Effects of price discounts and bonus packs on online impulse buying

We investigated and compared the effects of 2 forms of sales promotion, namely, price discounts and bonus packs, on online impulse buying. Participants were 280 undergraduate business students at a Chinese university, who responded to a promotion on a mock website. Previous researchers have shown that bonus packs have a greater impact on offline impulse buying than do price discounts. However, our findings were different in the online impulse buying context, in which price discounts resulted in greater impulse buying intention than did bonus packs when the product was hedonic, and bonus packs were a more effective sales promotion than price discounts when the product was utilitarian. In addition, price discounts resulted in greater impulse buying intention than did bonus packs when the product was inexpensive, whereas bonus packs were a more effective sales promotion than were price discounts when the product was expensive.