The impacts of coupon and discount on exposure and various stages of conversion funnel: An empirical investigation of the online food delivery service

Abstract

With the rapid development of delivery services, online-to-offline food delivery systems provide merchants the traffic support and marketing efforts to reach potential customers. Monitoring customer behavior allows us to measure conversion rates and analyze the relationship between marketing performance and the efforts of platforms or merchants. This study investigates the impact of incentives, including coupons from platforms and discounts from merchants, on exposure and conversion rates for different merchants. Besides, the dynamic analysis demonstrates significant adverse effects of lagged incentives on exposure and click rate. Platforms and merchants of online food delivery services stand to benefit from these insights.