The Palgrave Handbook

of Interactive Marketing
Edited by
Cheng Lu Wang
The Palgrave Handbook of Interactive Marketing
 Cheng Lu Wang
Editor

The Palgrave
Handbook
of Interactive Marketing
Editor
Cheng Lu Wang
University of New Haven
West Haven, CT, USA

ISBN 978-3-031-14960-3 ISBN 978-3-031-14961-0 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14961-0

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 Foreword

I do not like to use Latin words, preferring to write with shorter, blunter
English words whose roots are in Anglo-Saxon or Norse. So it is odd that
we chose the word “interactive” over 30 years ago to sum up a claim about
the future of marketing, that the back-and-forth between marketers and
consumers would define a coming “age of addressability.” 1 And there was
a price to pay for the choice. It gave us an excuse not to think too graphically
about the many ways that the consumer side of market transactions would talk
back to the concentrated power of marketers. I would like in this foreword to
make amends.
But before the atonement, let us acknowledge that this clumsy word, a
melding of Latin’s “inter” and “activus,” has lasted remarkably well. In fact, it
is fair to describe it, as Charles Wang does, as still defining one of marketing’s
fastest growing academic fields. It has led Professor Wang to invite me to write
a foreword to this book. The breadth of this book’s contents amply justifies
the claim that the interactivity theme in marketing is still growing, and indeed
at an accelerating pace. Interactivity is at the core of many frontier market-
making issues, the internet of things, the metaverse, platform business models,
and live streaming, to name just four of the book’s feast of themes.
So in trying to redress the abstractness of the interaction label, I shall
respond to Professor Wang’s kind invitation not with more abstract theo-
rizing on the frontier issues of interactivity in marketing, but instead by
pointing to some concrete interaction phenomena, believing as I do that theo-
rizing should proceed from phenomena (imperfectly understood and slightly
puzzling patterns of fact in the world) to theory.
Consider the phenomenon of the Johnny Depp versus Amber Heard libel
trial. It gave us just such a pattern of fact to puzzle over when legacy media’s
coverage of the trial was beaten by the coverage of “influencers.” The trial was
1 Blattberg, Robert C. and John Deighton (1991), “Interactive Marketing: Exploiting
the Age of Addressability,” Sloan Management Review, 33 (Fall), 5–14.

v
vi FOREWORD

live streamed on cable networks, which should have given them an unbeatable
market share advantage. The cable format of live sessions and breakaways to
commentaries had dominated the marketing of media products such as the OJ
Simpson and Kyle Rittenhouse trials. Refined over decades of broadcasting, it
should have been the way to do trial-as-media-product. And yet it was not. A
relatively new form of packaging, commentary by specialist influencers, won
out. Emily D. Baker, a former Los Angeles County deputy district attorney
who started her online career by unboxing an iPhone, led the assault with
500,000 weekly views. Her podcast, “The Emily Show,” rose to first place on
Apple Podcasts for US entertainment news during the trial, but she was just
one of several direct-to-consumer law pundits who covered the trial. What
advantages did these solo media stars have over legacy media? Beyond their
legal credentials, they were interactive. To simple chat they could add, for
a fee, Super Chat, a feature offered by the YouTube Partner program. It
let viewers win immediate prominence for their questions. They could also
add, for another fee, Super Stickers to decorate their chat stream entries.
The money to be made by selling these premium chat features was nothing
compared to ad revenue (Emily Baker reportedly made $109,000 monthly
during the Depp/Heard trial) but the chance to interact helped build the audi-
ence that advertisers bought. A Los Angeles Times reporter said that at one
moment in the proceedings Baker had about 128,000 live viewers, compared
to 72,000 for LiveNOW, the Fox cable channel’s streaming service and 86,000
for the cable channel ET.2
Twitch is a closely related case in point. Is the bond among esports stars,
commentators, and followers more intense than the bonds found in legacy
media because the chat stream, the real-time responses to the show, became
part of the show?
Physical store retailing is interactive, in a limited sense because stores offer
goods, shoppers respond, and stores respond to the responses. But it fails a
basic test of interactivity over time in that the shopper is anonymous until
after the transaction is over, and not even then if they pay with cash. Shop-
kick and Ibotta are platforms that let store retailing become as interactive as
online retailing. Their apps run on the phones carried by shoppers, and let
brands and retailers manage two-way conversations with identified shoppers.
The merchants give points, known as kicks, for walking into stores, inspecting
products on shelves, and making purchases. Shoppers react by doing what the
apps suggest. The puzzle to be solved is that this kind of offline interaction has
been slower to be accepted than online. Compared to passive loyalty programs,
shoppers are reluctant to take part in the active interaction required to make
the Shopkick and Ibotta apps partners in conversation.

2 Sakoui, Anousha. (2022). “The Amber Heard-Johnny Depp trial has turned this
ex-L.A. prosecutor into a YouTube star”, Los Angeles Times, May 26, 2022. https://
www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2022-05-26/johnny-depp-amber-
heard-trial-youtube-emily-baker.
 FOREWORD vii

Shein, the leading fast fashion brand in the USA, takes interaction in a
new direction. Shein operates as a front end to about 6000 Chinese clothing
factories, promoting their goods to customers in the USA on Tik Tok, Insta-
gram, and email. Where is the interaction? It is in a three-way conversation
between the brand, consumers, and the factories. Shein scours the internet for
clothing ideas, often finding them in the ideas of fashion influencers. It invites
factories to supply small quantities based on these ideas, and if an idea is a
success, invites factories to fill larger orders. Where Zara might ask factories
to fill minimum orders of 2000 items in 30 days, Shein’s first ask may be for
100 products in 10 days. The conversation is conducted not in the medium
of language, but in orders, deliveries, and sales.
Like Shein, Tik Tok itself is interactive in behavior, not messaging. The plat-
form offers a short video to an anonymous viewer. Depending on reaction, the
next video will be similar or different. After several rounds of this interaction,
Tik Tok’s algorithm will have begun to converge on the taste profile of the
viewer with more precision than many algorithms can do by using personal
data to profile the consumer. Of course, Tik Tok viewers may share a persis-
tent identifier such as an email address with Tik Tok, so that new visits can
start with a known profile, but viewers who prefer to be anonymous are at
very little disadvantage.
I promised no theory, but I cannot resist drawing an inductive general-
ization from these concrete cases. It amounts to a definition of interactivity.
An action and a reaction fall short of being an interaction. To be interactive,
three steps are needed. First there is an action, typically by the marketer on
the consumer. It can be a message or a non-verbal provocation like a coupon
or in Shein’s case an invitation to do business. Second there is a reaction. The
second actor, typically the consumer, responds, or fails to respond. Third, the
first actor acts again, in a way that takes account of the second actor’s response
or lack of response. Round three of an interaction is not just a repetition of
round one. The first actor learns. Persistent identity is vital to interactivity
unless, as in Tik Tok, the second actor stays in the relationship. Those cases
aside, a vital characteristic of the topic of this book is the ability of the parties
to recognize each other on subsequent encounters.

Boston, USA John A. Deighton

John A. Deighton is the Harold M. Brierley Professor of Business Administration

Emeritus at Harvard Business School. He specializes in data-driven marketing. His
recent published research includes “The Economic Impact of the Market-Making
Internet.” IAB, 2021 “The Socioeconomic Impact of Internet Tracking,” IAB, 2020,
and “Learning to Become a Taste Expert” (with Katherine LaTour), Journal of
Consumer Research, 2019. His Twitter feed is @HBSmktg.
viii FOREWORD

He is a past editor of the Journal of Consumer Research and the Journal of Interac-
tive Marketing, was Executive Director of the Marketing Science Institute, and was a
Director of the Berkman-Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University.
 Acknowledgements

I would like to extend my sincere gratitude to all authors who contribute to

this handbook meanwhile taking the role as peer reviewers for other chap-
ters. Their collective efforts and commitments make this book possible. I
also appreciate the assistance from Miss Jia Qi Cao, a graduate student from
Asia-Europe Business School at East China Normal University, who provided
tremendous help to communicate with authors and reviewers and to check the
format of each chapter.
My special thanks also go to additional reviewers who provide peer review
service to at least one chapter. Their valuable comments and constructive
suggestions to chapter authors significantly enhance the quality of each chapter
during the iterative revision process. The names of reviewers below are listed
alphabetically.

Dr. Victor A. Barger, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, USA

Dr. Ana Margarida Barreto, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa—ICNOVA,
Portugal
Dr. Nicky Chang Bi, University of Nebraska at Omaha, USA
Dr. Ricardo Godinho Bilro, ISCTE—Lisbon University Institute, Portugal
Dr. Andrew J. Dahl, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, USA
Dr. Thi Cam Tu Dinh, Yeungnam University, South Korea
Dr. Antonia Estrella-Ramón, University of Almería, Spain
Dr. Yang Feng, San Diego State University, USA
Dr. Youjiang Gao, Zhejiang University of Finance & Economics, China
Professor Sumeet Gupta, Indian Institute of Management Raipur, India
Dr. Nieves García de Frutos, University of Almería, Spain
Professor Sejin Ha, University of Tennessee, USA
Dr. Muhammad Iskandar Hamzah, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia
Dr. Tyler Hancock, University of Toledo, USA
Professor Ai-Zhong He, Hunan University, China

ix
x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Mr. Daniel Alejandro Mora Hernandez, Johannes Kepler University Linz,

Austria
Associate professor Hei-Fong Ho, Chang Jung Christian University, Taiwan
Professor Jacob Hornik, Tel Aviv University, Israel
Dr. Sara H. Hsieh, Tunghai University, Taiwan
Dr. Peng Hu, Anhui Agricultural University, China
Professor Minxue Huang, Wuhan University, China
Ms. Xiao Huang, Auburn University, USA
Dr. Fahad Ibrahim, Swansea University, UK
Dr. Krishnan Jeesha, Indian Institute of Management Lucknow, India
Dr. Chunli Ji, Macao Polytechnic University, China
Dr. Ying Jiang, Ontario Tech University, Canada
Dr. Eunsin Joo, Waseda University, Japan
Dr. Do Yuon Kim, Auburn University, USA
Dr. Jung-Hwan Kim, University of South Carolina, USA
Assist. Prof. Dr. Ines Kožuh, University of Maribor, Slovenia
Dr. Soyeon Kwon, Korea University, South Korea
Dr. Yoonjae Lee, Yeungnam University, South Korea
Dr. Crystal T. Lee, Shantou University, China
Professor Gang Li, North China University of Water Resources and Electric
Power, China
Associate Professor Junyun Liao, Jinan University, China
Professor Weng Marc Lim, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia and
Malaysia
Professor Wumei Liu, Lanzhou University, China
Associate Professor Laura Lucia-Palacios, University of Zaragoza, Spain
Dr. Rania B. Mostafa, Al Ain University, UAE
Dr. Kaustav Mukherjee, Coal India Limited, India
Mr. Jani Pavlič, University of Maribor, Slovenia
Dr. Elizabeth Manser Payne, University of South Dakota, USA
Professor Keyoor Purani, Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode, India
Dr. Tareq Rasul, Australian Institute of Business (AIB), Australia
Mr. Mohsin Abdur Rehman, University of Oulu, Finland
Professor Jin Sun, University of International Business and Economics, China
Dr. Kemal Cem Söylemez, Market Development Specialist in Yarin DNS,
Turkey
Dr. Patricia R. Todd, Western Kentucky University, USA
Dr. Tina Tomažič, University of Maribor, Slovenia
Dr. Ahmet Tuğrul Tuğer, Piri Reis University, Turkey
Dr. Kiseol Yang, University of North Texas, USA
Dr. Hye Jin Yoon, University of Georgia, USA
Dr. Ruonan Zhang, Auburn University at Montgomery, USA
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xi

Mr. Robert Zimmermann, University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria,

Austria
Cheng Lu Wang, Ph.D., Editor
 Contents

1 Interactive Marketing is the New Normal 1

Cheng Lu Wang

Part I Advancement of Interactive Marketing: An Overview

2 Evolution of Research in Interactive Marketing:
A Bibliometric and Thematic Review 15
Deepak Verma, Satish Kumar, and Divesh Kumar
3 From Direct Marketing Toward Interactive Marketing:
The Evolving Interactive Marketing Tools 43
Anne Moes, Marieke L. Fransen, Tibert Verhagen,
and Bob Fennis
4 Bridging the Theory and Practice of Digital Marketing
from Interactive Marketing Perspective: A Historical
Review 65
Ayşegül Sağkaya Güngör and Tuğçe Ozansoy Çadırcı
5 Interactive Digital Marketing Mechanisms: The
Significance in Digital Transformation 93
Mona Rashidirad and Hamidreza Shahbaznezhad
6 Empowering Consumers in Interactive Marketing:
Examining the Role of Perceived Control 117
Xiaohan Hu
7 How Brands Drive Electronic Word-of-Mouth
in an Interactive Marketing Environment: An Overview
and Future Research Directions 149
Ya You and Yi He

xiii
xiv CONTENTS

Part II Technology Development and Interactive Marketing

8 Technological Innovations in Interactive Marketing:
Enhancing Customer Experience at the New Retail Age 183
Sahil Singh Jasrotia
9 The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Interactive
Marketing: Improving Customer-Brand Relationship 199
Wajeeha Aslam and Kashif Farhat
10 How Internet of Things Is Shaping Consumer Behavior?
The Interactive Experience Between Customer and Smart
Object 219
Ching-Jui Keng, Hsin-Ying Liu, and Yu-Hsin Chen
11 The Physical Presence and Relationship Distance
for Efficient Consumer–AI-Business Interactions
and Marketing 239
Corina Pelau, Dan-Cristian Dabija, and Daniela Serban
12 Humanizing Chatbots for Interactive Marketing 255
Wan-Hsiu Sunny Tsai and Ching-Hua Chuan
13 Affective Interaction with Technology: The Role
of Virtual Assistants in Interactive Marketing 275
Guillermo Calahorra Candao, Carolina Herrando,
and María José Martín-De Hoyos

Part III Interactivity in the Virtual World

14 Augmented Reality in Interactive Marketing: The
State-Of-The-Art and Emerging Trends 301
Marc Riar, Jakob J. Korbel, Nannan Xi, Sophia Meywirth,
Rüdiger Zarnekow, and Juho Hamari
15 Interactive Marketing with Virtual Commerce Tools:
Purchasing Right Size and Fitted Garment in Fashion
Metaverse 329
Sadia Idrees, Gianpaolo Vignali, and Simeon Gill
16 Virtual Influencer as a Brand Avatar in Interactive
Marketing 353
Alice Audrezet and Bernadett Koles
17 Sentimental Interaction with Virtual Celebrities:
An Assessment from Customer-Generated Content 377
Bình Nghiêm-Phú and Jillian Rae Suter
 CONTENTS xv

18 The Conceptualization of “Presence” in Interactive

Marketing: A Systematic Review of 30 Years of Literature 397
Chen Chen, Xiaohan Hu, and Jacob T. Fisher

Part IV Platform Revolution and Customer Participation

19 The Platform Revolution in Interactive Marketing:
Increasing Customer-Brand Engagement on Social Media
Platforms 433
Zheng Shen
20 When in Rome, Do as the Romans Do: Differences
of Interactive Behaviors Across Social Media Networks 451
Qingjiang Yao
21 Enhancing Customer–Brand Interaction: Customer
Engagement on Brand Pages of Social Networking Sites 475
Zalfa Laili Hamzah and Azean Johari
22 Live Streaming as an Interactive Marketing Media:
Examining Douyin and Its Constructed Value
and Cultural Preference of Consumption in E-commerce 499
Boris L. F. Pun and Anthony Y. H. Fung
23 Interactive Experience of Collaborative Online Shopping:
Real-Time Interaction and Communication 519
Mohammad Rahim Esfidani and Behnam Izadi

Part V E-WOM and Influencer Marketing in the Interactive

Era
24 Reconceptualizing eWOM Communication: An Interactive
Perspective 547
Hongfei Liu and Chanaka Jayawardhena
25 Complaint Handling and Channel Selection
in the Interactive Marketing Era 571
Mariola Palazón and Inés López-López
26 What Do We Know About Influencers on Social Media?
Toward a New Conceptualization and Classification
of Influencers 593
María Sicilia and Manuela López
27 Influencer Marketing: A Triadically Interactive
Relationship Between Influencers, Followers, and Brands 623
Delphine Caruelle
xvi CONTENTS

28 Optimising the Effect of Influencer Marketing: Exploring

Consumers’ Interaction with Different Influencer Types
on Instagram 641
Daniella Ryding, Rosy Boardman, and Rafaella Konstantinou

Part VI Predictive Analytics and Personalized Targeting

29 Applying Predictive Analytics in Interactive Marketing:
How It Influences Customer Perception and Reaction? 667
Maggie Wenjing Liu, Qichao Zhu, Yige Yuan, and Sihan Wu
30 AI-Based Recommendation Systems: The Ultimate
Solution for Market Prediction and Targeting 683
Sandra Habil, Sara El-Deeb, and Noha El-Bassiouny
31 Deep Learning Applications for Interactive Marketing
in the Contemporary Digital Age 705
Billy Yu
32 Personalized Recommendation During Customer
Shopping Journey 729
Shobhana Chandra and Sanjeev Verma
33 Location-Based Proximity Marketing: An Interactive
Marketing Perspective 753
Aida Loussaief, Edward Ying-Lun Cheng,
Marta Yuan-Chen Lin, and Julian Ming-Sung Cheng

Part VII Practical Implications of Interactive Marketing

34 Customer Interactive Experience in Luxury Retailing: The
Application of AI-Enabled Chatbots in the Interactive
Marketing 785
Ni Zeng, Liru Jiang, Gianpaolo Vignali, and Daniella Ryding
35 Engaging and Entertaining Customers: Gamification
in Interactive Marketing 807
Devika Vashisht
36 Interactive Experience of Physical Servicescape and Online
Servicescape: A Review and Future Research 837
Zalfa Laili Hamzah and Muhammad Waqas
37 The Role of Touch, Touchscreens, and Haptic Technology
in Interactive Marketing: Evolution from Physical Touch
to Digital Touch 867
Ying Zhu
 CONTENTS xvii

38 It’s Fun to Play: Emoji Usage in Interactive Marketing

Communication 893
Ruijuan Wu

Part VIII A Necessary Evil? Unintended Consequences of

Interactive Marketing
39 Consumer Incivility in Virtual Spaces: Implications
for Interactive Marketing Research and Practice 917
Denitsa Dineva
40 The Dark Side of Gamification in Interactive Marketing 939
Chitrakshi Bhutani and Abhishek Behl
41 Ethical Considerations in Gamified Interactive Marketing
Praxis 963
Samaan Al-Msallam, Nannan Xi, and Juho Hamari
42 Value Co-creation or Value Co-destruction? the Role
of Negative Emotions in Consumer-Firm Interaction
in the Social Media Platform 987
Moreno Frau, Luca Frigau, Francesca Cabiddu,
and Francesco Mola

Glossary 1013
Index 1037
 Notes on Contributors

Dr. Al-Msallam Samaan is Postdoctoral Fellow in the Gamification Group

at the Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences
at Tampere University. Before joining Tampere University, he worked as
Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland. Dr. Al-
Msallam’s research focuses on studying gamification from the perspective of
marketing and ethics. His research has been published in journals and confer-
ences such as The European Marketing Academy Conference (EMAC) and
Journal of Marketing and Consumer Research. In his prior work, he has inves-
tigated many new marketing phenomena from perspectives of consumer expe-
rience and psychology, for example, aberrant consumer behavior, customer
engagement, and brand loyalty in social media, as well as tourism marketing.
Dr. Al-Msallam taught several courses in Marketing.
Aslam Wajeeha is Lecturer in the Business Administration Department of
IQRA University, Karachi, Pakistan. She is pursuing her doctorate studies
in Marketing from the University of Karachi, Pakistan. She received her
M.Phil. in Marketing from IQRA University and M.Sc. in Mathematics
from the University of Karachi. She has published several research papers in
reputed journals such as in Journal of Interactive Advertising, TQM Journal,
Technology in Society, Kybernetes, International Journal of Green Energy,
and Journal of Internet Commerce. Her research interest includes consumer
behavior, technology adoption, electronic word-of-mouth, and switching
behavior.
Dr. Audrezet Alice is Professor of Marketing at Institut Français de la Mode,
France. With a background in social sciences and humanities (B.Sc. in both
psychology and sociology), she holds an M.Sc. in marketing and a Ph.D. in
management sciences from Paris-Dauphine University. Her research focuses
on social media in society and fashion studies. She published in top inter-
national journals including Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services and

xix
xx NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Journal of Business Research. She currently co-guests editing a special issue on

virtual influencers on the Journal of Business Research. In an effort of science
dissemination, the results of her research are also available in Harvard Busi-
ness Review and various French media sites. She teaches courses related to
her research interests to Bachelor’s and Master’s students and to professional
executives.
Behl Abhishek is Assistant Professor at Management Development Insti-
tute, Gurgaon, India in the area of information technology and analytics.
He has earned his second Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Technology,
Bombay where his research is in the area of crowdfunding and gamification.
Dr. Behl is a winner of the prestigious “Naik and Rastogi award for excel-
lence in Ph.D.” from IIT Bombay. He holds a rich experience in teaching,
research, and consultancy. He has taught subjects like Business Analytics;
Marketing Analytics; Digital Marketing; Marketing Research. He has also
served as a Senior Manager—Research at Centre for Innovation Incubation
and Entrepreneurship, IIM Ahmedabad. His research is in the area of busi-
ness analytics and decision sciences with a focus on gamification, stakeholder
engagement, sustainability, and e-commerce startups. He is Associate Editor
of the Journal of Global Information Management (ABDC:A) Journal of Cases
on Information Technology (ABDC: C) and an area editor (South Asia) of the
International Journal of Emergency Services (ABDC:C). He features on the
editorial board of many journals like Journal of Global Marketing (ABDC: B);
Journal of Electronic Commerce in Organization (ABDC:B); Young Consumers
(ABDC:B).
Bhutani Chitrakshi is a research scholar, pursuing FPM in marketing at
Fortune Institute of International Business, Delhi, India. She has over 2.5
years of experience, including 1.5 years as a management associate in the
industry. During her corporate stint, she has been invited as a guest speaker
at business schools in India. In academia, she is developing her skills to write
research that creates impact on academics, industry, and society. Her areas of
research include consumer-brand relationships, new-age technologies, digital
platforms, and gamification in marketing. She is currently serving as the peer
reviewer for reputed journals like Journal of Global Information Management
(JGIM), and Information Resources Management Journal (IRMJ).
Dr. Boardman Rosy is Senior Lecturer in Fashion Business at the Depart-
ment of Materials, University of Manchester. Rosy’s research focuses on digital
strategy and innovation in the fashion retail industry. In particular, her research
specializes in e-commerce, digital marketing, and social media marketing,
using eye tracking technology and qualitative research methods. Her interest
is in exploring fashion retail’s current and future developments, focusing on
the digital economy and consumer behavior as well as how technology can
be used to solve issues related to both social and environmental sustainability.
Rosy has published several peer-reviewed academic papers in world-leading
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xxi

journals as well as books, including Social Commerce: Consumer Behaviour in

Online Environments (Springer, 2019) and Fashion Buying and Merchandising
in a Digital Society (Routledge, 2020).
Cabiddu Francesca is Full Professor at the Department of Economics and
Business, University of Cagliari (Italy). Her research has appeared in Annals of
Tourism Research, Business Horizons, The Service Industries Journal, Industrial
Marketing Management, Journal of Service Research, Tourism Management,
and other academic and applied journals.
Çadırcı Tuğçe Ozansoy has a Ph.D. degree in marketing. She is working as
Assistant Professor of marketing at Yıldız Technical University (YTU), Turkey.
Her main research areas include consumer behavior, digital consumption,
and fashion marketing. Currently, she is lecturing on consumption theory, e-
commerce, digital marketing, consumer behavior, and marketing research at
YTU.
Candao Guillermo Calahorra, M.Sc. is a Ph.D. student in Business Admin-
istration (Marketing) at the University of Zaragoza (Spain) and he coordinates
and produces post-production virtual reality projects within the Horizon 2020
EU Research and Innovation Programme. His research interests are in the
field of emotions, social media, and online consumer behavior. Particularly,
he is focused on the categorization of emotions through different ways of
communication within the Internet.
Dr. Caruelle Delphine is Associate Professor in Marketing at Kristiania
University College (Oslo, Norway). She holds a Ph.D. in Marketing from BI
Norwegian Business School (Oslo, Norway). Dr. Caruelle has presented her
research at international academic conferences such as AMA Winter Academic
Conference, Frontiers in Service, EMAC Doctoral Colloquium, and QUIS
Symposium. Her work has been published in Journal of Business Research. She
won the Liam Glynn Research Scholarship Award in 2018 and was selected as
a finalist for the SERVSIG Best Dissertation Award in 2020.
Ms. Chandra Shobhana is currently a doctoral student in Nitie (National
Institute of Industrial Engg., Mumbai). She has worked for eminent organi-
zations like ICICI Bank, 3M India Ltd, SP Jain Institute of Management and
Research in Marketing & Sales and Administration. In recent past she had
participated in the 8th UN PRME held in 2018. She has published two arti-
cles “Big Data and Sustainable Consumption: A Review and Research Agenda”
and “Personalization in Personalized Marketing: Trends and Ways forward.”
Chen Chen (ORCID: 0000-0003-1013-6932) is a Ph.D. student with inter-
ests focusing on how an immersive environment modulates individuals’ infor-
mation processing and consequently influences their cognitive performance
and decision-making. It turns into three interrelated areas: (1) Identifying
the underlying mechanisms of an immersive experience; (2) Understanding
xxii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

these mechanisms’ cognitive and persuasion outcomes; (3) Exploring how the
characteristics of the immersive environment modify these processes.
Cheng Edward Ying-Lun is currently studying in the Department of Elec-
tronic and Electrical Engineering, University College London, UK. His
current research interests are speech emotional recognition, location detection
through GPS, and architecture and landscape design with integrated engi-
neering. His research has been published in journals such as Journal of Business
Research, among others.
Cheng Julian Ming-Sung is Professor of Marketing in the Business Admin-
istration Department, National Central University, Taiwan. Dr. Cheng is also
Professor in the College of Business, University of Economics Ho-Chi-Minh
City, Vietnam. His research interests include marketing channels, martech,
branding, glocal marketing, sustainability marketing, AI and marketing, and
meta-analysis. His research has been published in various marketing journals
such as Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of International
Marketing, Industrial Marketing Management, International Journal of Oper-
ations and Production Management, Journal of Business Research, Journal of
Advertising Research, and European Journal of Marketing, among others.
Dr. Chen Yu-Hsin is currently Assistant Professor in the Department of Inter-
national Business, Shih Chien University, Taipei, Taiwan. His research focuses
on Internet marketing, customer behavior, and social network services.
Dr. Chuan Ching-Hua is currently Assistant Professor in Interactive Media
at the School of Communication, University of Miami, USA. Dr. Chuan is a
computer scientist who conducts research on human-centered computing and
computational communication. Her research interests include artificial intelli-
gence, machine learning, music information retrieval, audio signal processing,
data inclusion, and AI literacy.
Dabija Dan-Cristian is Full Professor and Ph.D. Supervisor at the Depart-
ment of Marketing, Babes, -Bolyai University, Romania. Dr. Dabija success-
fully supervised one Ph.D. student who recently graduated and has led
research projects on sustainability and the COVID-19 Resilience in Retail. He
published more than 100 papers in international ranked journals, participated
in numerous prestigious conferences, and serves as an associate or guest editor
for Amfiteatru Economic, Kybernetes, Journal of International Management.
His teaching disciplines are Retailing, International Marketing, Sales Promo-
tion, and Strategic Marketing. He was awarded the first book prize of the
Romanian Association of Economic Faculties (2017), the “Victor Slăvescu”
Prize (2019) of the Romanian Academy of Science, the Publons “Excellent
Reviewers” and the “Top Reviewers in Economics and Business” Awards
(2018), the “2020 MDPI Top Reviewer Award.”
Dineva Denitsa (Ph.D.) is Assistant Professor (Lecturer) in Marketing and
Strategy at Cardiff Business School, Cardiff University, UK. Her research area
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xxiii

revolves around the dark side of social media and particularly around the
different forms and moderation of uncivil consumer behaviors (e.g., trolling,
conflicts) on social media networks. Denitsa’s work has been published in
inter-disciplinary outlets including marketing, information technology, and
social psychology.
Prof. El-Bassiouny Noha is Vice Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor
and Head of Marketing at the Faculty of Management Technology, the
German University in Cairo (GUC), Egypt. She also acts as the lead academic
coordinator of the Business and Society research group which aims at bridging
the interface between business and society in the modern world in terms of
research, teaching, and community outreach. Her research interests lie in the
domains of consumer psychology, Islamic marketing, ethical marketing, corpo-
rate social responsibility, and sustainability. She has wide international exposure
and has published her works in reputable journals including the Journal of
Business Research, the International Journal of Consumer Studies, the Journal
of Consumer Marketing, the Social Responsibility Journal, the Journal of
Islamic Marketing, the International Journal of Bank Marketing, the Inter-
national Journal of Pharmaceutical and Healthcare Marketing, Journal of
Cleaner Production as well as Young Consumers. She is currently the Editor-
in-Chief of Management & Sustainability: An Arab Review (MSAR) as well
as Associate Editor of the Journal of Islamic Marketing. She has also received
many international awards including the prestigious Abdul Hameed Shoman
Arab Researchers Award (2019) on the level of the whole Arab world as well
as several Emerald Outstanding Reviewer Awards and Highly Commended
Paper awards.
Dr. El-Deeb Sara is a marketing scholar in the Faculty of Management Tech-
nology at the German University in Cairo (GUC), Egypt. She teaches a wide
range of topics in Digital Marketing and Media Psychology in GUC Egypt and
in GIU Berlin. She is particularly interested in cross-cultural studies, digital
marketing, consumer behavior, and media psychology. She is a researcher,
practitioner, and advisor in which she delivered corporate training and audits
for startups and for multinational firms. She is also an expert in quantita-
tive techniques including structural equation modelling and in various use of
quantitative software programs. She is a reviewer for several journals including
International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy and International Journal
of Internet Marketing and Advertising.
Esfidani Mohammad Rahim is Assistant Professor at the faculty of manage-
ment, university of Tehran, Iran. He holds a B.A., an M.S. in management,
and a Ph.D. in marketing management from the University of Tehran. His
research interests are consumer behavior, business-to-business marketing, and
ethical marketing. His work has been published in various journals, including
the International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, Journal of
xxiv NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Research in Interactive Marketing, Journal of Electronic Commerce Research,

and the International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management.
Farhat Kashif is Senior Lecturer in Management Sciences department of
Muhammad Ali Jinnah University, Karachi, Pakistan. He did Doctorate of
Philosophy in Marketing from Universiti Utara Malaysia. His research interest
includes consumer engagement behavior, technology adoption, and switching
behavior. He has published several research papers in reputed journals such as
Journal of Interactive Advertising, the TQM Journal, and Journal of Internet
Commerce.
Fennis Bob (Ph.D.) is Professor of Consumer Behavior at the University
of Groningen. He has published extensively on the psychology of persua-
sion and social influence, and the role of consumer self-regulation in these
processes.
Fisher Jacob T. is Assistant Professor in the College of Media at the Univer-
sity of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His research leverages brain imaging,
computational methods, and behavioral experiments to investigate how we
pay attention and make decisions in digital worlds and how the design of
digital technologies influences our attention and self-control. His work aims to
develop recommendations for developing digital messages and environments
that help us direct our attention in more effective ways.
Fransen Marieke L. (Ph.D.) is Professor of Positive Communication Science
at Radboud University. Her research focuses on communication, consumer
resistance, and consumer empowerment. She studies these topics from
different perspectives and publishes in communication, advertising, marketing,
and consumer-related journals.
Frau Moreno is Research Fellow at the Marketing Management Department,
Corvinus University of Budapest (Hungary). He holds a Ph.D. in Business
and Economics taken at the University of Cagliari (Italy) with honours and the
additional label of Doctor Europaeus, thanks to a period of research spent at
the BI Norwegian Business School. His research interests focus on marketing,
digital transformation, sustainability, and interactive value formation. He is
holding a Marie Curie research project called FooDization about the impact
of digital transformation on sustainable food production. His research has
appeared in peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of Service Research,
TQM Journal, International Journal of Marketing Studies, and other academic
and applied journals.
Frigau Luca is Assistant Professor in Statistics and Market Analysis at the
Department of Economics and Business Science of the University of Cagliari.
He was elected member of the ISBIS Executive as Vice-President for y-
BIS and Chair of the y-BIS Committee, as well as being a member of
the International Statistical Institute (ISI), International Society for Business
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xxv

and Industrial Statistics (ISBIS), the International Federation of Classifica-

tion Societies (IFCS), and the Italian Statistical Society (SIS). His main
research interests are Computational Statistics, Machine Learning, Statistical
Classification, Image Analysis, Shape Analysis, Big Data, Tree-based models,
Regularization, Text Mining, and Topic Modelling.
Fung Anthony Y. H. is Professor in the School of Journalism and Commu-
nication at the Chinese University of Hong Kong as well as a Professor in the
School of Art and Communication at Beijing Normal University at Beijing.
His research interests and teaching focus on popular culture and cultural
studies, popular music, gender and youth identity, cultural industries and
policy, and digital media studies. He has published widely in international
journals, and he has authored and edited more than 20 Chinese and English
books. His recent books are Youth Cultures in China (Polity Press, 2016)
(co-authored with de Kloet), Global Game Industries and Cultural Policy
(Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), Hong Kong Game Industry, Cultural Policy and
East Asian Rivalry (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018), and Made in Hong Kong:
Studies in Popular Music (Routledge, 2020).
Gill Simeon is Senior Lecturer in Fashion Technology, with the Department
of Materials, Faculty of Science and Engineering, Sackville Street Building
M13WE, University of Manchester, UK. Dr. Gill is a specialist in body scan-
ning and the application of body measurements in product development and a
core member of the Apparel Design Engineering (ADE) group at the Univer-
sity of Manchester. His research seeks to build clear links between individual
bodies and pattern shape requirements to address product fit and performance.
Developing body to pattern theory helps enable more sustainable bespoke
production methods as well as engage with better theory to support mass
production more inclusively.
Güngör Ayşegül Sağkaya has a Ph.D. degree in marketing. She is working as
Associate Professor of marketing at İstanbul Medeniyet University (IMU). Her
main research area is digital marketing and its impact on consumer behavior.
Currently, she is lecturing on digital marketing, marketing management,
strategic marketing, and e-commerce at IMU.
Ms. Habil Sandra is Marketing Assistant Lecturer and Ph.D. Candidate
in the Faculty of Management Technology at the German University in
Cairo (GUC), Egypt. She teaches various courses in Consumer Behavior,
Integrated Marketing Communications and International Marketing in GUC
Egypt. She is interested in certain research domains including artificial intel-
ligence, augmented reality, online consumer experience, digital marketing,
and consumer behavior. She has sufficient knowledge in quantitative data
analysis software (i.e., SPSS and AMOS). She also completed multiple certi-
fication in artificial intelligence, emerging technologies, and digital marketing
diploma. She participated lately in American Marketing Association (AMA)
xxvi NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

winter conference, 2022 and presented her work titled “Generation Covid:
Augmented Reality and the New Digital Consumer.”
Dr. Hamari Juho is Professor of gamification and the leader of the Gamifi-
cation Group at the Faculty of Information Technology and Communication
Sciences at Tampere University. Professor Hamari is leading research on gami-
fication under the Academy of Finland Flagship, Profiling, and Center of
Excellence programs. His and his group’s research covers several forms of
information technologies such as games, motivational information systems,
new media (social networking services, eSports), peer-to-peer economies
(sharing economy, crowdsourcing), and virtual economies. Dr. Hamari has
authored several seminal empirical, theoretical, and meta-analytical scholarly
articles on these topics from perspectives of consumer behavior, human-
computer interaction, game studies, and information systems science.
Dr. Hamzah Zalfa Laili is currently serving as Senior Lecturer at the
Faculty of Business and Economics, Universiti Malaya, Malaysia. Majority
of her research is directed toward an understanding of customer and brand
experience of corporate, product, service, and social media branding. Her
research works are published in Journal of Business Research, Journal of
Brand Management, Journal of Interactive Marketing, Journal of Research
in Interactive Marketing, Online Information Review, International Journal
of Bank Marketing, Journal of Consumer Marketing, Management Review
Quarterly and International Journal of Internet Marketing and Advertising.
Her research interests are mainly in the area of branding and consumer
psychology/behavior.
Dr. He Yi is the Chair and Professor of Marketing in the College of Busi-
ness and Economics at California State University, East Bay. She completed
her Ph.D. in International Marketing at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
She received her Master’s degree from University of Cincinnati. Her current
research interests include branding and brand portfolio management, social
media marketing, consumer psychology, and advertising effectiveness. Her
studies have appeared in journals such as Journal of Academy of Marketing
Science, Journal of Advertising, Marketing Letters, Journal of Interactive
Marketing, Journal of Business Research, Journal of International Marketing,
International Marketing Review and International Journal of Advertising.
Dr. Herrando Carolina is currently Assistant Professor at the University of
Zaragoza, Spain. Herrando’s research interests are in the fields of customer
experience and digital marketing. Her work has been published in journals
such as Journal of Business Research, Internet Research, International Journal of
Information Management, Electronic Commerce Research, Online Information
Review, or Frontiers in Psychology.
Dr. Hoyos María José Martín-De holds a Ph.D. in Business Administra-
tion and is Associate Professor in the Department of Marketing and Market
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xxvii

