Don’t Make Me Think Twice When I Am to Have Fun: Drawing Attention to Price Promotion Hurts Hedonic Purchase
Prof. Jessica KWONG
Professor of Marketing
CUHK Business School
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Date: 5 February 2026 (Thursday)
Time: 11:00-12:30
Venue: E22-G004
Host: Prof. Kao SI, Associate Professor in Marketing
Abstract
Hedonic purchases are often associated with feelings of guilt, leading to the explanation that price promotion facilitates sales because it alleviates that guilt. While much research has focused on the affective dimension of hedonic purchases, little has been said about the cognitive aspect of such purchases. We argue that, due to their experiential nature, hedonic products are inherently difficult to evaluate before consumption. Therefore, price promotion may expedite hedonic purchases by reducing its decision difficulty via encouraging fast and superficial decision making. In that case, factors that disrupt this process should undermine the effectiveness of price promotion. Consistent with this argument, we found that drawing consumers’ attention to price drops with visual highlights would impede purchase intentions for hedonic products, while having a lesser impact on utilitarian products. This occurs because drawing attention to the price drop would prompt consumers to engage in a deliberation mode, a process that is inherently more difficult for hedonic (vs. utilitarian) purchases. These results imply that while marketers may intend to entice consumers by highlighting a price drop, such action may backfire when the purchase is hedonically (vs. utilitarianly) driven.
Speaker
Prof. Jessica KWONG is Professor of Marketing and former Chairperson of the Department of Marketing at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (2020-2025). Her research focuses on human judgment and decision-making in consumer and organizational settings, with particular interest in numerical cognition, escalation of commitment, and the role of affect in motivation, judgments and processes. Her work has been published in leading journals across psychology, management, and marketing, including Journal of Applied Psychology, Management Science, Journal of Consumer Psychology, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Cognition, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, and Journal of Management.
All are welcome!
