Can Marketing Campaigns Induce Multichannel Buying and More Profitable Customers? A Field Experiment

For your marketing

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.

For a software experiment, compare an explanation of the benefit of a second product path, the same explanation with an incentive, and the existing experience. Keep the intended behavior specific and include incentive and support costs when judging the outcome. This is a proposed adaptation of a retail study: it would test whether the idea transfers to your product, rather than establish that it already does.

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.

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.

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.

Research sources

INFORMS journal record and author-hosted manuscript; the four-campaign randomized design is described in the source.