Interactive marketing strategies and consumer engagement

Interactive Marketing

An Analysis of How Interactive Marketing Can Facilitate the Purchase Decision Process

In the Age of Information, the need to grab and hold a potential customer's attention on a company's Web site has assumed more importance than ever. Furthermore, when marketers today come to appreciate the fact that advertising is simply one of the important functions of the marketing process, they are in a better position to achieve their organizational goals by presenting their interactive messages to potential consumers in a more effective fashion. To help determine how this can best be achieved, this paper provides a review of the relevant literature to describe the background and overview of the issues under consideration, how interactive marketing can be used effectively, as well as some of the potential problems that have been experienced with this approach in the past. A summary of the research and salient findings will be provided in the conclusion.

Review and Discussion

Background and Overview.

In their essay, "Leveraging Customer Information to Develop Sequential Communication Strategies: A Case Study of Charitable-Giving Behavior," Peltier, Schibrowsky, and Schultz (2002) report that, "Interactive marketing, an emerging body of research in the marketing communications literature, offers considerable promise for enhancing our understanding of donor-recipient relationships" (p. 23). The concepts that drive interactive marketing today are founded in both theory and practice to the concepts of relationship marketing, one-on-one marketing, and customer relationship management, interactive marketing utilizes extensive "customer-driven" data that is gathered through person-to-person or person-to-technology contacts that provide marketers with the opportunity to develop individualized exchanges that are intended to affect a change in knowledge or behavior of at least one potential consumer of a company's products or services (Peltier et al., 2002). In order to maximize the value of interactive relationships, it is critical to not only measure who a company's potential consumers are and how they are going about their purchase decision process, companies today must also recognize the critical psychological factors that tend to influence why they are seeking or maintaining a relationship with a given enterprise (Peltier et al., 2002). Once this valuable information has been collected, it is then possible to synthesize interactive data to provide marketers with the information they need to implement consumer-intensive communications that are specifically geared towards satisfying the needs and wants of individual customers (Peltier et al., 2002).

In an effort to jump on the "Internet bandwagon," though, many companies have failed to achieve the benefits that can be attained through this process and therefore have been disappointed at the results provided by their online presence. According to Peltier and his associates, "For the most part, firms have tended to rely on either behavioral data or attitudinal data but have great difficulty combining the two. Thus, many organizations know what their customers do or how they feel but have difficulty understanding the total relationship" (p. 24).

A consistent theme that emerges from the research concerns how recent these innovations have been and how there remains a need for additional studies to ascertain just how people make a purchase decision online and how companies can compel them to do so. In this regard, Peltier et al. report that, "Because of a dearth of literature in this area, conceptual and empirical research that investigates how psychographic-related data, such as customer lifestyles, attitudes, beliefs, values, needs, motivations, and priorities, can be 'leveraged' to impact positive interactive relationships is warranted" (p. 24).

In addition, an increasingly important consideration in any analysis of interactive marketing communications is the question of how different it is from marketing communications using more traditional media. In this regard, Bryant and Zillman (2002) suggest that while various interactive media have been characterized as being more powerful, responsive, and customizable than conventional marketing media, the growing body of evidence to date indicates that American consumers, at least, tend to respond to interactive advertising in the same ways they respond to advertising in more traditional media, at least with respect to traditional measures of advertising effectiveness (Bryant & Zillman, 2002).

In other words, most American consumers keenly appreciate the ability to gain the information they need to make a purchase decision when and where they want it, and, properly conducted, interactive marketing provides this interactive framework. Unfortunately, properly conducting an interactive marketing campaign has become more and more challenging as marketers have adopted increasingly sophisticated techniques to draw potential customers to their Web sites and hold them there long enough to make a purchase decision in their favor. In this regard, some methods have been shown to be more effective than others and these issues are discussed further below.

Effective Interactive Marketing Techniques to Facilitate the Purchase Decision Process.

Because most American consumers can be considered to be in a hurry already, their online shopping experience may involve "surfing" quickly through a number of relevant sites in an effort to gain the information they need for this purpose. In this dynamic environment, seconds count! Interactive marketing provides consumers who are in a hurry with the ability to get this information they need in a real-time environment. While some observers suggest that the impact of the Internet on the marketing function will change things in fundamental ways in the future, the fact remains that the essence of the process remains the same no matter what the forum: to sell a service or a product in the most efficient manner possible. These essential ingredients can spell the difference between the success and failure of any organization, so it not surprising that in recent years (and months), there has been an increasing amount of attention paid to how to better use these interactive resources to facilitate the purchase decision process by the online consumer.

According to Davis, Peltier, Schibrowsky, and Schultz (2002), the last few years have witnessed a growing number of studies concerning how interactive marketing can serve to improve customer loyalty and organizational profits. "At its core," these authors advise, "interactive marketing relies on the premise that as customer contacts accumulate over time, opportunities exist to develop strong and mutually beneficial relational partnerships. More recently, the combined impact of the information revolution and advancing media technologies has placed a premium on research directed toward finding ways to understand and enhance interactive buyer-seller relationships" (p. 7).

