Frequent customers reported weaker intentions to stay with a business when a promotion was reserved for infrequent buyers than when a comparable offer was reserved for new customers, according to four online experiments.
The Psychology & Marketing study, published in March 2026, examined reactions from people who were excluded from targeted offers. It measured stated retention intentions, not actual cancellations or long-term customer spending.
Researchers Xinlan Li, Xingyu Wang and Yaping Chang compared offers intended to attract new buyers with promotions designed to bring infrequent customers back more often.
Both can make commercial sense. A first-purchase offer can reduce the risk of trying a business, while a return offer can remind an existing customer to buy again. The research asks what happens when a regular customer sees a benefit they cannot receive.
Who gets the offer can matter
The authors call a promotion for new customers an acquisition promotion. An offer directed at infrequent existing customers is an activation promotion. Frequent customers in the experiments were not eligible for either type.
Participants excluded from an activation promotion were more likely to compare themselves with the recipients and reported lower intentions to remain customers than those excluded from a new-customer offer, the authors report.
One possible interpretation is that an infrequent buyer may seem a more directly comparable customer than someone who has never purchased. The experiments investigated comparison as a mechanism, but they do not establish that every regular customer will view an offer as unfair.
The researchers also found that the negative response was weaker under some conditions, including when participants learned about the offer online rather than offline, or when the benefit was delayed rather than immediate. Those comparisons concern the experimental settings, not a guarantee that any channel or delayed reward will solve the issue.
Retention needs its own measurement
Stated intentions can help researchers compare reactions under controlled conditions. They are different from observing whether a customer actually stops buying, and the abstract does not establish the financial effect of the offers.
A business testing a targeted promotion can compare the additional purchases from eligible customers with changes in purchases, complaints and retention among customers who were not eligible. The cost of the discount and any sales that would have happened anyway also need to be included.
Our earlier reporting on how earlier discounts affect later purchase interest examined a different question: how a previous low price influenced people considering a subsequent offer.
Designing offers customers can understand
Clear eligibility terms give buyers a way to understand why an offer exists. A business can also examine what benefits its regular customers already receive and whether those benefits match what they value.
There is no evidence in these four experiments that every buyer must receive the same price. The commercial balance depends on the cost of reaching less-active customers and the value of maintaining relationships with people who already buy frequently.
