Flash sale or continuing Sale? Examining the timing flow of E-tailers’ promotion effects

Fierce competition in the e-commerce landscape compels retailers to leverage price promotions to boost sales. Most of the existing promotion literature investigated the consequence of promotion effects on increasing sales but did not analyze the process. This study fills this literature gap by discussing the timing flow of e-tailers’ promotion effects. The objective of this research is to examine how the extent of promotion discount affects the promptness and continuity of the promotion effects, moderated by consumer seniority and experience, featured products, and featured channels. We collected data from Woot.com in 2022, a popular United States–based e-tailer that commonly offers discounted products, and used regressions to analyze the data. Our findings suggest that the discount extent affects the promptness and continuity of the promotion effect in a U-shaped way. Therefore, an intermediate discount is optimal to achieve the highest promptness and continuity of the promotion effect. In addition, the timing flow of the promotion effects is moderated by three aspects–consumer, channel, and product. Consumers’ historical purchase behaviors, reflected by their experience, weaken the promptness of promotion effects. Furthermore, consumer experience and the featured channel accelerate the continuity of promotion effects. The featured products weaken the continuity of promotion effects. Our findings yield important managerial implications to guide e-tailers in leveraging appropriate promotional discounts to attract consumers soon and continuously enhance sales. E-tailers should also pay attention to the particular consumer segments and the channel and product features to achieve the best timing flow of the promotion effects.