Promotional Campaign Duration and Word-of-Mouth in Durable Good Adoption

81 Pages Posted: 31 Dec 2019

See all articles by Bryan Bollinger

Bryan Bollinger

New York University (NYU) - Department of Marketing

Kenneth Gillingham

Yale University

Stefan Lamp

University of Toulouse 1 - Toulouse School of Economics (TSE)

Tsvetan Tsvetanov

University of Kansas

Date Written: November 16, 2019

Abstract

Intensive promotional marketing campaigns can be used to introduce products to consumers with the goal of increasing awareness, consideration, purchase, and word-of-mouth (WOM). In this paper, we study the role of campaign duration on solar photovoltaic adoption using a large-scale field experiment, in which we randomly assign communities to campaigns with shorter durations, increasing the marketing intensity to maintain the same total resources per campaign. In our context, a nonprofit partner conducts the campaign in cooperation with an installer selected by the community. We combine detailed campaign information with administrative data on solar adoptions and a large-scale survey of adopters to assess the effect of campaign duration on the number of campaign events, prices paid, product adoption, and potential determinants of adoption during the campaign. We find that shortening the length of the campaign did not affect installer behavior, price, or product adoption during the campaign but led to significantly fewer leads and less WOM, resulting in significantly lower post-campaign adoption rates.

Keywords: Durable good adoption, promotional campaign duration, word-of-mouth, eld experiments

Suggested Citation

Bollinger, Bryan and Gillingham, Kenneth and Lamp, Stefan and Tsvetanov, Tsvetan, Promotional Campaign Duration and Word-of-Mouth in Durable Good Adoption (November 16, 2019). NYU Stern School of Business, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3500933 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3500933

Bryan Bollinger (Contact Author)

New York University (NYU) - Department of Marketing ( email )

40 W 4th St
Tisch 804
New York, NY 10012
United States

Kenneth Gillingham

Yale University ( email )

493 College St
New Haven, CT CT 06520
United States

Stefan Lamp

University of Toulouse 1 - Toulouse School of Economics (TSE) ( email )

1, Esplanade de l Universite
Toulouse, 31080
France

Tsvetan Tsvetanov

University of Kansas ( email )

1415
Lawrence, KS 66045
United States

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