Retail promotional advertising. Do the number of deal items and size of deal discounts affect store performance?

Retailers use advertised price promotions to attract customers and stimulate store traffic and sales. While several studies have investigated the efficacy of individual-brand promotions, little empirical research has investigated the ways in which store-level promotion strategies influence retail performance. This article reports on a natural experiment involving a change in a grocery store's promotion strategy from featuring many items at small discounts, to a few items at deep discounts. Results of a time series intervention analysis indicate that such a change in strategy led to an increase in chain-level sales dollars but did not affect customer traffic.