eThesis - School of Business electronic theses

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This study examined sales promotion and consumer behavior in the context of financial services. The purpose of the research was to study how sales promotion influence consumer behavior in the marketing of financial services. The influence of sales promotion was studied by observing the credit card purchases before, during and after the promotional periods. The subject was of interest for the case company as they had challenged the Finnish credit card markets by introducing new product features aimed at persuaiding customers to use credit card as a daily payment method. The initiative was reinforced by a set of sales promotion activities, which were the focus of this research.

The theoretical part of the research was based on the academic literature on the subjects of sales promotion, consumer behavior and financial services. Theoretical framework was constructed based on the literature. The empirical study was conducted as a quantitative research with a quasi-experimental time series design. The data in the analysis was located in the company database and it was analyzed by SAS 9.3 using statistical methods of one-way ANOVA, two-way ANOVA, cross tabulation and t-test.

Results in the context of opening promotion showed statistically significant variation between promotion and behavior but the constitution of the cumulative sales illustrated possibilities of alternative explanations. Results concerning birthday promotion did not reveal statistically significant differences between promotion and credit card transactions. The lack of marketing communications and sales frequencies, however leave the question unclear. After all, the most active customer group was customers age 18 to 37 and they were also the most influential group to sales promotion. Both promotions also showed that most of the purchases are very small, that is between 0-25€. That could indicate that the card was actually used in small daily purchases.