Sunny, Rainy, and Cloudy with a Chance of Mobile Promotion Effectiveness

Abstract

Although firms are leveraging weather conditions in promotions, they struggle to quantify the impact. This study exploits field experiment data on weather-based mobile promotions with over six million users. Results find that sunny and rainy weather have first-order main effects. Purchase responses to promotions are higher and faster in sunny weather relative to cloudy weather, whereas purchase responses to promotions are lower and slower in rainy weather. These findings are robust across different measures of weather changes with both backward-looking historical weather and forward-looking forecasts, as well as deviations from normal weather. Also, sunny and rainy weather have second-order interactive effects with ad copies of mobile promotions. Compared with the neutral ad copy, the prevention frame ad copy hurts the initial promotion boost induced by sunshine, but improves the initial promotion drop induced by rainfall. For marketers, these findings imply new opportunities in customer data analytics for more effective weather-based mobile targeting. Data and the online appendix are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mksc.2017.1044 .