An Exploratory Field Experiment on Actual Usage of Discount Coupons

In this study, we seek to answer the question of whether sending the product discount coupons through the mobile technology as opposed to another more traditional communication technology i.e., e-mail, will yield different effect on consumer behavior? Through a real-world field experiment spanning four weeks, we observed that there is no significant difference in terms of coupons’ usage rate between the two technological means through which the coupons were disseminated, i.e., mobile phone in the form of short-message-service (SMS); and e-mail technology as e-mail message. However, we discovered that the discount coupons’ forwarding rate is significantly higher via e-mail as compared to SMS. Furthermore, the results provide indication that the propensity of using coupons received from a peer is higher as compared to coupons received from a merchant