Journal of Interactive Marketing

This article focuses on selected effects of gender in a direct response advertisement for a non-gendered item targeted towards professionals—both men and women. It assesses whether the specification of gender in the headline, and/or the gender of the message's spokesperson, affects the readers’ attitudes toward the message and their intention to respond. Nine versions of a direct response advertisement for a hypothetical financial services company were constructed. Each differed from the others in terms of the headline—Professional Man, Professional Person, Professional Woman—and the signature of the spokesperson—Mary West, J. West, John West—which appeared at the conclusion of the sales message. A national sample of 363 randomly selected men and women participated in a 3 × 3 × 2 within-subjects experiment. A gendered headline significantly affected males’ attitudes toward the test ad.

Although business is increasingly conducted on a global basis, the study of international retailing and international shopping behavior contingencies has been largely overlooked. This problem is particularly acute in the area of international nonstore retailing/shopping behavior. This article explores transnational shopping contingencies with a focus on non-store shopping.

The study is based on a comparison of Canadian and American responses to 48 psychographic type statements which are related to store and nonstore shopping. The comparison is timely in light of the recently enacted Canadian-American Free Trade Agreement. The results reveal that although Canadian and American shoppers are similar in many respects, they also exhibit some important differences. The most notable difference is the American shopper's more favorable predisposition to catalog patronage.

Inducing interest in and response to direct marketing campaigns from multiple organizational members is of continuing importance to business-to-business marketers. This article investigates the effects of a combination of direct telephone interaction and mail survey methods for improving customer response rates. Furthermore, this article examines the role of a “significant other” in the organization and the impact of this individual's endorsement on the cooperation and response rate from multiple organizational members. Two hundred and seventy-three project team members from 62 hospitals composed the research sample. The results demonstrated that this method was successful in generating a high multiple-subject response rate.

This article presents a schematic framework for explaining consumers’ cognitive processes involved in evaluating and making purchase decisions of directly marketed products. It argues that schematic representations of the three elements of direct marketing—source, mode, and response—influence consumers’ purchase decisions of directly marketed products. The schematic framework not only facilitates the understanding of the direct exchange process, but also provides guidelines for the development of response-enhancing direct marketing strategies.

For the past five years, the Direct Marketing Association, the Direct Marketing Educational Foundation and a corporate sponsor have joined forces to sponsor a national direct marketing competition for college students. This Collegiate ECHO competition gives student teams an opportunity to act as an ad agency, creating a direct marketing campaign for the sponsor/client.

In addition to the hands-on experience that all participants gain, there are Gold, Silver and Bronze Awards and prizes for the first, second and third-place teams.

What follows is an announcement of the upcoming competition plus the roster of winners from previous competitions.