In-store demonstrations as a promotion tool

Abstract Retailers and manufacturers jointly do their best to influence in-store customer behavior. One promotional tool often used by the industry but rarely studied by academics is in-store demonstrations. In this article we look at when and how demonstrations work the best. Two large field experiments were run and the results indicate that in-store demonstrations are powerful tools to increase sales. Furthermore, the results from the experiments show that the effectiveness of the demonstrations vary widely depending on when they and how they are executed.