As a natural extension of the interactive marketing function, the emerging technique uses important information about the potential customer that is gathered through various techniques such as "person-to-person" or "person-to-technology" features that provide companies with the ability to create individualized exchanges that can influence a change in knowledge or behavior of potential consumers. "Through interactivity," Davis and his colleagues advise, "database-driven longitudinal contact strategies may be developed that more efficiently and effectively manage buyer-seller relationships over time" (p. 8). According to Bryant and Zillman, "Comprehension is a vital part of interactive marketing communication, as it is with communication involving more traditional media. Interactive media have the potential advantage of providing a means for obtaining measures of comprehension on a real-time basis" (p. 384). While there remains a glaring need for additional studies in this regard, the research to date has determined that response to advertising on the Internet to be similar to response to advertising in other media, except that advertising on the Internet appeared to be easier to ignore (Bryant & Zillman, 2002). Furthermore, it has been shown that consumers are less price sensitive when providers on the Internet offer different rather than identical products, a finding that directly parallels findings in more-traditional retail settings (Bryant & Zillman, 2002).

In reality, the medium is of such recent origin that there remains a paucity of scholarly studies concerning interactive media, the interactivity of marketers, consumers, and ad messages; nevertheless, given its importance to the existing and future marketing functions, in the future, this assessment has gained increasing importance. According to Bryant and Zillman (2002), "interactive media place the consumer at the center of the study of marketing communication because effectiveness of marketing communications in such media hinges not only on how the marketer's message influences the consumer but also on how the consumer shapes and responds to the message" (p. 383).

Early on (at least as the phrase relates to the emerging online environment), Pavlou and Stewart (2000, cited in Hwang et al., 2003, p. 401) maintained that user involvement represents an important factor to take into account when considering the effectiveness of interactive marketing initiatives. Since that time, the emphasis on research into how interactive media can influence the purchase decision has largely been concentrated on the consumer and the marketer in order to gain the maximum return on investment in terms of consumer interaction and collaboration (Bryant & Zillman, 2002).

The research to date shows that when done properly, interactive marketing will give rise to the need for measures of the effectiveness of marketing communication that go beyond traditional measures. These new measures will focus on process as well as outcome and are likely to include measures of effectiveness that have previously been regarded as mediating variables (Bryant & Zillman, 2002). According to these authors, "The use of interactive media also draws attention to the theoretical differences between traditional conceptualizations on advertising and its applications to today's marketplace. Traditional approaches to advertising practice and research have implicitly assumed that advertising is something the marketer does to the consumer" (p. 369). By sharp contrast, interactive advertising makes it clear that what advertising does to the consumer is only one limited dimension of advertising, highlighting the need to understand what consumers do to advertising and how interactive media affect this two-way interaction (Bryant & Zillman, 2002).

While every situation is unique, there are some important commonalities that exist among potential consumers that should be taken into account. For example, the reasons any potential customers seek, self-select, process, use, and respond to information that are part of the decision-making process for a purchase involve an fundamental understanding of how interactive marketing communication takes place. Furthermore, the communication that does take place among multiple consumers over interactive media and computer-moderated forums such as portals and chat rooms has the potential to significantly influence the manner in which consumers tend to respond to marketers' communications.

According to some analysts, "Interactive media of various types not only open new opportunities for communication with and among consumers" (Spalter, 1996, cited in Bryant & Zillman, 2002, p. 369), they also create opportunities for creating new measures of consumer response to such communications, as well as to product offerings and other marketing initiatives. Furthermore, interactive media emphasize the significance of providing the potential consumer with the opportunity to make a real-time purchase decision in the realm of marketing communication (Bryant & Zillman, 2002).

Typical Problems Encountered with Interactive Marketing that Constrain the Purchase Decision. Interactive marketing appears to be much like riding a bike - the more one does it, the better one becomes. As more and more companies have established an online presence and extended their marketing function to include their Web sites, some problems have been encountered that should be taken into account. Clearly, some approaches have been more successful than others. The growing body of literature on Web-based marketing has been largely focused on some fairly annoying techniques such as banner advertisements, buttons, and pop-up windows (Hwang, Lee & McMillan, 2003). Needless to say, most American consumers simply hate unwanted and unsolicited marketing initiatives that interfere with their online shopping experience (pers. obs.), after all, they are in a hurry. In fact, these types of interactive marketing ploys may cause more harm than good when it comes to facilitating the purchase-decision process. According to Perina (2003), "Interactive signs in airports, taxis, street corners and public restrooms are turning the real world into an 'Outernet.' Some therapists believe that this digital blitzkrieg may ultimately contribute to a hotly contested disorder, 'sensory defensiveness'" (p. 78). By all accounts, though, no marketer in his or her right mind wants to encourage a defensive barrier against their message in the minds of potential consumers. Today, things have changed in fundamental ways and marketers who ignore these changes do so only at their peril.