{"title":"Do Handwritten Notes Benefit Online Retailers? A Field Experiment","authors":"Sanghwa Kim, Jeonghye Choi, Seung Hyun Kim","doi":"10.1177/10949968221102306","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Despite the technological advances in online retailing, the human touch continues to be essential to relationships between retailers and customers. Although a handwritten note is proposed as a simple means to help establish a personal relationship, its economic significance and alignment with current practices have been insufficiently studied. In this article, the authors evaluate the benefits of a handwritten note for an online retailer and reveal the boundary conditions of its benefits. A randomized field experiment demonstrates that presenting a handwritten note has a positive and significant effect on customer spending. More importantly, the authors observe that an additional marketing incentive (i.e., giveaway, price discount) attenuates this beneficial effect. Further, the study shows that these two effects arise with loyal customers, but not with nonloyal customers. A follow-up experiment reveals that warmth underlies the key findings, lending support for the theoretical prediction. The article concludes with a general discussion that the authors hope will inspire future research on relationship management in online retailing.","PeriodicalId":48260,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Interactive Marketing","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":6.8000,"publicationDate":"2022-07-19","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Journal of Interactive Marketing","FirstCategoryId":"91","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/10949968221102306","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"BUSINESS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Despite the technological advances in online retailing, the human touch continues to be essential to relationships between retailers and customers. Although a handwritten note is proposed as a simple means to help establish a personal relationship, its economic significance and alignment with current practices have been insufficiently studied. In this article, the authors evaluate the benefits of a handwritten note for an online retailer and reveal the boundary conditions of its benefits. A randomized field experiment demonstrates that presenting a handwritten note has a positive and significant effect on customer spending. More importantly, the authors observe that an additional marketing incentive (i.e., giveaway, price discount) attenuates this beneficial effect. Further, the study shows that these two effects arise with loyal customers, but not with nonloyal customers. A follow-up experiment reveals that warmth underlies the key findings, lending support for the theoretical prediction. The article concludes with a general discussion that the authors hope will inspire future research on relationship management in online retailing.
期刊介绍:
The Journal of Interactive Marketing aims to explore and discuss issues in the dynamic field of interactive marketing, encompassing both online and offline topics related to analyzing, targeting, and serving individual customers. The journal seeks to publish innovative, high-quality research that presents original results, methodologies, theories, and applications in interactive marketing. Manuscripts should address current or emerging managerial challenges and have the potential to influence both practice and theory in the field. The journal welcomes conceptually rigorous approaches of any type and does not favor or exclude specific methodologies.