MEROT Alain

Les résultats de quatre expérimentations conduites auprès de 922 personnes dans deux secteurs d’activités ont permis de montrer qu’il est possible d’inciter les consommateurs à modifier leur comportement pour conserver leur statut en utilisant la communication persuasive, via (1) des stratégies préventives, (2) le cadrage, et (3) en tenant compte de l’intensité de l’effort à réaliser pour le client. Enfin, les résultats montrent qu’il est possible d’atténuer les effets de la rétrogradation mais que les stratégies testées ne permettent pas d’annihiler totalement ses effets sur le consentement à payer, les intentions de fidélité et de prosélytisme.

This research focuses specifically on hierarchical programs (e.g. Gold, Silver). Literature empirically demonstrates the superiority of this kind of design ; they bring more consideration to customers who meet predefined spending level. However, if a customer falls short of the required spending level, firms have to downgrade him to a lower status and we know that demotion has negative effects on loyalty intentions. This research attempts to overcome this limitation by answering two questions : how to get the customer to maintain his/her status? and can we eliminate the negative effects of demotion ?

The results of four experiments conducted with 965 people in two different sectors have shown that it is possible to encourage consumers to change their behavior to maintain their status using persuasive communication via (1) prevention strategies, (2) framing and (3) by taking into account effort intensity. Finally, the results show that it is possible to mitigate the effects of demotion but the tested strategies fail to completely eradicate their effects on willingness to pay, loyalty intentions and word of mouth.