Research at the University of Zaragoza in Spain. Her research interests include

issues in e-commerce and consumer behavior, acceptance of new technologies,
and marketing management systems. Her work has been published in several
journals such as Industrial Marketing Management, Technovation, Journal of
Business Research, Interacting with Computers, Internet Research or Journal of
Research and Consumer Services.
Hu Xiaohan is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Institute of Communications
Research (ICR) at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She earned
her M.S. in Advertising at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and
B.A. in Advertising at Wuhan University in Wuhan, China. Her research
interests include interactive and digital advertising, consumer psychology, and
consumer behavior. Her current research projects investigate the role of user
control in affecting digital advertising and marketing effectiveness.
Idrees Sadia is a Ph.D. researcher and a textile designer. She has worked
with different fashion brands and renowned designers in Pakistan as a textile
designer. She has almost 7 years of teaching experience in Pakistan as a lecturer
and in the UK as a teaching assistant at the University of Manchester, UK.
She is also certified as an associate fellow of the higher education academy
(UK). Moreover, she has worked as a paper setter and examiner for PBTE
(Punjab Board of Technical Education) TEVTA Lahore, and the Univer-
sity of the Punjab. She completed her education (Bachelor’s to M.Phil.) in
textile and fashion design from the College of Home Economics (University
of the Punjab), Lahore, Pakistan. Now she is doing a Ph.D. Textile design
Fashion and Management (Department of Materials, Faculty of Science and
Engineering) from the University of Manchester, UK. During her Ph.D., she
presented her research work at various international conferences. Addition-
ally, she received the best presentation award, on the topic “Technological
advancement in fashion online retailing: A comparative study of Pakistan and
UK fashion e-commerce” presented at ICATT 2020: International Conference
on Applications of Textile Technology in Amsterdam.
Izadi Behnam holds a Ph.D. in Marketing Management at the University
of Tehran. He holds an M.S. in Marketing Management from the Univer-
sity of Tehran and a B.A. in Industrial Engineering from Kar University. His
research interests are in the areas of Social Commerce and Consumer Behavior.
His recent work has been published in the Journal of Electronic Commerce
Research.
Dr. Jasrotia Sahil Singh is Assistant Professor in the Area of Marketing
at Jaipuria Institute of Management, Indore, Madhya Pradesh, India. His
research interests include Consumer Behaviour, Retailing, Tourism Manage-
ment, and Marketing Education. His research has been published in journals
including International Journal of Retail and Distribution Management,
Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Journal of Education, and Journal of Public
Affairs.
xxviii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Jayawardhena Chanaka is Professor of Marketing at Surrey Business School,

University of Surrey, Head of Department of Marketing and Retailing, and
Visiting Professor at University of Hull and University of Jyväskylä, Finland.
Research interests include customer relationships, particularly in virtual and
service marketplaces and how organizations use technology in attracting,
developing, and maintaining customer relationships; how consumers evaluate
services, influence of social media and word-of-mouth on consumer decision-
making in consumption of services. Chanaka has over 100 articles published in
specialist journals and proceedings, including Industrial Marketing Manage-
ment, Journal of Business Research, European Journal of Marketing, Journal of
Marketing Management.
Jiang Liru is a Ph.D. student at Department of Material, University of
Manchester, Written works: “What makes consumers have neutral or nega-
tive responses to celebrity endorsement on social media? A mixed methods
study based on Chinese luxury fashion market since Covid-19” (accepted
by 28th International Conference on Recent Advances in Retailing and
Consumer Science); joined EuroMed conference and MMU DFI conference
in 2021; associate Fellowship awarded during her being a teaching assistant in
University of Manchester.
Johari Azean is a graduate from Universiti Malaya who studied in Master
of Management in Graduate School of Business, Faculty of Business and
Economics, Universiti Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. She has applied the
knowledge in her business in fabric handicrafts in Malaysia.
Dr. Keng Ching-Jui is currently Professor in the Department of Busi-
ness Management, National Taipei University of Technology. He completed
his Ph.D. at National Chengchi University. Professor Keng’s research inter-
ests include consumer behavior, e-commerce, Internet marketing, and social
network services. He has published papers in Computers in Human Behavior,
Information Research, Journal of Applied Social Psychology, Contemporary
Management Research, Electronic Commerce Research, International Journal
of Service Industry Management, and Cyberpsychology & Behavior.
Dr. Koles Bernadett is Associate Professor of Marketing and Consumer
Behaviour, and the Academic Director for the Bachelor of International Busi-
ness program at IÉSEG School of Management in Paris, France. She holds
a Doctorate (Ph.D.) in Marketing and Consumer Behaviour from Durham
University Business School (UK) and a Doctorate (Ed.D.) in Psychology
from Harvard University (USA). Bernadett’s research covers a range of
areas reflecting upon her multidisciplinary background and expertise. She has
devoted many years to studying the role of innovative technologies (e.g., Social
Media, virtual environments, Virtual Reality, Artificial Intelligence) on individ-
uals, consumers, and organizations, and currently pursues projects that focus
on various aspects of digital user behavior (human and virtual influencers,
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xxix

streamers, gamers and consumers) on online gaming and social media plat-
forms. Bernadett has further expertise in a range of consumer behavioral topics
(e.g., compensatory consumption, consumer compromise, brand love) which
she applies to understand human actions in digital and offline settings. Prior to
joining IÉSEG, she held professorial positions in the USA, Portugal, Hungary,
the UK, and France. Bernadett serves on the Editorial Board of the Interna-
tional Journal of Consumer Studies as an Associate Editor and has published
widely in international peer-reviewed journals. She also has experience in
managing Special Issues at different high-quality outlets, including Journal
of Business Research, Psychology & Marketing, and International Journal of
Consumer Studies.
Ms. Konstantinou Rafaella completed her Master’s by Research Degree in
Fashion Marketing & Management at the Department of Materials, University
of Manchester and she now works as a practitioner in the field.
Korbel Jakob J. received the B.Sc. degree in industrial engineering and
management from the Friedrich-Alexander-University, Erlangen-Nuremberg,
Germany, in 2014, and the M.Sc. degree in industrial engineering and
management from the Technical University of Berlin, Germany, in 2017 where
he is currently employed as a research associate at the Chair for Information
and Communication Management. In recent projects, he participated in the
examination and implementation of a virtual reality application for the treat-
ment of psychological disorders and an augmented reality application for retail.
His research focuses on 3D models in the form of virtual goods and products
in the manufacturing and gaming industry from a developer and user (inno-
vation) perspective as well as on data analysis of e-commerce platforms and
online communities.
Dr. Kumar Divesh is Assistant Professor in Department of Management
Studies, Malaviya National Institute of Technology (MNIT) Jaipur. He
has also taught at FORE School of Management, New Delhi and ICFAI
Academy Hyderabad prior to joining MNIT. He did Ph.D. from Depart-
ment of Management Studies, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee
in 2015 and M.B.A. from Madan Mohan Malviya University of Technology,
Gorakhpur in 2008.
His research work is published in reputed international publishers like
Emerald, Taylor and Francis, and ScienceDirect. He has also a forthcoming
book in the area of Integrated Marketing Communication from a leading
international publisher. He actively participated in various national and inter-
national conferences. He regularly reviews for research submissions at Emerald
publishing, Springer, Taylor and Francis, and Inderscience journals.
Dr. Kumar has won highly commended award “South Asian Management
Research Fund Award 2013” for the project "Problems and prospects of
compost marketing in Uttarakhand, India.” His research interest includes
xxx NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Sustainable consumption behavior, sustainable supply chain, and sustainability

marketing strategies.
Dr. Kumar Satish is Associate Professor (Finance Area), Department of
Management Studies at Malaviya National Institute of Technology (MNIT)
Jaipur and Adjunct Associate Professor at Swinburne University of Tech-
nology, Malaysia Campus. He has over eighteen years of teaching and research
experience at management institutes of repute in India and abroad. Dr. Kumar
has obtained his doctorate from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)
Roorkee in 2011. He also qualified Junior Research Fellowship (JRF) in
2007. His research interest includes corporate finance small business finance,
corporate governance, consumer economics, systematic literature review, and
bibliometric analysis.
He has over 140 research publications in his credit with work appearing
in journals such as FT 50, A*, A category of ABDC journal ranking and
high impact factor journals like Contemporary Accounting Research, Journal
of Corporate Finance, and Journal of Service Research among others. His
research work has received google scholar citations of 4120 (as on March
26, 2022) with h-index and i-index index of 31 and 70, respectively. Dr.
Kumar is Associate Editor of leading journals including Journal of Business
Research, Electronic Commerce Research, Research in International Business
and Finance, Qualitative Research in Financial Markets, and Journal of Asia
Business Studies.
López Manuela (Ph.D. from the University of Murcia, Spain) is Assis-
tant professor of Marketing at the University of Murcia. She has been a
visiting scholar at the School of Communication Research at the Univer-
sity of Amsterdam (The Netherlands) and assistant professor at Universidad
Católica del Norte (Chile). Her research interests are focused on the influ-
ence of eWOM in consumer behavior, WOM marketing, and social media.
She has published articles in journals such as the Electronic Commerce Research
and Applications, European Journal of Marketing, Internet Research, Journal
of Research in Interactive Marketing, Online Information Review, Journal of
Product and Brand Management, Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic
Commerce Research and Journal of Simulation.
López-López Inés is Associate Professor at the University of Murcia, Spain.
She received her Ph.D. Degree in Marketing from the same institution.
Her current research interests include social networks, consumption-related
emotions, service failure and recovery, and corporate social responsibility. Her
papers have been published in journals such as Journal of Service Research,
Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing, Ecological Economics, Internet
Research, Marketing Letters, Electronic Commerce Research & Applications,
Online information Review, and Service Science, among others. She has
attended and presented her research in international conferences such as those
organized by the Society for Consumer Psychology, Association for Consumer
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xxxi

Research, European Marketing Academy and the Spanish Association for

Marketers and Marketing Scholars.
Lin Marta Yuan-Chen is Researcher at Science and Technology Interna-
tional Strategy Center, Industrial Technology Research Institute, Taiwan. Her
current research interest primarily concerns Martech. Her research has been
published in journals such as Journal of Business Research, Journal of Research
in Interactive Marketing, and Asian Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics,
among others.
Liu Hongfei is Associate Professor in Marketing at Southampton Business
School, University of Southampton, UK. Hongfei’s research interests primarily
lie in digital marketing and social media. His research focuses on the impact
of digitalization and technologization on individuals, businesses, and soci-
eties. His work has been published in highly regarded journals, including
Journal of Business Research, Journal of Business Ethics, European Journal
of Marketing, Industrial Marketing Management, Tourism Management and
Journal of Travel Research, among others. Hongfei serves as an Associate
Editor for Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing and as a guest editor
for Journal of Business Research.
Liu Hsin-Ying graduated from the Department of Business Management,
National Taipei University of Technology.
Dr. Liu Maggie Wenjing is Associate Professor of Marketing at the School of
Economics and Management, Tsinghua University, China. She has published
at journals such as Production and Operations Management, International
Journal of Research in Marketing, Journal of Consumer Psychology, INFORMS
Journal on Computing, Journal of International Marketing, and Marketing
Letters. She has authored book chapters in Handbook of Consumer Psychology,
International Handbook of Consumer Psychology, and Customer-Brand Rela-
tionships: Theory and Practice, with the former two books used as textbooks in
many Ph.D. programs across the world.
Loussaief Aida is Assistant Professor in the Economics and Management
Department, Time University, Tunisia. Her research interests focus on Islamic
marketing and Islamic finance. Her research has been published in journals
such as International Journal of Ethics and Systems and International Tourism
and Hospitality Journal, among others.
Meywirth Sophia received a B.Sc. in Information Systems Management from
the Technical University of Berlin, where she is currently writing her Master’s
thesis regarding the technology acceptance of augmented reality applications
in e-commerce and stationary retail. Her previous research focused on the use
of virtual reality applications for the treatment of anxiety disorders and was
published in the proceedings of the ECIS 2021.
xxxii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Moes Anne is a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Groningen and serves as

a researcher and lecturer at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. Her
research focuses on impulsive consumer behavior, consumer empowerment
and persuasion. She publishes in both scientific journals and trade journals
for marketing and advertising professionals.
Mola Francesco is Full Professor of Statistics at the Department of Economics
and Business Science of the University of Cagliari since 2008 and Rector of the
University of Cagliari since 2021. He was elected member of the Council of
the European (Regional) Board of the Council of the International Association
for Statistical Computing (IASC) and is a member of the International Statis-
tical Institute (ISI), International Society for Business and Industrial Statistics
(ISBIS), the International Federation of Classification Societies (IFCS), and
the Italian Statistical Society (SIS). He has published more than seventy papers
on international journals, encyclopedias, conference proceedings, and revised
monographs, acts as a referee of many international journals, and contributed
to numerous international conferences. His main topics include Partitioning
Algorithms and Decision Trees for Classification and Regression, non and
semiparametric Regression Modeling, Data Editing, Image Segmentation and
Causal Inference.
Dr. Nghiêm-Phú Bình is currently Associate Professor at the School of
Economics and Management, University of Hyogo, Japan. The majority of
his research are directed toward the understanding of consumers’ perceptions
and evaluations of the characteristics or images of products, services, organi-
zations, and places. He adopts the approaches of applied psychology theories
to the implementation of marketing and management activities.
Palazón Mariola is Associate Professor of Marketing at the University of
Murcia (Spain). Her current research interests include communication on
social networks, consumer behavior, marketing communication and corporate
social responsibility. Her papers have appeared in Psychology and Marketing,
the International Journal of Market Research, the European Journal of
Marketing, Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, the Journal of Product
and Brand Management, Journal of Consumer Behavior, Online Informa-
tion Review, and Electronic Commerce Research and Applications. She has
attended and presented her research in international conferences such as Amer-
ican Marketing Association, European Marketing Academy and the Spanish
Association for Marketers and Marketing Scholars.
Pelau Corina is Full Professor and Ph.D. Supervisor at the Bucharest Univer-
sity of Economic Studies, Romania, UNESCO Department for Business
Administration. Her research has been published by indexed journals such
as Computers in Human Behavior, Energy Policy, Amfiteatru Economic, and
others. Her main research interest is consumer behavior with focus on the
relation with artificial intelligence. Since 2021 she has been a member of
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xxxiii

the Executive Committee of the European Marketing Academy (EMAC) as

National Representative for Romania.
Pun Boris L. F. is Postdoctoral Fellow affiliated with the Hong Kong Institute
of Asia-Pacific Studies, the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research
interests mainly relate to popular culture and subcultural studies, especially in
fandom of Animation, Comic and Game (ACG). He is also interested in the
issues of youth culture, cultural industries and policy, and globalization and
transculturation. His current research target is TikTok and its global cultural
influence on youth. His previous works about fandom economy have been
included in The Handbook of Research on the Impact of Fandom in Society and
Consumerism and Exploring the Rise of Fandom in Contemporary Consumer
Culture.
Dr. Rashidirad Mona is Lecturer in Strategy and Marketing at University of
Sussex Business School. She holds her Ph.D. in Management from Univer-
sity of Kent, Canterbury, UK. Dr. Rashidirad is a fellow in Higher Education
Academy (HEA) following her completion of Postgraduate Certificate in
Higher Education (PGCHE), awarded by the University of Kent in 2012.
Also, she is a Certified Management and Business Educator (CMBE) from
Chartered Association of Business Schools (CABS) in the UK. Dr. Rashidirad
has been an active researcher since 2010, which has resulted in publishing
several peer-reviewed journal papers, a number of book chapters, and several
conference presentations. Her research focuses on “social Media Marketing,”
which is one of the key strands of Interactive Marketing. Dr. Rashidirad takes
a special interest in research that embraces social media user engagement and
the way companies can improve their users’ participation on their social media
platforms.
Riar Marc is a doctoral candidate at Technical University of Berlin and an
associated researcher at Gamification Group, Tampere University. His research
lies at the intersection of behavioral sciences and information systems, with
special focus on motivational design, the use of gamification to motivate coop-
eration and the adoption of augmented reality in E-Business. He holds an
M.Sc. in Business Informatics from the University of Mannheim and a B.Sc.
in Information Systems Management from Karlsruhe University of Applied
Sciences. In addition to his scientific endeavors, Mr. Riar has worked at
various companies, including Lufthansa German Airlines in New York, SAP
in Walldorf, Systec & Services GmbH as well as Fiducia IT AG in Karlsruhe,
Germany.
Dr. Ryding Daniella is Senior Lecturer in Fashion Marketing in the Depart-
ment of Materials at the University of Manchester, and the Academic Lead for
the New Academics Programme in the Faculty of Science and Engineering.
Daniella has a keen commitment and interest in educational research and
has supervised doctoral work within this remit. In addition, she is an active
researcher within her subject specialism with over 50 published articles, and
xxxiv NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

several textbook contributions, and she sits on the editorial board for a number
of academic business journals. Daniella is a member of the scientific committee
and abstract coordinator for CIRCLE International (Centre for international
Research on Consumers in their Locations and Environments), which hosts
an annual conference with over 88 University members. The author’s main
discipline-specific research centers on complex cognition, further exploring
the psychological and behavioral mechanisms which impact on consumer
decision-making within the field of contemporary retail marketing. She is
actively involved with a number of research projects which involve studies,
surrounding Environmental Sustainability, Social Sustainability, and Social
Media Marketing.
Serban Daniela is Full Professor in the Department of Statistics and Econo-
metrics at the Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Romania. Her
research has been published by indexed journals such as Economic Research-
Ekonomska Istraživanja, Economic Computation and Economic Cybernetics
Studies and Research, Amfiteatru Economic, and others. She has been a
director of two European Projects within FP7 and a member in eight research
grants. Her research work has been awarded an Excellency Diploma by the
National Institute of Statistics and the Romanian Society of Statistics for
outstanding research results and the teaching activity.
Dr. Shahbaznezhad Hamidreza is a digital transformation lead in NZ Post.
He attained his Ph.D. from the Information Systems and Operations Research
(ISOM) Department of the University Auckland in New Zealand. He is an
active researcher in digital marketing, knowledge transfer, data science, and
cybersecurity. He has published a significant number of journal articles and
conference papers, including a most recent one on “The Role of Social Media
Content Format and Platform in Users’ Engagement Behavior,” published at
Journal of Interactive Marketing in 2021.
Dr. Shen Zheng is currently Associate Professor at the Shi Liangcai School of
Journalism and Communication, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University. The majority
of her research is directed by the understanding of customer engagement
in social media marketing. She adopts data mining techniques to implement
marketing and management communication on social media.
Sicilia María (Ph.D. from the University of Murcia, Spain) is Associate
Professor of Marketing at the University of Murcia (Spain). She has been a
visiting scholar at Columbia Business School (New York) and at King’s College
Business School (London). She is currently lecturing in advertising, digital
consumer behavior, and market research. Her research interests are focused
on social media, advertising, and consumer behavior. She has published arti-
cles in the Journal of Interactive Marketing, Journal of Advertising, Journal
of Business Research, Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, Internet
Research and Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing.
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xxxv

Dr. Suter Jillian Rae is currently Assistant Professor at the Faculty of

Informatics, Shizuoka University, Japan. Her research is directed by the
social marketing theories. She is implementing research on consumer culture,
notably the impact of the rise and fall in popularity of “Cool Japan” on both
the national economy and society and the global market.
Dr. Tsai Wan-Hsiu Sunny is currently Professor in Strategic Communi-
cation at the School of Communication, University of Miami, USA. Her
research examines the influence of advertising and marketing communication
as a powerful cultural institution. Specifically, she has investigated topics such
as minority consumers’ response to multicultural advertising, glocalization of
brand meanings, social media engagement, and recently, AI and emerging
technologies like chatbot and augmented reality in advertising.
Dr. Vashisht Devika is presently working as Assistant Professor at Indian
Institute of Management Sirmaur, Paonta Sahib, Himachal Pradesh, India.
She is a Ph.D. in management from IBS Hyderabad, IFHE University, India
and was a visiting research scholar at Fogelman College of Business &
Economics, The University of Memphis, TN, USA. Her areas of interest are
Marketing Management, Brand Management, Advertising, Branded Enter-
tainment, Persuasion, Brand Placements, Advergames, Tourism Marketing
and Marketing Research. She bagged the Best Teacher Award for her excel-
lence in teaching in 2019. She has presented several research papers in
international conferences and published various research articles in inter-
national peer-reviewed journals, such as European Journal of Marketing,
Computers in Human Behaviour, Internet Research, Journal of Product and
Brand Management, Marketing Intelligence & Planning, Asia Pacific Journal
of Marketing and Logistics, Young Consumers, Journal of Indian Business
Research, Journal of Asia Business Studies, International Journal of Internet
Marketing and Advertising, Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing,
Management Research Review, Arts and the Market, Spanish Journal of
Marketing, Journal of Management and Economic Studies and Business Sciences
International Research Journal (IMRF Journals). In her research line, she
has won three Best Paper Awards: one at International Marketing Confer-
ence held at IIM-Lucknow, India in the year 2017, another at “Globalizing
Brand India: Opportunities and Challenges” International Marketing Confer-
ence conducted by IIM-Kashipur, India in the year 2015 and also at “2015
Society for Marketing Advances Conference” held at San Antonio, Texas,
USA.
Verhagen Tibert (Ph.D.) is Professor at the Centre for Market Insights of
the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. His research interests include
emerging digital technology, information systems, and retail innovation. His
research has been published in information systems, e-commerce, media and
marketing journals.
xxxvi NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Dr. Verma Deepak is Assistant Professor in Department of Management

Studies, Malaviya National Institute of Technology (MNIT) Jaipur since 2013.
A doctorate in Online Marketing and postgraduate in Management (MBA)
with dual specialization in Marketing and Information Technology, Dr. Verma
has over 22 years of cross-functional postgraduate teaching and industry (busi-
ness development) experience. Dr. Verma has organized more than three
dozen workshops for management graduates, academicians, and professionals.
He has a book published on computer networks and internet applications in
business, apart from having developed courses and study material for many
universities/academic institutions. He has been part of consulting projects
totalling over US$ 1.7 million.
His teaching interests revolve around statistical decision-making,
marketing/business analytics, and research methods. His research area
relates to understanding behavioral issues in digital/online environments and
issues in technology adoption.
Dr. Verma Sanjeev is Associate Professor in Nitie (National Institute of Indus-
trial Engg., Mumbai) with above 18 years of experience in Academics. His area
of expertise is Consumer Engagement and Experience, Services Marketing and
Marketing Research. He has published more than 30 articles in various jour-
nals. The most recent publication is “Past, Present and Future of Electronic
Word of Mouth (EWOM)” in Journal of Interactive Marketing September
2020.
Vignali Gianpaolo is Senior Lecturer in Fashion Business and Academic Lead
for the Manchester Engineering Campus Development (MECD), with the
Department of Materials, Sackville Street Building M13WE, University of
Manchester, UK. Gianpaolo is a graduate from UMIST with his first degree
in Mathematics. Furthermore, He did Master’s in strategic management
and initiated his career as a part-time Lecturer and Researcher at Manch-
ester Metropolitan University before joining a full-time employment in the
department of Retail at Leeds Metropolitan University. He then became
the program leader for Fashion Buying & Merchandising at Manchester
Metropolitan University until he achieved his Ph.D. and moved to Manch-
ester University working in the School of Materials where he delivers on both
undergraduate and postgraduate programs. He presented at various interna-
tional conferences and has written more than 40 papers and books in the
Marketing and Management field.
Dr. Wang Cheng Lu is Professor of marketing at the University of New
Haven. Dr. Wang’s research is mainly in consumer behavior and interactive
marketing. Dr. Wang has over one hundred scholarly publications at Journal
of Consumer Psychology, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of World Business,
Industrial Marketing Management, and Journal of Business Research, among
others. His work has been widely cited and he has been named in the world’s
top 2% of Scientists List by a researcher team from Stanford University.
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xxxvii

Dr. Wang is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Research in Interactive

Marketing. He has also served as the managing guest editor for over a dozen
of SSCI (ABDC-A ranking) journals, including Journal of Business Research,
Industrial Marketing Management, European Journal of Marketing, Interna-
tional Marketing Review, etc. Dr. Wang has served as the chair or co-chair
for over ten international conferences or symposiums in several countries and
regions. In addition, he published and/or edited books, including Interper-
sonal Psychology (Shanghai People’s Publishing House, 1987), Contemporary
Marketing in China: Theories and Practices (Nova Science Publishers, Inc.,
New York. USA 2011), Brand Management in Emerging Markets: Theories
and Practices (IGI Global, PA. USA, 2014), Exploring the Rising Fandom in
Contemporary Consumer Culture (IGI Global, PA. USA, 2017), and Hand-
book of Research on the Impact of Fandom in Society and Consumerism (IGI
Global, PA. USA, 2019).
Dr. Waqas Muhammad is Assistant Professor at NUST Business School,
National University of Sciences and Technology, Islamabad, Pakistan. His
research interests include customer experience in social media, customer
engagement in social media, and social media advertising. He has published in
the Journal of Brand Management, Journal of Interactive Marketing, Journal
of Research in Interactive Marketing and has presented papers in international
conferences.
Wu Ruijuan is Professor at Tianjin University of Technology. Dr. Wu’s
research is primarily on consumer behavior. Her work has appeared in
the Journal of Business Research, European Journal of Marketing, Electronic
Commerce Research and Applications, Computers in Human Behavior, Asia
Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, Online Information Review, Inter-
national Journal of Consumer Studies, Journal of Cleaner Production, as well
as a number of peer-reviewed journals.
Wu Sihan is a Ph.D. Candidate in Marketing at the School of Economics and
Management, Tsinghua University, China. She is interested in public policy
and digital marketing, mainly on how green policy impacts consumer behavior.
Dr. Xi Nannan is Assistant Professor (tenure track) in the Unit of Informa-
tion and Knowledge Management, at Faculty of Management and Business,
Tampere University. Her research is mainly focused on game-based approaches
(gamification, XR/AR/VR, multimodality, wearable technology) in informa-
tion systems, management, consumer psychology, and organization studies
toward responsible consumption, sustainable decision-making, harmonious
organizations, and digital business transformation. Dr. Xi’s research has been
published in a variety of prestigious journals, such as Journal of Business
Research, International Journal of Human-Computer Studies, International
Journal of Information Management, Information Systems Frontiers, and
Industrial Management & Data Systems.
xxxviii NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Dr. Yao Qingjiang is Associate Professor of Communication and Media at

Lamar University (Texas), obtained his Master’s degree from Beijing Normal
University and Ph.D. from the University of South Carolina. He has taught
at the University of Iowa, Fort Hays State University (Kansas), and LU in
the areas of strategic communications. His research interest lies in examining
the persuasive effects of the mass, digital, and social media, publishing in such
journals as Asian Journal of Communication, China Advertising, Environment
Systems and Decisions, Journal of International Crisis and Risk Communi-
cation Research, Journal of Internet Law, Journal of Marketing for Higher
Education, Journal of Media and Religion, Journal of Research in Interactive
Marketing, Public Relations Review, Science Communication, and Telematics
and Informatics.
Dr. You Ya is Associate Professor of Marketing in the College of Business
and Economics at California State University, East Bay. She received her
Ph.D. in Marketing from University of Central Florida. Her research inter-
ests include online word-of-mouth, social media, advertising, and marketing
strategies. Her research has been published in Journal of Marketing, Journal
of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Advertising, Information &
Management, Journal of Business Research and has been covered in several
media outlets, including Science Daily and Phys.org. She is the recipient of
the 2015 Marketing Science Institute H. Paul Root Award and the 2021 Swiss
Academy of Marketing Science Rigor & Relevance Research Award (Honor-
able Mention). She is also the finalist for the 2020 Sheth Foundation/Journal
of Marketing Award and the 2020 JAMS Sheth Foundation Best Paper Award.
Dr. Yu Billy is currently Associate Professor in the Faculty of Business, Macao
Polytechnic University, Macau SAR. He is particularly keen on using advanced
analysis techniques and diverse data types to gain insight into marketing
and management practices. Many of his students are qualified professionals
in SAS@ Certified Predictive Modeler, a recognized qualification in data
mining for analytical customer relationship management (aCRM). He admin-
istered and provided consultancy services on multiple government-funded
and commercial research projects. He also lectured and delivered keynote
speeches to practitioners in industries. His researches focus on investigating
shared patterns and causal factors in novel hypotheses. He published over a
dozen articles in scholarly journals indexed in the Web of Science. His publi-
cations mostly take a customer-centric view for organizational or marketing
performance. Recently, he works on deep learning applications for emerging
topics in electronic commerce and Fintech. Dr. Billy Yu seeks new data to
inform how human behaviors could be manipulated, controlling for objective
circumstances.
Yuan Yige is a Ph.D. Candidate in Marketing at the School of Economics and
Management, Tsinghua University, China. She has published several papers
 NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS xxxix

at journals such as Journal of Business Research and International Journal of

Advertising.
Dr. Zarnekow Rüdiger holds the Chair of Information and Communication
Management at Technical University of Berlin. His research focuses on the
areas of IT management and digital business models. He has led numerous
research projects on IT service management, digital health services, Gamifi-
cation and Internet business models. From 2001 through 2006 he was an
Assistant Professor and Researcher at the Institute of Information Manage-
ment at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, where he led the competence
center “Industrialization of Information Management.” As an author Prof.
Zarnekow has published various books and research articles in leading national
and international journals and conferences. He holds a Ph.D. from Univer-
sity of Freiberg, a Master of Science in Advance Software Technologies from
the University of Wolverhampton and studied Computer Science and Business
Administration at the European Business School, Oestrich-Winkel.
Zeng Ni is a Ph.D. student at Department of Material, University of Manch-
ester, UK. She focuses on the effect of interactive technologies on customer
responses and customer engagement area. Written works: “The Influence of
the Digital In-Store Experience on Customer Engagement in the Luxury
Sector” (accepted by 28th International Conference on Recent Advances in
Retailing and Consumer Science). Joined EuroMed conference in 2021.
Zhu Qichao is a Ph.D. Candidate in Marketing at the School of Economics
and Management, Tsinghua University, China. He has published several papers
at journals such as Marketing Letters and Frontiers in Psychology.
Dr. Zhu Ying is an Assistant Professor of Marketing in the Faculty of Manage-
ment at the University of British Columbia-Okanagan campus. She received
her Ph.D. in Marketing from the Mays Business School at Texas A&M Univer-
sity. Her research interests include digital marketing, consumer behavior, busi-
ness analytics, branding, and social networks. Her recent research focuses on
investigating the impact of technology on consumers. Her research has been
published in the European Journal of Marketing, Psychology & Marketing,
Journal of Retailing and Consumer Service, Journal of Brand Management,
and Internet Research, among others.
 List of Figures

Chapter 2
Fig. 1 CiteScore trends 18
Fig. 2 Source-wise growth of publications 22
Fig. 3 Top 10 sources of local citations 23
Fig. 4 Most relevant affiliations (top 10) 23
Fig. 5 Country-specific production 24
Fig. 6 Corresponding author country 25
Fig. 7 Three-field analysis for author-country-affiliation 25
Fig. 8 Word cloud (top 50 author keywords) 29
Fig. 9 Top 10 author keywords 30
Fig. 10 Keyword dynamics (top 10 author keywords) 31
Fig. 11 Document coupling using author keywords 31
Fig. 12 Strategic diagram of the four clusters 33
Fig. 13 Thematic evolution of interactive marketing literature 34
Fig. 14 Strategic diagram of themes for period 1997–2012 36
Fig. 15 Strategic diagram for the period 2013–2017 37
Fig. 16 Strategic diagram for the period 2018–2022 37

Chapter 4
Fig. 1 Research workflow 69
Fig. 2 The conceptual evolution of digital marketing 72
Fig. 3 The evolution of digital marketing themes (1990–2020) 73

Chapter 5
Fig. 1 The position of IDM in relation to interactive and digital
marketing strategies 98
Fig. 2 Six categories of IDM mechanisms 101

xli
xlii LIST OF FIGURES

Chapter 6
Fig. 1 Theoretical framework for examining perceived control
in interactive marketing 119

Chapter 7
Fig. 1 Conceptual model 151

Chapter 9
Fig. 1 Chatbot service quality 203
Fig. 2 Conceptual model 206

Chapter 10
Fig. 1 Concepts of the customer-smart object interaction experience 221

Chapter 11
Fig. 1 Classification of AI based on physical presence and relationship
distance to the consumers 242

Chapter 13
Fig. 1 Circumplex model representing valence and arousal. Own
elaboration from (Russell, 1980) 280
Fig. 2 Valence-arousal-dominance emotional space 280
Fig. 3 Communication tools in interactive marketing 281
Fig. 4 How a virtual assistant works. Own elaboration 285

Chapter 14
Fig. 1 Framework for consumer response in interactive AR marketing
based on S–O-R theory 304
Fig. 2 Unified overview of interactive AR marketing 307

Chapter 16
Fig. 1 Kizuna AI , a Japanese cartoon-like virtual singer, gamer
and VTuber (credit: Kizuna AI Wikipedia page) 359
Fig. 2 Brud’s activity timeline (Source Adapted
from commons.wikimedia.org) 362
Fig. 3 Key stages of developmental trajectory to approximate
the evolution of influencers 363

Chapter 17
Fig. 1 Hatsune Miku (Source Taken by the second author) 378
 LIST OF FIGURES xliii

Chapter 18
Fig. 1 Document acquisition and selection process 402

Chapter 19
Fig. 1 Hashtags and caption words most used 443

Chapter 21
Fig. 1 Structural Model 490

Chapter 23
Fig. 1 Separate navigation with location cue (Yue et al., 2014) 527
Fig. 2 Shared navigation (Wei et al., 2017) 528
Fig. 3 Split screen navigation (Yue, 2014) 528
Fig. 4 Interactive experience of collaborative online shopping (Source
Proposed by the authors) 529

Chapter 25
Fig. 1 Interactive channels for complaining 574
Fig. 2 Theoretical framework for complaint handling 585

Chapter 26
Fig. 1 Main factors that determine influencers’ impact on their followers 603
Fig. 2 Sponsored content (permanent post) created by the influencer
Justin Tse about a new product on Instagram 610
Fig. 3 Sponsored content (permanent post) created by the influencer
Canoopsy about a new product on Instagram 611
Fig. 4 Sponsored content on Instagram by Amanda Holtzer about tosh
snacks 613

Chapter 27
Fig. 1 The influencer phenomenon as a triadic relationship 625

Chapter 28
Fig. 1 Social media influencer types based on Campbell and Farrell
(2020) 647
Fig. 2 Independent constructs—Ohanian (1991) model of source
credibility 649
Fig. 3 The influencer types that the participants followed on Instagram 652

Chapter 29
Fig. 1 Theoretical framework for the effects of predictive analytics
on customer engagement 671
xliv LIST OF FIGURES

Chapter 31
Fig. 1 Micro-level customer purchasing prediction 710
Fig. 2 Autoencoder 711
Fig. 3 Reinforcement learning 712
Fig. 4 Federated learning 714
Fig. 5 Illustration of word embedding 715
Fig. 6 Generative adversarial network 716

Chapter 32
Fig. 1 Recommender system interaction process 731
Fig. 2 Conceptual model role of system-generated personalized
recommendations (PR) on consumer shopping journey 745

Chapter 33
Fig. 1 Conceptual model of antecedents and consequences of proximity
technologies 770

Chapter 36
Fig. 1 PRISMA article search process 841
Fig. 2 Model of antecedents and consequences of physical interactive
experience of servicescape 850
Fig. 3 Conceptual model of the antecedents and consequences
of online interactive experience 854
Fig. 4 Conceptual model of antecedents and consequences of phygital
interactive experience of servicescape 857

Chapter 37
Fig. 1 Conceptual Framework of Touch Research in Interactive
marketing 870

Chapter 39
Fig. 1 Incivility excerpt 918
Fig. 2 A Framework of Consumer Incivility on SMNs 921

Chapter 40
Fig. 1 Critical dimensions of the dark side of gamification in online
marketing (Source Developed by authors) 947
Fig. 2 Framework on challenges in the implementation of gamified
marketing solutions (Source Developed by authors) 954
 LIST OF FIGURES xlv

Chapter 42
Fig. 1 The empirical fluctuation process is expressed in relative terms.
The continuous line exceeding the boundaries (dashed lines)
identifies the significant negative comments peaks 995
Fig. 2 The negative comments distribution. The solid black line is
the relative cubic smoothing spline. The polygons indicate
the four periods characterized by statistically significant (p <
0.05) structural changes from a flat trend 996
 List of Tables

Chapter 2
Table 1 Summary of selected sources 18
Table 2 Search results—main information 20
Table 3 Articles published, mean citations per year and per article 21
Table 4 Top 10 authors and their impact 22
Table 5 Most cited countries 26
Table 6 Most globally cited articles (top 10) 27
Table 7 Most local cited articles (top 10) 28
Table 8 Clustering by author keywords—keywords, frequency, centrality
and impact 32

Chapter 3
Table 1 Overview of the ten discussed interactive marketing tools 56

Chapter 4
Table 1 Performance analysis (1990–1999) 74
Table 2 Performance analysis (2000–2004) 75
Table 3 Performance analysis (2005–2009) 77
Table 4 Performance analysis (2010–2014) 80
Table 5 Performance analysis (2015–2020) 85

Chapter 5
Table 1 An analysis of the IDM mechanisms 104

Chapter 6
Table 1 Summary of literature in perceived control and interactive
marketing research 133

xlvii
xlviii LIST OF TABLES

Chapter 7
Table 1 Summary of selected studies of how brands drive WOM 157
Table 2 Summary of elements of interactive marketing environment 169

Chapter 9
Table 1 Dimensions of customer-brand relationship 204
Table 2 Chatbot service quality dimensions 206

Chapter 10
Table 1 Summary of manipulation check results 231
Table 2 Convergent validity, reliability, and discriminant validity 232
Table 3 Results of the main effect 232
Table 4 Results of the moderating effects of user types and parasocial
interaction 233

Chapter 13
Table 1 Databases that integrate emotions and stimuli (text-image-sound) 279
Table 2 Most popular virtual assistants and their keyword to wake up.
Own elaboration 284
Table 3 Examples of anthropomorphic theories and their application
in VPA studies. Own elaboration 287
Table 4 Dimensions of the interactive relationships between consumers
and virtual assistants. Own elaboration 289

Chapter 14
Table 1 Overview of the conducted interviews 306

Chapter 15
Table 1 AIDA Marketing framework with assessment Of VR, AR, MR,
and 3D Mobile app scanners for interactive marketing 345

Chapter 16
Table 1 Identification and key attributes of notable virtual influencers 361

Chapter 17
Table 1 Sentiments toward product and product attributes 388

Chapter 18
Table 1 Presence Search Strings 401
Table 2 Definition table of presence that has been cited in interactive
marketing 404
 LIST OF TABLES xlix

Chapter 19
Table 1 Comparison with recent relevant studies 439
Table 2 Brand descriptions 440
Table 3 Customer-brand engagement rates of brands 441

Chapter 20
Table 1 User Demographics of the Representative Social Media 454

Chapter 21
Table 1 Measurement Items for All Constructs 487
Table 2 Internal Consistency Reliability and Convergent Validity Test 488
Table 3 Discriminant Validity—Fornell and Larcker 489
Table 4 HTMT Discriminant Validity 489
Table 5 Results of Structural Model 490

Chapter 22
Table 1 Users’ satisfaction ratings for the Douyin platform 508

Chapter 24
Table 1 Typology of eWOM media 551

Chapter 26
Table 1 Previous definitions of influencers 598
Table 2 Classifications of influencers based on their number of followers 600
Table 3 New classification of influencers based on potential reach 601
Table 4 Research agenda 615

Chapter 32
Table 1 Review procedure under SPAR-4-SLR procedure (Paul et al.,
2021) 734
Table 2 Customer shopping journey 738

Chapter 33
Table 1 Various types of technologies applied for proximity marketing
and their applications in practice 761
Table 2 Applied theories in proximity marketing 766

Chapter 34
Table 1 The application of chatbots in luxury retail 792
Table 2 The research gap and further research directions 800
l LIST OF TABLES

Chapter 38
Table 1 Summary of studies 896
Table 2 Emoji functions 899
Table 3 The effects of emojis 904

Chapter 39
Table 1 Uncivil consumer behaviors and examples 922

Chapter 40
Table 1 A review of literature on the dark side of gamification through
the TCCM framework (Singh & Dhir, 2019) (Source Developed
by authors) 946

Chapter 42
Table 1 Visual model for the mixed methods explanatory sequential
design study 993
Table 2 The number of comments (%) and emotions percentage
distribution of the three topics identified in the first period
(from June 23, 2013, to August 11, 2013) 997
Table 3 Summary of the first peak of problematic interaction 998
Table 4 The number of comments (%) and emotions percentage
distribution of the three topics identified in the second period
(from October 23, 2015, to November 17, 2015) 999
Table 5 Summary of the second peak of problematic interaction 1000
Table 6 The number of comments (%) and emotions percentage
distribution of the three topics identified in the third period
(from August 30, 2016, to September 23, 2016) 1000
Table 7 Summary of the third peak of problematic interaction 1002
Table 8 The number of comments (%) and emotions percentage
distribution of the three topics identified in the fourth period
(from December 26, 2016, to January 30, 2017) 1003
Table 9 Summary of the fourth peak of problematic interaction 1005
 CHAPTER 1

Interactive Marketing is the New Normal

Cheng Lu Wang

Interactive marketing, as one of the fastest growing academic fields in contem-

porary business world, is the multi-directional value creation and mutual-
influence marketing process through active customer connection, engagement,
participation and interaction (Wang, 2021). Such a definition reflects the
nature of interactive marketing as bilateral communication that emphasizes
consumer active participation in the marketing process. Interactive marketing,
which emerged with the digital edge and wide application of e-commerce
(Deighton, 1996), has dramatically expanded its scale and scope thanks to
the newly developed technologies.
Indeed, contemporary interactive marketing has moved beyond the scope
of direct marketing or digital marketing, as the market is becoming a forum
for conversations and interactions among connected actors or participants in
platform ecosystems (Lim et al., 2022; Wang, 2021). The advancement of
mobile technology with interactive content and personalized experience makes
interactive marketing the new normal in the business world. The increasing
use of artificial intelligence, mobile device and social media further facilitate
marketers to deliver convenience and personalized content with immersive
experiences that allow customers to dive in and enjoy the seamless interactive
shopping journey via omnichannels on a deeper level.

