Recently, i came across an interesting pot made by Vivian Leung [https://blogs.ubc.ca/vivianwl/] that talked about relating to the consumer’s psychological factors to influence their behaviors. In it she also added an example of how McDonalds introduced its buttermilk biscuit by allowing customers to try free samples of it and following it up with coupons and special deals in order to attract new customers, turning them into regular customers.
I must say however, these tactics may only be effective in the short run, as customers see only the benefits of a free product/sample as there are no costs involved. But in the long run, if the product’s quality is not very high, the product will eventually fade off the market along with its limited time specials. An example of this, still using the Mcdonald’s buttermilk biscuit, as Vivian has mentioned in her post, the quality of the product is not very high, therefore, even though a lot of advertising and money has been put into promoting the product, it will not be a long lasting product.
So, in the case of these promotions, although these strategies are very effective, they can only have a long lasting effect for good quality products. A good example of this would be UFC pay per view in mexico, where they offered free viewing of all fights and then switched over to pay per view after getting a certain high amount of followers, and the strategy turned into a big success.