Journal of Interactive Marketing

A survey of 1,000 Chicago-area consumers suggests that concern about privacy issues varies depending on the situation, the company conducting the marketing activities, and the consumer's own personal need for the products being sold. In addition, the survey found that certain kinds of consumers are more negative about potential threats to their privacy than are others.

This article discusses a research tool for marketing strategies—Consumer Preference Structure Analysis—as an illustration of how direct marketers can benefit from an understanding of the patterns in consumer choice behavior. From purchasing histories and product attribute ratings, this innovative strategic marketing tool defines a hierarchy of buyer preferences and market competition. An analysis of findings from a mail survey of 565 women apparel buyers indicates that switching patterns between catalogs and catalog attribute ratings define a hierarchy of directly and indirectly competitive apparel catalogs. This leads to an explanation for consumer priorities in the women's apparel catalog market and, more generally, to an appreciation of how buyer behavior patterns and attribute ratings can be analyzed.

Limited resources combined with a desire to reach as many people as possible often make direct response public service announcements an important tool in educational campaigns. To understand the impact of direct-response TV PSAs, and find ways to increase their effectiveness, this study examined 1) the effects of a highly targeted HIV prevention message on young adults’ knowledge, perceptions, and intentions; and 2) whether altering two PSA elements, the telephone number used and the length of time it was displayed, would affect viewers’ recall and intention responses. The results indicated exposure to the PSA had no discernible effects on HIV-related knowledge, but did affect perceptions. Compared with an unexposed control group, students exposed to the PSA a) estimated seeing more HIV- and AIDS-related PSAs, b) rated the usefulness of TV PSAs lower, c) were more likely to rate their chances of contracting HIV as low or none (83 percent vs. 66 percent, p < .05), and d) expressed less desire to obtain more information. The use of an all-mnemonic phone “number” resulted in a threefold increase in recall of the CDC National AIDS Hotline phone number, but did not affect intentions to call. Overall, the results reaffirm the importance of deploying strategies that go beyond reliance on either a single PSA or TV PSAs alone to affect knowledge, perceptions, or intentions.

This article considers whether employment outside the home contributes to the feelings of time pressure experienced by working wives and their husbands. It then examines, for both spouses, whether or not feelings of greater time pressure are associated with mail/phone order preferences. Data gathered from 197 married persons residing in 34 states and the District of Columbia suggest that wives’ employment outside the home is related to both spouses’ feelings of time pressure. For neither spouse are feelings of greater time pressure linked with preference for nonstore shopping alternatives.

While the strength of direct response advertising lies in its accountability, trends in the direct marketing industry indicate other effectiveness measures, to complement sales, are needed for enhancing long-term customer relationships. Two such effectiveness measures are ad likability and feeling toward direct response products/services. Thirty randomly selected direct response print ads were evaluated by 146 respondents yielding 730 ad evaluations regarding perceptions that impact ad likability and feeling toward direct response products/services. A factor analysis of 27 content scales resulted in 5 ad content categories. The 5 content categories were used to examine their impact on feelings and likability of direct response advertisements.

In December, 1991, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991 became law. This bill regulates telemarketing activity and is intended to protect the home privacy interests of American telephone customers. The federal law is substantially similar to legislation recently enacted by numerous states. This article explains the main provisions of the new federal law, as well as the various state regulations. Then, the piece compares and contrasts the federal and state approaches to see if any state laws are preempted by the controlling federal bill. Finally, the article examines the free speech rights of telephone solicitors to determine if any of these new laws violate first amendment freedoms. An appendix provides a quick reference to the main provisions of the state laws.