C. L. Wang (B)
University of New Haven, West Haven, CT, USA
e-mail: cwang@newhaven.edu

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2023
C. L. Wang (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Interactive Marketing,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14961-0_1
2 C. L. WANG

Marketing activities in the connected world at various social media networks

take an “organic” form that integrates shopping with daily live events through
generating, disseminating and sharing news, new personal stories, creative
works, photos and ideas. As social media content is merging with online shop-
ping and consumers are persistently browsing, exploring, sharing and engaging
with different forms of content, users read news, share photos, express opin-
ions, surf websites, play games and meanwhile participate in organic marketing
by sharing and recommending a product/brand.
Despite such dramatic changes in marketplaces, theoretical advancement or
academic inquiry of the mechanisms of interactive marketing strategies has
largely lagged behind industry innovation and market practices. This hand-
book aims at theoretical advancement with managerial relevance that shed
insights on interactive marketing in the digitalization era. In particular, as
a collection of cutting-edge research, both in conceptual development and
empirical evidence, this handbook reflects a contemporary landscape of inter-
active marketing, from historical overview, current theoretical and practical
advancement to emerging trends of interactive marketing.

1 What Are the Unique

Features of This Handbook?
• This is one of a kind of the handbook in the fast-growing interactive
marketing field that provides most updated knowledge and cutting-edge
research findings.
• This is the most comprehensive interactive marketing book, with 41
chapters covering all aspects of contemporary interactive marketing
real, including social media and influencer marketing, big data and
machine learning in predictive analytics, mobile marketing and proximity
marketing, interactive digital marketing and Omnichannel marketing, AI,
VR and AR in business applications.
• With a focal point on interactive marketing, this handbook takes a multi-
discipline perspective, from new technology innovations, social media
and platform application, economic and cultural impacts, social and
psychological analysis, and management and information system.
• As a collective work written by over 100 authors from more than 20
countries across all continents of the world, this book is indeed “global”
and reflects a collaborative work across cultural backgrounds.

2 Who Will Benefit from Reading This Book?

• It provides a timely and comprehensive textbook companion and/or
course project resource for college educators and students used for
variety of graduate and undergraduate marketing courses, such as Digital
 1 INTERACTIVE MARKETING IS THE NEW NORMAL 3

Marketing, Internet Marketing, Social Media Marketing, New Media

Communication, Marketing Analytics and Marketing Management, etc.
• It offers valuable references for academic researchers who are inter-
ested in conducting and publishing in interactive marketing research.
The state-of-art review and emerging new trends presented in the
book are particularly useful for research idea generation and conceptual
development.
• It puts forward insightful guidelines and practical tools for business
management in the application of new interactive marketing strategies
and applications in the real-world practices.

3 Organization of the Book

The book contains 42 chapters that are organized into 8 sections, each
consisting of 4–6 chapters. A brief description of each section and each chapter
follows.

3.1 Part 1: Advancement of Interactive Marketing: An Overview

Since interactive marketing as a field evolved from traditional form of direct
marketing and e-commerce around three-decade ago, it has grown dramat-
ically to be the fastest developed business discipline with a particular focus
on interactivity and consumer participation. The market is becoming a forum
for conversations and interactions among connected actors or participants
through digital and mobile marketing activities. This section provides an
overview of the historical advancement of interactive marketing discipline.
Chapter 2 offers an author-keyword-based bibliometric analysis of the
research published in the domain of interactive marketing to develop and
present the thematic evolution of various research subthemes in the area. The
analysis presents the performance analysis of scholarly research in interactive
marketing and identifies the most influential authors, affiliations and coun-
tries in the domain. Authors have identified major subthemes comprising the
research scholarship and how these subthemes have evolved over time.
Chapter 3 discusses the transformation from the traditional direct marketing
to the contemporary interactive marketing field in terms of the ten evolving
interactive marketing tools. The authors assess these tools in terms of the
three dimensions of interactivity (active control, two-way communication and
synchronicity) and the potential positive (e.g., cognition) and negative (privacy
concerns and intrusiveness) outcomes in marketing practices.
Chapter 4 gives an historical overview of the advancement of digital
marketing in the past 30 years, laying out the digital marketing domain as
a subset of interactive marketing with a focus on interactivity. The authors
conclude that interactive digital marketing has evolved from business-oriented
4 C. L. WANG

toward consumer-oriented and gradually closed the gap between industry

practices and theoretical advancement.
Chapter 5 closely looks at the interactive digital marketing (IDM) concept,
which reflects a focus on interactivity in digital marketing. The chapter
discusses six IDM mechanisms, including mobile marketing, online PR, social
media marketing, interactive display advertising, online partnership and email
marketing. The authors discuss how these IDM mechanisms are applied
though digital transformation based on a case study of a New Zealand
company.
Chapter 6 addresses the changing role of consumers in the interactive
marketing process from reactive to proactive and the underlying mechanism
of consumer empowerment. The author proposes a theoretical framework that
examines perceived control and related psychological processes in the interac-
tive marketing context. The chapter further discusses the relationship between
interactivity and perceived control as well as the effect of perceived control on
consumers’ affective, cognitive and behavioral responses.
Chapter 7 presents a “Five As” (awareness, associations, attitude, attach-
ment and activity) model to synthesize the impact of branding factors on
Word-of-Mouth communication in the interactive marketing environment.
The authors deliberate evolving interactive marketing environment elements,
such as new technologies, platform revolution and participatory culture, that
moderate the relationship between various branding factors and electronic
WOM.

3.2 Part 2: Technology Development and Interactive Marketing

The booming of interactive marketing echoes the rapid development and inno-
vations of new technologies and Internet of Things, which fuels the growth
of interactive marketing with powerful tools. The wide application of artifi-
cial intelligence, virtual reality, machine learning, chatbots and voice assistance
has greatly changed the retailing and communication landscape, enhancing
customer shopping experience and direct interaction with the firm or brand.
Chapter 8 discusses some recent technological innovations in the retailing
industry, such as smart mirrors, checkout-free stores, chatbots, facial recog-
nition, etc. Recognizing the growing competition and increased customer
awareness that have forced retailers to innovate and bring in new technolo-
gies, the authors suggest that such interactive technologies enhance consumer
interactive experience at the new retail age.
Chapter 9 examines the role of AI-powered chatbot’s service quality in
developing customer-brand relationship and their impact on electronic word-
of-mouth in improving interactive marketing. The authors contend that
understanding the dimensions of chatbot’s service quality can help marketers
enhance user experience, build customer-brand relationship and encourage
customers to involve in positive eWOM.
 1 INTERACTIVE MARKETING IS THE NEW NORMAL 5

Chapter 10 evaluates the impact of Internet of Things on consumer

behavior in terms of the interactive experience with smart devices. The authors
explore the optimal scenario of synergistic experience between customers
and AI-based smart objects by integrating interpersonal orientation, objects’
orientation and social orientation.
Chapter 11 compares two kinds of AI devices in terms of physical or virtual
presence. The personal AI assistants are involved in consumer daily life whereas
the external voice assistants or service robots are the devices that interact with
consumers during the product or service acquisition. Accordingly, the physical
presence and the friendliness of the voice assistant may impact the interactivity
in different ways.
Chapter 12 takes a unique perspective to look at text-based, anthropomor-
phic social chatbots in various digital platforms. The authors synthesize the
literature on computer-mediated communication and human–computer inter-
action, with a focus on humanizing chatbots for interactive marketing. The
chapter probes into the various anthropomorphic cues used in chatbot design
and messaging, including human identity cues, verbal and non-verbal cues,
along with related concepts including social presence, parasocial interaction
and the role of emotion in consumer-chatbot interactions.
Chapter 13 further explores the issue of affective interaction with tech-
nologies, focusing on virtual assistants such as chatbots or service robots.
The authors discuss interactive marketing experiences through text, sound and
image in assessing the role of transferring emotions based on anthropomorphic
characteristics of the virtual assistants.

3.3 Part 3: Interactivity in the Virtual World

The advert of Metaverse signals our life becoming a mix of physical and virtual
worlds in socialization, play and work. The development of technologies, such
as cloud computing techniques, blockchain and 5G/6G wireless commu-
nication networks along with virtual reality and augmented reality devices,
dramatically changed retailing activities and shopping experience. Consumers
can either experience the product in the digital landscape by virtual fitting
room or bring digital world to physical store where shoppers can experience
every facet of the brand through immersive multimedia content.
Chapter 14 evaluates the application of augmented reality in interactive
marketing. From the consumer perspective, AR gives rise to diverse cognitive,
affective and social-psychological outcomes, which can translate into behav-
ioral consequences including purchase intentions, word-of-mouth intentions
and brand engagement. From the marketer’s perspective, the advancement
toward an easy integration of AR within existing IT infrastructures and effi-
cient ways to create virtual product replicas are crucial for the adoption of AR
by small retailers.
6 C. L. WANG

Chapter 15 inspects how e-commerce marketing migrates to the interactive

v-commerce metaverse environment. The chapter outlines the recent v-
commerce tools including mobile 3D body scanning for interactive marketing
in fashion metaverse. The authors indicate that the practicability of v-
commerce tools (mobile body scanners, VR, AR and MR) with four main
elements such as immersive technology, interactivity, attractiveness, and accu-
racy have a potential to enhance the virtual interactive experience.
Chapter 16 looks over the emerging virtual influencers in interactive
marketing. The authors indicate that virtual influencers as computer-generated
characters or avatars designed and maintained by experts and digital agencies
help brands appeal and reach desirable target groups effectively through their
digital personalities. The chapter provides recommendations for marketers to
incorporate virtual into interactive branding strategy based on literature review
and exploratory interviews with young consumers.
Chapter 17 delves into the effect of virtual celebrity on product endorse-
ment with a comparison with human endorsers. Based on two empirical
studies, the author finds that viewers’ sentiments toward a virtual celebrity
and the parasocial interaction with a virtual celebrity vary, depending on the
virtual celebrity types (artificial figure and dead human figure), the markets
where the products are sold and the life cycles of the products.
Chapter 18 scrutinizes the conceptualization of “presence” concept in the
interactive marketing literature. The authors argue that consumers’ feelings
of being “there” in a mediated environment increase the effectiveness of the
immersive experience, making the concept of “presence” a central process of
interest to researchers and practitioners in interactive marketing. Based on a
systematic review of the literature, the chapter develops a theoretical frame-
work that identifies the technological antecedents (e.g., sensory breadth),
associated subdimensions (e.g., ecological validity) and cognitive processes
(e.g., self-location and action possibilities).

3.4 Part 4: Platform Revolution and Customer Participation

Platform revolution is forming a new business ecosystem for customer
connections and interactivities (Parker et al., 2016). Platform-orchestrated
multi-sided network interactions reshaping the retail industry by prioritizing
consumers’ needs and source sharing through data-driven matchmaking. The
process of value creation is rapidly shifting from the product- and firm-centric
view to personalized and interactive customer experience. Social network
platforms are particularly effective to enable people to work collaboratively,
generating, disseminating and sharing news, personal stories, ideas and creative
works through livestreaming.
Chapter 19 assesses the effectiveness of customer-brand engagement across
social media platforms, including Twitter, Instagram and TikTok through data
mining. The author finds that TikTok has higher customer-brand engage-
ment than Twitter and Instagram, despite the latter being larger platforms and
 1 INTERACTIVE MARKETING IS THE NEW NORMAL 7

widely used by brands. The author suggests that the choice of brand content
format can increase customer-brand engagement in interactive marketing.
Chapter 20 proposes five categories of social media networks, including
social networking, content sharing, social knowledge and news, shopping
reviewing and rating, and virtual world. The authors further identify five
types of major interactive marketing functions of social media, including
organic content, influencer marketing and social word-of-mouth, social ads,
social event planning and social care. The chapter also examines social
media analytics, measurements and ethical issues in interactive marketing
and explores how social media can function more effectively in interactive
marketing with the advancement of the new technologies.
Chapter 21 investigates the effect of customer-brand interaction on brand
pages of social networking sites, such as Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram,
Twitter, etc. In particular, the authors analyze the role of customer involve-
ment, practical benefits and social benefits of the fabric handicraft page that
could influence customer engagement, trust and purchase intention.
Chapter 22 uses Douyin as a case of interactive livestreaming media
to illustrate the constructed value and cultural preference of consumption
in e-commerce. The chapter shows the mechanism of Douyin in interac-
tive marketing could be operated and sustained even without the expected
economic gain. The authors draw strategic implications for the e-commerce
livestreaming industry.
Chapter 23 elaborates the emerging business practice, termed collabora-
tive online shopping (COS), which creates interactive experiences through
specific touchpoints in the joint customer journey. The chapter elaborates two
forms of real-time interaction and communication during collaborative online
shopping: the interpersonal interactions and interactions with the COS plat-
forms. The authors conclude that the shoppers experience during COS can be
enhanced by improving the interactive touchpoints of COSPs and enhancing
the interpersonal interactions between shoppers and their companions through
the social presence and flow.

3.5 Part 5: EWOM and Influencer Marketing in the Interactive Era

Participatory culture (Jenkins et al., 2006), enabled by web technology,
provides individuals new forms of expression, increasing consumer engage-
ment in public discourse, user-generated content, electronic WOM Commu-
nication and influencer marketing. Fan culture and fandom behavior, in partic-
ular, have changed the consumer-brand relationship as such that consumers are
acting roles like enthusiasts, hobbyists, reviewers, bloggers live streamers and
influencers in various digital platforms (Wang, 2020). Such real-life influencers
from grassroots not only have a significant following but a higher number of
buying conversations and conversions.
Chapter 24 offers a new conceptualization of eWOM through the theoret-
ical lens of interactive marketing. Focusing on the interactivity of eWOM, this
8 C. L. WANG

chapter develops a new typology of eWOM media based on their functionality,

information types and interactivity. Beyond the customer-to-customer commu-
nication in eWOM, this chapter takes a managerial perspective to categorize
and evaluate proactive and reactive eWOM strategies.
Chapter 25 talks over the common issues of complaint handling and
channel selection in the interactive marketing era. The authors contend that
consumers are turning to new interactive tools to raise their voice against
companies because of the wide array of private (i.e., WhatsApp) and public
channels (i.e., review platforms) available to them, raising challenges to
marketers in brand building with integral complaint handling strategy.
Chapter 26 attempts to reconceptualize influencers on social media consid-
ering the dynamic nature of the influencer phenomenon. While influencer
types are often classified based on the number of followers, the authors
propose an improved classification based on influencers’ potential reach, such
as mega-reach, macro-reach, medium-reach and mini-reach influencers.
Chapter 27 examines interactive relationship among influencer-follower,
influencer-brand and follower-brand involved in this triadic interplay. The
authors discuss the way that three parties interact with each other in a digi-
tally mediated dialogue using interactive tools such as likes, comments, tags,
etc. in social media. The interactive nature of the influencer phenomenon has
the potential to trigger brand-related conversations and instant sales via using
shoppable posts and livestream shopping sessions revolving around the content
that influencers create and share with their followers.
Chapter 28 focuses on understanding what makes one influencer type
more credible than another does in their social media marketing campaigns
for fashion brands. The authors find that while celebrity influencers have
high follower counts and have been influential in traditional marketing adver-
tising campaigns, their lack of online interaction with their followers lowers
engagement rates among consumers and consequently becomes less impactful
compared to some influencers of lessor followers.

3.6 Part 6: Predictive Analytics and Personalized Targeting

Big data and marketing automation via artificial intelligence and machine
learning have enhanced the interactive marketing research to measure user
experience metrics and increase more accurate and personalized prediction and
targeting. Therefore, application of predictive analytics and smart recommen-
dations help marketing to conduct AI-driven targeting, Interactive advertising
and Ad optimization, content creation and generation, dynamic pricing,
customized design and customer design experience. Interactive marketing
has indeed achieved personalization and customization of marketing without
soaring costs.
Chapter 29 provides a theoretical framework to understand customer
engagement in predictive analytics, which is the process of using current
and/or historical data with a combination of statistical techniques to assess
 1 INTERACTIVE MARKETING IS THE NEW NORMAL 9

the likelihood of a certain event happening in the future. The authors propose
that predictive analytics positively influences customer engagement through
need for meaningful affiliation, which is moderated by self-construal. Mean-
while, the authors suggest that predictive analytics may negatively influence
customer engagement through sense of control, which is moderated by data
use transparency and trust.
Chapter 30 explores the role of AI-driven systems in creating value for
consumers and retailers through the lens of personalized recommendation
systems and retargeted ads. Authors conducted a case study on the pioneer
e-commerce platform Amazon to showcase how consumers and businesses
relationship can be enhanced by AI-driven systems outcomes. The chapter
suggests that the AI-based recommendation system provides informative,
relevant and accurate content to consumers, and meanwhile, helps retailers
to enhance consumers’ loyalty, satisfaction and develop new products by
predicting consumers’ behaviors.
Chapter 31 seeks to guide how to leverage deep learning in interactive
marketing. It characterizes eleven typical issues that marketers have to deal
with. They include the curse of dimensionality, complex data processing,
language-image nexus and customer privacy. Correspondingly, the chapter
elucidates some solution techniques to address the issues, like generative
adversarial networks, transfer learning and federated learning.
Chapter 32 surveys the interactive marketing literature on application
of personalized recommendation. The authors suggest that Recommender
Agents tend to assist customers by decreasing the information overload and
presenting focused and curated content. The chapter identifies the role of
recommender agents in purchase and post-purchase stages of customer shop-
ping journey, including technology acceptance, persuasion, attitude formation
human recommender interaction, consumer response and decision-making.
Chapter 33 aims to clarify the concept of an emerging interactive marketing
strategy, i.e., location-based proximity marketing. The chapter discusses how
technological breakthrough has facilitated customer and marketer interaction
through continuous live location information collection and transmission via
mobile devices. The authors examine the emergence of proximity marketing,
which is based on pre-programmed marketing actions that deliver relevant
information to potential customers at the right time and in the right place.

3.7 Part 7: Practical Implications of Interactive Marketing

Spearheaded by industry-wide marketing practices and strategic applications
under various interactive innovations, the advent of interactive marketing has
witnessed the declining impacts of passive broadcast advertising and one-
way persuasive communication. Interactivity has become an integral part of
contemporary marketing practices from retailing, service marketing to recently
growing gamification in mobile marketing. With location identification tech-
nology, firms engage with the customer at the right place and time through
10 C. L. WANG

proximity marketing via interactive wireless transmitter. Built-in interactive

features of social media and mobile apps have enhanced seamless online
surfing/shopping experience with the synchronization of digital and physical
worlds through omnichannel marketing.
Chapter 34 explicates the practical application of artificial intelligent-
enabled chatbot technology to enhance customer engagement and customer
experience in the luxury retail. The authors suggest that chatbots in luxury
retail need to have low cost, quick response, attractiveness, personalized
service, intelligence and interactive features.
Chapter 35 demonstrates the role of incorporating the appropriately
designed gamified content for a brand to establish itself in the competitive
market. The author argues that gamification can be an effective interactive
marketing strategy that aids brands cut the advertising clutter, standing out
and escaping mediocrity. The chapter outlines the need to gamify and different
ways of gamified interactive marketing.
Chapter 36 assesses the interactive experience in servicescape from both
physical environment and online interaction perspectives. The authors indicate
that an understanding of this interactive experience for physical and online
contexts is important to practitioners to respond to a consumer’s preferences,
expectations and demands in a timely and appropriate manner.
Chapter 37 analyzes the role of touch in consumers’ experiences in both
physical and digital realms. Because consumers use their sense of touch to
interact with products and salespeople in direct marketing, they use touch-
screen devices to interact with products and others on e-commerce and
mobile commerce platforms. The author outlines how touchscreen devices
(e.g., smartphones, tablets) and haptic technology (smart wearables) influence
consumers’ experiences in the digital world.
Chapter 38 assesses the usage of emojis in interactive marketing in terms
of emotional (e.g., expressing sentiment) and semantic functions (e.g., substi-
tuting textual messaging). The chapter examines the effects of emojis (the
presence of emojis, the position of emojis, the repetition of emojis, the mean-
ings of emojis and the type of emojis) in interactive marketing communication.
The author concludes that emojis greatly influence interaction between the
brand and consumers, and connections among active consumers.

3.8 Part 8: A Necessary Evil? Unintended Consequences of Interactive

Marketing
The rapid development and application of powerful AI tools and mobile
technologies greatly increased consumer connectivity and meanwhile intruded
deeply into consumer lives, bringing various unanticipated consensus
(Deighton & Kornfeld, 2009). Interactive marketing creates both opportu-
nities and challenges for business and it is important to identify the potential
dark side of applying interactive and personalized technologies. The poten-
tial risks and ethical considerations include consumer vulnerability, privacy
 1 INTERACTIVE MARKETING IS THE NEW NORMAL 11

and information security when interactive devices, big data and advanced AI
technologies are used in interactive marketing activities.
Chapter 39 provides an overview of a dark side of interactive marketing
about customer incivility or a set of undesirable behaviors in virtual space.
Drawing on research across several disciplines, the chapter outlines emerging
distinct forms of incivility in a consumerism context and discusses their
distinguishing characteristics. The author puts forward strategic implications
suitable for managing consumer incivility on social media networks.
Chapter 40 attempts to cast attention on the dark side of using gamifica-
tion in interactive marketing, or incorporating game mechanics in non-gaming
contexts like social media marketing, email marketing, customer relationship
management, e-commerce and mobile marketing. The authors elaborate the
dark side surrounding three key themes: design-based challenges in gamifica-
tion, adopting gamified marketing solutions and user-based issues leading to
lesser or no impact of gamification in online marketing.
Chapter 41 looks at the effect of gamification on customers’ psychological
status, raising potential challenges on ethical concerns, such as manipula-
tion, exploitation, psychological harm, and conflict with cultural norms. The
authors identify special ethical implications related to using gamification as an
interactive tool and assess how consumer shape their ethical judgment toward
gamification. The chapter concludes with strategic implications for marketers,
designers and policymakers to minimize the unethical consequences of gami-
fication and ensure that companies will use gamification to compete ethically
and responsibly.
Chapter 42 investigates how customers’ negative emotions can destroy
value in online brand communities. The chapter pinpoints customers’ negative
emotions (anger, dissatisfaction, disgust, fear and sadness) and detects their
value co-destructing effects in the customer-firm interaction. According to the
authors, value co-destruction in the social media context can be understood as
an exchange of negative comments in which customers’ mix of emotions and
the firm’s responses determine the magnitude of value destruction.

References
Deighton, J. (1996, November–December). The future of interactive marketing.
Harvard Business Review, 74(6), 151–60.
Deighton, J., & Kornfeld, L. (2009, Winter). Interactivity’s unanticipated conse-
quences for marketers and marketing. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 23(1),
4–10.
Jenkins, H., Clinton, K., Puroshotma, R., Robinson, A., & Weigel, M. (2006).
Confronting the challenges of participatory culture: Media education for the 21st
century. The MacArthur Foundation.
Lim, W. M., Kumar, S., Pandey, N., Rasul, T., & Gaur, V. (2022). From direct
marketing to interactive marketing: A retrospective review of the Journal of Research
in Interactive Marketing. Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing, In print.
https://doi.org/10.1108/JRIM-11-2021-0276
12 C. L. WANG

Parker, G. G., Van Alstyne, M. W., & Choudary, S. P. (2016). Platform revolution:
How networked markets are transforming the economy—And how to make them work
for you. W. W. Norton.
Wang, C. L. (2020). Contemporary perspectives on fandom research: An introduction.
In C. L. Wang (Ed.), Handbook of research on the impact of fandom in society and
consumerism. IGI Global Inc.
Wang, C. L. (2021). New frontiers and future directions in interactive marketing:
Inaugural editorial. Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing, 15(1), 1–9.
 PART I

Advancement of Interactive Marketing:

An Overview
 CHAPTER 2

Evolution of Research in Interactive Marketing:

A Bibliometric and Thematic Review

Deepak Verma, Satish Kumar, and Divesh Kumar

1 Introduction
Information and communication technologies (ICT) have revolutionized
almost all spheres of our lives and the way businesses are conceived, managed
and conducted. With the availability of technologies for communicating
highly interactive messages using rich media and ubiquitous access to the
Internet, the passive broadcast of marketing messages has become a thing of
history. Wang (2021) defines interactive marketing as a bi-directional value
creation and mutual-influence marketing process through active customer
connection, engagement, participation and interaction. Communication and
interaction between marketers and their customers are thus essential to interac-
tive marketing. In the past, the role of communicating with the customer was
more or less designated to advertising and later, to a certain extent, to direct
marketing. In the current context of hypercompetitive markets and highly
savvy customers, relying only on mass advertising and direct marketing may
prove fruitless. The speed at which interactions take place between customers

D. Verma (B) · S. Kumar · D. Kumar

Malaviya National Institute of Technology Jaipur, Jaipur, India
e-mail: dverma.dms@mnit.ac.in
S. Kumar
e-mail: skumar.dms@mnit.ac.in
D. Kumar
e-mail: divesh.dms@mnit.ac.in

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 15

Switzerland AG 2023
C. L. Wang (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Interactive Marketing,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14961-0_2
16 D. VERMA ET AL.

and the richness and interactivity that modern information and communi-
cation technologies offer has made it mandatory for marketers to improve
their strategies and keep up to date with the latest trends relating to how
their customers interact. It is not just web sites and online forums that affect
how customers think and act. The consumer psyche is now being influenced
more than ever by platforms like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and so on.
With recent developments in technologies such as virtual reality (VR) and
augmented reality (AR), there is now only a thin veil between the real world
and the digital one. Such confluences can result in multiple applications which
can cause a manifold increase in the quality of customer interactions and expe-
riences with brands and marketers. Marketers have also tried to keep in pace
with these technological developments. There is a significant improvement in
the way marketers are now treating their interactions with customers. They
are no longer confined to the fringes of business strategy, but now assuming
more of a central stage with a strategic focus.
The contemporary landscape of engagement and communication between
businesses and their customers has undergone a systematic change in compar-
ison to the days of one-way mass communication primarily driven by adver-
tising. The nature of communication is now more bi-directional in nature. The
content, speed and variety have all evolved. This has also resulted in the evolu-
tion of interactive marketing over time to keep up with these changes. There
have, however, been only a few attempts made to retrospectively review the
research scholarship in this domain and the subthemes addressed. This chapter
makes an attempt to employ bibliometric methods to retrospectively study
the research scholarship in the domain of interactive marketing. Specifically, it
focuses on answering the following three questions:

1. Which are the most influential studies and who are the most important
authors and their affiliations in the domain of interactive marketing?
2. What are the major themes in the domain of interactive marketing, and
how do they interact?
3. What are the major themes of research in the domain of interactive
marketing, and how have these themes evolved?

In order to answer these questions, a bibliometric analysis approach was

taken. The first question was answered using a performance analysis of biblio-
metric data focusing on publication patterns. The second was answered using
document coupling based on author-supplied keywords. Finally, thematic
mapping and strategic diagrams were developed on the basis of the co-word
analysis of the author keywords performed to answer the third.
The remainder of the chapter is broadly divided as follows: the second
section relates to the method used to analysis the bibliometric data. Section 3
presents the results of the performance analysis, demonstrates the outcomes of
the document coupling based on author keywords, and the thematic evolution
 2 EVOLUTION OF RESEARCH IN INTERACTIVE … 17

of the subthemes in the domain of interactive marketing and finally, Sect. 4

concludes the chapter while including the key takeaways and future research
directions.

2 Method
In order to achieve the stated objectives of this chapter, a bibliometric analysis
approach was used. A bibliometric approach is considered suitable for handling
large amount of quantitative bibliographic data (Donthu et al., 2021) as in this
case. The methodology has been widely used in multiple domains of research
scholarship to analyse and visualize knowledge networks and intellectual struc-
tures (Donthu et al., 2022; Kumar et al., 2022). There are vast amounts
of knowledge inherent to the scholastic documents produced in any field,
which, if harnessed, analysed and visualized properly, can provide valuable
insights into the knowledge networks and intellectual structures of a research
domain. Using bibliographic data, such networks can be analysed and visual-
ized at various levels, including documents, authors, affiliations, countries and
keywords.
One of the earliest proponents of bibliographic coupling was Kessler (1963)
and now, with the availability of computing resources and the abundance of
documents in digital forms, it is gaining popularity in many fields of research.
Such analysis can provide valuable insights not only into the intellectual struc-
tures and subthemes being explored, but also in relation to how these are
evolving (Zhao & Strotmann, 2014). Bibliographic coupling may be defined
as two or more documents sharing certain items in their references, implying
common research themes (Yang et al., 2016). Such an understanding can be
extended to include other document components such as author keywords, as
frequently used ones may imply common, specific research themes (Morris &
Yen, 2004). The analysis in the current chapter uses author keywords as
the common base for analysing and visualizing the underlying intellectual
structures and subthemes in the area.
For the purpose of this chapter, bibliographic data for the two most
prominent journals in the domain of interactive marketing—the Journal of
Interactive Marketing and the Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing —
were extracted from SCOPUS. The Journal of Interactive Marketing (JIM),
published by Elsevier, is inarguably the most impactful source in the domain
of interactive marketing focusing on both online and offline topics related to
the analysis, targeting and service of individual customers. The journal has
an impact factor of 6.258. The Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing
(JIRM), originally started as Direct Marketing: An International Journal, is
another internationally acclaimed and referred journal. It changed its name in
2010 to expand its scope to interactive marketing, which is an extension of
direct marketing (or the use of direct media technologies) into new media
technologies that allow for multi-way communication between buyers and
sellers. JIRM has an impact factor of 4.509. Both of these are highly respected
18 D. VERMA ET AL.

journals in the field of marketing in general and represent the epitome

of impactful research specifically in the domain of interactive marketing,
as evidenced by their wide acceptance and impressive impact metrics and
indexing.
A summary of the various impact measures of JIM and JIRM based on their
2022 ranking by SCOPUS (CiteScore, 2020/2022) is presented in Table 1
and Fig. 1.
The initial search resulted in the extraction of 942 documents from the two
journals, 615 from the Journal of Interactive Marketing (JIM) and 327 from
the Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing (JIRM). For the purpose
of this chapter, only articles (873), editorials (41) and review papers (17)

Table 1 Summary of selected sources

Journal of Interactive Journal of Research in

Marketing Interactive Marketing

Coverage in SCOPUS 1997–present 2010–present

Total publications 581 290
Total citations 52,754 6,833
h-index 117 43
g-index 213 67
m-index 4.5 3.31
CiteScore 2020 11.4 6.2
SJR 2021 3.62 1.56
SJR quartile 2021 Q1 Q1
SNIP 2020 2.880 1.419
CiteScore tracker 12.7 9.1
(as on 6 April 2022)
CiteScore rank (marketing) 7/185 (96th percentile) 32/185 (82nd
percentile)

(a) Journal of Interactive Marketing (b) Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing

99 97 97 96
94 10 9.1 100
14 12.7 100 82 82
11.4 76 90
12 90 71 73
9.9 8 80
9.5 80
10 9 6.2 70
70
Percentile
CiteScore

7.4 6
Percentile
CiteScore

8 60 4.4 60
50 3.8 3.6 50
6 4 3.1
40 40
4
30 2 30
2 20 20
0 10 0 10
2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021* 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021*
CiteScore Percentile CiteScore Percentile

*2021 CiteScore as on 6 April 2022

Fig. 1 CiteScore trends

 2 EVOLUTION OF RESEARCH IN INTERACTIVE … 19

were retained. A summary of the main information extracted from the initial
search results and the final selected documents for the analysis are presented
in Table 2.
The analysis of the documents was divided into two parts: a biblio-
metric performance analysis of the documents extracted and the analysis and
visualization of major subthemes and their intellectual structures.
The first part of analysis, the bibliometric performance analysis, included
metrics such as the total documents produced, average citations per year and
per article, most cited sources, most impactful authors, top relevant institu-
tional affiliations, production of articles by country and so on. This section also
incorporated the identification of the top author-supplied keywords. This is
supplemented by the keyword dynamics of the top keywords and the trending
topics in the domain for the last five years.
The second part of the analysis focuses on major subthemes and their evolu-
tion using author-supplied keywords. In order to map the thematic evolution
in the area, this chapter adopts the general approach proposed by Garfield
(1994) by building maps from bibliometric information. Although there are
multiple forms of scientific mapping that can be performed using bibliometric
information (Small, 2006), two of the most common approaches are by using
co-word analysis (Small, 1973), which is primarily used to map the structure
of a scientific research space, and co-citation analysis, which mainly outlines
the conceptual structures (Cobo et al., 2011; Mora-Valentín et al., 2018).

3 Results
In the first stage of the study, a performance analysis was completed to compile
the publication trends among articles in the domain. Table 3 presents the year-
wise summary of the number of documents published, as well as the average
number of citations per article, and per year, and the total citable years. This
is supplemented with Fig. 2, which presents the year-wise breakdown of the
growth in the number of documents published in the two selected sources.
It can be seen that there is a steady increase in the number of documents
published in the field over time.
Table 4 presents the 10 most impactful authors. While Shankar, V. is the
most productive author with 21 publications to his name, the most impactful
author in terms of total citations is Malthouse, E.C., with a total of 1,602 cita-
tions. Dholakia, U.M. has the most citations per publication (221.5), having
received 1,329 citations for six publications. The top two most productive
authors, Shankar, V. and Malthouse, E.C., are also the authors with highest
h-index (12). The highest m-index (21) and g-index (0.600) among the most
productive authors belongs to Shankar, V. making him the most influential
and impactful author with the highest number of publications, second-highest
total citation count and top place in all indices.
Figure 3 presents the top 10 locally cited sources. The Journal of Inter-
active Marketing occupies the top slot with 2,275 citations, followed by the
20 D. VERMA ET AL.

