The Palgrave Handbook of Interactive Marketing

1067 Pages·2023·23.877 MB·English

by  Cheng Lu Wang

The Palgrave Handbook
of Interactive Marketing
Edited by
Cheng Lu Wang
The Palgrave Handbook of Interactive Marketing
Cheng Lu Wang
Editor
The Palgrave
Handbook
of Interactive Marketing
Editor
Cheng Lu Wang
University of New Haven
West Haven, CT, USA
ISBN 978-3-031-14960-3 ISBN 978-3-031-14961-0 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14961-0
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Foreword
I do not like to use Latin words, preferring to write with shorter, blunter
English words whose roots are in Anglo-Saxon or Norse. So it is odd that
we chose the word “interactive” over 30 years ago to sum up a claim about
the future of marketing, that the back-and-forth between marketers and
consumers would define a coming “age of addressability.” 1 And there was
a price to pay for the choice. It gave us an excuse not to think too graphically
about the many ways that the consumer side of market transactions would talk
back to the concentrated power of marketers. I would like in this foreword to
make amends.
But before the atonement, let us acknowledge that this clumsy word, a
melding of Latin’s “inter” and “activus,” has lasted remarkably well. In fact, it
is fair to describe it, as Charles Wang does, as still defining one of marketing’s
fastest growing academic fields. It has led Professor Wang to invite me to write
a foreword to this book. The breadth of this book’s contents amply justifies
the claim that the interactivity theme in marketing is still growing, and indeed
at an accelerating pace. Interactivity is at the core of many frontier market-
making issues, the internet of things, the metaverse, platform business models,
and live streaming, to name just four of the book’s feast of themes.
So in trying to redress the abstractness of the interaction label, I shall
respond to Professor Wang’s kind invitation not with more abstract theo-
rizing on the frontier issues of interactivity in marketing, but instead by
pointing to some concrete interaction phenomena, believing as I do that theo-
rizing should proceed from phenomena (imperfectly understood and slightly
puzzling patterns of fact in the world) to theory.
Consider the phenomenon of the Johnny Depp versus Amber Heard libel
trial. It gave us just such a pattern of fact to puzzle over when legacy media’s
coverage of the trial was beaten by the coverage of “influencers.” The trial was
1 Blattberg, Robert C. and John Deighton (1991), “Interactive Marketing: Exploiting
the Age of Addressability,” Sloan Management Review, 33 (Fall), 5–14.
v
vi FOREWORD
live streamed on cable networks, which should have given them an unbeatable
market share advantage. The cable format of live sessions and breakaways to
commentaries had dominated the marketing of media products such as the OJ
Simpson and Kyle Rittenhouse trials. Refined over decades of broadcasting, it
should have been the way to do trial-as-media-product. And yet it was not. A
relatively new form of packaging, commentary by specialist influencers, won
out. Emily D. Baker, a former Los Angeles County deputy district attorney
who started her online career by unboxing an iPhone, led the assault with
500,000 weekly views. Her podcast, “The Emily Show,” rose to first place on
Apple Podcasts for US entertainment news during the trial, but she was just
one of several direct-to-consumer law pundits who covered the trial. What
advantages did these solo media stars have over legacy media? Beyond their
legal credentials, they were interactive. To simple chat they could add, for
a fee, Super Chat, a feature offered by the YouTube Partner program. It
let viewers win immediate prominence for their questions. They could also
add, for another fee, Super Stickers to decorate their chat stream entries.
The money to be made by selling these premium chat features was nothing
compared to ad revenue (Emily Baker reportedly made $109,000 monthly
during the Depp/Heard trial) but the chance to interact helped build the audi-
ence that advertisers bought. A Los Angeles Times reporter said that at one
moment in the proceedings Baker had about 128,000 live viewers, compared
to 72,000 for LiveNOW, the Fox cable channel’s streaming service and 86,000
for the cable channel ET.2
Twitch is a closely related case in point. Is the bond among esports stars,
commentators, and followers more intense than the bonds found in legacy
media because the chat stream, the real-time responses to the show, became
part of the show?
