The effects of increasing and decreasing discount strategies on purchase intention and the analysis of the role of limited quantity and time pressure: A case study of Sharvand chain stores

Marketers use different pricing strategies to receive a market value. One of these strategies is discount strategy that is applicable to different frames. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of increasing and decreasing discounts, quantity limitation, and time pressure on the purchase intention of customers. The study is based on a descriptive-survey method. In terms of purpose, it is a developmental-applied piece of research. It is conducted based on a pilot factorial design with eight different role playing scenarios distributed in the form of a questionnaire among the customers of Shahrvand chain stores. The data were collected from 320 questionnaires (i.e. 40 questionnaires for each scenario). The SPSS software was used for the data analysis. In this research, independent t-tests were used to evaluate the effects of several variables including discount strategy (incremental and decreasing), limited quantitative strategy (presenting two products together or presenting one product) and the existence of time pressure and the absence of time pressure. To evaluate the validity of the questionnaire and the reliability, content validity and Cronbach's alpha methods were used respectively. The results of the research show that there is no significant difference between the impact of increasing and decreasing discounts strategies on the purchase intention of customers. But there is a significant difference between the impacts of limited quantity and limited time on the purchase intention of customers.