Is online multiple-stores cooperative promotion better than single-store promotion? Misprediction from evaluation mode

Abstract Inspired by the evaluation mode theory, we show online vendors mispredict consumers’ responses to different types of sales displays. While vendors predict that consumers evaluate a featured product more positively in a cooperative sales promotion (CSP; i.e., multiple stores promoting synchronously) than in an independent sales promotion (ISP; i.e., a single store promoting independently), consumers actually do the opposite. The reason is that vendors compare CSP with ISP and are able to evaluate depending on perceived acquisition utility; consumers, however, see either CSP or ISP, resulting in difficulty in accessing acquisition utility. Thus, they evaluate according to perceived transaction utility.