The easier you get it, the less you cherish it? Research on the influence of coupon issuing methods on consumers from the perspective of psychological ownership

Based on the perspective of psychological ownership, this research explores how to issue coupons makes consumers value and use the coupons through four studies. Study 1 and study 2 show that participatory promotions lead to higher psychological ownership, expected regret and consumer willingness to use coupons than general promotions. Study 3 shows that, among participatory promotions, non-anonymous (vs. anonymous) participatory promotions are associated with more willingness to use coupons due to the mediation path effect of psychological ownership. Meanwhile, studies 1–3 show that, when coupons are scarce, the method of issuing coupons based on consumers’ willingness to use them has no effect. This may be because the scarcity of the coupons increases their value, and thus the intention to use them is unaffected by the method of issuance. Finally, we conduct study 4 to measure real behaviors to provide ecological validity. The results show that the actual number of coupons used decreases from high to low in the order of non-anonymous participatory promotions, anonymous participatory promotions and general promotions, which is consistent with our conclusions of studies 1-3. Our conclusions provide theoretical and managerial implications in the context of the increasing popularity of mobile internet and intelligent terminals.