The Relationship Between Sales Promotion Activities, Private Label Attitudes, and Purchase Intention

Introduction

Private labels are retailers’ own brands which are produced by another manufacturer. These products can only be found in specific retailers (Hsu & Hsu, 2015). Although PLs are called differently in the existing literature, they are often used by the retailers to convince consumers to prefer their stores because these products are manufactured exclusively for them (Lymperopoulos et al., 2010). Moreover, retailers can increase the number of private label alternatives with lower prices comparing the national brands for the consumers. By this means retailers have the possibility to address more consumers with different incomes.

There are different factors (such as price, brand name, past experiences, product performance and word-of-mouth activities) that have effects on consumers’ perception of quality, and therefore purchase decisions (Odabaşı, 2000). The priority of these factors may differ from consumer to consumer. For example, some consumers primarily look at the brand name before deciding which product to buy, where others pay attention to the price first. This fact also causes consumers to behave differently. Early researchers, who conducted the very first studies on social psychology and personality, had been unable to reveal empirical findings that show the consistent cause and effect relations between personality traits, attitudes, and behaviors. Logical consistency has great importance in understanding consumer behavior and as a result, predicting possible future behavioral choices (Koç, 2016).

In order to persuade consumers to choose certain products or brands, companies use various tools such as promotional activities. Especially by using sales promotion activities, companies try to influence their target markets and boost their sales for the short term (Horchover, 2002). While doing this, developing positive consumer attitudes toward the products or brands is also possible via sales promotion activities. It is a higher possibility that consumers intend to purchase a brand or a product if there is an extra-value offered (Kotler & Armstrong, 2016).

With this study, it is aimed to reveal the relation between sales promotion activities, consumers’ attitude toward PLs, and their intention to purchase them. The main purpose of the study is to emphasize the importance of sales promotion for consumers’ attitudes toward PL products. According to the literature review, it was seen that there is no study which focuses specifically on this main purpose. In this context three hard-discount retail stores, which offer consumers more advantageous prices comparing other retailers, were examined. These stores were chosen because they are widely spread around Turkey.