Acquisition and retention · Field experiment
How Targeting Affects Customer Search: A Field Experiment
Fong, N. M. (2017). Management Science, 63(7), 2353–2364.
Plain-English take
Offers for products in categories customers had bought before raised purchase rates but reduced search activity. For your marketing: Personalized recommendations can improve immediate relevance while narrowing exploration.
How much weight to give this
3.5/5 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.
This profile could be checked against an abstract or metadata, not the full paper.
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
Do targeted offers change what customers search for beyond the promoted products?
Design
Field experiment testing targeted email offers from an online wine retailer, with website search behavior as an outcome.
Sample and setting
Customers of an online wine retailer; the abstract does not report the sample size.
Reported result
What the study found
Offers for products in categories customers had bought before raised purchase rates but reduced search activity. The reduction reflected less search by customers who visited, not fewer visitors searching at all.
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 product category; sample size and full design details are not reported in the abstract. The effect on discovery may differ in products with different assortments and purchase cycles.
Possible founder application
Personalized recommendations can improve immediate relevance while narrowing exploration. When testing targeted landing pages or lifecycle offers, include cross-category discovery and downstream expansion in the outcome set.
Evidence access
Publisher abstract; full text may require access
INFORMS publisher abstract retrieved with Firecrawl; full text was not inspected.
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.