Physical store retailing is interactive, in a limited sense because stores offer
goods, shoppers respond, and stores respond to the responses. But it fails a
basic test of interactivity over time in that the shopper is anonymous until
after the transaction is over, and not even then if they pay with cash. Shop-
kick and Ibotta are platforms that let store retailing become as interactive as
online retailing. Their apps run on the phones carried by shoppers, and let
brands and retailers manage two-way conversations with identified shoppers.
The merchants give points, known as kicks, for walking into stores, inspecting
products on shelves, and making purchases. Shoppers react by doing what the
apps suggest. The puzzle to be solved is that this kind of offline interaction has
been slower to be accepted than online. Compared to passive loyalty programs,
shoppers are reluctant to take part in the active interaction required to make
the Shopkick and Ibotta apps partners in conversation.
2 Sakoui, Anousha. (2022). “The Amber Heard-Johnny Depp trial has turned this
ex-L.A. prosecutor into a YouTube star”, Los Angeles Times, May 26, 2022. https://
www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2022-05-26/johnny-depp-amber-
heard-trial-youtube-emily-baker.
FOREWORD vii
Shein, the leading fast fashion brand in the USA, takes interaction in a
new direction. Shein operates as a front end to about 6000 Chinese clothing
factories, promoting their goods to customers in the USA on Tik Tok, Insta-
gram, and email. Where is the interaction? It is in a three-way conversation
between the brand, consumers, and the factories. Shein scours the internet for
clothing ideas, often finding them in the ideas of fashion influencers. It invites
factories to supply small quantities based on these ideas, and if an idea is a
success, invites factories to fill larger orders. Where Zara might ask factories
to fill minimum orders of 2000 items in 30 days, Shein’s first ask may be for
100 products in 10 days. The conversation is conducted not in the medium
of language, but in orders, deliveries, and sales.
Like Shein, Tik Tok itself is interactive in behavior, not messaging. The plat-
form offers a short video to an anonymous viewer. Depending on reaction, the
next video will be similar or different. After several rounds of this interaction,
Tik Tok’s algorithm will have begun to converge on the taste profile of the
viewer with more precision than many algorithms can do by using personal
data to profile the consumer. Of course, Tik Tok viewers may share a persis-
tent identifier such as an email address with Tik Tok, so that new visits can
start with a known profile, but viewers who prefer to be anonymous are at
very little disadvantage.
I promised no theory, but I cannot resist drawing an inductive general-
ization from these concrete cases. It amounts to a definition of interactivity.
An action and a reaction fall short of being an interaction. To be interactive,
three steps are needed. First there is an action, typically by the marketer on
the consumer. It can be a message or a non-verbal provocation like a coupon
or in Shein’s case an invitation to do business. Second there is a reaction. The
second actor, typically the consumer, responds, or fails to respond. Third, the
first actor acts again, in a way that takes account of the second actor’s response
or lack of response. Round three of an interaction is not just a repetition of
round one. The first actor learns. Persistent identity is vital to interactivity
unless, as in Tik Tok, the second actor stays in the relationship. Those cases
aside, a vital characteristic of the topic of this book is the ability of the parties
to recognize each other on subsequent encounters.
Boston, USA John A. Deighton
John A. Deighton is the Harold M. Brierley Professor of Business Administration
Emeritus at Harvard Business School. He specializes in data-driven marketing. His
recent published research includes “The Economic Impact of the Market-Making
Internet.” IAB, 2021 “The Socioeconomic Impact of Internet Tracking,” IAB, 2020,
and “Learning to Become a Taste Expert” (with Katherine LaTour), Journal of
Consumer Research, 2019. His Twitter feed is @HBSmktg.
viii FOREWORD
He is a past editor of the Journal of Consumer Research and the Journal of Interac-
tive Marketing, was Executive Director of the Marketing Science Institute, and was a
Director of the Berkman-Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.
