Search · Field experiment
How Targeting Affects Customer Search: A Field Experiment
Management Science · 2017
Summary
Offers for products in categories customers had bought before raised purchase rates but reduced search activity.
For your marketing
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.
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.
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.
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.
Research sources
INFORMS publisher abstract retrieved with Firecrawl; full text was not inspected.