Acquisition and retention · Field experiment testing four marketing campaigns
Can Marketing Campaigns Induce Multichannel Buying and More Profitable Customers? A Field Experiment
Montaguti, E., Neslin, S. A., & Valentini, S. (2016). Marketing Science, 35(2), 201–217.
Plain-English take
The experiment tests whether campaign design can cause multichannel buying and more profitable customer behavior, distinguishing communication content from financial incentives. For your marketing: For product-led and sales-assisted motions, test whether messaging or an incentive changes adoption of a second channel or product path, and measure contribution rather than channel count alone.
How much weight to give this
4.0/5 Useful evidence with meaningful caveats
The 1–5 evidence-check score is a practical reading aid, not a formal peer review or a probability that a conclusion is true. It combines design strength (2 points), sample reporting (1), comparison/control clarity (1), and how much of the paper could be checked (1). Access affects how confidently this directory can assess a study, not the study's underlying quality. Blinding is reported separately because it is not relevant to every design.
An experiment is useful for causal evidence, but the accessible profile does not establish random assignment.
A usable sample size is not stated in the profile's accessible source.
Experimental comparison is described; randomization or control details need checking in the paper.
An accessible full paper or manuscript is linked, making methods easier to check.
Double-blind? Blinding is not reported in the source reviewed; that does not establish whether blinding was or was not used.
Research question
What the authors investigated
Can marketing communications and incentives move customers into multichannel buying and increase their profitability?
Design
A field experiment tests four marketing campaigns that vary the communication message and whether a financial incentive is offered.
Sample and setting
Customers of a multichannel retailer in the experiment; the sources reviewed here do not provide the sample count in the abstract excerpt.
Reported result
What the study found
The experiment directly evaluates whether campaign design can cause multichannel buying and more profitable customer behavior, distinguishing communication content from financial incentives.
This is a paraphrase of the source. Check the original paper for definitions, estimates, statistical uncertainty and analysis details.
Scope and transfer
Limitations to keep in view
One retailer and channel environment; incentives and channel availability shape the result. Detailed estimates should be read in the paper before applying them to software acquisition or expansion.
Possible founder application
For product-led and sales-assisted motions, test whether messaging or an incentive changes adoption of a second channel or product path, and measure contribution rather than channel count alone.
Evidence access
Publisher record and author-hosted paper
INFORMS journal record and author-hosted manuscript; the four-campaign randomized design is described in the source.
If only an abstract or metadata was available, the profile is limited to claims supported there. A paper's paywall does not change its evidentiary status, but it limits what we can substantiate from accessible text.