Kim Corfman

Who they are

This page records the public professional record only. Nothing adverse is recorded and no motive is attributed.

The affiliation is the one the 1999 paper's record gives, and her wider career was not surveyed for this page. The paper is the single piece of her work used on this site, in the article Why Luxury Brands Hold Their Prices, where it supplies the account of a promotion as information about the brand.

Key papers

• Raghubir, P., & Corfman, K. (1999). 'When Do Price Promotions Affect Pretrial Brand Evaluations?' Journal of Marketing Research, 36(2), 211-222. doi:10.1177/002224379903600206

Key ideas

Raghubir and Corfman proposed that a promotion signals quality when it departs from the brand's own past promotional pattern or from common industry practice, and that product experts rely on promotions less than novices do. Three laboratory studies of a service promotion designed to drive trial found that consistency with past promotions, how unusual promoting was in the industry and consumer expertise determined when promotions hurt brand evaluations.

The concept page Promotion Signalling has the detail. The outcome measured was evaluation before purchase, not purchase. The paper was read here at the level of its published abstract.

What the paper asks

The 1999 paper asks when a price promotion changes what a consumer thinks of a brand before ever buying it. Its starting idea is that a promotion carries information. If a brand departs from its own past promotional pattern, or from what is common in its industry, a shopper may infer something about quality.

The authors also proposed a limit on the effect, that product experts rely on promotions less than novices do. Priya Raghubir is the first author, and the page for her, Priya Raghubir, covers her wider record.

How the paper is used on this site

The article Why Luxury Brands Hold Their Prices uses the paper to explain why a first markdown from a house that has never marked down can say more than the price cut itself. The reading across to luxury is the article's, and the experiments did not use luxury goods.

It sits in the article between the two long-run promotion studies, which tell what repeated promotion did to sales in groceries, and the hotel study, which tells how status-minded guests reacted to discount-website promotions. This paper supplies the mechanism that connects them, which is that a promotion is read as information.

What the paper does not show

It does not show that every promotion lowers evaluations. The effect depends on consistency with past promotions, how unusual promoting is in the industry and the consumer's expertise, and a brand that promotes regularly in an industry where promotion is routine is, on this account, the safest case.

It also says nothing about sales. The measure was brand evaluation before purchase, and the three studies were laboratory studies of a service promotion designed to drive trial.

Why the finding travels

The idea in the paper is simple enough to apply outside the laboratory. A customer who sees a brand do something unusual asks why, and the answer a customer reaches can be unflattering. That is the reason the paper has been cited for the question of what a markdown says about a luxury house, even though its experiments used a service and not a luxury good.

The limit is the one the authors built in. The inference depends on how far the promotion departs from the brand's own past and from its industry, and on how much the shopper knows. Where promotion is routine, the promotion says little. Where it is rare, it can say a great deal, and not always what the brand intended.

How it was read

The paper was read here at the level of its published abstract. Her listed affiliation is the Stern School of Business, New York University, as the paper's record gives it. Her wider career was not surveyed, nothing adverse is recorded, and no motive is attributed.

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