Behavioral and psychological aspects of interactive marketing

Citation

Hausman, A. (2014), "Behavioral and psychological aspects of interactive marketing", Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing, Vol. 8 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/JRIM-06-2014-0033

Behavioral and psychological aspects of interactive marketing

Article Type: Guest Editorial From: Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing, Volume 8, Issue 3

I thank the Editor, Dr Debra Zahay, and publisher of the Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing for giving me the opportunity to edit this special issue on behavioral and psychological issues related to the Internet. This issue was important to me personally as I’ve actively used the Internet since before there was a World Wide Web. As my consumption and research followed the transition of the Internet through development of search engines like Google to e-commerce and social media, I’ve been disappointed that, from an academic standpoint, we placed too much emphasis on the technologies and not enough emphasis on the human side of digital technologies – behaviors, emotions and community. This special issue helps overcome that technological bias.

The articles in this special issue lie firmly within Web 2.0 and deal with human aspects of interactions between consumers and between consumers and brands in digital space. The first paper, “Consumer behavior in the online context”, by Cummins, Peltier, Schibrowsky and Nill, provides an excellent introduction to this special issue by reviewing literature related to the consumer behavior and social network theory as they apply to the Internet. Literature covering the period from 1993-2012, spanning over 900 articles across > 85 marketing journals, the paper identifies eight categories containing the bulk of research in this area: cognitive, user-generated content, demographics and segmentation, online usage, cross-cultural differences, online networks and communities, strategic usage and search. After highlighting seminal studies and findings across each category, the authors, acknowledging the exploratory nature of extant studies, suggest a number of potentially fruitful areas of study. This paper should provide a backbone for PhD seminars, thus providing a plethora of future dissertation topics.

The second paper, by Kabadayi and Price, investigates responses to online reviews and asks questions regarding how consumers respond (in terms of trust in reviews and purchase intentions) when firms manipulate online reviews of their brands. Building on Hunt/Vitell’s (1993) model of ethics and impression formation theory, the authors collected data from > 2000 US online shoppers. Findings show a decline in trust once subjects learned the company manipulated reviews, as expected. However, purchase intentions were more impacted when subjects were exposed to positive review manipulations (favoring the brand) than negative review manipulations (bashing a competitor’s brand).

The next paper, by Lee and Ma, investigates brand engagement in the form of liking and commenting on the Facebook social networking platform. Going beyond existing studies examining motivation for using the site, their paper explores personality traits (extroversion, neuroticism and openness to new experiences) motivating liking and sharing on Facebook. Mediating the relationship are two constructs, communicating and broadcasting.

Finally, a paper from Soares and Pinho explores consumer reactions to advertising in online social networks. Online social networks, such as Facebook and Twitter, offer platforms free of charge to gather the massive numbers of users necessary to provide advertisers’ reach. They rely on advertising to monetize their platforms. Yet, users voice concerns about advertising. Understanding how consumers respond to this advertising helps platform owners optimize market returns without losing users. Building a model on theories of group norms, enjoyment and social identity, the authors predict advertising acceptance and advertising relevance, which generate advertising value leading to positive responses to the advertising.

Moving beyond Web 2.0

Web 2.0 brought us closer to enjoying the psychological and sociological benefits of the World Wide Web, as individuals began using the Internet not only for information, but for entertainment, for support and to build community (#B3). Brands followed the lead of consumers who prefer digital, interactive communication to the one-way communication of traditional advertising. Understanding Web 2.0 is critical, but, as depicted in the graphic below, we’ve already entered Web 3.0, although transitioning is slow. Thus, the progress made by papers in this special issue is only the beginning of our quest to understand the psychological and behavioral aspects of digital users (#F1).

Figure 1. Evolution of the WWW

First suggested by Markov of the New York Times (#B3), characteristics of Web 3.0 include technologies, including widgets, but the major emphasis of Web 3.0 is on back-end technologies (rather than front-end innovations at the user interface) to make the Internet more intelligent, collaborative, open (#B3) and mobile (#B1). Wearables and expansion of mobile beyond smartphones – to automobiles and other devices – means the Internet is now always on, as connected consumers (#B2) expect information and tools to make their lives easier everywhere, all the time.

Semantic search, forcing search engines to think like users in delivering links to what users want, not what they asked for, increased personalization of Web sites and tools, mobile apps and behaviorally based advertising bleed over into new forms of business and ways of thinking about consumption. Foremost in this new way of consumption is the sharing economy where users share resources rather than buying them. Examples include Uber, which employes regular folks willing to use their private cars as taxi drivers to make money during downtime, and AirBnB, allowing homeowners to rent out extra rooms and sofas to consumers looking for a cheap place to stay.

Implications of Web 3.0 for research

Web 3.0 is a disruptive technology rather than a continuous improvement on Web 2.0.

Moving forward, what are the implications of Web 3.0 for academic research? Two implications come immediately to mind. First, never have marketers needed more guidance in planning and optimizing digital marketing strategy. Marketing academics must step in to provide overarching theories that help marketers assess their online market performance. Marketers must form alliances with practitioners to build more holistic models of online consumer behavior, including the symbiosis between the real world and virtual ones using the massive databases collected by these practitioners.

A second implication of Web 3.0 is the velocity of knowledge creation and dissemination, meaning that academics must work with practitioners to create relevant research. Digital marketing advances so fast that relying solely on published journal articles contributes to an irrelevance of our research.

In closing, I want to thank the authors for their outstanding work in creating thought-provoking articles and responding so promptly and completely to the recommendations of the excellent reviewers from the editorial review team and Debra Zahay for her patience and understanding. And, I thank you, the reader.

Angela Hausman

References

Jamison, J. (2012), “Web 3.0, the Mobil Era”, Techcrunch, available at: http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/11/analysis-web-3-0-the-mobile-era/(accessed 12 June 2014).

Solis, B. (2012), “Meet generation C: the connected consumer”, available at: http://www.briansolis.com/2012/04/meet-generation-c-the-connected-customer/ (accessed 12 June 2014).

Spivak, N. (2005), “Special report”, Lifeboat Foundation, available at: http://lifeboat.com/ex/web.3.0(accessed 12 June 2014).