Acknowledgements
I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to all authors who contribute to
this handbook meanwhile taking the role as peer reviewers for other chap-
ters. Their collective efforts and commitments make this book possible. I
also appreciate the assistance from Miss Jia Qi Cao, a graduate student from
Asia-Europe Business School at East China Normal University, who provided
tremendous help to communicate with authors and reviewers and to check the
format of each chapter.
My special thanks also go to additional reviewers who provide peer review
service to at least one chapter. Their valuable comments and constructive
suggestions to chapter authors significantly enhance the quality of each chapter
during the iterative revision process. The names of reviewers below are listed
alphabetically.
Dr. Victor A. Barger, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, USA
Dr. Ana Margarida Barreto, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa—ICNOVA,
Portugal
Dr. Nicky Chang Bi, University of Nebraska at Omaha, USA
Dr. Ricardo Godinho Bilro, ISCTE—Lisbon University Institute, Portugal
Dr. Andrew J. Dahl, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, USA
Dr. Thi Cam Tu Dinh, Yeungnam University, South Korea
Dr. Antonia Estrella-Ramón, University of Almería, Spain
Dr. Yang Feng, San Diego State University, USA
Dr. Youjiang Gao, Zhejiang University of Finance & Economics, China
Professor Sumeet Gupta, Indian Institute of Management Raipur, India
Dr. Nieves García de Frutos, University of Almería, Spain
Professor Sejin Ha, University of Tennessee, USA
Dr. Muhammad Iskandar Hamzah, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia
Dr. Tyler Hancock, University of Toledo, USA
Professor Ai-Zhong He, Hunan University, China
ix
x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Mr. Daniel Alejandro Mora Hernandez, Johannes Kepler University Linz,
Austria
Associate professor Hei-Fong Ho, Chang Jung Christian University, Taiwan
Professor Jacob Hornik, Tel Aviv University, Israel
Dr. Sara H. Hsieh, Tunghai University, Taiwan
Dr. Peng Hu, Anhui Agricultural University, China
Professor Minxue Huang, Wuhan University, China
Ms. Xiao Huang, Auburn University, USA
Dr. Fahad Ibrahim, Swansea University, UK
Dr. Krishnan Jeesha, Indian Institute of Management Lucknow, India
Dr. Chunli Ji, Macao Polytechnic University, China
Dr. Ying Jiang, Ontario Tech University, Canada
Dr. Eunsin Joo, Waseda University, Japan
Dr. Do Yuon Kim, Auburn University, USA
Dr. Jung-Hwan Kim, University of South Carolina, USA
Assist. Prof. Dr. Ines Kožuh, University of Maribor, Slovenia
Dr. Soyeon Kwon, Korea University, South Korea
Dr. Yoonjae Lee, Yeungnam University, South Korea
Dr. Crystal T. Lee, Shantou University, China
Professor Gang Li, North China University of Water Resources and Electric
Power, China
Associate Professor Junyun Liao, Jinan University, China
Professor Weng Marc Lim, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia and
Malaysia
Professor Wumei Liu, Lanzhou University, China
Associate Professor Laura Lucia-Palacios, University of Zaragoza, Spain
Dr. Rania B. Mostafa, Al Ain University, UAE
Dr. Kaustav Mukherjee, Coal India Limited, India
Mr. Jani Pavlicˇ, University of Maribor, Slovenia
Dr. Elizabeth Manser Payne, University of South Dakota, USA
Professor Keyoor Purani, Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode, India
Dr. Tareq Rasul, Australian Institute of Business (AIB), Australia
Mr. Mohsin Abdur Rehman, University of Oulu, Finland
Professor Jin Sun, University of International Business and Economics, China
Dr. Kemal Cem Söylemez, Market Development Specialist in Yarin DNS,
Turkey
Dr. Patricia R. Todd, Western Kentucky University, USA
Dr. Tina Tomažicˇ, University of Maribor, Slovenia
Dr. Ahmet Tug˘rul Tug˘er, Piri Reis University, Turkey
Dr. Kiseol Yang, University of North Texas, USA
Dr. Hye Jin Yoon, University of Georgia, USA
Dr. Ruonan Zhang, Auburn University at Montgomery, USA