Table 2 Search results—main information

Initial search results Final selected

Journal of Journal of Research in Total

Interactive Interactive Marketing
Marketing

Timespan 1997:2021 2010:2022 1997:2022 1997:2022

Sources (journals, 1 1 2 2
books, etc.)
Documents 615 327 942 931
Average years from 11.9 4.99 9.52 9.49
publication
Average citations 85.64 20.61 63.06 63.78
per documents
Average citations 6.927 3.368 5.692 5.754
per year per doc
References 26,196 19,267 43,625 43,577
Document types
Article 566 306 872 873
Conference paper 5 5
Editorial 34 7 41 41
Erratum 4 4
Note 1 1 3
Retracted 1 1
Review 4 13 17 17
Document contents
Author keywords 1,302 871 1,981 1,979
(DE)
Authors
Authors 1,196 686 1,812 1,810
Author appearances 1,623 821 2,444 2,419
Authors of 73 43 116 115
single-authored
documents
Authors of 1,123 643 1,696 1,695
multi-authored
documents
Author collaboration
Single-authored 92 54 146 140
documents
Documents per 0.514 0.477 0.52 0.514
author
Authors per 1.94 2.1 1.92 1.94
document
Co-authors per 2.64 2.51 2.59 2.6
documents

(continued)
 2 EVOLUTION OF RESEARCH IN INTERACTIVE … 21

Table 2 (continued)

Initial search results Final selected

Journal of Journal of Research in Total

Interactive Interactive Marketing
Marketing

Collaboration 2.15 2.36 2.13 2.14

index

Table 3 Articles published, mean citations per year and per article

Year N Mean TC per art Mean TC per year Citable years

1997 33 28.18 1.13 25

1998 15 60.80 2.53 24
1999 12 109.17 4.75 23
2000 15 53.60 2.44 22
2001 21 121.62 5.79 21
2002 24 131.79 6.59 20
2003 21 94.62 4.98 19
2004 27 306.15 17.01 18
2005 21 158.29 9.31 17
2006 18 55.11 3.44 16
2007 20 201.45 13.43 15
2008 17 59.82 4.27 14
2009 35 126.43 9.73 13
2010 46 62.00 5.17 12
2011 41 47.44 4.31 11
2012 45 98.56 9.86 10
2013 45 78.80 8.76 9
2014 37 87.54 10.94 8
2015 36 41.00 5.86 7
2016 48 40.35 6.73 6
2017 54 38.39 7.68 5
2018 59 25.46 6.36 4
2019 62 20.40 6.80 3
2020 56 19.39 9.70 2
2021 103 4.83 4.83 1
2022 20 1 0
Average annual 9.61 20.08 34.03
growth rate (until
2021) (%)
22 D. VERMA ET AL.

700

600
Cumulaate Occurance

500

400

300

200

100

0
1997 1999 2001 2003 2005 2007 2009 2011 2013 2015 2017 2019 2021
Journal of Interactive Marketing Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing

Fig. 2 Source-wise growth of publications

Table 4 Top 10 authors and their impact

Author NP TC TC/NP h-index g-index m-index PY_start

Shankar V 21 1,582 75.34 12 21 0.600 2003

Malthouse EC 15 1,609 107.27 12 15 0.500 1999
Peltier JW 12 603 50.25 11 12 0.423 1997
Verhoef PC 10 618 61.8 9 10 0.500 2005
Hofacker CF 9 706 78.45 8 9 0.348 2000
Milne GR 8 951 118.87 7 8 0.292 1999
De Ruyter K 8 674 84.25 8 8 0.364 2001
Kim J 7 1,124 160.57 7 7 0.350 2003
Dholakia UM 6 1,329 221.5 6 6 0.286 2002
Kim H 6 317 52.84 6 6 0.429 2009

Note NP = number of publications; TC = total citations; TC/NP = citations per publication;

h = h-index (n articles getting at least n citations); g = g-index (n articles getting at least n2
citations); m = m-index (h-index divided by number of years author has been active); PY_Start
= year of first publication

Journal of Marketing with 2300 citations. The Journal of Consumer Research

(2,140 citations) and Journal of Marketing Research (1,968 citations) are other
notable sources of local citations.
Figure 4 presents the most relevant affiliations in terms of the number of
publications produced. Northwestern University tops the list with 41 publica-
tions, followed by Texas A&M University with 28. The third spot is occupied
by the University of Groningen (The Netherlands) with 17. Institutions from
the USA dominate the list, as seven out of the top 10 institutions are based
in the USA. Apart from the University of Groningen (The Netherlands) in
the third position, the other two non-USA institutions are the University of
Amsterdam (The Netherlands) and Ghent University (Belgium).
Figure 5a presents the spread of geographic affiliations. It can be noted
that the research production in the domain of interactive marketing is
 2 EVOLUTION OF RESEARCH IN INTERACTIVE … 23

JOURNAL OF INTERACTIVE MARKETING 2775

JOURNAL OF MARKETING 2399

JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH 2140

JOURNAL OF MARKETING RESEARCH 1968

JOURNAL OF BUSINESS RESEARCH 1130

JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN INTERACTIVE
1033
MARKETING
MARKETING SCIENCE 1016

JOURNAL OF THE ACADEMY OF MARKETING SCIENCE 952

JOURNAL OF RETAILING 848

JOURNAL OF ADVERTISING 822

Number of Local Citations

Fig. 3 Top 10 sources of local citations

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY 41

TEXAS A AND M UNIVERSITY 28

UNIVERSITY OF GRONINGEN 17

FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY 16

UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-WHITEWATER 15

UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND 15

NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY 15

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 14

UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM 14

GHENT UNIVERSITY 11

Number of Articles

Fig. 4 Most relevant affiliations (top 10)

primarily concentrated in North America, Europe, Australia and Oceania, and

South Asia (primarily India) and Southeast Asia (including China). Figure 5b
presents the top 10 countries with the highest numbers of publications. The
USA, with a total of 1,008 publications, leads the list with quite a margin,
followed by Germany with 100 to its credit. Apart from Germany, three more
countries—The Netherlands (in the third position), the UK (fifth) and Spain
(ninth) are featured from the European region. Three Asian countries, China,
South Korea and India, feature on the list at the fourth, seventh and eighth
positions, respectively. Canada is the other North American country, occu-
pying the 10th position, whereas Australia is sixth. There were no countries in
the top 10 from South America or Africa.
24 D. VERMA ET AL.

b USA 1008
GERMANY 100
NETHERLANDS 93
CHINA 91
UK 70
AUSTRALIA 49
SOUTH KOREA 45
INDIA 44
SPAIN 41
CANADA 39
Number of Articles

Fig. 5 Country-specific production

An analysis was conducted to identify the corresponding author’s country

affiliations. Figure 6 presents the results. The USA naturally tops the list by
huge margins, both in terms of single country publications (SCP) and multiple
country publications (MCP). Germany and China closely followed each other
in the second and third positions. Interestingly, it can be seen from the figure
that India is the only country in the list with all SCP and no MCP. This implies
a lack of international collaborations in the area from India, though it may be
emerging as a source of scholarship.
Lastly, a three-field analysis for author-country-affiliation was performed to
identify the linkages between the most influential authors, countries and affilia-
tions. Figure 7 exhibits the linkages in the form of a Sankey diagram. It can be
seen the USA is the most influential country as all of the top 10 authors as well
as the top 10 institutional affiliations are linked to it. The second most influ-
ential country in terms of linkages is The Netherlands, whereas Northwestern
University and Texas A&M University are the most linked affiliations. The
University of Groningen and the University of Amsterdam, both belonging
 2 EVOLUTION OF RESEARCH IN INTERACTIVE … 25

USA 349 71

GERMANY 26 17

CHINA 22 17

NETHERLANDS 24 10

SPAIN 15 10

INDIA 22 0
UNITED
15 6
KINGDOM
KOREA 9 12

CANADA 10 5 Single Country Publication (SCP)

AUSTRALIA 96 Multiple Country Publication (MCP)

Number of Articles

Fig. 6 Corresponding author country

to The Netherlands, and Ghent University (Belgium) are the only non-USA
universities in the top 10 list.
Table 5 presents the 10 most cited countries in the domain. It comes as no
surprise that the list is again dominated by the USA, with a total of 30,520

Fig. 7 Three-field analysis for author-country-affiliation

26 D. VERMA ET AL.

citations. The Netherlands and Germany occupy the second and third posi-
tions on the list with 3,247 and 2,487 citations, respectively. In total, there
are five countries from the European region on the list—The Netherlands,
Germany, the UK, Spain and Italy, two countries each from North America
(the USA and Canada) and Asia (South Korea and China). This indicates
that although there might be a relative increase in the number of publications
coming out of large emerging markets, like India, the area is still dominated
by the scholarship from the developed markets, especially North America and
Europe.
Table 6 presents the most globally cited articles. The most cited article is
Prahalad and Ramaswamy (2004), which is cited 2,989 times and focuses on
the dynamics of interactions between a firm and its customers and how it leads
to the creation of value. The second and third places on the list are occupied
by Hennig-Thurau et al. (2004) and Hollebeek et al. (2014), respectively.
While the former focuses on the development of a typology for the motives
of online consumer articulation, the latter attempts to conceptualize, develop
and validate a scale for consumer brand engagement in the context of social
media. Interestingly, five of the top 10 most cited articles relate to word-of-
mouth communication or customer reviews. Customer engagement and value
creation are the other dominant themes. It can also be noted that all of the
top 10 globally cited documents are published in the Journal of Interactive
Marketing.
Table 7 presents the list of the top 10 most locally cited articles. The most
locally cited article is Wang (2021), the inaugural editorial for the Journal
of Research in Interactive Marketing, which focuses on the major driving
forces of research in interactive marketing and how the research landscapes
are changing in the domain.
Figure 8 presents a word cloud based on the top 50 author keywords
extracted from the selected articles. It can be seen that the social media
and social networking sites themselves are the dominant themes. Some

Table 5 Most cited

countries Country Total citations Average article citations

USA 30,520 72.7

The Netherlands 3,247 95.5
Germany 2,487 57.8
UK 1,550 73.8
Korea 1,490 71.0
New Zealand 1,291 322.8
China 1,250 32.1
Canada 1,037 69.1
Spain 793 31.7
Italy 707 78.6
 2 EVOLUTION OF RESEARCH IN INTERACTIVE … 27

Table 6 Most globally cited articles (top 10)

Authors Year Title TC TC_Yr Norm_TC

Prahalad CK & 2004 Co-creation experiences: 2,989 157.32 9.76

Ramaswamy V The next practice in value
creation
Hennig-Thurau T, 2004 Electronic word-of-mouth 2,847 149.84 9.30
Gwinner KP, Walsh G & via consumer-opinion
Gremler DD platforms: What motivates
consumers to articulate
themselves on the Internet?
Hollebeek LD, Glynn 2014 Consumer brand 1,176 130.67 13.43
MS & Brodie RJ engagement in social media:
Conceptualization, scale
development and validation
Bickart B & Schindler 2001 Internet forums as 1,007 45.77 8.28
RM influential sources of
consumer information
de Vries L, Gensler S & 2012 Popularity of brand posts 1,005 91.36 10.20
Leeflang PSH on brand fan pages: An
investigation of the effects
of social media marketing
Brown J, Broderick AJ & 2007 Word of mouth 958 59.88 4.76
Lee N communication within
online communities:
Conceptualizing the online
social network
Dellarocas C, Zhang X & 2007 Exploring the value of 899 56.19 4.46
Awad NF online product reviews in
forecasting sales: The case
of motion pictures
Bagozzi RP & Dholakia 2002 Intentional social action in 857 40.81 6.50
UM virtual communities
Sawhney M, Verona G & 2005 Collaborating to create: 853 47.39 5.39
Prandelli E The Internet as a platform
for customer engagement in
product innovation
Sen S & Lerman D 2007 Why are you telling me 687 42.94 3.41
this? An examination into
negative consumer reviews
on the Web

Note TC = total citations; TC_Yr = total citations per year; Norm_TC = normalized total
citations

other prominent themes relate to e-commerce, marketing communication,

consumer behaviour and Internet marketing.
For a further analysis, the top 10 author keywords were extracted. Figure 9
presents a tree map of the top 10 author keywords. The most dominant
theme that can be identified from the tree map relates to social media,
28 D. VERMA ET AL.

Table 7 Most local cited articles (top 10)

Author Year Title LC GC LC/GC Norm Norm

(%) LC GC

Wang CL 2021 New frontiers and 60 87 68.97 43.52 17.99

future directions in
interactive
marketing:
Inaugural editorial
Hennig-Thurau 2004 Electronic 56 2,847 1.97 8.35 9.3
T, Gwinner KP, word-of-mouth via
Walsh G & consumer-opinion
Gremler DD platforms: What
motivates
consumers to
articulate themselves
on the Internet?
Hollebeek LD, 2014 Consumer brand 38 1,176 3.23 8.27 13.43
Glynn MS & engagement in
Brodie RJ social media:
Conceptualization,
scale development
and validation
Calder BJ, 2009 An experimental 37 547 6.76 3.39 4.33
Malthouse, EC & study of the
Schaedel, U relationship
between online
engagement and
advertising
effectiveness
de Vries L, 2012 Popularity of brand 34 1,005 3.38 7.05 10.2
Gensler S & posts on brand fan
Leeflang PSH pages: An
investigation of the
effects of social
media marketing
Shankar V & 2009 Mobile marketing: 34 252 13.49 3.12 1.99
Balasubramanian A synthesis and
S prognosis
Brown J, 2007 Word of mouth 32 958 3.34 3.5 4.76
Broderick AJ & communication
Lee N within online
communities:
Conceptualizing the
online social
network

(continued)
 2 EVOLUTION OF RESEARCH IN INTERACTIVE … 29

Table 7 (continued)

Author Year Title LC GC LC/GC Norm Norm

(%) LC GC

Hoffman DL & 2009 Flow online: 30 487 6.16 2.75 3.85

Novak TP Lessons learned and
future prospects
King RA, 2014 What we know and 29 551 5.26 6.31 6.29
Racherla P & don’t know about
Bush VD online
word-of-mouth: A
review and synthesis
of the literature
Shankar V, 2010 Mobile marketing 29 344 8.43 6.84 5.55
Venkatesh A, in the retailing
Hofacker C & environment:
Naik P Current insights
and future research
avenues

Note LC = local citations; GC = global citations; LC/GC(%) = ratio of local citations to global
citations; Norm_LC = normalized local citations; Norm_GC = normalized global citations

Fig. 8 Word cloud (top

50 author keywords)

with 42% occurrences if the four keywords social media (15%), social media
marketing (13%), social networking sites (6%) and Facebook (8%) are consid-
ered together. The other dominant theme related to consumer behaviour with
27% occurrences, if the two keywords consumer behaviour (17%) and online
consumer behaviour (10%) are considered together. E-Commerce (11%),
advertising (8%), marketing communications (7%) and Internet marketing
(6%) were other keywords in the list of the top 10 author keywords.
Figure 10 presents the cumulative occurrences of the top 10 author
keywords for the period 2009–2022. It can be seen that consumer behaviour
30 D. VERMA ET AL.

Fig. 9 Top 10 author keywords

remains the most popular keyword from 2010 onwards. Social media and
social media marketing, which rose a little late, around 2012 and 2016, respec-
tively, currently occupy the second and third positions in 2022. E-commerce,
which was at the top of the list in 2009, is placed in the fourth position in
2022. The top five list is completed by online consumer behaviour, which
has been steadily gaining numbers and emerging as one of the most popular
author keywords, especially after 2016.
Next, document coupling was performed by using author keywords as
coupling measures and global citation scores as impact measures. The visual
representation of the clusters is presented in Fig. 11 and the cluster-wise major
keywords, cluster frequency and their centrality and impact are presented in
Table 8. Four major clusters were identified.
Cluster 1 was identified by the keywords social media, Facebook, social media
marketing , consumer engagement and digital marketing , indicating that social
media and customer engagements are the major themes of the cluster. The
top articles included in the cluster are Hollebeek et al. (2014), de Vries et al.
(2012) and King et al. (2014).
Cluster 2 was defined by the keywords e-commerce, online advertising ,
Internet marketing , mobile marketing and online marketing , indicating
marketing using the digital and electronic medium as the core theme. The
top articles included in this cluster are Calder et al. (2009), Hoffman and
Novak (2009) and Shankar and Yadav (2010).
 2 EVOLUTION OF RESEARCH IN INTERACTIVE … 31

80
CONSUMER
BEHAVIOUR
70
SOCIAL MEDIA

60 SOCIAL MEDIA
MARKETING

50 E-COMMERCE

ONLINE CONSUMER
40 BEHAVIOR

ADVERTISING
30
FACEBOOK

20
MARKETING
COMMUNICATION
10
SOCIAL
NETWORKING SITES

0 INTERNET
2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 MARKETING

Fig. 10 Keyword dynamics (top 10 author keywords)

Fig. 11 Document coupling using author keywords

32 D. VERMA ET AL.

Table 8 Clustering by author keywords—keywords, frequency, centrality and impact

Cluster Top keywords Frequency Centrality Impact

1 Social media 67 0.436 3.379

Facebook
Social media marketing
Consumer engagement
Digital marketing
2 E-commerce 65 0.310 2.836
Online advertising
Internet marketing
Mobile marketing
Online marketing
3 Social media marketing 71 0.450 1.918
Facebook
Social networking sites
Marketing communications
Consumer behaviour
4 Consumer behaviour 47 0.394 1.703
United States of America
Internet
Electronic commerce
Web sites

Cluster 3, the largest of the four clusters, comprised keywords such as social
media marketing , Facebook, social networking sites , marketing communications
and consumer behaviour, indicating marketing communication and consumer
behaviour in the context of social media as the core theme of the cluster.
The top articles in the cluster included Barger et al. (2016), Kabadayi and
Price (2014), Wang and Kim (2017), Swani et al. (2013) and Schivinski and
Dabrowski (2015).
Lastly, Cluster 4, the smallest of the clusters, was based on the keywords
consumer behaviour, United States of America, Internet , electronic commerce
and web sites . The top articles included in the cluster are Kim and Lennon
(2013), Rodrigues Pinho and Soares (2011), Dix (2012), Lin et al. (2012)
and Limbu et al. (2012).
A strategic diagram (as presented in Fig. 12) of the four clusters was drawn
based on their centrality and impact in order to clarify the maturity and cohe-
sion represented by these clusters. It can be seen that Cluster 1 has both high
centrality and impact, implying that these articles and keywords have strong
external linkages and have matured enough to serve as the motor themes
for the domain. Cluster 2 has high impact but low centrality, meaning that
though the themes in the cluster have high impact in terms of citations, they
are not much linked with the other subthemes in the domain. Such themes
are usually labelled niche themes. Cluster 3 has a high centrality score but low
impact scores, implying that although these subthemes do not have very high
 2 EVOLUTION OF RESEARCH IN INTERACTIVE … 33

global citations, they have strong external linkages with other subthemes in
the domain. Such themes are usually labelled as basic themes. Lastly, Cluster
4 has low scores on both the centrality and impact measures. This implies that
either these are declining themes that are losing currency with the researchers
in the domain or are new emerging themes that are yet to forge linkages with
other subthemes in the domain and create impact in terms of citations.
The next step was to map the evolution of various subthemes in interac-
tive marketing literature. For the purpose of charting the thematic evolution,
three timespans are considered, 1997–2012, 2013–2017 and 2018–2022. The
difference in the number of years in the first period and the latter two can
primarily be attributed to the significant increase in the number of publications
in recent years. The results are presented in Fig. 13.
For the first period (1997–2012), the predominant subthemes in the inter-
active marketing literature were driven by research related to social media.
Other dominant subthemes included advertising , consumer behaviour and
interactive marketing . The third rung of important subthemes during this
period were related to online marketing , e-commerce and customer relationship
management . Additionally, there was also some research related to marketing
strategy.
As is common in most emerging areas of research scholarship, the
subthemes from the initial period consolidated themselves into various
related subthemes or were split into further subthemes in the next period

Fig. 12 Strategic diagram of the four clusters

34 D. VERMA ET AL.

Fig. 13 Thematic evolution of interactive marketing literature

(2013–2017). During this period advertising emerged as one of the largest

subthemes, consolidating its evolution from the online advertising , adver-
tising and consumer behaviour subthemes of the previous period. Social media
marketing emerged as another major influential subtheme evolving from the
subthemes interactive marketing , customer relationship management and social
media from the previous timespan. The subtheme mobile marketing emerged
as a consolidation of research in subthemes advertising , interactive marketing
and marketing strategy. The subtheme consumer behaviour from the previous
period evolved further in this one by drawing from the e-commerce subtheme
of the prior timespan. Another significant subtheme emerging during this
period was cross-cultural , indicating an expansion of the initial research schol-
arship to include cross-cultural implications. This subtheme primarily evolved
from customer relationship management , interactive marketing and social
media subthemes from the previous period. Some other themes that emerged
independently of the subthemes of the preceding years were engagement, a
very influential subtheme during this period, and direct marketing . Other
notable subthemes that can be identified for the timespan are interactivity and
social identity, which evolved from the e-commerce and advertising subthemes,
respectively, of the previous period.
The more recent time period 2018–2022 represents a further consolida-
tion of the subthemes. The top three subthemes that emerged during this
period are online marketing , social media and online consumer behaviour. The
new version of the subtheme online marketing consolidated research from the
previous subtheme of engagement , interactivity, consumer behaviour, cross-
culture and direct marketing . The newer version of social media extended
 2 EVOLUTION OF RESEARCH IN INTERACTIVE … 35

the subtheme of the previous period to include research in the subthemes

of engagement and social identity. Similarly, the advertising subtheme from
the previous period evolved further by including inputs from the social
media marketing subtheme. Two new subthemes evolved during the latest
period—structure equation modelling and personalization. While the former
predominantly borrows from social media marketing , mobile marketing and
cross-cultural themes, it also indicates the emerging importance and adoption
of complex statistical modelling to understand the underlying relationships in
the domain.
Lastly, thematic landscapes were analysed for each of the selected periods
using strategic diagrams. A two-dimensional strategic diagram can be obtained
from the two parameters of the keyword network or theme—centrality, which
represents the degree of interaction of a network with other networks, and
density, which is the measure of the internal strength of the network (Callon
et al., 1991). While centrality can be thought of in terms of the strength of
external ties of a network, density can be thought of in terms of the strength
of internal ties. Based on these two dimensions, the identified themes based
on co-keyword analysis can be placed into the four quadrants of a strategic
diagram (Callon et al., 1991; Muñoz-Leiva et al., 2012). The first quadrant
represents the themes that are both high in centrality and density. This means
that the themes in this quadrant have strong external linkages with other
themes as well as strong internal cohesion. Such themes are well developed
and provide structure to the research in the field and are labelled motor themes .
The second quadrant contains themes which have high centrality but are low
in density. These themes usually represent the categories which are basic themes
in nature and are more useful in creating underlying linkages and interactions
between other subthemes. This means that these subthemes are more traversal.
Those in the third quadrant are low in centrality but high in density, indi-
cating that these themes do not interact much with other themes, but have
strong internal linkages. Such themes represent specialized subthemes in the
area, and are also sometimes labelled niche themes . The last and fourth quad-
rant represents themes which are neither high on centrality nor on density.
This essentially means that these themes are low on maturity and linkages
with other themes. Usually, this quadrant represents themes that have either
declined and lost relevance or have only recently emerged.
Figure 14 presents the strategic diagram for the first period of analysis, i.e.
1997–2012. It can be noted that consumer behaviour was the most influen-
tial theme for the period. Although it has high centrality, indicating strong
linkages with other themes, it has moderate density, placing it at the border
of the first and second quadrants. Another significant theme that exhibited
similar characteristics was interactive marketing . It can also be seen that digital
technology and advertising were the motor themes for the period, which
could serve the purpose of creating underlying linkages for other themes.
Customer relationship management and e-commerce indisputably served as the
36 D. VERMA ET AL.

Fig. 14 Strategic diagram of themes for period 1997–2012

basic themes. No niche or declining/emerging themes were identified for this

period.
Figure 15 presents the strategic diagram for the period 2013–2017. It can
be observed that advertising and, to some extent, direct marketing served
as the motor themes for the period. Most of the influential themes, social
media marketing , consumer behaviour, interactivity, mobile marketing and
social identity, were all in the second quadrant and thus served as the basic
themes. This may denote that although these themes had high centrality indi-
cating their importance, they needed to further mature and develop as research
themes. It can also be observed that the period marks the emergence of some
niche subthemes in the recall , engagement and viral video advertising . An
emerging subtheme, cross-cultural , can also be identified.
Figure 16 presents the strategic diagram of the major themes for the
current period spanning 2018–2022. It can be noted that the social media
serves as the major influencing motor theme for the period. Another new
subtheme, structural equation modelling , seems to have moderate to high
centrality as well as density, indicating that this subtheme might be emerging
as a major influential subtheme in the future. Increasing centrality indicates
that it has strong external linkages with other themes and an increasing
density suggests increasing maturity. Given that structural equation modelling
relates to a quantitative modelling of complex relationships, it does present
a strong potential for serving as the underlying framework to link various
subthemes creating linkages between them. It can also be inferred from the
strategic diagram for the period that the subthemes—social media marketing ,
online marketing , online consumer behaviour and advertising serve as the basic
 2 EVOLUTION OF RESEARCH IN INTERACTIVE … 37

Fig. 15 Strategic diagram for the period 2013–2017

themes for the period. It can also be observed that subthemes of scholarly
research in interactive marketing mobile commerce and consumer attitudes are
located between quadrants three and four. This may indicate the potential of
these themes to develop into niche themes in the future.

Fig. 16 Strategic diagram for the period 2018–2022

38 D. VERMA ET AL.

4 Conclusion
4.1 Key Takeaways
This chapter uses bibliographic data to analyse and visualize the intellectual
structures of the research scholarship in the domain of interactive marketing.
In doing so it retrospectively analysed the bibliographic data from research
published in two of the leading journals in the area—the Journal of Interactive
Marketing and the Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing. Three major
objectives were identified for the review of the bibliometric data. A summary
of the results is presented below.
For the first objective of identifying the patterns in publications and the
most influential contributors in the domain, a performance analysis of the
research publications was carried out. The analysis showed a continuous and
steady increase in the number of documents published over time. Shankar, V.
was found to be most influential author with the highest number of publi-
cations and second-highest number of citations (Malthouse, E.C. has the
highest number of citations), joint highest h-index (with Malthouse, E.C.),
highest g-index and highest m-index among all the contributors in the research
domain. The Journal of Interactive Marketing was found to be the most locally
cited source, followed by the Journal of Marketing and Journal of Consumer
Research. Among the institutional affiliations, Northwestern University and
Texas A&M University were the top contributors. The list of top contributing
affiliations was dominated by the institutions located in the USA, with seven
of the top 10 universities belonging to the USA. The remaining three univer-
sities were from Europe (two from The Netherlands and one from Belgium).
It was observed that the USA dominated the research landscape by huge
margins compared to any other country. Most of the countries that signifi-
cantly influence the research domain are matured and developed economies,
leaving a huge gap for emerging and developing economies. Among all the
significant contributing countries, multiple country publications were found
to form a significant proportion, with the exception of India. This essentially
means that, barring India, authors are collaborating internationally in order to
execute their research studies. The list, obviously, is dominated by the USA
both in terms of single country publications and multiple country publica-
tions. An attempt was also made to identify the most influential research in
the domain. Prahalad and Ramaswamy (2004), Hennig-Thurau et al. (2004)
and Hollebeek et al. (2014) were found to be most globally cited articles.
Similarly, Wang (2021), Hennig-Thurau et al. (2004) and Hollebeek et al.
(2014) were found to be the most locally cited documents.
In order to identify the major subthemes in the research domain, an analysis
of author keywords was also undertaken. The top five keywords used by the
authors in the domain were found to be consumer behaviour, social media,
social media marketing, e-commerce and online consumer behaviour. This
indicates that the research involving social and digital media, and e-commerce,
are the driving influences in the field of interactive marketing. Furthermore, an
 2 EVOLUTION OF RESEARCH IN INTERACTIVE … 39

analysis of the keyword dynamics over last 13 years indicated that the above
listed five keywords are the fastest growing author keywords in the research
domain.
Next, a bibliographic coupling of the articles was performed using author
keywords as coupling measures and global citation scores as impact measures.
A total of four clusters were obtained. Cluster 1 comprised 67 articles with the
major keywords—social media, Facebook, social media marketing, consumer
engagement and digital marketing. The cluster has both high centrality and
impact, making it the cluster representing the motor themes in the domain.
Cluster 2 contained 65 articles with major keywords—e-commerce, online
advertising, Internet marketing, mobile marketing and online marketing.
Cluster 3 included 71 articles with major keywords such as social media
marketing, Facebook, social networking sites, marketing communications and
consumer behaviour. This cluster has high centrality but low impact, implying
that these themes are mature enough to provide linkages to other subthemes
in the domain, but do not have high impact on their own. The last, and
the smallest, Cluster 4 incorporated 47 articles with major keywords, such as
consumer behaviour, United States of America, Internet, electronic commerce
and web sites. This cluster is both low on centrality and impact. Usually, such
clusters represent themes which are declining and are no longer popular with
researchers. Such centrality and impact scores may also represent emerging
themes which have not yet matured enough to provide external linkages to
other subthemes in the domain, or evolved enough to have a high impact of
their own.
The chapter also included an analysis of evolution of major subthemes
in the domain of interactive marketing since 1997. For this purpose, three
periods were identified as 1997–2012, 2013–2017 and 2018–2022. The anal-
ysis revealed that the subthemes have consolidated and interacted with each
other to evolve into a complex lot which are interlinked and borrow from
each other. Such interactions and linkages are a sign of increasing maturity in
the research domain. The analysis indicated that the contemporary subthemes
in interactive marketing are driven by social media and online technologies,
and focus more on (online) consumer behaviour. This is natural, as interac-
tive marketing is based on the basic premise of bi-directional communication
between the marketers and customers Wang (2021), and online media, espe-
cially the social media, has emerged as the biggest and most prominent channel
driving community-style conversation in the contemporary markets.

4.2 Future Directions

Moving forward, interactive marketing can be considered one of the most
interesting and impactful domains of research in marketing. It should be
noted that with the advent and evolution of ubiquitous communication
technologies and rich interactive media, the fundamental nature in which
customers interact among themselves and with businesses and marketers
40 D. VERMA ET AL.

have changed. Such fast-evolving dynamics are bound to present new chal-
lenges to marketers, who need to align their strategies and communication
channels with their customers in light of these developments. As noted by
Wang (2021) in his inaugural editorial for JIRM, the interactions between
customers and marketers are evolving from unidirectional mass communi-
cation to bi-directional value creation and mutual influencing marketing
processes. Technologies such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR)
and artificial intelligence, as well as the proliferation of mobile networks and
its access, coupled with increasingly savvy customers in ever-connected virtual
communities, are promoting a dynamic and ever-evolving communication
landscape. Such dynamics, although increasing the complexities for marketing
managers, also provide huge opportunities for them to create strong mutually
beneficial and value-creating bonds with customers.
Marketers can leverage social networks and media to drive community-style
conversations, promoting customer-driven content generation that creates
higher values for customers. Such customer-driven value co-creation may not
only help in forging closer relationships with the customer, but can also help
in creating a more loyal and sticky customer base. However, this dilution
of control over content created for brands has its own perils and complica-
tions. Marketers should be wary of the control over the narrative of their
brands over social media and need to monitor this proactively. In addition, fake
identities and news over social media create their own peculiar complexities.
Future research related to understanding and development of such dynamics
can help the development of a strong community within the target customers,
benefitting both customers as well as businesses.

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 CHAPTER 3

From Direct Marketing Toward Interactive

Marketing: The Evolving Interactive Marketing
Tools

Anne Moes, Marieke L. Fransen, Tibert Verhagen, and Bob Fennis

1 Introduction
‘Without interaction, nothing new happens. Without interaction no meaning
is generated. Without interaction no experience is created’ (Ascott, 1997,
p. 338). This quote nicely illustrates why interactivity between companies
and customers has become a crucial element of marketing (Lee, 2005). This
chapter presents an overview of empirical studies on interactivity in the context
of interactive marketing tools to provide insight in both the promising and
troubling effects that interactivity may elicit.
Interactivity is defined as ‘The degree to which two or more communica-
tion parties can act on each other, on the communication medium, and on
the messages and the degree to which such influences are synchronized’ (Liu &

A. Moes (B) · B. Fennis

University of Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands
e-mail: a.moes@hva.nl
B. Fennis
e-mail: b.m.fennis@rug.nl
A. Moes · T. Verhagen
Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
e-mail: t.verhagen@hva.nl
M. L. Fransen
Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands
e-mail: marieke.fransen@ru.nl

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 43

Switzerland AG 2023
C. L. Wang (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Interactive Marketing,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14961-0_3
44 A. MOES ET AL.

Shrum, 2002, p. 54). Interactivity comprises three dimensions: (1) active

control, which refers to experiencing feelings of control during an interac-
tion and is measured with items such as ‘I can browse on my own pace’; (2)
two-way communication, which refers to the ability of two parties sending
information to and receiving information from each other. Two-way commu-
nication is often measured with items such as ‘I had the opportunity to
talk back’; and (3) synchronicity, referring to the speed in which someone is
responded to and is measured with items such as ‘I felt I was getting an instan-
taneous response’ (Liu & Shrum, 2002, see also Moes et al., 2021). These
dimensions of interactivity cannot be simplified to dualistic constructs where
active control, two-way communication, and synchronicity are either present
or not. Rather, the dimensions exist on a gradual scale (Liu & Shrum, 2002).
This also means that not all three dimensions have to be equally present in an
interactive marketing tool, for this tool to be recognized as interactive. The
definition of interactive marketing, in its turn, combines dimensions of inter-
activity, such as two-way communication, with marketers’ intended effects of
using interactive tools. Wang (2021) brings these concepts together in the
following definition of interactive marketing: ‘the bi-directional value creation
and mutual-influence marketing process through active customer connection,
engagement, participation and interaction’ (p. 1).
Since the rise of the digital age, one-way mass media communication had to
make room for more interactive ways of communication, and traditional direct
marketing had to make room for contemporary interactive marketing (Wang,
2021). Accordingly, marketing tools have evolved tremendously in the past
thirty years, which also affected the focus of scientific research. In the 1990s,
when the internet was introduced, web browsers and search engines had a
huge influence on marketing, and, in the second half of the 1990s, online
marketing also received much academic attention (Ratchford, 2020). Research
on total engagement (flow) with online tasks arose (Hoffman & Novak,
1996), the viability of online marketing for different products and services
was studied (Peterson et al., 1997), and the effects of internet shopping on
consumers and marketers were discovered (e.g., Alba et al., 1997; Lal &
Sarvary, 1999; see Ratchford, 2020 for a full overview). However, the internet
really increased in popularity when WiFi was adapted widely in the first decade
of 2000. Companies started to create websites and web shops en masse, and
increasingly improved their interactive functions (Kucuk, 2016). These func-
tionalities allowed companies, for example, to enhance shopping experiences
(Wang, 2021) and to serve their customers 24/7, instead of the eight hours
per day that was common before the start of the digital age (Barwise & Farley,
2005; Wang, 2021). Also, social networks (2005) and smartphones (2007)
were introduced, and later (2009) were commonly used (Ratchford, 2020).
The number of internet-related studies in marketing literature grew exponen-
tially in this decade. Topics included online advertising (Chen et al., 2009),
online customization (Ansari & Mela, 2003), and motives for posting on social
media (Schau & Gilly, 2003; see Ratchford, 2020 for a full overview). In the
 3 FROM DIRECT MARKETING TOWARD INTERACTIVE … 45

2010s interactive marketing again took a flight. Tools that were once, not so
long ago, seen as futuristic, such as virtual assistants, smart home devices, and
location tracking, were becoming more and more common (Ratchford, 2020).
Research started to study the implications of using contemporary techniques as
marketing tools. These tools included, but were not limited to, virtual reality
(Moes & Van Vliet, 2017), chatbots (Liebrecht & Hooijdonk, 2019), person-
alized ads and news items (Krafft et al., 2017), and augmented reality (Butt
et al., 2021).
It can be concluded that early marketing tools were mainly focused on one-
way communication and limited in their functionalities. However, marketing
tools are getting increasingly interactive, and two-way contemporary interac-
tive marketing tools bring countless opportunities for companies to reshape
and strengthen relationships with consumers (Lim et al., 2022; Wang, 2021).
Additionally, the past thirty years demonstrated that interactive marketing
tools contributed to build a participatory culture for customers, meaning that
contemporary customers can actively contribute to their own shopping expe-
riences, or even to (co-)produce products. They are no longer the passive
consumers that they once were (Wang, 2021). Hence, interactive marketing
applications can be beneficial for both customers and companies in many ways.
However, not all research on interactivity shows beneficial effects. Interactive
marketing tools can also be perceived as intrusive (e.g., Krafft et al., 2017)
or they can backfire and have negative effects on, for example, buying urges
(Moes et al., 2021).
In the past thirty years we have witnessed an accelerated development
within the scope of interactive marketing tools (Wang, 2021). This chapter
presents an extensive, however not exhaustive, overview of important studies
on such tools. It discusses ten of the most pioneering tools used in interac-
tive marketing, ranging from relatively older, classical tools, such as websites
and banners to more contemporary and innovative interactive marketing tools,
such as virtual reality (VR) and interactive advertising screens.

2 Literature Overview
This part of the chapter discusses ten types of interactive marketing tools.
For each tool it is first demonstrated how it relates to the three dimensions
of interactivity (active control, two-way communication, synchronicity; Liu &
Shrum, 2002). In doing so, this chapter also provides insights in what dimen-
sions are the driving forces behind the discussed interactive marketing tools.
Second, this chapter will highlight the most important, sometimes contra-
dicting, effects that each tool has on its users. Both positive and negative
effects will be discussed. Third, and final, this chapter also provides practical
guidelines for each tool that marketers should keep in mind when developing
an interactive marketing strategy.
The ten tools that will be discussed here are either commonly used by
companies or increasingly used by companies: (1) websites, (2) branded apps,
46 A. MOES ET AL.

(3) banners, (4) email, (5) social media, (6) online chatbots, (7) virtual reality
(VR), (8) augmented reality (AR), (9) location-based messaging, and (10)
interactive advertising screens (e.g., Barwise & Farley, 2005; Farías, 2018;
Hartemo, 2016; Kaczorowska-Spychalska, 2019; Moes et al., 2021; Moes &
Van Vliet, 2017; Moriuchi et al., 2021; Sreejesh et al., 2020; Van Noort & Van
Reijmersdal, 2019; Verhagen et al., 2021). Innovative, contemporary, tools in
interactive marketing are less extensively researched than their older counter-
parts, due to the fact that they are relatively new. In this literature review we
provide valuable knowledge on both the more classical tools that are already
researched for over thirty years, and on the more contemporary tools that are
only studied relatively recently.

