Navigating Differentiated Promotional Practices: Examining Consumer Fairness Perceptions in Omnichannel Retail
(A2025-126407)

AUTHORS

Ophélie Duquesne, UCLouvain, LouRIM; Simon Hazée, UCLouvain, LouRIM; Caroline Ducarroz, UCLouvain

ABSTRACT

In today’s connected world, retailers must rethink and effectively execute their marketing strategies across channels to stay competitive. Despite the several benefits of omnichannel retailing, whether to unify or differentiate promotional practices across online and offline channels remains a controversial topic among researchers and practitioners, potentially impacting business performance. Building upon fairness theory, this multi-experiment research first investigates consumer responses to these promotional strategies and highlights consumers’ aversion to differentiated promotional practices across channels. Secondly, authors delve into consumers’ processes to uncover the reasons why consumers perceive a promotional deal available both online and offline differently from an equivalent online-exclusive or an offline-exclusive deal. Such insights offer retailers clear strategic guidelines to tailor their promotional approaches without hurting consumers’ fairness perceptions.