Hiding Gifts Behind the Veil of Vouchers: On the Effect of Gift Vouchers Versus Direct Gifts in Conditional Promotions

To boost sales, marketers often conduct promotions that offer gifts conditional on the purchase of a focal product. Such promotions can present gifts in different formats: customers could be informed that they will receive a gift directly or that they will receive a voucher entitling them to a gift. Normatively speaking, the two formats are equivalent, as a voucher’s value is identical to that of the gift it represents. Yet this article suggests that promotion format (voucher vs. direct gift) influences consumers’ intention to purchase the focal product. Five lab experiments and one field experiment reveal that, compared with presenting a gift directly, introducing a voucher attenuates the influence of gift value on purchase decisions, decreasing purchase intentions for promotions offering high-value gifts but increasing purchase intentions for promotions offering low-value gifts. This effect occurs because vouchers break the direct association between the focal product and the gift, reducing people’s tendency to compare the gift’s value with the focal product’s value. The effect observed can be attenuated by increasing the salience of gift value.