2.1 Websites
One of the most widely adopted interactive marketing applications is websites
(Barwise & Farley, 2005; Main, 2021). The extent to which active control
is possible in websites depends on the site’s features. However, generally,
websites can be classified as featuring high active control because users
can control their own pace and navigation within the digital environments.
Compared to active control, the presence of two-way communication on a
website can be considered less self-evident. The most basic form of two-way
communication found on websites is the opportunity for its users to click on
something (e.g., a tab), where the website responds to. However, looking at
more advanced websites, users are increasingly asked to ‘talk back’ by liking,
reviewing, or commenting on products or services. In these cases, a website
would score higher on the two-way communication dimension. Finally, the
synchronicity level of websites mostly depends on external factors such as a
user’s internet speed (see Liu & Shrum, 2002). However, it is also important
for companies to optimize their website on a regular basis to make it load
quicker, since 40% of website users will stop engaging with it when they expe-
rience it as too slow (> 2 seconds loading time; Main, 2021). Hence, websites
do have the potential to score high on synchronicity.
Most companies nowadays have a website (e.g., Main, 2021). Customers
use websites to gain information, ask specific questions, or buy products.
Research shows that high interactive websites, compared to low interactive
websites, lead to a higher favorability toward the website and the exposed
products (Sicilia et al., 2005). In line with these outcomes, interacting with
product images on retailers’ websites has been found to benefit experimental
and instrumental value (Fiore et al., 2005). A meta-analysis shows that website
interactivity positively affects enjoyment of using the website, attitude toward
websites and products, and behavioral intentions such as recommendation and
purchase intention (Yang & Shen, 2018). Additionally, Huang (2016) found
a positive relationship between browsing on a website and impulse buying
behavior. However, there is some debate on the effectiveness of interactivity
on cognitive responses. While Sicilia et al. (2005), found a positive effect of
 3 FROM DIRECT MARKETING TOWARD INTERACTIVE … 47

website interactivity on information processing, Kim and Stout (2010) did

not find any effect of interactivity on such cognitive responses, and Sundar
and Constantin (2004) even found a negative effect. A possible explanation
for these different results can be found in the level of interactivity. Moderated
interactivity seems to be beneficial, however, too much interactivity is possibly
perceived as overwhelming and cognitively distracting and may therefore back-
fire (Liu & Shrum, 2002; Yang & Shen, 2018). Marketers are therefore
advised to keep in mind that more interactivity is not always for the better, and
to actively test what level of interactivity in their website functionalities works
best for their customers. Moreover, it is important to consider that actual
interactivity can differ from perceived interactivity. This means that adding
more interactive website functionalities does not necessarily lead to a stronger
perception of interactivity (and vice versa, Voorveld et al., 2011).

2.2 Branded Apps

Due to consumers’ fast adaption of smartphones, more than 50% of website
traffic happens through mobile devices (HubSpot, 2021). Driven by this fact,
brands also increasingly make use of branded mobile apps as an interactive
marketing tool (Van Noort & Van Reijmersdal, 2019), and consumers seem
willing to use them. Nowadays, on average, consumers spend over 4 hours
a day on apps on their mobile phones (Annie, 2021) and almost 40% of all
smartphone users prefer to shop on a brand’s app over a website, since they
find this easier or faster (HubSpot, 2021). Similar to websites, branded apps
score high on active control since users determine the pace and navigation.
Depending on its features, apps also have the potential to score high on two-
way communication. There are basic apps, where users can, for example, only
view content, and more elaborate apps, where an app’s functionalities allow
users to interact with at least one other party. Concerning synchronicity, a
marketer only has a limited amount of influence on the synchronicity level of
this tool. Marketers can, for example, offer chat functionalities within the app-
environment with which they can directly respond to customers. However,
also here a consumer’s internet speed can affect this dimension tremendously,
which makes it difficult for marketers to fully control this third dimension of
interactivity (see Liu & Shrum, 2002).
Branded apps are a very promising interactive marketing tool (Wang et al.,
2016), since they are voluntarily downloaded and used by consumers who
find them entertaining and/or functional (Bellman et al., 2011). Other adver-
tising formats, on the contrary, may come with resistance since consumers
may perceive unsolicited persuasive messages as a threat to freedom (Fransen
et al., 2015). Arguably, using branded apps as an interactive marketing tool
can therefore result into positive outcomes. However, results on the effec-
tiveness of branded apps are mixed. For example, where Van Noort and Van
Reijmersdal (2019) reported a positive effect of branded app usage on brand
attitude, Hoogendoorn (2013) did not find an effect. Also, the effects of
48 A. MOES ET AL.

branded apps on cognitive responses are not conclusive (Seitz & Aldebasi,
2016). A possible explanation for these observed differences is the type of
branded app. For example, entertaining branded apps may mainly evoke affec-
tive brand responses, such as a positive attitude toward the brand and the
feeling of having a close relationship with the brand. Informational branded
apps, on the other hand, may generally only evoke cognitive brand responses,
such as brand recall, brand beliefs, and brand recognition (Van Noort & Van
Reijmersdal, 2019). Therefore, it seems important for marketers to consciously
decide on the goals they aim to achieve with the branded app. Moreover,
it should be considered that 80% of the consumers only download an app
from a trustworthy and familiar company (HubSpot, 2021), which makes it
difficult for new companies to deploy branded apps as consumers may not
yet be familiar with these companies. Moreover, many consumers (72%) are
concerned about their privacy when using apps (HubSpot, 2021). There-
fore, a clear privacy statement, accessible to consumers, could probably benefit
brands.

2.3 Banners
A third interactive marketing tool that is frequently used is banners (Barwise &
Farley, 2005). Banners, in the USA, are the third largest advertising invest-
ment online (Farías, 2018) which makes it a popular tool to use. As opposed
to websites and apps, banners are difficult to control actively by its users since
they cannot determine when and where the banners should (or should not)
pop up. Banners, therefore, score low on active control. Also on two-way
communication, banners show little potential. However, banners allow a very
basic form of communicating with its user, which makes the literature consider
the tool as interactive. Namely, a user can click on a banner, in which the
banner responds by, for example, opening a new tab. Generally, this response
is immediate, which makes this tool scores high on synchronicity. However,
due to the very little interactive features of banners, the synchronicity level
largely depends on external factors such as internet speed (see Liu & Shrum,
2002).
Research shows that banners do not frequently lead to clicks (only in about
1% of the time, see e.g., Cho, 2003), and thus often fail to evoke interac-
tion. An explanation for this low click-rate is that banner advertisements are
often perceived as misleading and untrustworthy when it comes to data secu-
rity. Especially men, compared to women, seem to be impatient to deal with
banners (Krushali et al., 2018) and are therefore possibly more likely to install
pop-up blockers. Moreover, banners are also perceived as intrusive (Krammer,
2008). Nevertheless, banners can still elicit positive effects. They can be effec-
tive in improving one’s brand recall, attitudes toward the advertised brand,
and purchase intention (e.g., Chiu et al., 2017). However, as most consumers
experience banners as invaluable distractions, banners are increasingly being
ignored by customers. This ‘banner blindness’ can prevent possible positive
 3 FROM DIRECT MARKETING TOWARD INTERACTIVE … 49

effects (Resnick & Albert, 2014). Marketers are therefore recommended to

design creative banners that stand out with visual saliency, and are, at the same
time, congruent with the webpage where the banner is meant to pop up (Yang
et al., 2021). Although banners technically are an interactive marketing tool,
marketers are advised not to use them for this purpose. Yet, banner ads are
very useful for improving recall and in this way strengthening a company’s
marketing position (Yang et al., 2021).

2.4 Email
Another form of frequently used online interactive marketing is email
marketing (Hartemo, 2016). Email is one of the most cost-effective marketing
channels and can be used to empower consumers (Hartemo, 2016). In terms
of interactivity, email can be classified as high active control, since users can
control their own pace and navigation. Moreover, email has the potential to
score very high on two-way communication, since this tool allows someone
to start a dialogue with someone else and (at least) two parties can respond
endlessly to each other. However, companies increasingly use so-called do-
not-reply email-addresses. Such email use can be categorized as one-way
communication because these email accounts can only send emails, and not
receive them. Additionally, emails do not always score high on synchronicity,
the third dimension of interactivity (see Liu & Shrum, 2002). Although emails
can be responded to immediately, practice shows that emails from customers
to companies are seldomly answered directly (TimetoReply, 2020).
Email marketing appears to positively affect purchase intention, both on
the short term and on the long term (Wu et al., 2018). For marketers, it
is particularly beneficial to email customers who did not purchase something
recently, since research shows that especially those customers are sensitive to
email promotions (Wu et al., 2018). Email is therefore still considered a prof-
itable communication channel. Although email marketing can have positive
effects, it can also be experienced as annoying, untrustworthy, and boring
(Mahmoud et al., 2019). Consequently, sending too many emails can cost
marketers customers. According to research, the optimal number of emails that
a company should send each month to a single customer is seven. However,
this number is depended on how likely it is that a customer will buy a product.
The lower a customer’s purchase-state is, as estimated by marketers, the more
emails a company should send (and vice versa, Zhang et al., 2017). There-
fore, marketers are recommended to segment their customers into groups
that reflect their purchase-state and adjust the number of emails they send
per group.

2.5 Social Media

Another interactive marketing tool that this chapter discusses here is social
media. A substantial amount of the B2C companies have at least one social
50 A. MOES ET AL.

media account (Sreejesh et al., 2020). Social media can be viewed as highly
interactive. Besides that social media users can control the pace in which
they watch or post content (active control), social media are also interactive
marketing tools that pre-eminently score high on two-way communication.
They are designed to interact and connect with another party by, for example,
chatting, liking, or posting (Obar & Wildman, 2015). Furthermore, social
media messages are often quickly responded to and therefore also score high
on synchronicity (see Liu & Shrum, 2002). Nevertheless, it is still possible to
distinguish different levels of interactivity in social media, depending on how
a social media account is managed by the marketer.
Research shows that the level of message interactivity on social media posi-
tively affects perceived informativeness, which, subsequently, has a positive
effect on ad effectiveness (Ott et al., 2016). Additionally, interactivity in social
media positively affects brand attitude, brand loyalty, and purchase intention
(Kim & Lee, 2019). Consistent with these findings, Colliander et al. (2015)
show that companies that enter a dialogue with their followers on Twitter,
versus companies that follow a one-way communication strategy, enhance
brand attitudes and purchase intentions among their followers. However,
these findings do not mean that more interactivity on social media is always
better. A study by Sreejesh et al. (2020), show that very highly interactive
social media accounts, compared to less interactive accounts, lead to low ad
attentions and low recall. The authors explain these negative effects with
cognitive absorption, which entails that when a user is preoccupied with a
main activity (such as interacting), it limits other cognitive functions (such as
memory). In other words, interactivity seems to have a, yet to discover, sweet
spot. Based on the literature, marketers are recommended to interact with
their customers through social media. However, if a company wants to elicit
cognitive responses with their customers, interaction levels must be moderate.

2.6 Online Chatbots

Online chatbots are increasingly used in marketing (Kaczorowska-Spychalska,
2019). Online chatbots score, in general, relatively high on active control. A
chatbot is an artificial intelligent computer program that communicates with
users in a natural language, often in the form of text messages. Such bots
are programmed to understand and respond to users, in a way that fits the
communication style of the organization that uses the bots (Kaczorowska-
Spychalska, 2019). Although some chatbots start a conversation unasked,
when visiting a website for example, users can decide if, when, and how they
respond. Users are therefore actively in control of the conversation, at least of
the pace and content at which they respond to the chatbot. Moreover, online
chatbots are developed to pursue an actual two-way conversation in a natural
language with their users. Chatbots, therefore, also score high on two-way
communication. Under the assumption that external factors, such as internet
speed, are sufficient, chatbots score high on synchronicity as well (see Liu &
 3 FROM DIRECT MARKETING TOWARD INTERACTIVE … 51

Shrum, 2002). After all, most chatbots can respond quicker to a question than
humans can (Nawaz & Gomes, 2019).
Chatbots can help companies to answer customers’ questions about offered
products and services (Kaczorowska-Spychalska, 2019). Customers value the
information-providing feature of chatbots, especially when it comes to simple,
to-the-point information (Arsenijevic & Jovic, 2019). Perhaps not surprising,
chatbots can therefore elicit numerous positive effects (Hoyer et al., 2020).
For example, Chung et al. (2020) show that online chatbots can help luxury
retail brands to build positive customer relationships. The perceived dialogue,
between customers and bots, also enhances interaction satisfaction and brand
likeability (Tsai et al., 2021). Furthermore, chatbots can reduce hesitation
to purchase (Hoyer, et al., 2020). However, mixed results are found when
it comes to using chatbots as an engaging technology. Some find them to
increase user engagement (Tsai et al., 2021), while others state that engage-
ment cannot be pursued with the use of chatbots (Moriuchi et al., 2021).
Overall, the literature seems to agree that chatbots are a great communica-
tion tool for consumers who have unambiguous questions (Moriuchi et al.,
2021). Nonetheless, chatbots are only beneficial to companies if customers
decide to use them. Research shows that when people are concerned about
their privacy, this negatively moderates the effect of their attitude toward bots
and their intention to use them (de Cosmo et al., 2021). For companies who
consider using chatbots, it could therefore be recommended to use human-
like chatbots (opposed to machine-like chatbots). Human-like chatbots are
found to decrease privacy concerns (Ischen et al., 2019). Consequently, people
are not only more eager to use bots (de Cosmo et al., 2021), but also
disclose more information to the bots, and are more willing to follow the
bots’ recommendations (Ischen et al., 2019).

2.7 Augmented Reality

Similar as with chatbots, AR applications are increasingly popular in the
marketing domain. AR offers its users a live image of reality, accompanied by
a virtual, computer-simulated, layer (TotalReality, n.d.). AR, therefore, offers
a range of possibilities; from making it possible to show in 3D how a (virtual)
couch fits in a user’s living room (e.g., Mens, 2017), to showing how (virtual)
sunglasses look on a potential buyer (e.g., CharlieTemple, n.d.). AR scores
high on active control, since users decide where and when to click and in
which direction they look. Users can also communicate with each other, and
with the company offering the AR application, while experiencing AR (Total-
Reality, n.d.). However, two-way communication does not necessarily mean
that there must be a conversation between two parties. It can also be about
exchanging information (Liu & Shrum, 2002) between a user and a virtual
environment for example, which makes that AR has a great potential to score
high on two-way communication. Lastly, AR also scores high on synchronicity.
In fact, the synchronic and instantaneous connection between virtual and real
52 A. MOES ET AL.

content is an important feature of AR (Liang & Roast, 2014; also see Liu &
Shrum, 2002).
AR has been found being able to create positive customer experiences, espe-
cially the more interactive AR-tools have the potential of achieving this. High
interactive AR can, probably because of its ability to create an experience,
also create a deep level of engagement between a brand and their customers
(Moriuchi et al., 2021). Companies who aim to establish an engaging rela-
tionship with their customers, without having to be physically together per
se, could therefore benefit from AR applications. Moreover, AR applications
can also inspire their users, which positively affects customers’ brand attitudes
(Rauschnabel et al., 2019). However, it is important for AR applications to
be developed professionally, since poorly developed apps can lead to nega-
tive customer experiences and consequently result in negative brand effects
(Rauschnabel et al., 2019). Nevertheless, the literature is mostly positive about
using AR as a marketing tool. Research even shows that high interactive AR
can affect revisiting intentions to an online store, shopping intention (Mori-
uchi et al., 2021), and purchase intention (Sung, 2021). The positive effect of
AR on purchase intentions can be explained by perceived informativeness and
enjoyment (Smink et al., 2019). If the means are available for companies to
do it in a professional manner, they are advised to develop highly interactive
AR applications that offer their customers an experience.

2.8 Virtual Reality

VR is a computer-simulated environment, which places the user in a virtual
experience. VR thus differs from AR, since VR only shows a virtual world and
completely shuts of reality from its users (TotalReality, n.d.). VR and AR are
similar when it comes to the degree of interactivity they offer. As with AR, VR
scores high on active control since users determine how quick, or slow, they
move within the virtual environment. VR also scores high on two-way commu-
nication since the environment and user within that environment respond to
each other. For example, with VR users can walk around a company’s latest
launched product. The environment will show a different image depending on
where users are standing and the direction of their eyes. Not rarely people can
communicate with others while using VR (TotalReality, n.d.). Finally, also VR
cannot function accurately if it would score low on synchronicity. VR there-
fore (should) also score high on this third dimension of interactivity (see Liu &
Shrum, 2002).
In line with the results of Moes and Van Vliet (2017) showing that VR
stimulates visit and purchase intentions, Yung et al. (2021) show that VR has
a stronger effect on visiting and recommendation intentions than traditional
media. Correspondingly, Kim et al. (2022) found that exploring a physical
store in VR (versus on a website) enhances users’ visit intentions. The posi-
tive effects of VR are explained by flow state (Kim et al., 2022), novelty
of the medium, enjoyment (Moes & Van Vliet, 2017), and presence (Yung
 3 FROM DIRECT MARKETING TOWARD INTERACTIVE … 53

et al., 2021). Although many positive effects of VR are found, there is still
much uncertainty about the exact consequences of using VR as an interactive
marketing tool. Regarding recall, for example, some studies argue that being
immersed in an environment (which is often the case with VR) benefits users’
recall (Chowdhury et al., 2017). Others, however, do not find effects of VR
on recall (Moes & Van Vliet, 2017). Therefore, more research is needed on
the effects of VR in marketing (Xi & Hamari, 2021). In addition, it should be
considered that VR asks for a device, such as an Oculus rift of Google card-
board, for customers to experience it. Research shows that most consumers are
unwilling to buy their own Google cardboard to use branded VR applications,
despite being very affordable. Hence, marketers should consider distributing
such tools for free or only target those people who already possess VR glasses
(Moes & Van Vliet, 2017).

2.9 Location-Based Messages

Location-based messages, as opposed to most other interactive marketing
tools, cannot be actively controlled by the receiver. Location-based messaging
software uses customers’ geographic data and automatically sends messages
to customers when they are physically close to a company, such as a store.
It thus allows environmental monitoring of customers and permits marketers
to address customers at the exact right place. Location-based messaging is
therefore a form of proximity marketing (Flavián et al., 2019; Wang, 2021).
The messages can, for example, contain special offers for customers if they
immediately visit the store (Verhagen et al., 2021). After users’ consent,
they can receive (sometimes unlimited) messages from companies, based on
their geographic location. Users often cannot determine on what moment
they will receive the messages, nor do they have influence on how quickly
they receive messages in succession. This interactive marketing tool, therefore,
scores low on active control. Location-based messages also score low on two-
way communication. The software responds to the place where a customer is
located, by sending the customer a message. Customers who want to respond
to the message can do this, for example, by visiting the company. However,
in general it is not possible to respond to the location-based text messages
by sending a text message back. Location-based messages do score high on
synchronicity (see Liu & Shrum, 2002). In fact, it is crucial that this marketing
tool contains a high level of synchronicity. After all, the software must respond
directly to where a user is located at that exact moment, for the message to be
location relevant (Verhagen et al., 2021).
Concerning the effectiveness of location-based messaging, Meents et al.
(2020) show that these messages can enhance store visit intention, especially
when they contain a scarcity message. However, location-based messages can
also be perceived as intrusive (Verhagen et al., 2021). The more intrusive
the message, the less positive a recipient’s attitude toward the message is.
Arguably, this explains why customers still seem to prefer a static poster over
54 A. MOES ET AL.

location-based messages (Gazley et al., 2015). When a company decides to

send location-based messages, it is therefore important to make them as rele-
vant as possible for the recipient. This means, firstly, that the messages should
be congruent with the place where consumers are located. Research shows
that location congruency is the most important construct for location-based
messaging to be perceived as valuable by the recipient (Verhagen et al., 2021).
Secondly, companies can make location-based messages more relevant for their
recipients by customizing its content to their interests. By doing so, customers’
attitudes toward the messages improve (Gazley et al., 2015).

2.10 Interactive Advertising Screens

Lastly, this chapter discusses interactive advertising screens. Interactive adver-
tising screens are digital screens, placed in a shopping street for example, with
commercial content meant for consumers to interact with (Moes et al., 2021).
Consumers can actively control the pace in which they interact with the screen,
which makes this tool score high on active control. Also, interactive screens
have the potential to communicate in a two-way direction. With features such
as asking for users’ opinions or responding to given likes, these screens can
achieve experienced two-way communication with users (Moes et al., 2021).
For the screens to be perceived as more interactive, it is necessary that the
screen immediately responds to the actions of the users. Interactive screens
are able to do this and therefore potentially also score high on synchronicity
(Moes et al., 2021; also see Liu & Shrum, 2002).
We know that interacting with a screen, such as a tablet, can come with
positive effects (Sicilia et al., 2005). However, offline customers differ from
online customers on many levels. The latter, for example, more often value
variety (e.g., Donthu & Garcia, 1999) and convenience (Monsuwé et al.,
2004). Nevertheless, Moes et al. (2021) found similar positive effects for
interacting with an interactive advertising screen in a physical shopping envi-
ronment, as others found for interacting with a screen while shopping from
home. Results of this study show that the level of interactivity (low versus
high) on interactive advertising screens (in a physical shopping surrounding)
has a positive effect on self-agency, which, subsequently, benefits impulse store
visit urges and impulse buying urges. In other words, interacting with an
advertising screen in a shopping street enhances customers’ feelings of ‘being
in charge of the situation’, which translates to higher urges to visit the store
and to buy something unplanned. However, the same study also shows a nega-
tive residual effect, when self-agency was taken into account, of interactivity
on impulse visits and impulse buying. This means that there is a negative
effect of interactivity as well. In the previous paragraphs we have learned that
interactivity can also be too high. Too much interactivity could possibly be
perceived as overwhelming, which could translate into negative effects (Liu &
Shrum, 2002; Yang & Shen, 2018). Possibly this also explains the negative
residual effect found in the study on interactive advertising screens. Perhaps
 3 FROM DIRECT MARKETING TOWARD INTERACTIVE … 55

users felt, simultaneously, overwhelmed by the interaction and being in charge

of the situation (self-agency), which both led to a conflicting outcome. Hence,
when a company decides to use interactive advertising screens, they are advised
to select those screens that have the ability to elicit feelings of self-agency
with users, without being overwhelming. This means that the user should
completely be in charge of the interaction and, probably, that the interaction
contains little surprise to the ones that use the screen.
Table 1 provides an overview of the ten discussed interactive marketing
tools and (1) their level of interactivity and (2) the most important effects
they can elicit.

3 Discussion and Insights for Future

Directions in Interactive Marketing
3.1 Conclusion
This chapter provided an overview of significant empirical literature on interac-
tivity in the context of interactive marketing. Overall, three conclusions can be
drawn. First, although the literature considers all ten discussed tools as inter-
active, they score differently on the three dimensions of interactivity. With a
few exceptions, it appears that the newer a tool is, the higher it scores on
the interactivity dimensions. Second, the two tools that score low on active
control and two-way communication (banners and location-based messaging)
are both potentially experienced as intrusive. It would be interesting to study
whether active control and two-way communication, which both emphasize
participation of the user, indeed affect experienced intrusiveness (see Table 1).
Third, research on the ten interactive marketing tools generally shows posi-
tive effects on diverse outcome variables. These include affective outcomes,
such as attitude and enjoyment, and behavioral outcomes, such as visit inten-
tion and buying intention (see Table 1). Also, positive effects of interactive
tools on cognitive outcome variables were found, such as on recall and recog-
nition. However, the literature seems indecisive on these effects since some
studies failed to find similar results or even found negative effects of interac-
tive marketing tools on cognitive outcomes. This may be explained by, among
other things, cognitive absorption when interactivity levels are too high.

3.2 Implications for Practice

This chapter also provided some practical guidelines that marketers should
keep in mind when developing an interactive marketing strategy. For at least
websites, social media, and interactive screens hold that higher levels of inter-
activity are not always better. Especially when aiming for cognitive responses,
such as brand or ad recall, interactivity levels must be moderate. Furthermore,
marketers were advised to anticipate on possible negative perceptions of inter-
active marketing tools. Email, for example, could be perceived as annoying,
56 A. MOES ET AL.

Table 1 Overview of the ten discussed interactive marketing tools

Tool Interactivity levela Positive outcomesb Negative outcomesc

Websites AC: high Attitude toward Cognitive responses,

TC: low website and products such as information
S: high Experimental value processing, recall, and
website recognition
Instrumental value
website
Enjoyment
Information processing
Recommendation
Purchase intention
Impulse buying
behavior
Branded apps AC: high Experimental value Cognitive responses,
TC: high Instrumental value such as information
S: high Brand attitude processing, recall, and
Attitude toward the recognition
brand Privacy
Feeling of having a
close relationship with
the brand
Brand recall
Brand beliefs
Brand recognition
Banners AC: low Brand recall Misleading
TC: low Purchase intention Untrustworthy
S: high Invaluable distractions
Banner blindness
Intrusiveness
Email AC: high Short term purchase Annoying
TC: high intention Untrustworthy
S: low Long term purchase Boring
intention
Social media AC: high Perceived Ad attentions
TC: high informativeness Recall
S: high Ad effectiveness
Brand loyalty
Purchase intention
Brand attitudes
Online chatbots AC: high Positive customer Engagement
TC: high relationships Privacy
S: high Interaction satisfaction Attitude toward bots
Brand likeability Intention to use them
Reduce hesitation
User engagement

(continued)
 3 FROM DIRECT MARKETING TOWARD INTERACTIVE … 57

Table 1 (continued)

Tool Interactivity levela Positive outcomesb Negative outcomesc

Augmented reality AC: high Customer experience Customer experiences

TC: high Engagement (with poorly
S: high Inspiration developed apps)
Brand attitude Brand effects (with
Revisiting intention poorly developed
Shopping intention apps)
Purchase intention
Perceived
informativeness
Enjoyment
Virtual reality AC: high Visit intention Consumers are
TC: high Purchase intention unwilling to buy their
S: high Recommendation own device to use
intention branded VR
Flow applications
Enjoyment
Presence
Recall
Location-based AC: low Visit intention Intrusiveness
messages TC: low Attitude toward the Attitude toward the
S: high message (when e.g., message (when e.g.,
congruent) intrusive)
Customers prefer a
static poster over
location-based
messages
Interactive advertising AC: high Self-agency Impulse visit urges
screens TC: high Impulse visit urges (depending on what
S: high Impulse buying urges psychological process
is activated)
Impulse buying urges
(depending on what
psychological process
is activated)
a Potential score on Liu and Shrum’s dimensions of interactivity (2002). AC = active control;
TC = two-way communication; S = synchronicity. NB: Synchronicity levels also depend on
external factors such as internet speed
b Found positive effects of, or opinions about, (interactivity within) the tool
c Found negative effects of, or opinions about, (interactivity within) the tool
b,c : In some cases, conflicting outcomes were found, which resulted in listing that variable in
both the positive outcome column and negative outcome column
58 A. MOES ET AL.

but not if the number of emails is tailored to the recipient’s needs. Location-
based messages can be experienced as intrusive, but can also be valued when
the messages are congruent with the location and interests of the consumer.
Banners are often experienced as invaluable distractions, but can elicit posi-
tive effects when they are visual salient and congruent to the banner-page.
And, finally, branded apps and chatbots can raise privacy concerns, which can
be anticipated on by using, respectively, clear privacy statements and human-
like chatbots. Hence, how an interactive tool is designed and implemented
influences its effects tremendously. Lastly, it was recommended to develop
interactive marketing tools in a professional and accessible manner. Poorly
developed AR, for example, can result into unwanted effects, and VR is not
accessible for people without VR glasses which makes it difficult to reach the
full target group. An important caveat to all these results, however, is that
research on the effects of interactivity, especially on cognitive outcomes, is not
yet totally clear. We still do not completely understand when and why inter-
active marketing tools have positive effects, negative effects, or no effects at
all. Therefore, guidelines for practitioners in interactive marketing may change
over time when new insights come to light. Moreover, technological devel-
opments are moving fast, providing practitioners with endless possibilities to
use innovative interactive marketing tools. Generally, it can be stated that the
newer a tool is, the less research on the effectivity of these tools exists. Imple-
mentation of such tools should therefore go hand in hand with continuously
monitoring the effects they elicit.

3.3 Future Research

Based on the results, this chapter suggests several recommendations for future
research. First, it is suggested that more attention in studies on interactive
marketing tools should go to the role of the three dimensions of interactivity.
Insights in these characteristics of interactivity tools could help researchers to
better understand what interactivity dimension contributes the most to certain
outcomes, both positive and negative. For example, if low levels of active
control and two-way communication indeed lead to feelings of intrusiveness
with the customer, this would be valuable to know. Furthermore, this chapter
recommends future research to keep focusing on the effects of innovative,
contemporary marketing tools on important outcomes such as enjoyment,
attitudes, cognition, and behavior. This is necessary to reinforce findings and
clarify the observed contradictions in the literature. In this focus on contem-
porary tools, attention should go to technology adaptation as well. Studying
technology adaptation is not only important to gain insights in how contem-
porary tools are perceived and used by customers, but also to predict what
other new technologies would fit interactive marketing purposes (Lim et al.,
2022).
A strong focus on innovative, contemporary tools in future research
should, however, not mean that the focus on commonly used interactive
 3 FROM DIRECT MARKETING TOWARD INTERACTIVE … 59

tools should fade. On the contrary, these tools are also still rapidly devel-
oping, and it is recommended that their effects are continuously studied.
Social media, for example, was once about Twitter and Facebook, but nowa-
days contains TikTok and influencer-marketing as well. It is necessary to
continue mapping such developments within each interactive marketing tool
on a micro-level and to keep studying their effects on brand-customer inter-
actions (Lim et al., 2022; Wang, 2021). Likewise, for other commonly
used tools, such as websites, email, and banners, it is encouraged to closely
monitor their (possible) developments and how these contribute to interac-
tive marketing purposes. For example, it would be interesting to study the
increasing degree of gamification and entertainment on brand websites and
how this affects interactive marketing (Wang, 2021). This chapter encourages
(future) marketers and researchers to stay curious and join powers. It is of
importance that they contribute to both practice-oriented research and scien-
tific research, on all types of interactive marketing tools since literature on
interactive marketing is far from saturated.

Acknowledgements This work is supported by The Netherlands Organization for

Scientific Research (NWO) [grant number: 023.011.008]

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 CHAPTER 4

Bridging the Theory and Practice of Digital

Marketing from Interactive Marketing
Perspective: A Historical Review

Ayşegül Sağkaya Güngör and Tuğçe Ozansoy Çadırcı

1 Introduction
The adoption of the Internet by the masses is the biggest and the most crit-
ical event that has affected marketing theoretically and practically over the last
three decades. The growth of digital has transformed marketing to a person-
alized phenomenon (Erdem et al., 2016). The digital revolution has been
reflected in how companies and consumers embrace interactive technologies
and how the new technologies facilitate experiences, interactions, and, most
importantly, behaviors.
Interactive marketing includes many operational and strategic decisions that
are only successful with a thorough understanding of the consumer. As a result,
with the undeniable impact of the Internet and the introduction of new chan-
nels to conduct marketing activities, interactive marketing has become one of
the most studied subjects in academic journals.
Marketing interactivity can be defined as “a person-to-person or person-
to-technology exchange designed to effect a change in the knowledge or
behavior of at least one person” (Haeckel, 1998). This definition highlights
the impact of technology on interactive marketing. Digitalization of marketing
activities since the beginning of the 90s created strong connections between

A. S. Güngör (B)
Istanbul Medeniyet University, Istanbul, Turkey
e-mail: agngor@yahoo.com
T. O. Çadırcı
Yıldız Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 65

Switzerland AG 2023
C. L. Wang (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Interactive Marketing,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14961-0_4
66 A. S. GÜNGÖR AND T. O. ÇADIRCI

interactive marketing and digital marketing (DM) literature. Over the years,
interactive marketing has been divided into specialized and focused areas, one
being the DM. In the domain of contemporary interactive marketing, DM is
a remarkable area with its specific focus on interactivity.
Defining the conceptual evolution of DM research for the last 30 years
can help us to deeply understand the domain and create the potential to
adopt a forward-looking approach. Building on the existing literature, the
main objective of this chapter is threefold: By taking the DM domain, a subset
of interactive marketing, we aim to: (1) identify the dominant themes within
DM research; (2) provide insights into the longitudinal change in these themes
over time with the use of science mapping and bibliometrics; (3) compare and
contrast the change within the practice and the research perspectives over time.

2 Literature Review and Background

Before the widespread use of information and communication technologies
(ICT) in marketing, the communication form used by marketers was the
traditional form of direct marketing (Zahay, 2021). As the Internet and
networking became prevalent in the customers’ lives, the marketing turned
into a dialog between the customers and the companies, thus, becoming
interactive. As of definition, interactive marketing emphasizes interactivity,
characterized by two-way communication, personalization, value co-creation,
participation, interaction, and engagement (Wang, 2021; Zahay, 2021). In
the literature, interactive marketing is defined with three central constructs:
communication in the form of dialog, responses, and proactive behaviors to
create value, and engagement to modify and control the environment (Steuer,
1992; Wang, 2021).
Digital media and marketing have spawned the most significant influence
on the evolution of interactive marketing. The interrelationships between
interactivity and digital channels can be analyzed through many aspects,
including e-wom (Çadırcı & Güngör, 2016; Güngör & Çadırcı, 2013; López
et al., 2021); search engines (Barwise & Farley, 2005; Shankar & Malthouse,
2007); personalization (Kaya & Güngör, 2012; Wang, 2021); e-services
(Elsharnouby & Mahrous, 2015; Finn et al., 2009); customer reviews and
recommendations (Güngör & Özgen, 2020; Malthouse & Hofacker, 2010;
Wang, 2021); co-creation (Payne et al., 2021; Wang, 2021); virtual commu-
nities and environments (Malthouse & Shankar, 2009; Park & Feinberg, 2010;
Wang, 2021); e-auctions (Malthouse & Hofacker, 2010) and many others. As
can be observed in the research subjects, interactive marketing is a term that
includes DM but also has unique characteristics that are beyond DM (Wang,
2021). In nature, DM is a form of interactive marketing and is highly related
to the interactive domain (Wang, 2021). The domains are so intertwined that
they are even referred to as interactive digital marketing (IDM) (See Krishen
et al., 2021).
 4 BRIDGING THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF DIGITAL … 67

As digital channels mainly dominate interactive media, defining and fore-

casting the possible changes within DM research can provide deeper insights
into the evolution of interactive marketing. There have been attempts to
understand, forecast, and classify the DM domain from different aspects.
For example, Vanhala et al. (2020) studied a corpus of 495 articles (2000–
2018) to investigate online consumer behavior. Leung et al. (2017) relied on
bibliometrics, co-citation, and co-word analyses in their attempt to define the
social media research domain. They analyzed 406 papers from 16 journals
published between 2007 and 2016. Another stream of research focused on
future research opportunities. In their effort to develop a framework, Kannan
and Li (2017) researched the extant literature on DM. They highlighted the
digital technologies which are prevailing and will have a significant effect on
marketing strategies. They came up with the agenda for future research. Like-
wise, Lamberton and Stephen (2016) analyzed the changes in digital, social
media, and mobile marketing themes. They worked on five premier marketing
journals and focused on 15 years (2000–2015). Again, the study resulted
in suggestions for future research. By pursuing a multi-disciplinary approach
and using data extracted from the Scopus database, Krishen et al. (2021)
have defined the main research topics and their evolution in IDM research.
They were able to identify five different stages: the start-up, customer satis-
faction and analysis, social networking and review, co-creation and customer
engagement, and lastly, machine intelligence and IoT-based virtual reality.
Taking a different approach from the previous studies, this chapter covers
the whole realm of DM. The data was extracted from the WoS database,
not specific to any journal but specific to the keywords (detailed in the
methodology section). To the best of our knowledge, this chapter is the first
to apply science mapping to DM research which sets the present chapter
apart from previous works. Third, this chapter presents the theoretical evolu-
tion of DM followed by practical changes and developments in the domain.
This presentation enables us to show the alignment between the subjects of
academia and practical applications of digital marketers while enabling a better
understanding of the evolution of interactive marketing.
Relying on collective wisdom, we divided the 30 years into 5-year intervals
to examine the themes in detail (only 1990–1999 was a ten-year interval since
there were a very small number of publications on DM yet). As stated by
Lamberton and Stephen (2016), interesting changes appear at approximately
5-year intervals in the domain of digital. We observed that most of the time,
the practical evolution has its reflections in theory in the next period. And
sometimes, the foundations of a concept are built theoretically first, and it
comes to life in practice in the following period.
68 A. S. GÜNGÖR AND T. O. ÇADIRCI

3 Methodology
Analyzing scientific texts is a good way of understanding the evolution and
the performance of a research domain. In the current study, a complete biblio-
metric analysis was used to analyze the evolution of DM as a research domain.
A typical bibliometric analysis produces two evaluations: performance analysis
and science mapping (Cobo et al., 2011). Performance analysis is based on the
publications (articles), and it produces information on the outputs of these
publications that are based on documents, authors, and citations (Noyons
et al., 1999a). The most significant sources and articles can be derived through
the performance analysis, information on the author, and country productivity.
Also, the impact can be obtained using performance analysis, information on
source, and article.
Science mapping provides information on the cognitive structure of a
research domain with the inclusion of its evolution over time (Noyons et al.,
1999b). To understand the cognitive structure through science mapping,
mostly semantic maps created with co-word analysis are used (Börner et al.,
2003). Co-word analysis creates clusters of keywords used within a corpus that
are semantically or conceptually related (Lopez-Herrera et al., 2010) based on
their co-occurrences within the documents in the corpus. Co-word analysis
can be attributed as a form of content analysis that operates with the associ-
ation strength between words (Callon et al., 1983). In other words, co-word
analysis works with the assumption that the content of multiple documents
can be derived from the co-occurrence of keywords associated with the docu-
ment (Callon et al., 1991). Maps created with co-word analysis can be used
to understand the existence of keyword clusters within a period and their
evolution through consecutive periods (Cobo et al., 2011).
A longitudinal science mapping analysis has a set of steps (Börner et al.,
2003; Callon et al., 1991; Van Eck et al., 2006): (1) Collection of data; (2)
Selection of the unit of measurement; (3) Information extraction; (4) Detec-
tion of research themes with the calculation of similarities and the use of a
clustering algorithm; (5) Building strategic diagrams and thematic maps; and
(6) Conducting a performance analysis of the themes. Figure 1 exhibits the
research workflow of the study.
(1) Collection of Data. The data was extracted from Web of Science™ (ISI
WoS) Core Collection (e.g., Social Sciences Citation Index) to analyze and
visualize the current situation of DM literature. In data extraction, certain
keywords (e.g., digital marketing, internet marketing, electronic marketing,
etc.) were searched in the title, keywords, and abstracts of the papers.
Papers without keywords and content, like book reviews and editorials, were
excluded from the data, and only articles belonging to the subject category
of “business” were included in the analysis. The final data included docu-
ment titles, source title, author names (8,816 authors), the author-assigned
(11,683), and WoS-assigned (5,262) keywords, cited references, times cited,
 4 BRIDGING THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF DIGITAL … 69

Web of Science Database

Data
Preprocessing

Search Results Network Extraction Normalization

Mapping (Walktrap
(5,026 Articles; (Word Co- (Association
Clustering)
11,683 Occurence) Strenght)
Keywords)

Visualization (Sci-
Mat Software)

Interpretation

Fig. 1 Research workflow

and publication date of 5,026 articles. The average citation per document was
34.9, and the number of authors per document was 2.64.
(2) Selection of the unit of measurement and information extraction. As the
data was extracted from ISI WoS, each document had two groups of keywords.
The first group included author-assigned keywords, and the second group was
WoS-assigned keywords. The author-assigned keywords were selected since
WoS-assigned keywords were more generic, and the use of author keywords
was expected to be more reflective of the studies.
(3) Detection of Research Themes. Using the frequency of keyword
co-occurrences, similarities between articles can be calculated. Association
strength, also known as proximity index, is a measure that provides a fair
comparison between high volume and low volume word co-occurrences
(Van Eck & Waltman, 2007, 2009). The association strength measure was
used in the normalization process of co-occurrences. In plain words, articles
sharing similar keywords are grouped together to form a research theme. The
researcher should locate the subgroups of keywords that exhibit a strong asso-
ciation during this step. The network map that presents the subgroups can
only be created with the use of a clustering algorithm. Although there are
multiple clustering algorithms that can be used in science mapping studies, we
used the Walktrap clustering algorithm to cluster the extracted keywords. Pons
and Latapy (2005) proposed that the walk trap algorithm relies highly on the
distance between word clusters. The general assumption of the algorithm is
that as the nodes within a graph are highly associated (in the same cluster),
the distance between these nodes should be short (Lee et al., 2020).
70 A. S. GÜNGÖR AND T. O. ÇADIRCI

(4) Mapping of the Research Themes. The detected themes are positioned
on the thematic map based on centrality and density (Callon et al., 1991).

