Market researchers should be paying more attention to how consumers perceive products that are heavily promoted by reducing prices, according to Scott Davis, an assistant professor in the UC Davis Graduate School of Management. "The conventional wisdom was that if a company promoted a product through advertising it would essentially cheapen the image of the brand," says Davis, a pricing strategist who teaches courses on advertising and marketing at the UC Davis business school. His research has found that just the opposite occurs. By promoting and manipulating prices on selected personal-care products in a retail store laboratory, Davis and his co-researchers found that people's evaluations of products tended to increase when promoted. Conversely the evaluations decreased for products that were not promoted, compared to other brands that had been promoted. His research also demonstrated that product promotion reinforces a brand's positive image when the consumer has had a good experience with it.