The Psychology of Digital Discounts: Perceived Savings and Impulsive Consumption

Modern digital purchase has transformed simple price reduce to strategic sale devices designed for enticing consumers into unplanned purchases. This paper argued that how consumer would respond to sale is not only depend on dollar amount offered, but on how and when they perceive the sales opportunity and whether the offered items will provide them certain psychic benefit. Discount size, format (percentage off vs cashback), existence of a sense of urgency, credible messaging and availability of choice that make the whole product available with great saving then leads to psychological meaning of gain and hence stimulate impulsivity without rational considerations. Therefore, psychology of digital sale could be summarised as: Digital Discount -> Perceived Saving -> Psychological Attractiveness -> Reduced Deliberation -> Impulsive Consumption Finally, although conceptual, this paper theoretically illustrates why individuals often end up buying something they didn't want in the first place solely because it seems that wayward purchase is a 'money saving' offer. All suggested relationships are needs to be empirically validated in the subsequent research projects.

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