The impact of retargeted direct mailings on consumer response

: a quantitative research

Abstract

Despite the digital age, direct mailings (DM) are (again) of high importance for managers and marketers to attract consumers and alter their behaviour. Specifically, retargeted direct mailings (RDM) are currently receiving the utmost attention in professional practice. Widely accessible technologies to collect valuable consumer data on behavioural and attitudinal aspects allow for tailoring campaigns to (re)activate customers with the goal of triggering a purchase and maximizing their lifetime value.This thesis studies the effectiveness of RDM on customer purchase behaviour, i.e., purchase and spending decision, and how this effect is moderated by customer relationship characteristics (purchase frequency and relationship duration) as well as communicated incentive type (discount vs. premium vs. none). For this purpose, panel data on individual purchase behaviour from 7,839 customers across 12 optical retailers in the Netherlands over 8 years is analysed.The results show that while RDMs, in general, significantly alter purchase likelihood and spending amount, this positive effect is diminished for customers with higher purchase frequencies. Moreover, RDMs have a higher positive effect on customers with higher relationship durations with their retailers. Furthermore, communicating an incentive eliminates the original positive impact of RDMs without incentive while the size of the impact does not significantly differ between discounts and premiums.These results confirm that customers respond heterogeneously to RDM campaigns and that especially the customer life cycle stage is a decisive factor. It provides guidance for managers and marketers on which metrics to track, whom to target, and how to design their RDM communications.

Date of Award	28 Jun 2023
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Saeid Vafainia (Supervisor)