{"id":3994,"date":"2018-03-07T15:46:08","date_gmt":"2018-03-07T19:46:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/questrom-magazine\/?page_id=3994"},"modified":"2018-04-25T10:57:53","modified_gmt":"2018-04-25T14:57:53","slug":"smarter-deals","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/questrom-magazine\/spring-2018\/smarter-deals\/","title":{"rendered":"Smarter Deals"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When two rival firms\u2014think Dunkin\u2019 Donuts and Starbucks\u2014flood customers with direct mail coupons, economic models suggest that, with prices lowered in tandem, neither one gains a competitive edge.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/questrom\/profile\/monic-sun\/\">Monic Sun<\/a> (GRS\u201906,\u201908), an assistant professor of marketing, says geotargeting\u2014pricing that tracks consumers not by their home addresses, but by the smartphones in their pockets\u2014may be a better bet, benefiting both shoppers and the firms they patronize. Smartphone offers can change every time a consumer\u2019s location does. Customers might get one coupon offer if they\u2019re close to the seller\u2019s store, a better offer if they\u2019re near a competitor\u2019s store, and a third if they\u2019re by neither.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFrom a competitive standpoint, geotargeting has fewer bad implications than traditional coupons,\u201d says Sun, who <a href=\"https:\/\/pubsonline.informs.org\/doi\/abs\/10.1287\/mksc.2017.1030\">coauthored a paper<\/a> on the subject with researchers at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nyu.edu\/\">New York University<\/a> and the <a href=\"https:\/\/uconn.edu\/\">University of Connecticut<\/a>. \u201cIf you use it in the right way, mobile targeting can outperform both nontargeted uniform pricing and traditional coupon targeting.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But smartphone deals, unlike direct mail, also allow buyers to change their location\u2014within reason\u2014to snare a better deal. For that reason, says Sun, firms must exercise caution in the value of the coupons they provide. \u201cThe increased flexibility for these consumers to arbitrage by changing locations puts a restriction on how aggressively the firms can compete with other firms at each location,\u201d she says. Companies must also rein in their aggressiveness so they don\u2019t cannibalize their own sales if they have multiple locations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When two rival firms\u2014think Dunkin\u2019 Donuts and Starbucks\u2014flood customers with direct mail coupons, economic models suggest that, with prices lowered in tandem, neither one gains a competitive edge. Monic Sun (GRS\u201906,\u201908), an assistant professor of marketing, says geotargeting\u2014pricing that tracks consumers not by their home addresses, but by the smartphones in their pockets\u2014may be a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13452,"featured_media":0,"parent":3875,"menu_order":6,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"story.php","meta":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Smarter Deals - Questrom Magazine<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/questrom-magazine\/spring-2018\/smarter-deals\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Smarter Deals - Questrom Magazine\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"When two rival firms\u2014think Dunkin\u2019 Donuts and Starbucks\u2014flood customers with direct mail coupons, economic models suggest that, with prices lowered in tandem, neither one gains a competitive edge. 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Monic Sun (GRS\u201906,\u201908), an assistant professor of marketing, says geotargeting\u2014pricing that tracks consumers not by their home addresses, but by the smartphones in their pockets\u2014may be a [&hellip;]","og_url":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/questrom-magazine\/spring-2018\/smarter-deals\/","og_site_name":"Questrom Magazine","article_modified_time":"2018-04-25T14:57:53+00:00","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Est. reading time":"1 minute"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/questrom-magazine\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/questrom-magazine\/","name":"Questrom Magazine","description":"","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/questrom-magazine\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/questrom-magazine\/spring-2018\/smarter-deals\/","url":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/questrom-magazine\/spring-2018\/smarter-deals\/","name":"Smarter Deals - Questrom Magazine","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/questrom-magazine\/#website"},"datePublished":"2018-03-07T19:46:08+00:00","dateModified":"2018-04-25T14:57:53+00:00","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/questrom-magazine\/spring-2018\/smarter-deals\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/questrom-magazine\/spring-2018\/smarter-deals\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/questrom-magazine\/spring-2018\/smarter-deals\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/questrom-magazine\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Spring 2018","item":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/questrom-magazine\/spring-2018\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"Smarter Deals"}]}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/questrom-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3994"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/questrom-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/questrom-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/questrom-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13452"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/questrom-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3994"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/questrom-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3994\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4200,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/questrom-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3994\/revisions\/4200"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/questrom-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3875"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/questrom-magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}