delivery of these coupons. The current study investigated the effect of ways to deliver a mobile coupon especially focusing on location-based push coupons. The findings demonstrate that having the customer play a game before offering a coupon should be effective because of two reasons: effort justification and positive affect. In particular, we sought to answer the following questions: (a) When the mobile coupon is offered after playing a game, is the game, as a fun-based task, perceived to be “effortful” enough to justify the value of the coupon? (b) If a game-based mobile coupon is effective in promoting the perceived coupon value, is it because the fun experience of playing game enhances the positive affect? (c) What are the underlying mechanisms explaining the rela tionship between the mobile coupon and perceived value? There are three primary findings. First, a game-based mobile coupon is an effective tool to ensure that customers perceive a higher value of the coupon compared to no-fun-task-based or no task-based mobile coupons. Our findings showed that individuals who played a game showed a higher level of perceived value compared to those who did nothing. Interestingly, their perceived value was even higher than that of those who did the online survey to get the coupon. This further
Fig. 2. Result of the moderated mediation model of game and survey for affect, product type and perceived coupon value (Note. Unstandardized regression coefficients are reported). 6
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Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services 54 (2020) 102029
Fig. 3. Result of the moderated mediation model of game and control for affect, product type and perceived coupon value (Note. Unstandardized regression coefficients are reported).
place for the right product can be welcome regardless of how it was delivered. Finally, this study suggests that mobile coupon designers should consider the product type. Our findings suggest that game-based coupons work especially well for utilitarian products, while survey-based coupons justify the hedonic products better. Several limitations in this study warrant further research. First of all, there are several boundary conditions that the readers should be aware of. The findings of this study apply only to location-based push mobile coupons, and what we have found in this study may not be applied to other coupon promotion contexts. Moreover, there may be differences in the perceived value of a coupon depending on the discount rate offered by the coupon, the type of game, or game play time. For instance, prior research suggests that the contextual influences on the value of the discount promotion are only effective when the discount depth is moderate (i.e., between 10% and 30%; Biswas et al., 2013). A significant increase or decrease of the objective value of the coupon may invalidate the influence of efforts on perceived value. We believe future studies should be conducted to test the effect in various contexts. Second, we used a very short online survey in the experiment, and it seemed like individuals did not perceive that they put much effort into answering it. Typically, the length of an online survey is quite short when coupons are offered only after doing the survey. To make the study more realistic and believable, we utilized a 10-question online survey which could easily be finished in a couple of minutes. A lengthy survey questionnaire or other tasks which require more effort may have different results. Lastly, we believe we can strengthen the generalizability of our findings by testing in the populations with different ages. The current study was conducted among university students who are competent with mobile games. Thus, future research should also test if a game-based coupon will be received as well by older, less tech-savvy consumers. In conclusion, this study highlighted the effectiveness of game-based mobile coupons and provided empirical evidence for when and how perceived coupon value can be enhanced. As mobile phones provide various opportunities for marketing, we hope future investigations would further reveal the effectiveness of mobile coupons in promoting more enjoyable and engaging experiences that can enrich companies’ relationships with customers.
sufficient to justify the value of the coupon. This research also supplements previous findings that show con sumers’ balancing tendency between hedonic and utilitarian benefits. Most prior studies have tested the effect by presenting two different products within a proximal time frame such as sequential consumption (e.g., main dish and dessert) or bundle packs (Dhar and Simonson, 1999; Khan and Urminsky, 2004; Khan and Dhar, 2006). Our study demon strated that the balancing effects can be applied in the context of the consumer’s experiences with promotional activities. Note that one condition for consumers to display balancing tendencies between two activities is the proximity of temporal distance between those events. As such, we believe the effect was particularly strong for a location-based coupon because the coupon usage occurred right after the pre-activities (i.e., game or survey in the current study) in the same space. The findings of the current study suggest practical implications as they provide a practical guideline for designing marketing strategies for mobile promotion. First, this study sheds light on game-based mobile promotions and suggests empirical evidence for why and how they are an effective method in marketing. Games are fun and elicit positive affect that can further enhance the perceived value of the promotion. Moreover, games can be utilized not just as a task before providing promotions but also as an experiential marketing opportunity. As mobile phone-related technology advances, the interactive experiences that games provide can be highly immersive. Marketers could use this me dium to build relationships with customers. We also provide novel knowledge to execute location-based mobile coupon promotions effectively. It is important to note that some of our findings are different from previous studies that utilized paper coupons. In our study, the control group of the free coupon condition showed unexpectedly high perceived value. One of the reasons to explain this is that location-based technology provides a coupon at the right place and the right time. Although no efforts were exerted, this situation may have enhanced the perceived value of coupon. Similarly, Unni and Harmon (2007)’s experiment showed that location-based mobile promotion has a high level of perceived value regardless of its type (push vs. pull), while location-based advertising showed significant differences depending on whether it was requested by the consumer or not. It is possible to conjecture that a promotion at the right time and the right 7
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Declaration of competing interest
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