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 mobiletechnology as opposed to another more traditional communication technology i.e., e-mail, will yielddifferent effect on consumer behavior? Through a real world field experiment spanning four weeks, we observedthat there is no significant difference in terms of coupons’ usage rate between the two technological means throughwhich the coupons were disseminated, i.e., mobile phone in the form of short-message-service (SMS); and e-mailtechnology as e-mail message. However, we discovered that the discount coupons’ forwarding rate is significantlyhigher via e-mail as compared to SMS. Furthermore, the results provide indication that the propensity of usingcoupons received from a peer is higher as compared to coupons received from a merchant.