Journal Must-reads from Peter Verhoef, University of Groningen

February 16, 2018

Peter Verhoef is Professor of Marketing and director of the Business School at the University of Groningen where he is founder of the Customer Insights Center and, more recently, the Groningen Digital Business Centre. His research focuses on customer management, customer loyalty, multi-channel issues, and category management, and has appeared in Harvard Business Review, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, and Marketing Science, among other publications. He is the co-author of Creating Value with Big Data Analytics (Routledge 2016).

Recommended reading
1
Digital Marketing: A Framework, Review and Research Agenda by P.K.  Kannan and H. Alice Li, International Journal of Research in Marketing

 “Anyone interested in marketing should read this article. It provides a very good overview on what is (un)known in the emerging field of digital marketing. Traditional marketing textbooks lack this kind of knowledge and this paper nicely integrates existing findings in a relevant framework. For marketers who want to be up to date on the latest findings on digital marketing in marketing science, I strongly recommend this paper.”

 

2
Riding the Waves: Revealing the Impact of Intrayear Demand Cycles on Advertising and Pricing Effectiveness by Maarten J. Gijsenberg, Journal of Marketing Research

“Firms need to understand the effectiveness of their advertising expenditures. This paper studies how effectiveness differs between demand peaks and demand drops during the year. Peaks may exist due to seasonal variation; for example, beer and ice consumption could be higher during summer periods.

“Interestingly this study shows that advertising is more effective during demand peaks, and less effective in lower demand periods. This suggests that firms should mainly advertise in peak periods. Price cuts are not more effective in demand peaks. The study also reports some difference between brands. Niche brands seem to benefit most from advertising more during demand peaks. In a period where there is such a strong focus on digital marketing efforts, this is a classic paper that focuses on mass advertising efforts in CPG market.”

 

3
Return on Service Amenities by Rebecca W. Hamilton, Roland T. Rust, Michel Wedel, and Chekitan S. Dev, Journal of Marketing Research

“In the service industry firms invest in providing additional services to their customers. These so-called service amenities induce additional costs. The question is, What are the returns? Customers may be more likely to choose the service provider (increased customer acquisition rates) and/or they may be more satisfied and thus more loyal to the service provider (increased retention rates).

“This paper uses discrete choice experiments to estimate the effects of service amenities on customers and to calculate return on these investments. They validate their model in a field study as well. Interestingly for the hotel industry, they find strong differences in ROI for different amenities (i.e. bottled water vs. free internet). The ROI of a bottle of water is extremely high for some brands, suggesting that these brands can benefit strongly from providing free water to their guests. Effects also seem to be brand-specific. If you are working in the service industry, this is a must-read for how to increase the ROI of service improvements.”

 

4
Effects of Traditional Advertising and Social Messages on Brand-Building Metrics and Customer Acquisition by Lisette de Vries, Sonja Gensler, and Peter S.H. Leeflang, Journal of Marketing

“Firms now invest in multiple channels to reach their potential customers, and social media has become an important communication channel. This study examines the relative effectiveness of communication channels. It provides a case study of a telecom provider on the effects of traditional advertising and new social communication on customer acquisition. It is a very relevant paper in an era where firms struggle with assessing the return on all their advertising efforts.

“Their study suggests that that traditional advertising is most effective for both brand building and customer acquisition. Impressions generated through social messages complement traditional advertising efforts. Thus, thoroughly orchestrating traditional advertising and a firm’s social media activities may improve a firm’s performance with respect to building the brand and encouraging customer acquisition. Clearly, this is only a single case study, so one should be careful to rely solely on their results. However, this study provides a nice method on how to assess the effectiveness of different advertising efforts.”

 

5
How Well Does Consumer-Based Brand Equity Align with Sales-Based Brand Equity and Marketing-Mix Response?  by Hannes Datta, Kusum L. Ailawadi, and Harald J. van Heerde, Journal of Marketing

“Firms in many industries measure consumers’ perceptions about their brand and specifically focus on consumer-based brand equity. This study addresses the question of how these measures relate to more sales-focused brand equity measures, specifically market share. Using 10 years of data, they show that three brand equity dimensions positively relate to market share. However, there is a slight negative correlation between energized differentiation and market share. The study also shows different elasticities for brands with specific brand equity measures. For example, promotions have stronger effects for high status and high esteem brands, while distribution has a weaker effect. This paper is rich in interesting findings for brand manufacturers. Most importantly, consumer brand equity measures matter and have an impact on how brands perform in the market.”

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