Do discount presentations influence gift purchase intentions and attitudes of Chinese outbound tourists?

This study examines how Chinese cultural elements influence the responses of Chinese tourists toward different price discount presentations used by destination retailers. It identifies “8” and combinations of it (e.g., 88) as Chinese cultural icons. It investigates how presenting discounts containing “88” influence the gift purchase intentions and attitudes toward gift shops and the tourism destination of Chinese outbound tourists. The results from two experiments show that Chinese tourists are more likely to purchase gifts and have positive attitudes toward gift shops and their destination when destination retailers use “Pay 88%” than when they use the economically equivalent “Get 12% off” as a price discount. These effects are sequentially driven by consumers’ perceptions of cultural acknowledgment and their positive affect. Moreover, the effects only hold when the country of origin of the retailer is Western; it disappears when it is Chinese.