Possessive case with gerund

The latter is better. There is no possession so the ' is wrong to me. What exactly do you mean? There were no promotions that enticed customers to purchase more than one product? There were no promotions simulating customers that had already purchases more than one product to purchase more.

If you mean what I think you mean (that the promotions were designed to encourage purchases, not to stimulate customers who had already decided to purchase more than one product) then neither sounds right to me. I suppose you could say:



There were no promotions that stimulated customers to purchase more than one product.

Perhaps show me how you'd write both meanings?

That the promotions didn't stimulate a customer to purchase a second product after they purchased the first

and that the promotions didn't stimulate a customer to purchase two products at once

There were no promotions that stimulated customers to purchase more than one product. -- some customers may have bought nothing, some may have bought one product, but none bought more than one product (at least, not as a result of any promotion).



For the other finer-grained meanings you want, I don't see any better ways to word it than what you've already suggested:

Hi again.

I'm going to change the sentence and thus the meaning, so that we can focus on the possessive case preceding the gerund:

There were no promotions that stimulated customers' purchasing a product.



There were no promotions that stimulated customers purchasin

Hi.

English 1b3's sentences:

There were no promotions that stimulated customers' purchasing more than one product.





There were no promotions that stimulated customers purchasing more than one product.



For the former sentence, I feel/think we could replace the

English 1b3
There were no promotions that stimulated customers' purchasing a product.

There were no promotions that stimulated customers purchasing a product.I'm afraid I'm still not clear what you're wanting to say. To me, the second one means:

There wer

Mr Wordyor are you talking about promotions stimulating (encouraging) customers to purchase products?

That is what I'm talking about, not the example sentence you gave.

The reason I used the apostrophe is because the promotions were to stimulate the customers' purchasing, not to stimulate the customers.

Take this example:

English 1b3
Take this example:

I can't stand his singing in the shower

Not 'him.

This is fine. (However, "him" is common and, to me, acceptable in everyday English.)

English 1b3Do you now see my version with the apostrophe as correct?

I'm afraid not. To me, the possessive + geru

Mr Wordy
There were no promotions that stimulated customers' purchasing of a product.

I was going to mention this version actually, but I can't see why this works but the one without of does not.

Are you able to explain it to me please?