Journal of Interactive Marketing

One of the major questions facing direct marketing fundraisers is “How much should we ask for?” If the asking amount is too high, fewer people might give. If the asking amount is too low, average donations might be reduced. This study was designed to answer this question. The results are encouraging for direct marketers. The presentation asking range affects the percentage of givers and the size of the gift. This implies that direct marketers can impact the donation choice process by manipulating the presentation of the asking range. This study represents a first step in understanding how context effects might benefit direct marketers.

This article develops the technology for evaluating contact decisions over time. It is assumed that a company has a database of inquirers and wishes to determine who should be selected to receive a potential stream of contacts. Individuals are first evaluated for receiving the initial contact with a break-even rule based on customers’ lifetime values and the potential of receiving up to four contacts. Those contracted who fail to respond are reevaluated for the second contact, and so on. The latter half of the article discusses the longitudinal response model that is needed to predict conditional response probabilities for evaluating the decision rules. This model is based on recent work on discrete survival models using logistic regression.

Testing new lists is the lifeline of the direct mail business because it provides access to new customers, which is necessary for future growth and profit. Mailers often lose money on list testing. This article proposes a procedure (method) that is cost-effective, and at the same time, provides adequate information about the universe so that the mailer can make the right decision whether to go slowly on a list or to jump from a sample test to a full run. Many articles have been written suggesting, on a theoretical level, how the rollout response can be predicted from a sample test, but no one has shown whether or not that method works when applied to real data. This article not only proposes a new method for predicting rollout response from a sample test, but also tests it with real data. Furthermore, it compares the results of the two methods. The results show that the method described here gives far better rollout predictors than the other method. This article also suggests a mailing strategy that can be used as a guide.

The long interview is an intensive questioning of respondents selected for their special knowledge, experiences, and insights (or ignorance) of the topic under study. The objectives of the long interview include learning the thinking, feeling, and doing processes of the respondents, including an understanding of the respondent's worldview of the topic under study in her or his own language. We compare the strengths and weaknesses of the long interview to other primary data collection methods. We describe a research application of the long interview in direct marketing. The study was designed to: a) learn about the rich complexities in the lives of household gardeners buying and using seeds/plants after responding to direct marketing appeals, and b) resolve the conflicting “theories-in-use” of how and why different customer types purchase products. These differing theories were proposed by different managers in the firm sponsoring the study. The development and critical testing of competing theories-in-use are described. The study was designed to learn about five customer types. The results include thick descriptions of the processes of buying and using seeds and plants purchased through direct marketing offers and store visits.

This study examines how two information-processing theories in consumer research, categorization and deliberative processing, apply to mail-sorting behavior. Experimental subjects were exposed to a mail envelope that was consistent with, or discrepant from, their existing cognitive categories to stimulate different processing behavior across groups. Expertise in direct mail was also examined for its effects on several measures of cognitive response. The data indicate that both types of processing are evident and that expertise plays a different role in mail sorting than previously expected.

In addition to products and services, the direct marketing transaction offers a commodity that is priceless: the customer's personal shopping safety. The potential for danger in today's store environment enables the direct marketer to highlight customer safety as a major distinguishing component of the direct product offering. The inherent customer safety of the direct marketing transaction is vital to society. It is also a feature which, if optimally marketed, offers profit potential whose magnitude may not have existed since Ward, Sears, and Roebuck made shopping available to rural America. Thus, the direct marketer has an immense opportunity and obligation to educate consumers to insist on personal shopping safety as a key purchase criterion. Discussed are marketplace danger and how retailers are addressing it, opportunities and obligations for direct marketers, the theory and practice of marketing the direct shopping safety advantage, and two examples of approaches to creating safety advantage messages. Eighteen research hypotheses are presented, as is a table of nine topics for future study.