• Centrality is the measure of the external strength of a network, and it

presents the interaction of a network of words with other word networks.


c = 10 ∗ ek,h ;

where, k: keyword belonging to the theme; and h: keyword belonging to other

themes.

• Density is the measure of the internal strength of the network, and it

presents the interaction of words within the same network.

 ei, j
d = 100 ∗
w
where, i and j: keywords belonging to the same theme; and w: number of
keywords in the same theme.
The themes are positioned on a two-dimensional map, and their positions
are determined based on their centrality and density ranks (López-Herrera
et al., 2010; Muñoz-Leiva et al., 2013). They are calculated as cr = rankic /N ;
and dr = rankid /N . In these equations, rankic and rankid represent the position
of the theme in the list of themes in ascending order of centrality and density,
respectively. N represents the total number of themes and is used for normal-
ization purposes. Following the calculations of centrality and density rankings,
a map is produced with four separate quadrants representing four different
groups of themes: “a) motor themes ; b) basic or transversal themes, c) emerging
or declining themes, d) specialized and isolated themes ” (Callon et al., 1991).
Each research theme in each quadrant is represented with a sphere, and the
size of each sphere is proportional to the number of documents in each theme
(Cobo et al., 2011).

a. Upper-right quadrant (Motor Themes): Themes in this position present

a high level of centrality and density. Each theme positioned in this
quadrant is highly developed and they have strong external and internal
strength.
b. Lower-right quadrant (Transversal and Basic Themes): The themes in
this quadrant have a high level of internal strength, but they are not as
highly developed as themes in the upper-right quadrant. They mostly
represent general and basic themes.
 4 BRIDGING THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF DIGITAL … 71

c. Lower-left quadrant (Declining or Emerging Themes): The themes

positioned in this quadrant are weakly developed, lacking internal and
external strengths. Due to their low centrality and density measures, they
are expected to disappear or emerge in the research domain.
d. Upper-left quadrant (Specialized and Isolated themes): Themes in this
quadrant have a high level of centrality but a low level of density. These
themes exhibit a peripheral character and have a high level of internal
strength.

(5) Performance Analysis . The last phase of science mapping includes

performance analysis. The rationale behind performance analysis is to deter-
mine the themes with the highest impact. Each theme’s productivity is
determined by the number of documents and average citations generated by
each theme and their h-index. The common way of understanding biblio-
metric evaluation is using different indexes like the h-index (Hirsch, 2007),
and g-index (Egghe, 2006). h-index is a micro-level evaluation of a single
scientist’s achievement over time. According to Hirsch (2005, p. 16,569), “a
scientist has index h if his or her papers have at least h citations each, and
the other (n−h) papers have ≤ h citations each.” In time, the h-index gained
more extensive use as an assessment of scientific productivity (Martínez et al.,
2014; Rousseau, 2006).

4 Results and Discussion

To present the conceptual structure of DM, we created maps based on scien-
tific production and analyzed and discussed the evolution of DM—both
practically and theoretically—in 5 consecutive periods with the use of SciMAT
software. The results of the thematic analysis are summarized in five thematic
maps (Fig. 2) and an evolution map (Fig. 3).

4.1 1990–1999: The Dawn of New Beginnings

The Practical Landscape (1990–1999). The early 90s were the first decade
of the Internet, known as Web 1.0. With the launch of the mass-market
browser Netscape, in 1994, the World Wide Web project became public. As
a response to the increasing number of Web users, search engines Yahoo!
(1994) and Google (1997), e-commerce sites Amazon (1994), eBay (1995),
and e-mail service provider Hotmail (1997) were commercialized. The first e-
commerce-oriented websites acted as digital brochures with limited marketing
and customer engagement possibilities. There was only traditional one-way
communication at any Web site without any interaction. DM was still in the
proximity of interactive marketing in that era, not fully capitalized yet. The
90s were the era when consumers and companies realized the opportunities
and threats of being online.
72 A. S. GÜNGÖR AND T. O. ÇADIRCI

(a) 1990-1999 (b) 2000-2004

(c) 2005-2009 (d) 2010-2014

(e) 2015-2020

Fig. 2 The conceptual evolution of digital marketing

 4 BRIDGING THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF DIGITAL … 73

Fig. 3 The evolution of digital marketing themes (1990–2020)

The Conceptual Structure (1990–1999). During this period, with the limited
research areas defined yet, the TECHNOLOGY and MARKETS appeared as
the Motor themes with an effort to familiarize the academia with the subject
of “Use of Technology in Commercial Markets” (Fig. 2a). The most domi-
nant motor theme was TECHNOLOGY (Table 1). TECHNOLOGY, as a
theme, was closely related to the sub-themes search cost, internet markets, e-
business, new products, and diffusion of innovations. The sub-themes are the
apparent indicators of academia’s approach to the new digital products as
innovations and try to relate them to e-business. The other motor theme is
the MARKETS, in close relationship with the sub-themes network externali-
ties, value chain, business, industry, and investment. Scholars were defining the
value chain of DM and in a belief that the more the investment, the more the
advantage of these newly founded electronic companies. And it is a challenge
to understand the buying patterns of consumers, reflected in the sub-theme
network externalities, in the digital environment. The only basic theme of this
74 A. S. GÜNGÖR AND T. O. ÇADIRCI

Table 1 Performance analysis (1990–1999)

Theme Number of papers Average citations h-index

TECHNOLOGY 10 193.8 8
CHOICE 11 147.64 11
MARKETS 6 46.67 6
CONSUMERS 5 120 5
ORGANIZATIONS 7 226.43 7

period was CHOICE. By definition of the basic themes, CHOICE is impor-

tant for the DM field but not well-developed yet. Since CHOICE reflects the
consumer preference (sub-theme), it is highly related to CONSUMER, which
showed up as the isolated theme of the era. The theme CONSUMER had
a very weak tie with the sub-theme behavior, yet, and the strongest tie with
the sub-theme information-technology. Consumer side studies were gathered
around flow, perception, and feelings at the consumer level, consumer search,
electronic markets, and telecommunications at the company technology level.
ORGANIZATION was the emerging theme and at the very basic level at this
period.
To summarize, the 1990s were the first years for both the practical and
theoretical developments of DM. While practitioners were trying to get the
best out of the new digital medium, academia was struggling to define the
technical and operational dynamics of the medium. The focus of the studies
in this era was the organizations, with only a few consumer studies.

4.2 2000–2004: Understanding the Rules of Digital Marketplaces

The Practical Landscape (2000–2004). At the beginning of the new millen-
nium, companies recognized that the Internet was not only a tool for
commercialization but also socialization. In the early 2000s, static websites
became interactive and included dynamic content with a few social interac-
tion aspects (Poynter & Lawrence, 2008). In this era, traditional interactive
marketing took a new direction to become contemporary. This led compa-
nies to form online intellectual relationships with their customers through
content and membership groups (Erragcha & Romdhane, 2014). The emer-
gence of socialization through the web is also observed with the launch of
LinkedIn (2002), MySpace (2003), and Facebook (2004). This period also
created a shift in terms of interactivity. The bi-directional nature of relation-
ships evolved into unidirectionality, i.e., between company and customer and
between customers (Poynter & Lawrence, 2008). This was the milestone in
interactive marketing’s nature to become more digitalized. The interactive
relationships were also symbolized by wikis and blogs. As consumers realized
the opportunities in the digital world, traditional interactive marketing tools
turned into digital, and DM was even more important. As a preliminary effort,
 4 BRIDGING THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF DIGITAL … 75

Google launched Adwords in 2000 and marked the beginning of search engine
and display marketing.
The Conceptual Structure (2000–2004). In this period, the themes were
either categorized as motor themes or emerging themes. Based on their
strategic positions in the thematic map, FIRM, SYSTEMS, and TRUST are
the motor themes of this period (Fig. 2b), well-developed, and important
for the structuring of the DM field. Innovation was the most dominant co-
occurrence of the theme FIRM. It became prominent in this era with a
reasonable belief that the higher the innovation capability of a digital firm,
the better it performs in electronic channels. And, as the relationship between
the sub-themes promises, the network of the firm was one of the main deter-
minants of the innovation performance of the firm. Thus, on the firm side,
innovation, network, performance, and e-business studies gained importance.
The SYSTEM studies were other drivers of the research field. The high cita-
tion rate of the theme (164.11) discloses its importance for scholars while
supporting the position of the theme on the map (Table 2). The sub-themes
of the SYSTEM being information-technology, auctions, reverse auctions, and
externalities implied that the scholars were still trying to figure out the tech-
nicalities as well as new pricing mechanisms brought to the market mainly by
eBay in the previous period. TRUST, the motor theme, had its strongest link
with markets and breakdowns as buyer–seller relationships, perceived risk, and
consumer perceptions. The co-occurrence network of TRUST was a clear indi-
cator of how vital it is both for the electronic markets and relationships with
consumers. It was one of the most studied subjects with 27 articles and the
highest average citation (264.26) of the period.
CONSUMERS and SERVICES were the emerging themes of the period.
The SERVICES studies had a new entrance to the DM domain with 3 articles.
The scholars noticed that almost every product/service that was offered in
the digital channels was based on a service economy. With the other emerging
theme, CONSUMERS, academia is trying to understand the consumer expe-
rience and perception of search costs associated with consumer search and
price. Although the theme CONSUMER is at the focus of every period, the
elaborated consumer studies were reserved as subjects of interest shortly.

Table 2 Performance
analysis (2000–2004) Theme Number of Average h-index
papers citations

TRUST 27 264.26 24
FIRM 12 130.25 12
SYSTEMS 27 164.11 24
CONSUMERS 16 244.81 16
SERVICES 3 77 3
76 A. S. GÜNGÖR AND T. O. ÇADIRCI

Although the studies of this era still mostly focused on the company side,
consumer studies gained momentum. The main concern was shaped around
acknowledgment of new systems by the firms, innovations which were the
main drivers of the DM field at this period, and, to a small degree, relation-
ships between buyer and seller. Still, it is not surprising to see that almost all
the themes of 2000–2004 had a strong evolutionary follower, which is the
theme TRUST (Fig. 3)—implying that the studies on the consumer were yet
to accelerate.

4.3 2005–2009: The Rise of Multichannel Marketing

The Practical Landscape (2005–2009). Although the foundations of Web 2.0
(Community web) have been laid in the previous period, the term was first
introduced at a conference organized by O’Reilly and Medialive International
in 2004. Likewise, the evolutive marketing concept developed by Prof. Philip
Kotler had reached its second stage, Marketing 2.0. It was time for conver-
sations, collaborations, and communities. It was the years that the marketers
awakened with the idea of going where the customers were instead of waiting
for them.
Web 2.0 was named as the participating web. It rested on social media
(Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010), which relied on user-generated content (UGC)
(Ye et al., 2011) and crowdsourcing (Erragcha & Romdhane, 2014). Further-
more, considering the interaction capability of social media, digital and
interactive marketing became even more effective in building a more person-
alized approach in the mid-2000s (Wang, 2021). Integrating the consumers
into the marketing process in a personalized way and considering them as
the players, not the receivers, was the fundamental idea behind marketing 2.0
(Bressolles, 2012). Consumers became collaborators of marketing strategies
with never-lasting interactive communication during this period.
2005 was when YouTube, GoogleAnalytics, and search engine optimiza-
tion (SEO) were first pronounced. As the methods of data collection, digital
communication, and data analysis have accelerated, marketers looked for ways
to utilize collected data, called “big data.” Analyzing the big data opened the
venue for fine-tuned segmentation and marketing. The focus of marketing in
this period was moved from understanding the online customer to persua-
sion tactics through data analytics. Moreover, responding to all these changes,
2006 was the year in which analytical customer relationship building (CRM)
was operationalized.
The introduction of Twitter in 2006 changed how consumers share opin-
ions and how they get information. Social networks (e.g., Twitter, Facebook,
Tumblr [2007]) were not only serving the purpose of opinion sharing but also
giving a hand to the companies in identifying the consumer attitudes toward
the brands. It was also the year that the mobile as a concept and media was
recognized by digital marketers.
 4 BRIDGING THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF DIGITAL … 77

It seemed that the marketers had to obey the new rules set by the
customers. No company filter was ever possible, and the new technologies
challenged the companies more than ever. It was time to give away action in
favor of interaction. The market became a forum for interactive marketing’s
naturally inherited conversations among connected customers and/or partici-
pants via digital and mobile tools (Wang, 2021). Rust et al. (2010) stated, “A
truly customer-centered view of marketing is the natural result of technology.”
The Conceptual Structure (2005–2009). The most recurrent occurrence was
MARKETS which showed up as a motor theme during this period (Fig. 2c).
MARKETS, as a theme, was closely related to the sub-themes of behaviors,
strategies, information-technology, electronic marketplaces, network externalities,
network effects, information asymmetry, information goods, and online retailing.
TRUST, which has been studied generously since the beginning of the 2000s,
was another motor theme that found a strong ground in this era as well (Table
3). This theme is interrelated with sub-themes like performance, satisfaction,
electronic markets, services, commitment, environments, buyer–seller relation-
ships, perceived risk, and marketplaces. These two themes are the most studied
subjects of this period. Along with them, two more motor themes are also
presented in Fig. 2c. These are INNOVATION and PRICE. INNOVATION
is related to the sub-themes of technology, firm, customers, information systems,
organizations, capabilities, social networks, dynamic-capabilities, and telecom-
munications. This era witnessed the infancy of analytical tools, mobile phones,
and social media channels. As one of the main topics of interactive marketing,
social media was used as a way to engage audiences in conversations and
information sharing (Byon & Phua, 2021).
The studies exploring these facets of DM found its ground in the theme
of INNOVATION. PRICE is interrelated with consumer behavior, auctions,
consumer perceptions, online-auctions, promotions, digital products, risk, and
internet-auctions. The theme has evolved into the theme of AUCTIONS in
the next era (Fig. 3). PRICE has been studied from both buyer and seller
perspectives. A group of studies under this theme explored the impact of

Table 3 Performance analysis (2005–2009)

Theme Number of papers Average citations h-index

TRUST 61 81.84 34
OPPORTUNITIES 4 160 4
MARKETS 75 52.65 28
MARKETING-STRATEGY 9 67.89 9
CONSUMERS 41 87.12 28
INNOVATION 32 103 22
PRICE 27 69.89 22
DESIGN 13 85.46 11
CHANNEL 8 52.88 8
78 A. S. GÜNGÖR AND T. O. ÇADIRCI

online pricing on consumers’ behavior, including their risk perceptions (e.g.,

Chellappa & Kumar, 2005; Ratchford, 2009; Sen et al., 2006). Another realm
of studies was analyzing the system of auctions in digital platforms, the use
of promotions, and digital product pricing strategies. With the penetration
of mobile technologies, changes in electronic markets, auctions and require-
ments, and adoption of new pricing mechanisms, PRICE’s importance as a
research field kept on growing.
The single basic theme of this era is CONSUMERS. The theme is inter-
related with sub-themes of perception, choice, search costs, communication,
experience, retailers, mechanisms, brand, and social influence. The theme repre-
sents studies on digital consumer behavior. The studies listed under this theme
were attempts to discover consumer behavior with their perceptions and expe-
rience on digital platforms. CONSUMERS has been a recurrent theme since
the 90s. During this period, it is also the second most cited theme with the
highest number of average citations (Table 2).
The other group of themes MARKETING-STRATEGY, DESIGN, and
CHANNEL were either emerging or disappearing themes in DM between
2005 and 2009 (Fig. 2c). MARKETING-STRATEGY is interrelated with
sub-themes like websites, tourism, decision, marketing-communications, online-
reviews, paradigm, preferences, and purchase. As the business landscape of
DM was under change because of new channels, academia showed interest
in possible strategic directions in these new environments. DESIGN evolved
from SYSTEMS in the previous period is interrelated with the product, supply-
chain, systems, business-models, e-business, e-service, online communities, and
reverse auctions. The theme is mostly related to business system design within
digital environments. The last theme in this quadrant is CHANNEL, which
is interrelated with industry, switching-costs, costs, shoppers, benefits, and choice-
models. Under the heading of this theme, academia explored channel choice
in digital environments. The most representative sub-theme being industry is
an indicator of the focus on the business side of channel choice.
The single isolated theme between 2005 and 2009 is OPPORTUNI-
TIES. Examining the thematic evolution map (Fig. 2c), OPPORTUNITIES
is a newly introduced theme in DM literature. The theme evolves into
INTERNET-CHANNEL, EXPERIENCE, and PERCEIVED VALUE in the
upcoming period. The theme has relationships with the acquisition, customer
value, distribution-channels, exchange, information-search, marketing-channels,
motivation, and time. The launch of social networks like Twitter and Face-
book, and the introduction of mobile technologies, created growth in both
availabilities of content and information at an increasing pace. Connecting
the information availability with channel management, practitioners started to
question “value” created in a multi-channel environment, and academia has
focused on OPPORTUNITIES created by these channels. Despite having the
smallest number of documents (4 papers), the theme was the most cited one
in this period.
 4 BRIDGING THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF DIGITAL … 79

4.4 2010–2014: Rules of the Interactive Web

The Practical Landscape (2010–2014). 2010 was the year that Web 3.0 started.
The idea behind Web 3.0 was user cooperation (Fuchs, 2010), and it was
the first year of “extended immersive experience” (Erragcha & Romdhane,
2014, p. 140). The matching marketing era was categorized as Marketing 3.0,
the age of participative and collaborative marketing (Kotler et al., 2010a). It
was the “value-driven era” (Fuciu & Dumitrescu, 2018, p. 45). According to
Kotler et al. (2010b), it was time for marketers to search for meaning in their
strategies and apply the ones that were centered on “values.” And the most
memorable values were created through experiences.
With the new information age, the virtual networks served as knowledge-
sharing media in addition to information exchange (Erragcha & Romdhane,
2014). The users were in dialogue with companies and with each other.
These developments created “producing consumer (prosumer)” (Kotler et al.,
2010a) who was a volunteer for content producing and sharing (via Twitter,
Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube), engaging in real-time discus-
sions (via WhatsApp, Skype, Yahoo Messenger), publishing content via blogs,
sharing knowledge via wikis, and reviewing products/services on platforms.
Realizing the power that the consumer had, marketers, wisely, transformed
the consumers into supporters and partners (Toffler, 1980). To achieve more
advanced collaboration, companies asked them “to play the key role in creating
value through co-creation” (Kotler et al., 2010a, p. 10), asking them to
participate in the process, thus, putting the basics of interactive marketing
into practice. Following the spirit, 2010–2011 were the years that many
social media initiatives have stepped into the market, like WhatsApp (2010),
Google+ (2011), Instagram (2011), Pinterest (2011), and Snapchat (2011).
As the players of interactive marketing, they all aimed to allow the customers
to engage and enjoy becoming a part of the interactive do-it-together process
(Wang, 2021). However, it took some years before social media amassed large
user bases and proved its worth for marketers through network externalities.
The other scope of Marketing 3.0 was focused on companies. The devel-
opments in information and communication technologies and their fast
diffusion rate created changes and raised questions about the relationship
between connected consumers and companies (Gómez-Suárez et al., 2017).
As a response, buyer–seller and platform-consumer relationships became the
trendiest research topics in DM.
In 2014, the number of mobile users surpassed desktop users. With all
these different devices at the expense of consumers, “omnichannel market-
ing” was spinning around in 2014. However, multi-channel and mobile
were fairly minor concepts for practitioners and thus for researchers in 2014
(Lamberton & Stephen, 2016). Their development was reserved for the next
period.
The Conceptual Structure (2010–2014). As the domain of the digital diver-
sified, there appeared many Motor themes in the thematic map (Fig. 2d).
80 A. S. GÜNGÖR AND T. O. ÇADIRCI

The most important and the most influential of them were BEHAVIORS,
TRUST, ATTITUDES, and INFORMATION-TECHNOLOGY (see Fig. 2d
and Table 4). The sub-themes of BEHAVIORS (consumers, communication,
choice, brand, decision) and TRUST (satisfaction, commitment, buyer–seller
relationships) were the clear indicators of the studies on the communication
channels that were effective in shaping consumer behavior and establishing
trust. Communication technologies, systems, and innovation were the three sub-
themes of the INFORMATION-TECHNOLOGY. They reflected academia’s
attempt to define innovative technologies and systems to improve digital
companies’ capabilities. ATTITUDES is another motor theme in the thematic
map of 2010–2014. It had its sub-themes of consumer behavior, perception,
and environments in the conceptual studies. And gender and gender-difference
studies were elaborated under the heading of this theme. One stream of studies
of the era projected that one of the goals was to understand the effect of
attitudes on purchase intention within different environments along with the
differences between genders.
The theme REVIEWS had the highest average citation, indicating the great
interest in the theme, and was located in the exact middle of motor and highly
developed themes. As the practitioners are aware of the consumer capabilities
to stimulate others (reflected in the sub-theme of social influence), the user-
generated content (UGC) studies gained momentum under the heading of
REVIEWS. In the next period, REVIEWS evolved into ONLINE-REVIEWS
(Fig. 3), answering the need to have detailed studies on the theme.

Table 4 Performance analysis (2010–2014)

Theme Number of papers Average citations h-index

TRUST 77 39.49 30
SIGNALING 13 64.54 9
ATTITUDES 60 46.17 28
INFORMATION-TECHNOLOGY 53 42.49 23
BEHAVIORS 102 62.27 36
INDUSTRY 36 29.14 17
PERCEIVED VALUE 18 23.72 12
INTERNET-CHANNEL 12 54.33 10
RETURNS 11 49 9
REVIEWS 27 77.37 21
BUSINESS 28 30.25 14
EXPERIENCE 16 37.88 12
INFORMATION-SEARCH 10 48.3 7
SERVICES 14 34 10
FIRM 7 22.86 4
AUCTIONS 7 18.86 6
 4 BRIDGING THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF DIGITAL … 81

Although PERCEIVED VALUE and INDUSTRY were capturing the

attention of researchers as the motor themes (Fig. 2d), they were not as influ-
ential as the other themes in this period based on average citation rates (Table
4). The theme PERCEIVED VALUE covered the studies on consumer percep-
tions and the benefits that the customer gets from buying either a product or
service. And the INDUSTRY-related studies mainly dealt with strategies to be
developed at electronic marketplaces.
Although not high in the number of studies, SIGNALLING was an impor-
tant theme regarding the effect it created in terms of average citation (Table
4). It was located between emerging and isolated/highly developed themes.
The theme mostly covered papers on price signaling and was internally
related to price, social interaction, platforms, information asymmetry, online
marketplaces, and online search. The internal ties reveal that as the online
marketplaces, search engines, and aggregator platforms evolved, price signaling
became an issue to be researched by scholars (e.g., Brettel & Spilker-Attig,
2010).
RETURNS and INFORMATION-SEARCH were two other highly cited
emerging themes (Table 4). Examining the sub-themes, RETURN studies
mainly concentrated on risk, purchase, and policy. They are the indicators of
DM scholars’ interest in the effect of different policies applied to handle
returns and the risk perceived by the consumer during an online purchase.
INFORMATION-SEARCH was scattered around the sub-themes of pref-
erences, perceived risk, recommender systems, and online reviews. They were
representing a growing interest in studies of the need for information about
the connected customer and risks caused by the technology that enabled them
to get this information. Other themes located in the quadrant of emerging or
declining themes were EXPERIENCE, FIRM, and AUCTIONS (See Fig. 2d).
Studies on FIRM and AUCTIONS were believed to be declining because
of the low average citation rates (22.86 and 18.86, respectively). On the
other hand, the theme of EXPERIENCE was emerging. As the need to
understand the “customer experience” in emerging environments was staying
steady, the interest in the subject kept growing. In this period, the themes
SERVICES and BUSINESS surfaced as the basic themes. They needed time
to be conceptualized.
In general, the themes in this period were indicators of the actualiza-
tion of technology in shaping consumer behavior. The focus partially moved
from firm-based studies to consumer-based research. While the consumer
studies reflected the interest in consumer attitudes, trust development, value,
and online experiences, firm-based studies were conceptualized around digital
channels, pricing, and logistics. The studies in the era indicated a power shift in
favor of consumers, who were the main driver of DM research in this period.
82 A. S. GÜNGÖR AND T. O. ÇADIRCI

4.5 2015–2020: The Rise of the Customer Kingdom

The Practical Landscape (2015–2020). Although it is valid for all successive
periods, it is not possible to mention clear-cut differences between this and
the previous period. During this period, the technologies and applications that
evolved in the preceding period became more functional in terms of DM.
Facebook acquired WhatsApp at the end of 2014 to serve corporations
with data that is collected on different channels of social networks. With the
collected data, digital marketers realized the potential of social media, which is
not limited to marketing (Qin, 2020). With the proliferation of social media
and with its discovered capabilities, social media altered the way of consumer
involvement in interactive marketing (Vazquez, 2020). Companies discovered
that social media allowed them to make the consumers actively participate in
every creative stage of the company operations and sell products/services in
digital marketplaces. With their enhanced interactivity feature, users interacted
with each other and marketers in a triad relationship (Wang, 2021).
Although it started in the early 2010s, in this period, social commerce
dominated the market. As companies were forming active brand communi-
ties, they were offering opportunities for collaboration and co-creation to the
customers (Kucharska, 2019). As the customer feels like a part of the company,
the academia, very conveniently, defined the theme as “collaborative platform
economy,” or more commonly, “sharing economy”—the term used in the
traditional economy.
As “managers wanted to extract business values from social technologies”
(Roberts & Grover, 2012), marketers started to seek the solution in mobile
technologies and multi-channel. They started to invest in their apps, place ads
in other’s apps, or use ad networks (e.g., DoubleClick of Google). Mobile
replaced the websites. It was possible to both geographically and behaviorally
target consumers through geolocation services (Taylor et al., 2020), thus,
giving the consumers time-sensitive promotions and building the relationship
while providing the best experience for consumers.
At first sight, it seemed like consumers were sharing with each other (wikis,
blogs, social media, vendor ratings, comments, etc.), but companies were
adopting quickly by commercializing the model, as in the growth of Uber
and Airbnb. The sharing economy along with the mobile, brought digital
marketers to the concept of the service economy, moving away from the
product economy. As the companies sought a way to differentiate themselves
from the competition, they raised their standards for quality of services, tried
to provide the experience unique to their services (Lamberton & Stephen,
2016), and asked for trust and loyalty.
Another important entry in this period was the launch of wearables in the
market. They had the potential of mobile phones since the consumers carried
them everywhere and, even better, wore them at night and day, and they
enabled connection through devices (i.e., Internet of Things [IoT]). It did not
take long for the companies to emerge with smartwatches (e.g., Pebble watch,
 4 BRIDGING THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF DIGITAL … 83

Apple Watch, Samsung Galaxy Gear), fitness bracelets (e.g., Fitbit Force),
and smart spectacles (e.g., Google Glass) (Shankar et al., 2016). Wearables
became another source of data for digital marketers. Voice recognition services
followed immediately as a disruptive innovation (the key players were Apple’s
Siri, Amazon’s Echo, and Google’s Google Assistant). Putting all these smart
devices together, consumers were highly immersed in the digital environment.
To provide the best immersive experience, the technology of augmented reality
(AR) (and, after a while, virtual reality—VR) stepped into the strategies of
digital marketers.
The Conceptual Structure (2015–2020). As in previous periods, TRUST is
a motor theme of this period. It is interrelated with satisfaction, consumer
behavior, commitment, electronic markets, online marketplaces, perceived risk,
purchase intention, repurchase intention, and risk. The ongoing trend of trust
as a motor theme over the years addresses its importance in DM literature.
TRUST has its strongest interconnections with satisfaction, consumer behavior,
and commitment. This implies the impact of trust on consumer satisfaction and
loyalty. As the competition in the digital world stiffened more, concepts like
satisfaction, trust, and loyalty became more important for e-retailers. Another
motor theme that has been evolved from the theme TRUST (2010–2014)
is MARKETPLACES. It has interconnections with online product reviews,
price premiums, security, benefits, channel, contracts, decision, exchange, and
information asymmetry. The theme represents the exchange process of goods
and information in digital channels. Especially the existence of information
asymmetry shows that studies under the theme MARKETPLACES try to
discover the balance between buyers and sellers in terms of information avail-
ability. INNOVATION is another theme that is in the upper-right quadrant.
The theme is not new in the scope of DM literature. The theme appeared
between 2005 and 2009 and makes its reappearance during this period (See
Fig. 3). It’s interrelated with sub-themes like performance, technology, strate-
gies, business models, capabilities, digital platforms, dynamic-capabilities, firm,
and network effects. Mostly related to seller-side innovations, this subject is
expected to grow in the following periods. The introduction of wearables,
AR, and VR technologies resulted in the entrance of INNOVATION as a
motor theme to the map. And the sub-themes are indicators of academia’s
interest in discovering the impact of new technologies and business models
on firm performance and capabilities. The combination of INDUSTRY and
BEHAVIOR in the preceding period resulted in the theme of MARKETS
(Fig. 3). The theme has interconnections with reviews, search costs, consumer
search, costs, industry, mechanisms, networks, online platforms, and prefer-
ences. The theme connects the buyer and seller sides of DM. In terms of
the number of papers, the largest theme is BEHAVIORS. Evolving from
ATTITUDES and BEHAVIORS (Fig. 3), the theme is interrelated with inten-
tions, motivation, product, consumers, perception, attitudes, brand, choice, and
communities. The theme represents online consumer behavior and includes
social media and community structures. The penetration of social media
84 A. S. GÜNGÖR AND T. O. ÇADIRCI

and the evolution of social commerce created new venues for researchers
working on digital consumers (e.g., Graham & Wilder, 2020; Kakalejčík et al.,
2020; Qin, 2020). Another theme that is highly related to BEHAVIORS is
ONLINE-REVIEWS. The impact of social media also presents itself within
this theme. The theme has interconnections with sub-themes like social influ-
ence, user-generated content, tourism, acquisition, communication, experience,
hotels, national culture, and sentiment. Mostly dominated by tourism and
hospitality studies, the theme investigates the impact of reviews on consumer
behaviors (e.g., Sotiriadis, 2017). Also another important point stems from the
sub-theme “sentiment.” This is an indicator of a new realm of studies using
big data and text analytics to discover the hidden sentiments in online reviews.
This is a new perspective in DM research, which is expected to have great
potential in the upcoming years. The last motor theme is also previously seen
in the preceding periods, INFORMATION-TECHNOLOGY. The theme is
interrelated with sub-themes of services, SMEs, systems, behavioral intentions,
business, digital innovation, extension, intrinsic motivation, and organizations.
The single basic theme of the period is ONLINE SHOPPING.
Evolving from themes like AUCTIONS, PERCEIVED VALUE, INTERNET-
CHANNELS, ATTITUDES, and TRUST (Fig. 3), the theme is related
to sub-themes like values, online retailing, online consumer behavior, brand
community, customers, customer value, gender differences, retailers, and time.
The theme is mostly focused on online retailing. The scope of the studies
produced under this theme had two dimensions, understanding consumer
characteristics (e.g., Gallant & Arcand, 2017) and defining the dimensions
of customer value (e.g., Ariffin et al., 2018; Izogo & Jayawardhena, 2018).
The proliferation of customers and penetration of online retailing as a channel
created a need to understand what constitutes customer value in online
retailing. As the theme represents itself as a basic theme, it is expected to
grow in the upcoming years with the great potential of the introduction of
new online shopping channels.
The themes CONSUMER-RESPONSE, ONLINE COMMUNITIES,
POLICY, CUSTOMER-EXPERIENCE, INFORMATION-SEARCH, and
PERCEIVED VALUE are placed in the lower left quadrant of the map
(Fig. 2e). ONLINE COMMUNITIES is an emerging theme in this quadrant,
which has strong internal ties with social interactions, social networks, users,
equity, identity, judgments, marketing-strategy, online consumer reviews, and
smartphone. The theme, evolved from REVIEWS, mostly deals with consumer
interactions within online communities and possible strategies that can be
pursued to benefit from earned media (e.g., Qin, 2020). CONSUMER-
RESPONSE is interrelated with pricing strategy, recall, switching-costs, promo-
tions, brand attitude, design, emotions, failure, and field. This theme focuses
on investigating customer response toward different marketing activities in
the fast-paced environment of DM (e.g., Wolkenfelt & Situmeang, 2020).
POLICY is another theme that is expected to emerge in the upcoming
years. This can easily be understood with a look at its relationship with
 4 BRIDGING THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF DIGITAL … 85

sub-themes like returns, social networking sites, corporate social responsibility

(CSR), auctions, disclosure, expectations, food, incentives, and resources. Espe-
cially its interrelationship with resources, returns, and CSR is very impor-
tant. Since sustainability has been a very popular subject in the last few
years, the theme is expected to present growth in the upcoming years.
INFORMATION-SEARCH and PERCEIVED VALUE are two themes that
had been present in the preceding periods. INFORMATION-SEARCH repre-
sents studies on pricing, emerging markets, and online search activities. The
scope of PERCEIVED VALUE has evolved to include a more detailed
approach to defining how value is created and perceived. The theme represents
studies that focus on understanding consumer perceptions of value as well as
the impact of marketing investment and its impact on value creation. The last
theme in this quadrant is CUSTOMER-EXPERIENCE. This is a very strong
theme in this period. Although it has the least number of articles, the theme
was able to capture a relatively high number of average citations (Table 5). The
theme is interrelated with sub-themes of service innovation, attribution, direc-
tions, and environments. In digital platforms, everything becomes a service.
Achieving a high level of service excellence creates a higher demand for online
companies and also provides a better customer experience. The product glut
resulting in customer scarcity in digital environments created a greater need
for a better customer experience, to which attribution is also highly related.
A thorough understanding of the customer journey in digital channels can
provide important insights on managing investments in DM, which can result
in higher levels of marketing ROI.

Table 5 Performance analysis (2015–2020)

Theme Number of papers Average citations h-index

INNOVATION 149 10.03 22

TRUST 154 10.31 18
BEHAVIORS 277 9.01 23
MARKETS 87 10.97 14
MARKETPLACES 20 5.95 5
INFORMATION-TECHNOLOGY 56 14.3 16
ONLINE-REVIEWS 72 11.89 14
OPPORTUNITIES 13 7.08 6
CONSUMER-RESPONSE 16 4.88 4
ONLINE SHOPPING 27 12.96 9
ONLINE COMMUNITIES 29 8.34 7
POLICY 14 11 9
INFORMATION-SEARCH 16 5.38 6
PERCEIVED VALUE 17 6.35 7
CUSTOMER-EXPERIENCE 7 11.14 4
86 A. S. GÜNGÖR AND T. O. ÇADIRCI

The last theme that made a comeback in this period is OPPORTUNITIES.

Stemming from INTERNET-CHANNEL in the previous period (Fig. 3), the
theme has internal interrelations with marketing communications, supply chain,
virtual communities, attachment, buyers, challenges, digitalization, and infor-
mation systems. The inclusion of communities and communications refers to
the seller side of DM; with the inclusion of supply chain and buyers, it refers
to the buyer side of DM.
In brief, the last 5 years represent the strength of social media as a channel
of commerce in DM. Almost in every quadrant, a significant number of sub-
themes have strong connections with the social media phenomenon. The
impact of growth in social networking and mobile media, the emergence of
new technologies, devices, and platforms, and the sharing economy are highly
represented in academia’s take on DM research.

