ServiceFriday: All About Alliteration – The Impact of Alliterative Promotions on Purchase Behavior
Why was Subway’s “$5 Footlong” viewed as an iconic and beloved deal for years on end? Considering the fact that those footlongs often added up to more than $5, it seems quite puzzling. Alliteration, or the repetition of initial word sounds across two or more proximal words, may be the answer to this puzzle. Recent research suggests that alliteration can positively influence deal evaluations and purchase behavior.
The study, published in the Journal of Retailing, focused on examining the impact of alliterative promotional messages on consumer evaluations and choices. Researchers conducted four experiments to test to the effect of alliteration on choice, deal evaluation, and processing speed.
Experiment 1 presented participants with the choice to select between “Two Twix” and “Two Snickers” (alliterative condition) or between a “Couple Twix” and a “Couple Snickers” (non-alliterative condition). The data shows that in the non-alliterative condition 44.8% of participants chose Twix compared to the 55.2% that chose Snickers. This is noticeably lesser than the 72.4% of participants that selected Twix over Snickers in the alliterative condition. “Because choice conditions only differed on alliteration, this provides evidence that alliteration can alter consumer choices.” researchers discovered.
In Experiment 2, fictitious shirt brands were displayed as alliterative and non-alliterative promotional messages to participants. Researchers than measured deal evaluations by asking participants about purchase intentions, how attractive the offer was, how happy they were with the deal, and how much value for their money the deal provided. Participants were also asked if the promotional messages sounded right and how good of a “ring” they had to them. “Our aggregate deal evaluation scale revealed a significant main effect of alliteration; participants in the alliterative condition felt the deal was better relative to those in the non-alliterative conditions.”
Experiment 3’s purpose was to test if alliterative messages facilitated faster processing speeds and if this impacted participants’ perceptions of how good or bad the deals were. Sitting in isolated rooms with a computer, they were asked to respond as quickly as possible to whether they agreed on if 40 promotions represented a good deal. The results indicated that alliterative promotions were processed much faster than non-alliterative messages and had the highest agreement scores (i.e. participants thought they represented good deals).
The findings from Experiment 3 were reinforced in Experiment 4 with the noticeable difference being that alliterative promotions of the fictitious bar soap brands featured the objectively worse price. “9 Neven for $9” is a bad deal compared to “9 Neven for $8” but due to the alliterative nature of the former, the results indicated that the faster processing speed positively influenced the alliterative promotion.
Managerial implications
The results of this study are of great importance to retail management, particularly the findings from Experiment 4, which indicate consumers may opt to pay more for promotional messages that use alliteration. Researchers concluded that the effects of alliteration happen because alliterative promotions are more fluent, meaning easier to process.
The study shows that money may be “left on the table” if pricing promotion is not alliterative even if it is a better deal (lower price). Researchers suggest managers consider the alliterative avenue of pricing promotions when creating said messages.
“We provide evidence that alliterative pricing promotions can positively influence deal evaluations, product choice, and purchase behavior relative to non-alliterative pricing.”
To read the full article, go to the Journal of Retailing. (A fee may apply.)