Retailers and brands are just starting to utilize online social media to support their businesses. Simultaneously, public displays are becoming ubiquitous in public places, raising the question about how these two technologies could be used together to attract new and existing customers as well as strengthen the relationship toward a focal brand. Accordingly, in a field experiment we displayed ...

This study addresses a growing trend in how consumers obtain and use information prior to making their online purchasing decisions. Specifically, the authors investigate the relationship between online word-ofmouth (WOM, i.e., customer reviews and ratings) and sales (as measured by Amazon “ranks”) for different product categories. Using data collected from Amazon, the authors find that online W...

DOI: 10.2501/JAR-51-1-258-275 INTRoDUCTIoN To generate brand awareness for its Old Spice fragrance line, Procter & Gamble invited Facebook users to “Turn Up Your Man Smell” by becoming “fans” of its products. Within a week, the brand’s fan page had more than 120,000 new fans (Morrisey, 2009). Not content merely to draw fans to its Facebook page, the Red Robin restaurant chain enlisted Facebook ...

The rising costs of health care have forced changes in institutions that provide health care services to patients. Doctors, hospitals, insurance companies, and drug manufacturers have changed business practices to trim costs and maximize profits. One practice exploited by pharmaceutical companies is the freedom to advertise prescription drug products.' Direct-to-consumer advertising can effecti...

The proliferation of advertising in all communication media causes consumers to perceive a significant amount of competitiveness between advertised products, as well as to feel overwhelmed by the intrusiveness of their advertisements. When taken together, these dimensions form the concept ‘‘advertising clutter.’’ A review of the literature shows that perceived intrusiveness is the main componen...

This study scrutinizes the predictive relationship between three referral channels, search engine, social medial, and third-party advertising, and online consumer search and purchase. The results derived from vector autoregressive models suggest that the three channels have differential predictive relationship with sale measures. The predictive power of the three channels is also considerably d...

Many farms have begun operating websites in order to promote their businesses. This study used data from a survey of farms in the northeastern U.S. for the year 2004 in order to identify characteristics of farmers, farms, and farm businesses associated with website adoption. Following a technology adoption framework, a Probit model of website adoption was estimated to identify significant relat...

Consumers enjoy virtually limitless choice when selecting channels to fulfill their consumption needs. Each sales channel – from niche boutiques to catalog sales, big-box retail to ecommerce – offers a unique combination of risk and reward that entices certain consumers while dissuading others. Understanding why consumers select one channel over another – both as a general proposition and in in...

The goal of the current study is to determine the optimal level of advertising beyond which advertising expenditure will not be justified by revenues. To achieve the goal first different types of media were rated by experts as to the degree of their importance. Then data ware collected by interviewing the managers and reviewing different media resources. The collected data were then analyze...

This paper empirically investigates how the intensity of direct-to-consumer advertising depends on the sales channel, using data from the US mutual fund industry. The empirical analysis exploits the presence of two sales channels within the industry, one where firms sell directly to end consumers and another where firms sell through expert intermediaries. I find that firms in the direct sales c...