5 Conclusion and Future Research

Digital marketing is a variant of interactive marketing (Wang, 2021), aiming
to provide interactive, participatory, engaging, and immersive experiences.
According to the study by Lim et al. (2022), the evolution of direct marketing
to interactive marketing introduced the terms like social media, multi-channel
marketing, relationship marketing, and viral marketing that led to the intro-
duction of the DM concept. The same study presented that under the topic of
multi-channel marketing, IDM was still a term used between 2012 and 2016
in the literature. Likewise, interactive marketing’s demand to deeply under-
stand the customer to deliver personalized experiences (Stone & Woodcock,
2014) is one of the core subjects that digital marketers cannot ignore.
Starting with the aim of defining the DM literature domain and comparing
it with the practice of DM, we concluded that DM literature started as busi-
ness and information-technology oriented and has significantly evolved in
30 years. Research orientation became consumer-oriented, especially with the
introduction of web technologies, Web 2.0 and Web 3.0.
The findings aroused from the DM study show that there are interactive
marketing features highly overlapping with the study results. It is not beyond
expectations since the DM domain is a subset of the interactive marketing
domain (Wang, 2021). The study results inform both the development and
the future of interactive marketing. To give an idea of how investigating the
DM domain has guided the future of interactive marketing, one can refer to
the last era (2015–2020). The themes that fall under the category of emerging
and motor themes in the last era are the basic indicators of future studies.
For example, the interactive feature of the ONLINE COMMUNITIES, the
personalized, engaged, and the two-way nature of CONSUMER EXPERI-
ENCE, which appeared as the emerging themes in the last era, are themes of
interactive marketing and DM. The theme PERCEIVED VALUE contains the
value co-creation strategy as the construct calls for interactive marketing. With
the feedback the marketers get from the customer in the form of CUSTOMER
 4 BRIDGING THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF DIGITAL … 87

RESPONSE, the personalization process is initiated with interactive marketing

in mind. As an example of the development of the interactive marketing liter-
ature domain, the theme REVIEWS was first used as an influential keyword in
the 2010–2014 era (in 27 papers only), and in the 2015–2020 era, it turned
into CUSTOMER-REVIEWS with an astonishing number 72 papers. It indi-
cated the studies on the participatory nature of both interactive and DM.
Likewise, the studies on INNOVATION appeared first in the 2005–2009 era
(in 41 papers), and then the studies accelerated to reach the number of 149
in 2010–2015. If we reasonably associate the term INNOVATION with value
co-creation, it will imply the effect of interactive marketing on DM.
The study results also imply that the rapid and ever-lasting technological
advancements within the DM realm require changes within marketing science
in both the topics of the domain and the way research is carried out. Big
data and machine learning will significantly change how researchers collect,
analyze, and interpret data. Today, to gain a perspective on DM, it is vital
that academia turns its face toward real-time data collection and analysis. A
group of researchers specializing in advertising topics should benefit from the
data collected via field experiments. The fast changes in technological advance-
ments will diminish the power of traditional methods like survey design and
lab experiments. Even though big data holds a huge promise for companies
and researchers, it tends to provide information on certain situations like the
ones looking for in-depth consumer insight. In these cases, relying on qualita-
tive and transformative consumer research might provide further insights into
consumers’ points of view. Methodologies like nethnography would be much
more applicable in these situations.
As digital channels keep on penetrating, success for companies lies
in managing the product/brand/service in a multi-channel setting. Early
research on DM mostly focused on the acceptance and proliferation of new
technologies, but we need a new research stream that combines the digital-
ization phenomenon with a traditional marketing perspective. It calls for both
field and conceptual studies.
In terms of what is next for DM, the future will be a story of two trends: On
one hand, there are emerging new themes to meet the needs of the markets
and connected consumers. On the other hand, the future will be shaped by
persistent current themes. For example, it is no surprise that the SYSTEM
studies will always be the motor theme in the DM domain since innovation
and technology are the two basic drivers of digital. Investment in technology
and R&D will thus be the present and future themes of DM for practitioners,
and academia supports by researching how promising and resilient these inno-
vations are for both the consumers and firms. At one-fold, future SYSTEM
studies will be shaped around new technologies like the Internet of Everything
(IoE), which refers to the intelligent connection of things, people, processes
and platforms, and value provided to the customers through extended reality
(XR), including immersive technologies like augmented reality (AR), virtual
reality (VR), and mixed reality (MR). The future of interactive marketing will
88 A. S. GÜNGÖR AND T. O. ÇADIRCI

continue to accelerate forward, leveraging technological advancement with

more personalized, digital, and dynamic content (Wang, 2021).
Future research, adding to the current one, can further include journals
with different orientations like sociology, psychology, and human–computer
interaction and can extend this research by focusing on more fragmented areas
of DM (such as social media marketing).

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 CHAPTER 5

Interactive Digital Marketing Mechanisms: The

Significance in Digital Transformation

Mona Rashidirad and Hamidreza Shahbaznezhad

1 Introduction
The term Interactive Digital Marketing (IDM) was first officially applied by
Krishen et al. (2021). Even though it is just very recently that the term IDM
is being applied and entered as a concept in the literature of marketing, it
is not a new concept. Previously, scholars (Barwise & Farley, 2005; Byon &
Phua, 2021; Zahay, 2014) highlighted the importance of using digital tech-
nologies in interactive marketing, and indeed, interactive marketing without
digital technologies could not have been developed to what it is known as
interactive marketing today. So, no one can disregard the significance of digital
technologies as a substantial part of interactive marketing. While the impor-
tance of IDM to today’s marketing is obvious, the definition of this concept
is not. In this chapter, IDM is defined as the bi-directional value creation and
mutual-influence marketing process through applying digital media, data and
technologies.
As the term IDM has just entered the literature review, the mechanisms
of IDM are not expected to be well-known. Nevertheless, new mechanisms
and tools of interactive and digital marketing are developing every day to help

M. Rashidirad (B)
International Marketing, Kent Business School, University of Kent, Canterbury, UK
e-mail: M.Rashidirad-702@Kent.ac.uk
H. Shahbaznezhad
NZ Post, Auckland, New Zealand
e-mail: Hamid.Sha@Nzpost.co.nz

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 93

Switzerland AG 2023
C. L. Wang (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Interactive Marketing,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14961-0_5
94 M. RASHIDIRAD AND H. SHAHBAZNEZHAD

companies communicate with their customers in most interactive and efficient

way and learn from them (Cluley et al., 2020). These mechanisms aim to accel-
erate companies’ level of knowledge about customers, competitors, products
and services and thereby assist companies to change and transform accord-
ingly (Stone et al., 2021). This change in digital area needs a substantial level
of agility in all companies, so the processes, databases, data flows, tasks and
roles should be all transformed in the most agile way (Verhoef et al., 2021)
to address the challenges of the current interactive environment (Melović
et al., 2020). With new contextual data generated through using these mech-
anisms and the use of data science analytics, companies are expected to be well
advanced in their digital transformation journey. Digital transformation, most
frequently identified by the multi-factor effects of digital technologies on a
company (Ziółkowska, 2021), is the process of applying state-of-the-art tech-
nologies to create new and disruptive processes, both in the culture and the
customer experience, to trigger strategic responses from businesses to address
changing business and market requirements (Guenzi & Habel, 2020; Vial,
2016).
While there are several IDM mechanisms, e.g., Social Media Marketing
available to companies that could assist them in their digital transformation,
these are not systematically studied and presented in the pertinent literature.
The main focus of these IDM mechanisms is on interactive marketing through
the use of online technologies to capture data from and about customers
and lead customers to the company’s products and services. Using IDM
from a digital transformation perspective enables companies to make internal
changes, improvements and advancements which reflect the market demand
and customer needs. This chapter aims to examine the significance of IDM
mechanisms in digital transformation and the way they assist companies to
implement effective changes. To achieve this aim, the chapter questions are
outlined as follows:

i. What is IDM and its role in companies’ digital transformation?

ii. What are the effective mechanisms of IDM which are significant to
companies’ digital transformation?

This chapter comprises a literature review, based on secondary research,

which is then followed by a case study. First, the relevant sources, both
academic and business press, published in the last decade (2011–2021), are
reviewed to gain a clear understanding of the concept of IDM. Then a crit-
ical and comparative study of the sources will be conducted which would help
classify IDM mechanisms. Following that, the chapter will investigate a few
chosen IDM mechanisms in a case study of a company in New Zealand to
assess the ways in which the company applied the mechanisms in its digitalisa-
tion journey. Finally, it will discuss whether the company has been successful,
why and what lessons learned can be shared from it.
 5 INTERACTIVE DIGITAL MARKETING MECHANISMS … 95

This chapter will contribute to both theory and practice. One of the
key theoretical contributions is to the new concept of IDM and its mecha-
nisms which are under-studied in the extant literature so that students and
researchers can use this chapter as a base to ground their understanding
and future research. From a practical perspective, this chapter would enable
interactive marketers to employ the latest IDM mechanisms for the right
reasons to help their company in digital transformation. The finding may assist
managers to make their decisions on digital and interactive marketing practices
and investments and navigate the implementation through their digitalisation
plans.

2 Literature Review
2.1 Interactive Digital Marketing (IDM): The Conceptualisation
and Definition
In order to understand IDM, it is necessary to distinguish it from two concepts
that make this term: digital marketing and interactive marketing.
Most businesses now need to compete and market in the digital environ-
ment and this has been considerably accelerated as a result of the recent
Covid-19 pandemic. Digital marketing is about using any type of technolog-
ical device to conduct marketing on electronic platforms (American Marketing
Association, 2021). The word “digital” refers to the medium used to deliver
the marketing campaign (Ritz et al., 2019). According to Gartner (2022)
digital marketing is “a set of techniques, enabled by technology, which allows
marketing to improve its processes to engage in a dynamic conversation with
people who are influencers and buyers and ultimately target, acquire and retain
customers. It includes the ability to interactively communicate with customers
through electronic channels, such as the Web, email, smart devices such as
phones and tablets and mobile applications”. As can be inferred from this defi-
nition, one of the key aspects of digital marketing is the possibility of having
interactive communication with customers. This has also been highlighted by
Zahay (2014) who regards digital marketing as a means of interactivity and
dynamic engagement with customers through digital channels.
Digital marketing uses all forms of technology, both online and offline. The
offline technologies applied in digital marketing include instant messaging,
text messaging and podcasting, while online digital marketing could include
social media marketing, content marketing and email marketing. Therefore,
Internet or online marketing is only a part of digital marketing, in which
online technologies, e.g., websites, blogs, etc. are applied. Thus, an Internet
connection is essential to online marketing. This marketing technique allows
businesses to reach customers, conduct research, and sell their products or
services over the Internet.
One of the main purposes of digital marketing is to improve customer rela-
tionship and engagement (Olson et al., 2021). As proposed by Krishen et al.,
96 M. RASHIDIRAD AND H. SHAHBAZNEZHAD

(2021, p. 184), digital marketing applies “data, ICT-based technology (e.g.,

artificial intelligence), platforms (e.g. social networks), media and devices to
extend the scope of marketing within both physical and virtual spaces, for the
purpose of improving customer relationships by empowering, informing, influ-
encing, and engaging consumers”. But not all digital marketing mechanisms
are interactive; that is, enabling customers to establish two-way communica-
tion with a company (Wang, 2021, p. 1). In other words, digital marketing
does not necessarily mean interactive marketing if it is not practiced in a two-
way (or multiple-way) interaction. For example, traditional Email Marketing
and banner marketing are kinds of digital marketing, but they are not inter-
active marketing if they mainly focus on one-way communication instead
of two-way interaction (involving customer engagement and participation).
Another key mechanism of digital marketing is Search engine marketing
(Peter & Dalla Vecchia, 2020) which also is not interactive. While search
engine marketing is about gaining visibility on a search engine to encourage
click-through to a website (Aswani et al., 2018), it does not provide any
interactivity and synchronicity in communication. Therefore, while digital
marketing includes both outbound and interactive marketing practices (Ritz
et al., 2019), the focus of this chapter is solely on “interactive” digital
marketing (IDM) (see Krishen et al., 2021). Today’s customers are looking
for engaging and authentic experiences that put them in charge of their own
buying journey (Shahbaznezhad et al., 2021). This means it is time to rethink
digital marketing as is known now and further focus on interactive part of it.
Interactive marketing is a marketing strategy that promotes an actively
two-way relationship between parties, e.g., businesses and users/customers
(Byon & Phua, 2021). Interactive marketing has dramatically changed
the conventional thinking about marketing and has shifted it from one-
sided customer interaction to a two-sided participation. Through interactive
marketing, customers have been empowered to transform from passive recip-
ients to active participants in the marketing messages. The term interactive
marketing, as for any other concept in marketing, has many different defini-
tions. In this chapter, the definition suggested by Wang (2021, p. 1) has been
adopted, who believes that interactive marketing is “the bi-directional value
creation and mutual-influence marketing process through active customer
connection, engagement, participation and interaction”. The underlying driver
of the growth of interactive marketing was the advent of new technolog-
ical platforms which have changed the whole concept of marketing from a
linear pipeline of activities to a complex network of interactions between busi-
nesses and their stakeholders (Wang, 2021). Interactive marketing could be
conducted through various forms, i.e., digital marketing, mobile marketing
and social media marketing (Wang, 2021). These forms are called mechanisms,
and this chapter aims to identify them as applied in the digital environment.
Having briefly defined both concepts of digital marketing and interactive
marketing and reviewed their key characteristics, it is important to note that
even though these two types of marketing share some similarities, they do
 5 INTERACTIVE DIGITAL MARKETING MECHANISMS … 97

not mean the same and these terms are not interchangeable. As noted by
Moe and Ratchford (2022), it is becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish
these two concepts and differentiate interactive marketing from other types of
marketing, as marketing in all its various forms, including digital marketing,
have the potential to be interactive, thanks to the widespread availability of
Internet and advances in technology. However, not all interactive marketing
practices are conducted digitally; some of its functions are being performed
online, and others offline (Halbheer et al., 2014). Thus, in a broad sense,
interactive marketing could be divided into digital and non-digital, as “digital”
only defines the medium of the marketing communication. Also, it should be
noted that not all digital marketing practices are interactive. Digital marketing
can be interactive or not, so only a part of digital marketing is interactive. In
fact, the usage of digital technologies in marketing does not necessarily make
it interactive, meaning that the employment of IT is not an interactive subject.
A basic and simple difference between interactive marketing and digital
marketing lies in whether the marketing activities are one-way or two-way
communications. Interactive marketing existed before digital marketing, in its
original form of direct marketing. For example, personal selling and service
marketing are traditional forms of interactive marketing, as long as they are
in a two-way and interactive form, existed long before the development
of digital technologies. However, the advancement of digital technologies
provides the tools and platforms that greatly facilitate a wider practice of inter-
active marketing. That is why interactive marketing emerges as a new academic
discipline about 30 years ago, thanks to the growth of Internet and new digital
technologies. For example, TV advertising becomes interactive TV advertising
(there is growing area of interactive advertising as well) due to the accessi-
bility of digital technology making such a change possible. Ikea’s long-time
used catalogue is a traditional, one-way communication (the customer can
read the pictures in catalogue). The new digital technology and augmented
reality (AR)/virtual reality (VR) allow customers to scan the content catalogue
and link to the actual product image or videos and even making a purchase
through it in a seamless way. This may give some people the misperception
that equates interactive marketing with digital marketing.
Having discussed the differences between digital marketing and interactive
marketing, our focus is on the intersection of these two types of marketing
(see Fig. 1), which is called IDM. In this chapter, IDM is defined as the
bi-directional value creation and mutual-influence marketing process through
applying the 5Ds of digital marketing (Chaffey & Ellis-Chadwick, 2019). The
5Ds include digital devices, digital platform, digital media, digital data and
digital technology. Any IDM should be conducted on a digital device, such as
phones, tablets, laptops, desktop computers, TVs, gaming devices and virtual
assistants (like Amazon Echo). IDM requires a digital platform, such as Insta-
gram, Twitter, a blog or a website. Also, a digital media should be in place
which enables interactive digital marketers to reach and engage with users,
including emails, search engines or social networking. The fourth D is digital
98 M. RASHIDIRAD AND H. SHAHBAZNEZHAD

Fig. 1 The position of

IDM in relation to
interactive and digital
marketing strategies

data, which refers to different forms of data, including text, photos, videos
and interactive content shared by both users and businesses. Finally, any IDM
applies digital technology or marketing technology, also known as “martech”,
which describes a range of software and tools that help companies in achieving
marketing goals or objectives.
Thus, one can conclude that the fundamental element of IDM is that it
enables companies and customers to interact and influence each other (Li
et al., 2021).

2.2 The Importance of Interactive Digital Marketing (IDM)

in Digital Transformation
Having previously discussed the concept of IDM in relation to interactive and
digital marketing, in this section IDM will be carefully studied from both
conceptual and managerial perspectives and will be reviewed within the context
of digital transformation.
The topic of IDM has been gaining a tremendous amount of attention
from researchers in recent years, so meaningful literature is available on the
role of digital technologies in interactive marketing (Krishen et al., 2021).
Some studies have been carried out on the role of social media user engage-
ment (e.g., Shahbaznezhad & Rashidirad, 2020), content type and format
(e.g., Shahbaznezhad et al., 2021) and social media platform in IDM (Coelho
et al., 2016), and demonstrate the importance of strategic use of social and
interactive platforms in stimulating two-way interaction with users.
No one can deny the role of Internet, as being the most favourable
channel for the development and implementation of IDM. Interactive digital
marketers use interactive and digital features and channels, i.e., email, social
media and models for providing information and sorting customers, based
on their requirements (Ahmed et al., 2017). IDM leverages the organisa-
tional customer knowledge to implement new integral changes, improvement
 5 INTERACTIVE DIGITAL MARKETING MECHANISMS … 99

and advancements. The question that needs to be answered in this section is

why IDM should be highly considered by companies and, in particular, why
companies should invest in IDM in their digital transformation journey.
Disruptive technologies are advancing rapidly. Planned or unplanned digital
transformation is happening at an ever-increasing rate in companies across the
world (Vial, 2016). IDM technologies, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and
Business Intelligence (BI) offer extensive analytical capabilities to companies
to digitally transform the way and which they understand customer behaviour.
Customers are online and almost everyone uses digital technologies these days.
To attract new customers and interact with the existing ones, the interactive
online marketplace and digital platforms are among the most applied ways to
make it happen. When people, as potential customers, hear about a business,
they need to know about it and interact with it to fulfil their sense of gratifica-
tion. If people cannot interact with a company quickly, easily and in a timely
and effective manner and they do not have a chance to communicate their
requests, then that company will inevitably lose them as customers.
Apart from external factors, such as interacting with customers which can be
very well-managed through using IDM mechanisms, from an internal perspec-
tive, digital transformation leads to fundamental changes to the way a company
operates. IDM mechanisms enable companies to modernise legacy systems,
tune processes, accelerate efficient workflows, strengthen security and increase
profitability (Matt et al., 2015). Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick (2019, p. 144)
define digital transformation as “a staged programme of business improve-
ments to people, processes and tools used for integrated digital marketing to
maximise the potential contribution of digital technology and media to busi-
ness growth”. The point of this explanation is that digital transformation is
about creating a technology framework to funnel customer-related data into
actionable insights. So, instead of defining new projects to migrate to the
new technologies, companies need to leverage and optimise the systems and
processes, ensuring they work together intelligently to provide more robust
business intelligence and make data-driven decisions to drive future success
(Verhoef et al., 2021). The key input of this transformation is the proper data
flow from the business environment, competitors and, most importantly, the
customers. Hence, for collecting and orchestrating all this input systematically,
one needs to rely on IDM, as it promises an effective interaction with both
external and internal players.
The benefits of using IDM in companies’ digital transformation journey
can be both financial and non-financial. The most frequently reported
financial outputs are higher Return on Investment (ROI), higher profits,
higher productivity and cost efficiency (Alrawadieh et al., 2020). But, most
importantly, there are enormous intangible and non-financial advantages
which include: higher organisational agility (Troise et al., 2022), accelerated
data collection process (Dremel et al., 2017), better resource management
(Fenech et al., 2019), providing integrative care of different digital plat-
forms, enhancing brand reputation (Matarazzo et al., 2021), being responsive
100 M. RASHIDIRAD AND H. SHAHBAZNEZHAD

to various stakeholders, higher customers’ reach-out and interaction rate

(Berman, 2021) and better customer experience and engagement in devel-
oping new products and services.

3 IDM Mechanisms
3.1 Background
Before starting to review the prior relevant work on IDM mechanism
taxonomies, it is key to establish the grounding of our research based on one of
the fundamental models in marketing, i.e., marketing mix, initially proposed
by McCarthy (1960). The reason that this model has been selected as the
theoretical background for this chapter is that any decision with respect to
IDM mechanisms must be guided by the companies’ marketing mix (Virvi-
laitė & Belousova, 2005). While the original 4Ps of the marketing mix, i.e.,
Product, Price, Promotion and Place, were heavily criticised due to the lack
of customer orientation and insufficient attention to the relationship with
customers, the 7Ps were then offered which include further elements (the
service mix) that better reflect service delivery (Constantinides, 2006; Goi,
2009). Of 7Ps model, the focus of IDM is mainly on service elements. i.e.,
People, Process and Physical evidence and, in particular, the people. This vari-
able of the marketing mix clearly relates to how a company interacts with
its customers and other stakeholders pre-sales, during sales and post-sales.
Thus, the focus of IDM must be on the people element and the way compa-
nies develop and deploy their IDM mechanisms to best serve an interactive
relationship with customers.
Different scholars have attempted to study interactive marketing mecha-
nisms within the digital world, even though the literature shows that this
strand of knowledge is still segregated and it is not systematically explored.
For instance, Majid (2020) explores three main interactive marketing commu-
nications channels, i.e., e-word-of-mouth (e-WOM), online review forum
and search engine optimisation (SEO). He proposes that all three channels
positively affect customer acquisition. Also, he lists all interactive marketing
micro-channels, including email, companies’ website, SEO, WOM, telephone,
face-to-face, among others. Clearly, not all of these are digital. For example,
face-to-face and telephone marketing are not digital; therefore they cannot be
considered in IDM. In another study, Sabin (2010) offers a model in the inter-
active marketing mechanisms are divided into ten types: content marketing,
Search Engine Marketing (SEM), display advertising, Social Media Marketing,
community marketing, email marketing, mobile marketing, affiliate marketing,
online promotions and integrated campaigns. This taxonomy mainly focusses
on categorising different mechanisms based on the currently available tools in
online and digital platforms. One of the other relevant works to study IDM
mechanisms, which is primarily grounded in digital marketing, is the study
by Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick (2019). They classify digital communications
 5 INTERACTIVE DIGITAL MARKETING MECHANISMS … 101

tools into six groups: search engine marketing, online PR, online partnership,
social media marketing, opt-in email and display advertising. In a similar study,
Olson et al. (2021) look at seven most common digital marketing tactics,
which include content marketing, SEO, email marketing, search and social
advertisements, data-driven personalisation, marketing technology usage and
social media advertising. As can be seen, there are some mechanisms, e.g.,
social media marketing, which are shared in all these taxonomies and shows
how digital marketing is embedded in most interactive marketing practices.

3.2 The Conceptual Framework

Having evaluated both academic and business-related taxonomies for IDM, it
was decided to take the two models by Sabin (2010) and Chaffey and Ellis-
Chadwick (2019) together as the base, and incorporate relevant knowledge
and practical experience in the field to develop a conceptual framework (see
Fig. 2). In this framework, IDM mechanisms are broadly considered through
six categories as follows.
In order to construct this framework and carefully select the relevant mech-
anisms, the core concept of “interactivity” and its dimensions were used as the
thought foundation of the framework. According to Rafaeli (1988, p. 111),

Fig. 2 Six categories of IDM mechanisms

102 M. RASHIDIRAD AND H. SHAHBAZNEZHAD

interactivity is: “an expression of the intent that, in a given series of commu-
nication exchanges, any third (or later) transmission (or message) is related to
the degree to which previous exchanges referred to even earlier transmissions”.
There is a general agreement that interactivity is captured in two factors that
distinguish interactive communication from passive communication (Majid,
2020): (i) The ability to receive and respond to messages (Heeter, 2000) and
(ii) the level of control that the receiver has in crafting the message (Downes &
McMillan, 2000). However, one should be noted that while interactivity is an
integral core element of all proposed IDM mechanisms, they do not all offer
the same degree of interactivity to the customers/users. Thus, while some
can be considered as highly interactive, e.g., social media participation, others
may provide a less interactive experience to the customers, e.g., display adver-
tising. Thus, in order to determine IDM mechanisms and distinguish them
from the mechanisms of interactive marketing and digital marketing, the three
main pillars of interactivity are used in this chapter. These three dimensions
which have been frequently referred to in the extant literature (Liu & Shrum,
2002; Steuer, 1992; Wang, 2021) are (i) two-way communication, (ii) active
control and (iii) synchronicity. Two-way communication refers to the recip-
rocal conversation with mutual influences in social and business ecosystems
(Wang, 2021). It is the extent to which an IDM mechanism provides a true
bi-directional engagement of the parties, e.g., businesses to users (B2C), busi-
nesses to businesses (B2B) or users and users (C2C). The second dimension
of interactivity, which is active control, implies customer responsiveness and
proactive behaviours in value creation and exchange. Finally, synchronicity
refers to the extent of engagement in control and modification of real-time
environmental changes.
Having used the concept of interactivity and the three pillars of it as the
base for identifying IDM mechanisms, Fig. 2 illustrates the IDM mechanisms.
Each is briefly outlined below.
Mobile Marketing and advertising applications deliver promotional infor-
mation to customers based on their preferences and location (Kurkovsky &
Harihar, 2006). IDM micro-mechanisms of mobile marketing include
messaging, mobile web content, mobile coupons, mobile loyalty programmes,
mobile tagging, mobile display advertising, downloadable content, mobile
application and mobile hotspots (Sabin, 2010). Other examples may include
promotions sent via SMS text messaging or MMS multimedia messaging,
through downloaded apps using push notifications, through in-app or in-game
marketing, through mobile websites, or by using a mobile device to scan QR
codes. Interactive mobile marketing enables user interaction to connect and
communicate with a company, i.e., the store’s server. For example, the user is
given selective products/offerings matching the user’s preferences that include
some current promotions. The user may then explore each product by viewing
the product information, offer details and related products using a system of
mobile marketing (Kurkovsky & Harihar, 2006).
 5 INTERACTIVE DIGITAL MARKETING MECHANISMS … 103

The next IDM mechanism is Online Public Relation (PR) which seeks to
maximise favourable mentions of a company, brands, products/services or
website on third-party websites or social media platforms. These third-party
media channels are the ones that are likely to be visited by a company’s target
market (Chaffey & Ellis-Chadwick, 2019). The reason that online PR is clas-
sified as an IDM mechanism is that it could be two-way, so companies are able
to respond to negative mentions and conduct PR via various digital channels,
e.g., social media news centre or blogs.
Interactive Display advertising, as one of the other IDM mechanisms
includes contextual ads, banner ads and rich media ads, among others.
This IDM mechanism aims to achieve brand awareness and encourage click-
through to a target site (Hoban & Bucklin, 2015). Display advertising could
be in various data forms, e.g., photo, video, audio and interactive media
(Semara et al., 2021).
The next IDM mechanism identified is email marketing which usually
consists of three main types of email viz. transactional emails, acquisition emails
and retention emails, depending on the marketing objective. As noted by
Hartemo (2016), email allows an active, interactive and personalised commu-
nication fulfilling the preferences of an empowered customer. Thus, email
marketing is one of the main mechanisms of interactive marketing in the digital
marketplace; one which makes customers active participants in the commu-
nication process; however, it needs to be highly relevant for the recipients.
In a study by Ziółkowska (2021), it is shown that more than 77% of Small
and Medium Size Enterprises (SMEs) use email as the most frequently used
communication tool through their digital transformation.
The next IDM mechanism is Online partnership which is mainly about
creating and managing long-term arrangements to promote a company’s
online services on third-party websites or through email communications
(Stone & Woodcock, 2014). There are different forms of partnership, which
include affiliate Marketing, affiliate network participation, proprietary affiliate
programmes (Duffy, 2005), link building, online sponsorship, co-marketing
and aggregators, such as price comparison sites, like Moneysupermarket (mon
eysupermarket.com) and booking.com.
Finally, social Media Marketing consists of social media advertising, social
media participation, social media campaigns, social media apps/ widgets, social
media monitoring and social media listening. No one doubts that social media
has become the most attractive and powerful tool for customers to engage
with brands (Chahal & Rani, 2017). Social media is considered as one of the
key mechanisms to conduct interactive marketing (Byon & Phua, 2021), as it
provides an online platform to share information and exchange ideas among
users without any restriction in time, place and medium (Zhang et al., 2021).
According to Melović et al. (2020), social media is the most used mechanism
in companies’ digitalisation projects.
104 M. RASHIDIRAD AND H. SHAHBAZNEZHAD

3.3 An Analysis of IDM Mechanisms

As mentioned above, not all IDM mechanisms provide the same level of inter-
activity. Some offer a higher degree of two-way communication, while others
may provide a greater level of engagement and synchronicity. To better under-
stand each of the mechanisms, the three main aspects of interactivity, reviewed
in Sect. 3.2 (Liu & Shrum, 2002; Steuer, 1992; Wang, 2021) are used and as
can be seen in Table 1, the first three columns rank the interactivity level of
each IDM mechanism based on a three-point scale of low/medium/high. For
instance, social media marketing provides a high degree of two-way commu-
nication, active control and synchronicity (real-time communication), while
email marketing is a less powerful IDM mechanism in all three aspects. The
next two columns show the degrees of marketers’ control of messaging, and
customers’ control in conversation, respectively. As indicated in the table,
while marketers are salient and have high level of power and control in
communication in some IDM mechanisms, e.g., mobile marketing and email
marketing, their level of control is much less in the more open and real-time
social media platforms. This is obviously amplified when one considers user-
generated content, where users are in charge, compared to marketer-generated
content (see Ding et al., 2014).

Table 1 An analysis of the IDM mechanisms

Degree of Degree of Degree of Degree of Degree Degree of data

two-way responses engagement marketer of creation for a
communication and in control control of customer marketer to
proactive and messaging control integrate into
behaviour modification digital trans-
for value of real-time formation
creation environ-
mental
changes

Mobile Medium Medium Medium High Medium Low

marketing
Online PR High High High Medium High High
Interactive Medium Medium Medium Medium Medium Medium
online
advertising
Email Medium Medium Medium High Medium Low
marketing
Online High High High Medium High High
partner-
ship
Social High High High Medium High High
media
marketing
 5 INTERACTIVE DIGITAL MARKETING MECHANISMS … 105

It is necessary to note that effective employment of each of these IDM

mechanisms relies on a deep understanding of the customers (Stone et al.,
2021): who are they? What do they want? What content do they want
to see? How do they make decisions online? How do they make orders
online? What factors contribute to their purchasing decision? What devices
do they use online? How can companies retain customers and encourage
them to repeat their transactions? In order to obtain a deep understanding
of the customers/users, data are essential. So data analytics is the backbone
of any IDM mechanism. In other words, no IDM mechanism would work
through any digital transformation, if it is not data-driven. So, any decision
on IDM mechanisms should be informed through real-time data analysis.
That is why, the last column of Table 1 is related to the importance of data
insights provided by IDM mechanisms for marketers to integrate into their
digital transformation projects. As demonstrated in the table, of the six identi-
fied IDM mechanisms, i.e., online PR, online partnership and social medial
marketing provide high degree of data creation for digital transformation.
Indeed, those IDM mechanisms that enable customers to have high control in
communication are rich in terms of data collection. For example, Domino’s,
the American multinational pizza restaurant, started its digital transformation
journey through its use of social media to find fresh ideas for improving its
businesses. In 2012, Domino’s lunched its “think oven”, a Facebook page
where users were asked to submit ideas. The ideas that attracted most attention
were rewarded with a monetary prize and actually implemented with executive
approval (Jobber & Ellis-Chadwick, 2020). This example shows the extent of
data insight that social media marketing, as one of the IDM mechanisms, can
provide to assist a company to embark on its digitalisation journey.
However, it should be noted that what is the key is not just the data, as
the business environment is now awash with big data. Instead, the ability
of companies to process, analyse and derive insights from the data is highly
important (Moe & Ratchford, 2022). A careful data analysis in a coherent
and integrative way through all different levels and functions of a company is
not accessible unless the company has gone through some degrees of digital
transformation to make the best use of real-time data. The importance of data
analytics will be further explored through the presentation of the case study.

4 The Case Study of NZ Post

In this section, the main and the biggest postal and package delivery services
company in New Zealand, NZ Post, will be explored as a case study. The case
study aims to investigate IDM mechanisms in the digital transformation of the
company.
106 M. RASHIDIRAD AND H. SHAHBAZNEZHAD

4.1 Business Background

The NZ Post transformation project is a prime example of a large logis-
tics company with more than 7,000 employees and contractors that has
gone through transformational change by taking advantage of IDM mecha-
nisms. NZ Post is a New Zealand-based delivery and e-commerce logistics
company that processes and delivers items—parcels, packages and letters—
of New Zealand and international origin, to meet the requirements of both
sending and receiving customers. NZ Post provides logistics services for busi-
nesses, including many that are engaged in e-commerce with customers, and
with other companies both in New Zealand and internationally.
The story of NZ Post highlights how a business in the public sector can
change over time and improve its business outcomes with strategic thinking.
NZ Post is the largest logistics and delivery network in New Zealand that
provides sending and receiving customers with services to help them commu-
nicate and do business. The business services are consistent throughout the
year and carefully planned. NZ Post allocates resources at the peak times
of online shopping periods, both domestically and internationally. NZ Post
is part of the national landscape, integral to the New Zealand (Kiwi) way
of life for nearly 180 years during which the business has been changing
consistently to meet its customers’ needs. In 2020 Covid and lockdowns
had a huge impact on the e-commerce sales and consequently on NZ Post’s
workload, activities and performance. Many big traditional physical brands
extended their online presence, allowing them to keep trading during lock-
downs. As online continues to become a bigger part of their business, many
have been adapting their business models further to the new channel mix to
accommodate customers’ interactions both online and in-store.

4.2 Te Iho Programme (Digital Transformation Project)

Over the past five years, the parcel volumes of NZ Post have grown by more
than 41%. In 2021 NZ Post delivered over 67 million items which entailed
a huge amount of processing, sorting and deliveries. At the core of the NZ
Post strategy is a single integrated supply chain that moves items safely, at the
lowest cost, and to the service standard the customer has paid for. To make
this vision a reality, NZ Post needed to have rich end-to-end data that flow
seamlessly across their network systems, that of their partners and those of
their customers. Following the increase in parcel volume, the existing transport
management system and warehouse management legacy systems were unable
to support this interactive data-driven vision.
Te Iho is the name of the company’s transformation project to response
rapidly to this unprecedented growth in online shopping over recent years. Te
Iho is Maori name and it means the heart, essence or inner core. The story
behind the name is linked to NZ Post’s Māori name “Tukurau Aotearoa” and
is inspired by Tāne’s forest (Tāne being The God of the Forest). From the
 5 INTERACTIVE DIGITAL MARKETING MECHANISMS … 107

outside, the forest looks peaceful and serene but, if you look closely, it is a
constant hive of movement, activity and network. At the heart of this forest
is the company’s network. The company’s vision is to be the best partner for
online shopping and the best delivery network in New Zealand. Te Iho plans
to make a stronger, safer and more connected core backbone by building new
facilities with the latest global automation technology, enhancing the systems
and technology and reinforcing the company’s processes and procedures. This
will provide the stability and control that in turn sets the last mile teams up to
deliver for the customers. Te eho plans to build capability and capacity in the
interactive parcel network so the company can grow with customers’ need. In
Te eho, new processing sites are planned to be built with more than double
the size of previous capacity in the parcel processing network over the next
10 years. Enabling capabilities is the part of Te eho that is focussed on data
and technology. So, by improving the sorting systems, Te eho plans to make
the operations more connected, visible, efficient and simple. By seeking quality
information from the customers as early as possible, Te eho plans to improve
the data and make changes to the data fields behind the barcodes on the
parcel labels to bring them in line with industry and international standards.
This connects parcels back to NZ Post locally and globally and it will give
the company more standardised data about parcels including what is inside,
its estimated dimensions and weight, its priority and whether it is perishable.
This data set lets the company forecast and plan a more efficient journey for
parcels from pick up through delivery even for parcels that come unexpectedly.
Industry and international standardised data will help the business to deliver
a more consistently interactive experience for customers and make it easier for
them to work with NZ Post.
As a result, a massive transformation project was started in early 2021. The
project was massive enough to lead the company to go through rebranding
and logo changing to open a new chapter in its history. This transforma-
tion project was started by investing $170 million on optimising the parcel
network and processing infrastructure, data, culture and standardisation. All
these major changes need strategic, organisational, cultural, financial and
operational restructuring to suit the new digital-driven environment. Digital
transformation would be the underlying layer of transformation to create a
new sustainable, competitive and interactive service setting.
To reach these goals, NZ Post first planned to advance its online partnership
with key strategic customers in B2B environment and define collaboration-
based business using big data and digital technologies. Then, the company
attempted to incorporate new IDM mechanisms to improve service quality for
individuals and retailers (see the next section). The second major step (under
process at the time of writing this chapter), is related to human resources
and enhancing the organisation skillset, which is the hardest and most crucial
part of the transformation. This is mainly related to defining new values, new
behaviours, training, recruitment and reskilling for new roles which all need
to be conducted in any successful digital realm. Finally, the company requires
108 M. RASHIDIRAD AND H. SHAHBAZNEZHAD

new business approaches, mechanisms, methods and technologies to provide a

comprehensive service aligned to customer values. The new systems, processes,
infrastructure and technologies need to be set to meet the customer require-
ments which are all based on digital technologies. So digital transformation
would be at the heart of this transformation project.

4.3 IDM Mechanisms in Digital Transformation

The more an e-commerce business grows, the more it requires technology
to help manage the deliveries efficiently, reliably and economically. NZ Post
employs different IDM mechanisms to help it automate and simplify the
delivery process. A few prime examples are elaborated below.
One of the key IDM mechanisms employed by NZ Post in their digital
transformation is the shipping application programming interface (API), clas-
sified as a mobile marketing mechanism in the proposed conceptual framework
(see Fig. 2). API is a software intermediary that allows two applications to talk
to each other (see Boateng et al., 2019). Simple examples of APIs are each
time you use an app like Facebook, send an instant message, or check the
weather on your phone, you are using an API. APIs are mostly used to help
developers provide information to marketers. The Shipping APIs used by NZ
Post let large companies customise the shipping functionality into the client
software quickly and easily (NZ Post, 2022a). With this IDM, companies can
create labels, track parcels, validate addresses and retrieve shipping options,
all using the usual software interface. For instance, if a customer is a Shopify
user, they check out the NZ Post’s addressing plugin that can streamline their
customers’ checkout experience by choosing a valid New Zealand address from
the drop-down list.
E-ship is one of the other company’s IDM mechanisms initiated as part
of their digitisation and it is now applied by the company. E-ship is a cloud-
based B2B mobile-based app that integrates with client e-commerce platforms
to automate the process of delivering customers’ orders. E-ship is particularly
designed for e-commerce companies which frequently send multiple parcels at
once, giving them an instantly accessible and interactive platform. Some of the
key features of e-ship for client companies are accessing all NZ Post shipping
options, sending customised email notifications to customers, generating on-
demand reports, quick label printing and generating and printing pick slips
(NZ Post, 2022b).
As another example, related to the online partnership mechanism
(presented in Fig. 2), NZ Post is committed to giving its customers the latest
information, insights and tools to help them grow the partners in B2B. Along
with this annual review of online shopping trends, NZ Post produces a regular
and timely update called e-commerce Spotlight. This covers the latest market
data and also provides in-depth analysis and stories that are directly relevant at
the time.
 5 INTERACTIVE DIGITAL MARKETING MECHANISMS … 109

One of the fundamental changes in the digital transformation era in NZ

Post was associated with the database architecture. Following customers’ needs
to track their parcels and packages, there has been a movement from focussing
on data at rest (service-oriented architecture) to focussing on events (event-
driven architecture). The shift to event-driven architecture means moving
from a data-centric model to an event-centric model. In the event-driven
model, the data are still important, but the events become the most impor-
tant component. An event is any change of state of some key business system.
As a customer service business, the event driver will give interactively near-
real-time notifications of events which will allow the company to respond
to issues/ problems much more quickly. Hence, the database migration has
been changed from SQL/Oracle-based databases to the Kafka transactional
system-based one. This migration by itself does not include any of the IDM
mechanisms mentioned in the model. Nevertheless, it provides the under-
lying infrastructure for interactive collaboration with customers for services
through parcel tracking and notifications. Parcel notification is offered to all
customers who are using any one of the company’s online ticketing solutions
when sending domestically. This will help customers to follow the progress
of their parcel delivery. This visibility helps improve customer satisfaction and
removes the need to call or email customers to find out where the shipment’s
current location is. Using SMS and email notifications as the mobile marketing
mechanisms of IDM, it is easy to connect directly with customers. So, noti-
fications can be sent when the item is picked up, then with the courier for
delivery, when it has been delivered and when an attempted delivery has been
made. Customers can interact with certain messages, giving them options to
have their parcels left in a secure location. This avoids re-delivery and makes
for happier customers. Similarly, with express courier services, customers can
track their parcel’s journey in real-time on a “live” map and receive instant
pickup and delivery notifications via email or text. This includes estimated time
of arrival and live GPS tracking. This improved level of visibility and control
certainly leads to a better delivery experience for customers.

4.4 The Challenges of the Digital Transformation Project

There are numerous challenges in every transformation project. The majority
of these are related to people, processes, technologies and budget. The most
important part is the resistance to change. In big organisational settings such as
NZ Post, there are several diverse teams that are intertwined with each other.
So, if one plans to change one part, one needs to consider all other moving
parts as well. Therefore, change management was one of the major concerns
in the Te Iho Programme. Consequently, there has been continuous inter-
action with different stakeholders, the employees, to consider their concerns
throughout the transformation. People usually do not like change and prefer
to keep the system as it is so they may overcomplicate the change requests
110 M. RASHIDIRAD AND H. SHAHBAZNEZHAD

and make the implementation of new processes difficult. Finally, from a tech-
nology perspective, people are used to use old technology and usually resist
upskilling themselves to the new work environment. Also, migration from
old technology to new technology always has its own technical challenges.
For instance, consolidating the different object-oriented databases, e.g., SQL
and Oracle to the event-driven ones, e.g., Kafka might be a huge technical
challenge because of the difference in underlying concept/architecture. To
overcome this, the company tries to best use various IDM mechanisms, e.g.,
email, social media and mobile communication to facilitate the transformation
by keeping an interactive relationship with employees and encouraging them
to cooperate in the change.

5 Discussion, Implications and Conclusion

The far-reaching availability and adoption of digital technologies and online
social networks has transformed marketing practices and the way marketers
engage with customers. This adoption of novel and innovative devices and
data-driven marketing, particularly in online marketing practices, provides a
wide and efficient reach, which in most cases causes companies to conduct
some degree of digital transformation. IDM, as an integral part of the digital
transformation of today’s business world, is evolving at the same rate to
keep up with the required marketing and digital capabilities of companies
(Bala & Verma, 2018). This chapter tracks research dynamics in IDM by
reviewing recent articles, citation and co-citation networks on both areas of
interactive marketing and digital marketing to conceptualise the new term
of IDM. To the best of our knowledge, this chapter is a pioneering one
which conceptualises the concept of IDM and classifies its mechanisms. The
chapter suggests the significance of IDM and the application of its mecha-
nisms in digital transformation which explains the recent shifts in marketing
practices towards bi-directional, value creation and synchronised communica-
tion and partnerships with users. The focus of IDM in this chapter was mainly
on service elements and in particular “People” of the marketing mix model.
This element of the marketing mix clearly relates to how a company interacts
with its customers and other stakeholders pre-sales, during sales and post-sales.
Thus, the focus of the identified IDM was on people and the way companies
could deploy IDM mechanisms to best act in their interactive relationship with
customers through their digital transformation.
Apart from the aforementioned theoretical contributions, this chapter offers
practical contributions to the field of IDM as an international and interdisci-
plinary area. It provides a solid foundation to interactive digital marketers, as
well as policymakers to devise certain mechanisms for enhancing the effective-
ness of their marketing campaigns through IDM mechanisms. The chapter
identified and described IDM mechanisms which are particularly considered
through any organisation’s digital transformation. Thus, it would enable inter-
active marketers to employ the latest IDM mechanisms for the right reasons
 5 INTERACTIVE DIGITAL MARKETING MECHANISMS … 111

to help their company in its digital transformation. The ideas put forth herein
can incontestably aid business and marketing professionals to better plan
their digital transformation projects that are facilitated by IDM mechanisms.
These mechanisms promise companies to provide their users (both employees
and customers) with a two-way, value-creating and synchronised experience
throughout the digitalisation journey. Indeed, this chapter suggests compa-
nies’ marketing professionals and decision-makers need to critically think about
investing in IDM mechanisms, even before they start their digital transforma-
tion project. For instance, it is suggested that companies use IDM mechanism
of social media marketing to lower the users’ resistance against the digital
transformation and make sure everyone feels they are a part of the change.
Thus, the findings of this chapter may assist managers in their decisions on
the use of digital and interactive marketing practices and navigate the way it
could be put in place through their digital transformation plans.
However, determining which mechanisms would be the most effective
ones in a digital transformation project and deliver the best customer satis-
faction is not possible because this is highly context-dependent. This means
that choosing the most effective IDM mechanisms in digital transformation
may vary from one company to another one, depending on their internal
and external environment. Indeed, IDM mechanisms aid companies to better
understand their customers’ needs and make innovative changes. In digital
transformation, the key driver to change is customer data. IDM mechanisms
facilitate two-way communication between customers and companies. So the
new tools and services designed for customers will be driven by customers’
ideas and comments. Thus, any development and deployment of IDM mech-
anisms have to be data-driven. Given the fact that Internet has enabled
companies to capture data of vast amounts (Big Data), and the potential payoff
from learning how to use it, data analytics has gained increasingly important
role in IDM practices. While this area is mostly practical based, future research
on methods that make productive use of these data is still needed (Ratchford,
2015).
One of the other key challenges of scholars and practitioners’ in IDM
area is the nature of today’s digital marketplace, which is highly changing
and dynamic, thanks to the ever-increasing and disruptive advances in tech-
nologies. This makes the developed models, theories and frameworks become
outdated very quickly (Moe & Ratchford, 2022). As a result, the mecha-
nisms of IDM that have been put together in this chapter could be easily
replaced or upgraded by new ones in less than a year’s time! So, it is crucial
for researchers, marketers and any policy makers in this area to stay updated
through continuous monitoring the environment, finding new ways to collect
and analysis data and investing in new mechanisms and platforms to interact
with customers.
112 M. RASHIDIRAD AND H. SHAHBAZNEZHAD

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 CHAPTER 6

Empowering Consumers in Interactive

Marketing: Examining the Role of Perceived
Control

Xiaohan Hu

1 Introduction
As innovative technologies give consumers more opportunities to participate
in and interact with marketing processes, interactivity has become an inte-
gral part of contemporary marketing practice (Wang, 2021). Recent studies
in interactive marketing research have investigated a wide range of interactive
platforms and technologies, such as self-service technology (e.g. Robertson
et al., 2016; Zhu et al., 2007), gamified marketing (e.g. Hu & Wise, 2021;
Xi et al., 2018), virtual reality (e.g. Kim et al., 2021; Wang & Chen, 2019),
augmented reality (e.g. Whang et al., 2021; Zimmermann et al., 2022), and
social media marketing (e.g. Cuevas et al., 2021; Jung & Heo, 2021; Yoon
et al., 2022). Extant literature also acknowledges the positive effects of inter-
activity on marketing outcomes, including consumers’ attitudes and behaviors
(e.g. Cuevas et al., 2021; Kim et al., 2021; Kirk et al., 2015; Lucia-Palacios &
Pérez-López, 2021). Despite the amount of research investigating interac-
tivity, one of the compelling issues that emerge from this research is to reveal
the underlying mechanisms that explain the effects of interactivity (Sundar,
2004; van Noort et al., 2012). Only if underlying principles are studied can
we fully understand how consumers are influenced by interactive marketing
communications (van Noort et al., 2012), and therefore inform both the
theoretical and practical understanding of interactive marketing.

X. Hu (B)
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL, USA
e-mail: xhu33@illinois.edu

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 117

Switzerland AG 2023
C. L. Wang (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Interactive Marketing,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14961-0_6
118 X. HU

While interactive marketing platforms and technologies have rapidly

evolved, the psychological mechanisms underlying their use remain largely
unchanged. The core values of interactive marketing, including consumer
connection, engagement, participation, and interaction (Wang, 2021), are
realized by empowering consumers so they have a more active role. Consumers
today are increasingly empowered by having more control in actively making
decisions about their marketing experience enabled by newly developed tech-
nologies, such as social media, interactive videos, virtual reality, etc. Such a
role reversal of consumers from passive to active and from reactive to proactive
can be summarized as a reduction of institutional control and an increase of
consumer control (Shapiro, 1999). Therefore, consumer control has become
an integral part of consumer empowerment in interactive marketing today.
Motivated by the need to explicate the underlying mechanisms of inter-
active marketing effectiveness and understand consumer empowerment in
interactive marketing activities, this chapter addresses the changing role of
consumers from passive to active, from reactive to proactive, by providing a
theoretical overview of the concept perceived control and associated psycho-
logical processes in interactive marketing. Due to its conceptual connection
with interactivity, control, particularly consumers’ perception of control, can
be a key psychological mechanism to understand the effectiveness of inter-
active marketing. Explicating perceived control and associated psychological
processes will therefore advance theoretical understanding and provide prac-
tical guidelines for interactive marketing research and practice. This chapter
first discusses the conceptual definitions of perceived control, particularly in
the interactive marketing context; then the chapter focuses on the relation-
ship between interactivity and perceived control in marketing research and
explicates the important role of control in explaining interactive marketing
effectiveness. In addition, the chapter outlines psychological processing conse-
quences and effects of perceived control, focusing on consumers’ affec-
tive, cognitive, and behavioral responses. Finally, the chapter discusses some
possible moderating factors that may influence the relationship between
control and interactive marketing effectiveness, including consumers’ dispo-
sitional factors, motivation, and personalization. Directions for future research
are also suggested. Figure 1 summarizes the theoretical framework to examine
the role of perceived control in interactive marketing.

2 Defining Perceived
Control in Interactive Marketing
The concept of control has been studied broadly in research areas including
psychology, marketing, advertising, and technology studies. However, concep-
tualizing control is difficult because of the number of related terms that
have been defined and studied in the literature, such as autonomy, self-
determination, and agency. Moreover, scholars have focused specifically on
some sub-concepts or dimensions of control such as perceived control, actual
 6 EMPOWERING CONSUMERS IN INTERACTIVE … 119

Fig. 1 Theoretical framework for examining perceived control in interactive

marketing

control, locus of control, etc. This chapter explicates control by focusing

on the subjective aspect of this concept. Consumer perception is one of the
central foci of marketing research. It has been argued that perceived control
is a powerful predictor of people’s behavior and emotion, independent of
the actual control conditions that may have contributed to those perceptions
(Averill, 1973; Skinner, 1996). In the marketing literature, perceived control
is also studied as an important factor determining marketing effectiveness (e.g.
Hu & Wise, 2021; Kirk et al., 2015; Lee et al., 2018).
Psychologically, Skinner (1996) defined perceived control as the belief
about the extent to which people have control over the environment. The
concept is also seen as the amount of control people feel they have over a
situation or another person (Bugental et al., 1989). Accordingly, people with
a higher sense of control believe they have a strong impact on their surround-
ings. Steiner (1979) defined control as an experiential state that occurs “when
feeling that he or she, rather than other people, luck, or unmanageable forces,
determines whether desired outcomes will be received” (p. 17). Some scholars
have also defined control as individuals’ perceived ability to exert influence
over targets. According to Burger (1989), control can be simply defined as
the perceived ability to significantly alter events. This view of control also falls
into the subjective perspective because it suggests that it is not necessary for an
individual to have actual control over the events but rather that the individual
only perceive that he or she is able to exert control.
In marketing research, control has been studied as a psychological construct
in different contexts. Services researchers were among the first in the
120 X. HU

marketing discipline to recognize the relevance of perceived control. As these

researchers sought to distinguish between higher and lower quality services,
perceived control surfaced as a salient explanation (Hui & Bateson, 1991; Zhu
et al., 2007). More recently, as digital self-service technologies (SSTs), such as
Internet shopping, mobile apps, and automated chatbots, are getting increas-
ingly prevalent and becoming a critical component of interactive marketing
(Lee, 2017), perceived control has been broadly examined in this area.
According to Collier and Sherrell (2010), control in self-service settings is
the ability to rule the flow of transaction and the level of interactivity expe-
rienced by consumers. Perceived control over SST refers to the perception
of mastery over the processes and outcomes of the service interface tech-
nologies (Zhu et al., 2007, 2013). Perceived control has also been studied
in other areas of interactive marketing. In their study of gamified marketing,
for instance, Lee et al. (2018) defined perceived control as the users’ sense
that the game precisely executes their intended actions. Based on this defini-
tion, these authors also argued that perceived control is related to the user
interface and a well-designed user interface helps users control their actions
in the game. Hanus and Fox (2017) studied customizable interface in inter-
active advertising and defined control as the perception that one is able to
manipulate a customizable interface in a predictable way.
To summarize, perceived control emphasizes people’s subjective assessment
of the extent to which they can alter or impact environment. It focuses
on people’s interpretation of their own abilities and the target that they
can exert control upon. In interactive marketing research, perceived control
refers to consumers’ perception of their ability to rule, alter, or manipulate
marketing messages and interfaces, enabled by interactive marketing technolo-
gies, such as Internet websites, mobile apps, self-service technologies, etc. To
better understand the role of perceived control in interactive marketing, the
next section explicates the conceptual association between interactivity and
perceived control.

3 Interactivity and Perceived Control

The conceptual relationship between interactivity and perceived control has
been explicated since the early age of interactive marketing, when the concept
of interactivity just emerged in marketing and consumer research. In their
discussion about interactive advertising and presence, Lombard and Snyder-
Duch (2001) suggested that central to the idea of interactivity is the concept
of control. Steuer (1992) defined interactivity as the extent to which users
can participate in modifying the form and content of a mediated environ-
ment in real-time. The potential for the user to modify the environment is
the essence of user control, which has been conceptualized as a key compo-
nent of interactivity by a number of researchers. For example, Liu and Shrum
(2002) conceptualized interactivity in marketing and advertising research as
a three-dimensional construct encompassing (1) active control, (2) two-way
 6 EMPOWERING CONSUMERS IN INTERACTIVE … 121

communication, and (3) synchronicity. Specifically, active control referred to

consumers’ ability to customize the information flow and jump from one loca-
tion in the Internet to another. The authors also explicated this idea with
the example of Internet banner advertising where consumers could actively
control their advertising experience by choosing to click on the ad to obtain
more information or ignore the ad without doing anything special. Since
consumer perceptions are central to marketing research, researchers have also
examined perceived interactivity and its relationship with perceived control.
For example, Wu (2006) studied perceived interactivity in website marketing.
He defined perceived interactivity as a psychological state experienced by a
site-visitor during his or her interaction with a website, which manifests in
three dimensions: (1) perceived control; (2) perceived responsiveness; and
(3) perceived personalization. Specifically, Wu (2006) followed the theory
of planned behavior and defined perceived control as the perceived ease or
difficulty of performing the behavior (Ajzen, 1991). Similarly, McMillan and
Hwang (2002) also identified control as a central component of perceived
interactivity in web-based advertising. Based on the above conceptualization, it
is apparent that control is a key component of interactivity. From a conceptual
perspective, an interactive marketing interface should offer consumers various
interactive options for controlling the nature of their interaction, and therefore
influence consumers’ perception of control toward the marketing messages.
The interactive marketing literature also provides sufficient empirical
support to the relationship between interactive marketing technologies and
perceived control. For example, Moes et al. (2021) found that interac-
tivity enabled by in-store interactive advertising screens led to consumers’
feelings of agency and control. Whang et al. (2021) found that inter-
activity, as a feature of augmented reality shopping experience, enhanced
perceived cognitive control and perceived behavioral control. Researchers also
found that using image interactivity technology (IIT) for product display
also enhanced consumers’ perceived control toward their interactions with
marketing messages (Hu & Wise, 2020; Overmars & Poels, 2015). Recent
interactive marketing research has also examined gamified marketing, which
usually requires an interactive process of completing game tasks relevant to
marketing messages. One study showed that using interactive hand gestures
as game input led to increased perceived control (Xi et al., 2018). Hu and
Wise (2021) investigated the playable ad, which is an innovative type of digital
advertising that integrates interactivity and gamification in marketing commu-
nications. They found that compared with more traditional video advertising,
consumers interacting with the playable ad showed greater perceived control.
The conceptual relation and the empirical findings discussed above reveal
that perceived control is a key component of interactivity in marketing
communications. As a psychological construct describing consumers’ subjec-
tive feeling, perceived control is also closely related to psychological processing
outcomes, such as attitude and behavior. The next section focuses on how
122 X. HU

perceived control explains the effects of interactive marketing on multidimen-

sional consumer responses.

4 Effects of Perceived
Control in Interactive Marketing
In studying the effectiveness of interactive marketing, researchers have
measured various types of consumer responses including attention, memory,
attitude, and purchase intention. Among these outcome variables, marketing
researchers have also made distinctions between affective, cognitive, and
behavioral responses. Holbrook and Hirschman (1982) proposed a compre-
hensive model of a consumer response system, including effect, cognition,
and behavior. According to these authors, consumers’ affective responses
include attitude, preference, mood, and feelings. Cognitive responses involve
attention, memory, beliefs, and thought. Behaviors and behavioral intentions
are also known as conative/behavioral responses in the model, which have
been typically measured as purchase intention, intention to search, etc. Based
on this model, the following sections review interactive marketing literature
that examines the psychological effects of perceived control on consumers’
affective, cognitive, and behavioral responses.

4.1 Effects of Perceive Control on Affective Responses

In general, it is demonstrated that having control is subjectively positive.
Research showed that perceived control elicited by interactive marketing tech-
nologies positively influenced consumers’ attitudes, feelings, and satisfaction
levels. For example, Yen (2005) studied consumers’ experience with Internet
self-service, such as online travel services and bookstores. Through a survey,
she found that control over Internet self-service technology led to a posi-
tive effect on users’ satisfaction with the service. Hanus and Fox (2017)
investigated the effects of customizable options in online advertising and
manipulated the extent to which participants were able to customize the
avatars that represented the source of the marketing message. They found that
having more choices led to greater perceived control, which reduced people’s
psychological reactance toward persuasion and increased product liking. Hu
and Wise (2020) studied the role of perceived control in explaining the effect
of image interactivity technology on multidimensional consumer responses.
They found that perceived control mediated the effect of using interactive
product images (vs. static images) on multidimensional consumer responses,
including perceived informativeness, product attitude, purchase intention, and
willingness to pay. Wang and Chen (2019) compared the marketing effec-
tiveness of virtual reality (VR) brand videos and websites. They found that
perceived control of VR videos had a significant effect on consumers’ interest
in the brand. Fan et al. (2022) investigated consumer responses to artificial
intelligence services. This study showed that compared with consumers using
 6 EMPOWERING CONSUMERS IN INTERACTIVE … 123

the voice assistant, consumers using the touch panel for service had greater
perceived control due to the perception of extended self, which enhanced their
satisfaction with the service.
Why is perceived control positively associated with consumers’ affective
responses? Such a relationship has been validated in early psychology research,
which demonstrated that increased perceived control exerted a positive impact
on human physical and psychological well-being, including physical toler-
ance, anxiety, task performance, etc. (e.g. Ball & Vogler, 1971; Staub et al.,
1971; Thompson, 1981). Through neuroimaging techniques, recent research
in cognitive psychology and neuroscience also found neural bases for control
in brain regions that are involved in affective and motivational processes,
suggesting that having control is inherently rewarding and motivating to
human beings (see Leotti et al., 2010). In the context of interactive marketing
research, a relevant theoretical framework that has been widely applied to
understand the effect of perceived control on affective responses is the psycho-
logical reactance theory. This theory proposes that individuals perceive a series
of ways in which they are free to behave. Once a behavior is perceived as
specific freedom, anything that makes it more difficult to exercise that freedom
constitutes a threat. As a result, individuals feel motivated to restore the threat-
ened freedom (Brehm & Brehm, 1981). One effective restoration strategy is
to exercise different freedom to gain a feeling of control and choice (Wick-
lund, 1974), since the psychological reactance theory follows the assumption
that humans place a high value on choice and control (Quick et al., 2013).
This means that perceived control can diminish freedom threat and reac-
tance, which enhances affective responses. Research suggests that as interactive
marketing technologies afford more perceived control, consumers feel less
reactance toward the persuasive marketing messages and have more positive
affective responses. For example, one recent study on social media marketing
demonstrated that consumers’ feelings of autonomy to control Facebook
ads were negatively associated with their perceptions of freedom threat and
reactance (Youn & Kim, 2019). When consumers felt they had a sense of
autonomy in controlling social media advertising, they perceived less reactance
and showed fewer negative feelings and emotions. Following the psycholog-
ical reactance theory, Choi and Kim (2022) studied the effects of an interactive
advertising feature—the ad skip option. They found that presence of the ad
skip option resulted in a higher level of perceived control, predicting lower
ad intrusiveness and ad irritation, and a more favorable ad attitude. In the
context of gamified marketing, Hu and Wise (2021) found that playable ads,
compared to video ads, increased consumers’ perceived control, which in turn
led to less psychological reactance and a more positive product attitude.
Understanding perceived control as a motivational need of humans can
contribute to our understanding of interactive marketing research and prac-
tice. For example, with gamification of marketing and more active consumer
participation, it is believed that interactive marketing is becoming more fun,
exciting, and inviting (Wang, 2021). This can be explained by the fact that
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control, namely, the ability to manipulate, modify, customize, and eventually

determine the game process, is the fundamental feature of games. Since having
control is psychologically motivating and rewarding, integrating game compo-
nents into interactive marketing practices can therefore provide consumers
more engaging and positive affective experience. Future research in interac-
tive marketing should therefore pay more attention to the motivating nature
of perceived control and examine how perceived control can explain the posi-
tive experience of various types of interactive marketing technologies, such as
social e-commerce, virtual reality, augmented reality, etc.

4.2 Effects of Perceive Control on Cognitive Responses

While a handful of studies have confirmed the positive relationship between
perceived control and affective responses in interactive marketing, relatively
fewer studies have examined the effects of control on consumers’ cognitive
responses. Similar to the effect on affective responses, the psychological reac-
tance theory has been adopted to explain the effect of perceived control
on cognitive responses. According to the theory, reactance is conceptual-
ized as a combination of effect and cognition. Perceived control, which
helps mitigate freedom threat, can diminish reactance, indicated by cogni-
tive responses such as negative thoughts and beliefs (Quick et al., 2013).
Empirical studies following this theoretical framework typically confirmed the
relationship between perceived control and negative cognitions. As interactive
marketing technologies afforded more control, consumers had fewer negative
thoughts toward the marketing messages (e.g. Hu & Wise, 2021; Youn &
Kim, 2019). Additionally, as the increasing use of artificial intelligence, virtual
reality or augmented reality further facilitates marketers to deliver exceptional
experiences (Wang, 2021), marketing scholars have also paid attention to the
role of direct product experience, or telepresence, in explaining the effects
of perceived control on cognitive responses. For example, Klein’s (2003)
research is one of the earliest studies that examined user control and virtual
product experience. The author proposed that the greater the level of control
consumers experienced in interactive marketing, the greater the perceived simi-
larity of the experience to a direct product experience, which meant a greater
level of telepresence. Such direct product experience enabled by user control
tended to intensify consumers’ beliefs about the product. Through two exper-
imental studies, Klein (2003) confirmed the relationship between control,
telepresence, and consumers’ cognitive responses.
Besides the lack of research in this area, empirical findings on the rela-
tionship between perceived control and cognitive responses in an interactive
marketing context are also mixed. For instance, Wang (2015) investigated
the interactive experience of corporate websites by focusing on consumers’
control of navigation. It was argued that control of navigation can influ-
ence cognition because the dynamic process of navigation, which allowed
 6 EMPOWERING CONSUMERS IN INTERACTIVE … 125

consumers to customize browsing experience, could stimulate systematic elab-

oration of information (Liu & Shrum, 2009). When control of navigation
was perceived to be high, consumers could concentrate on interacting with
the website content, and therefore generated more positive thoughts about
the website and the brand. However, results from Wang (2015) failed to
confirm the relationship between control and more positive thoughts toward
the marketing message. Nelson et al. (2006) examined consumers’ processing
of brand placement in games and manipulated control by asking participants
to play (user control) or watch (computer-control) the game. They found that
game players, who were able to actively control the gaming process, recalled
fewer embedded brands than watchers.
A possible explanation to the inconclusive findings on control and cogni-
tive responses is the capacity limit of cognitive resources. While interactivity in
marketing and advertising activities can facilitate information processing and
persuasion by affording consumers more control, it may also require more
cognitive resources and add to consumers’ cognitive load, which makes it more
difficult to control and process relevant information (Liu & Shrum, 2009).
For example, Ariely (2000) studied both the advantages and disadvantages of
information control on consumers’ decision quality, memory, knowledge, and
confidence. Results showed that controlling the information in an interactive
shopping scenario enhanced consumers’ memory and knowledge about the
relevant information, and consumers’ confidence in their judgments. However,
having control could also create demands on cognitive resources and therefore
impeded consumers’ cognitive responses. In their study of brand placement in
games, Nelson et al. (2006) also suggested that active players were more likely
to experience cognitive overload than passive watchers. Due to the limited
cognitive resources and the information-demanding context of game play,
active game players might focus more on the central elements of a game,
while passive watchers would have remaining cognitive resources to attend
to peripheral elements in the game such as brand placement.
In sum, the interactive marketing literature offers some insights into the
relationship between perceived control and consumers’ cognitive responses,
such as cognitive thoughts. Unlike the consistent findings for affective
responses, it appears that the availability of cognitive resources is an impor-
tant factor that may moderate the relationship between perceived control
and cognitive responses: while control can facilitate cognitive processing of
interactive marketing messages, it may also become cognitively demanding
under conditions of high cognitive load, and thus impede cognitive processing.
Future research should further explore the effects of perceived control on a
broader range of cognitive responses, such as attention and memory toward
marketing messages, and how cognitive load may interact with the process in
interactive marketing.
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4.3 Effects of Perceived Control on Behavioral Responses

According to the model of the consumer response system, behavioral responses
are generally the outcomes of cognition and/or affect. Prior interactive
marketing research also demonstrated that both cognitive and affective
responses were related to consumers’ behavioral intentions. For example,
Papagiannidis et al. (2017) found that increased perceived control elicited
by immersive virtual retail environment had positive effects on consumers’
simulated experience, engagement, and enjoyment, which further influenced
purchase intention. Youn and Kim (2019) found that increased perceived
control toward social media advertising decreased consumers’ negative cogni-
tions and anger, leading to less behavioral avoidance to social media adver-
tising. Robertson et al. (2016) found that consumers’ satisfaction toward self-
service technologies mediated the effects of perceived control on consumers’
behavioral intentions, including the intention to reuse the service and the
intention to spread positive word-of-mouth.
Other studies have also revealed the direct effect of control on consumers’
behavioral intentions. Particularly, the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen,
1985) has been widely adopted to investigate the effect of perceived control
on behavioral responses in interactive marketing research (e.g. Ariffin et al.,
2021; Li & Yin, 2021; Wang & Chen, 2019). The theory of planned behavior
proposes factors that shape an individual’s behavioral intentions and behav-
iors. Specifically, it is theorized that perceived behavioral control, which refers
to perception of easiness or difficulty in performing a certain behavior, drives
behavioral intention (Ajzen, 1991). The more resources and opportunities an
individual has or the more power in performing tasks, the higher the level of
perceived control and the stronger the behavioral intention (Ajzen, 1991).
Following the theory of planned behavior, marketing scholars have demon-
strated that perceived control plays a significant role in affecting consumers’
behavioral intentions in interactive marketing activities. For instance, Ariffin
et al. (2021) found that perceived control was positively related to consumers’
intention to continue using e-wallet. Li and Yin (2021) found that perceived
control induced by skippable video advertising negatively affected ad avoid-
ance intention. Richard and Meuli (2013) tested the theory of planned
behavior in the context of permission-based location-aware mobile adver-
tising (PBLAMA), which is a type of interactive mobile marketing that
enables marketers to send more personalized and targeted messages to indi-
vidual consumers based on their geographic location. They found that the
lack of perceived control significantly and negatively influenced intentions to
use PBLAMA. In the context of virtual reality marketing, Wang and Chen
(2019) suggested that consumers’ interaction with VR videos and websites was
accompanied by perceived behavioral control. They argued that VR viewers’
perceived control originated in their beliefs that they could watch an activity
in a way that they could not otherwise do in person, which brought more
profound feelings of immersion, interaction, and emotion. As a result, the
 6 EMPOWERING CONSUMERS IN INTERACTIVE … 127

positivity associated with perceived control offered by the VR context could

be transferred to their perception of the marketing message embedded in VR
videos. Results from this study showed that perceived control of VR brand
videos was positively associated with consumers’ interest in the embedded
brand and the intention to consider the brand. The above evidence suggested
that perceived control was a significant factor that explained consumers’
intention to engage in interactive marketing activities.

5 Moderating Factors that Influence

the Effects of Perceived Control
In addition to the main psychological processes described above, there are
several factors that may moderate the effects of perceived control on affective,
cognitive, and behavioral responses in interactive marketing. These moderating
factors will be discussed in more detail next.

5.1 Dispositional Factors of the Consumer

The amount of control that is optimal, or even beneficial, is likely to depend
upon individual differences, such as a desire for control or locus of control
(Klein, 2003). A desire for control is an important factor accounting for varia-
tions in human behavior in control situations. It refers to individual differences
in general desire for having control over the events in one’s life (Burger &
Cooper, 1979). Specifically, people high in the desire for control are “assertive,
decisive, and active. They generally seek to influence others when such influ-
ence is advantageous. They prefer to avoid unpleasant situations or failures
by manipulating events to ensure desired outcomes” (p. 383). People who
are low in desire for control, conversely, can be described as “nonassertive,
passive, and indecisive. These persons are less likely to attempt to influence
others and may prefer that many of their daily decisions be made by others”
(p.383). Locus of control (LOC), on the other hand, captures people’s general
expectancies about the causes of rewards and punishments (Rotter, 1966).
People with an internal LOC (“internals”) generally expect that their actions
will produce predictable outcomes. Conversely, people with an external LOC
(“externals”) generally expect that outcomes are due to external variables such
as fate, luck or powerful others. It is argued that internals are more action-
oriented, commit to tasks allowing for personal control, and derive more
satisfaction from situations calling for personal control (Hoffman et al., 2003).
Such individual differences suggest that having control may not always be
preferable and satisfactory. Previous marketing literature has also confirmed
that consumers’ dispositional differences may influence their perceptions and
responses to marketing information. For example, Faraji-Rad et al. (2017)
examined the relationship between the desire for control and consumers’
adoption of a new product. They found that people with a higher level of
128 X. HU

desire for control were less likely to consider using new products than tradi-
tional products. For people with a lower desire for control, the newness of the
product did not affect the willingness to consider the product. With regard
to SST adoption, Hoffman et al. (2003) examined locus of control (LOC)
and found that consumers with high internal LOC were more committed
to adopting the Internet for goal-directed activities, whereas consumers with
high external LOC were less likely to adopt the Internet for goal-directed
activities. According to these authors, a possible explanation for such differ-
ence was that internals usually adopted and mastered riskier and innovative
strategies and thus they were likely among the first to be attracted to the
new marketing technologies. Mullins et al. (2015) argued that fit between
consumers’ desire for control and their perceived control in the marketing
environment predicted consumers’ satisfaction. Their argument was based
on the person-environment fit theory. The theory suggests that fit between
what an individual needs and what the environment supplies lead to positive
outcomes such as satisfaction. Misfit, on the other hand, can trigger nega-
tive outcomes. Based on this theory, people’s desire for control can be viewed
as individual needs and perceived control represents perceptions of what the
environment supplies (Mullins et al., 2015). When an individual’s desire for
control is greater or less than perceived control of the environment, the indi-
vidual is likely to experience greater dissatisfaction. Results from this study
confirmed that consumers’ satisfaction and product sales were highest when
perceived and desired control converged, and decreased when perceived and
desired control diverged, suggesting the moderation role of desire for control
on the effects of perceived control.
However, the research cited above primarily explored dispositional factors
and control in a more traditional marketing context. Relatively little is known
about the relationship between dispositional factors, perceived control, and
consumer responses in interactive marketing. As the rapid development and
innovation in new technologies empower consumers with a more active role in
controlling marketing messages and processes, individual differences in desire
or locus of control should be even more relevant in interactive marketing
research. For instance, gamified marketing encourages more active consumer
engagement and participation (Wang, 2021). Despite the trend toward greater
consumer engagement and control, the consequences of having control may
not always be beneficial. It is important to understand not only the conse-
quences of perceived control per se, which have been well established but
also the relationship between consumers’ dispositional need for control and
perceived control. Future research should investigate the role of dispositional
factors in impacting the effectiveness of interactive marketing.
 6 EMPOWERING CONSUMERS IN INTERACTIVE … 129

5.2 Consumer Motivation

Marketing and consumer research shows that two fundamental motiva-
tional orientations underlie the difference in consumer goals and behav-
iors. Consumers may behave and process marketing information differently
depending on whether their goals are primarily utilitarian or hedonic (e.g.
Hirschman & Holbrook, 1982; Wang & Jiang, 2019). The utilitarian motiva-
tional orientation involves consumers engaging in a marketing activity in order
to obtain needed products, services, or information with little or no inherent
satisfaction derived from the activity itself. On the other hand, the hedonic
motivational orientation refers to consumers engaging in a marketing activity
to derive inherent satisfaction from the activity itself. In this case, the activity
is motivated by more experiential benefits provided by the experience, such as
agreement or excitement.
Hoffman and Novak (1996) summarized the distinction between goal-
directed and experiential behaviors specifically in the digital marketing context.
According to these authors, goal-directed behaviors are utilitarian, instru-
mental oriented, and extrinsically motivated. Whereas experiential behaviors
are related to hedonic value, ritualized orientation, and intrinsic motivation.
Botti and McGill (2011) also suggested that a hedonic consumption expe-
rience was intrinsically motivated and inherently rewarding, namely, it was
sought as an end in itself. On the contrary, a utilitarian experience was extrin-
sically motivated and not rewarding in itself. Since people typically engage in
intrinsically motivated behaviors to feel competent and self-determining (Deci,
1975), it has been argued that the concept of intrinsic motivation is closely
associated with people’s desire for control (Burger & Cooper, 1979).
Empirical studies have examined the relationship between perceived control
and motivation. In Zuckerman et al.’s (1978) study, for instance, some partic-
ipants were given the opportunity to select three of six problems they would
work on and how to allocate their time among the three chosen problems,
while other participants had no choice in their tasks. Results showed that
participants who had free choice in their tasks, namely, who had a higher level
of perceived control, were more intrinsically motivated than those who did
not have any choice. Botti and McGill (2011) looked into the interaction
effect between perceived control and hedonic/utilitarian goal of consumers.
In their study, participants were asked to imagine eating gourmet food in Italy
for either a hedonic or a utilitarian goal. Perceived control was also manipu-
lated by choice. Choosers were able to select one of the main courses from
a menu while nonchoosers were told that one of the main courses would be
randomly assigned to them. Results from this study demonstrated that partic-
ipants who had choice were significantly more satisfied than those without
choice. Moreover, in the hedonic condition, choosers’ satisfaction was greater
than that of nonchoosers. In the utilitarian condition, no significant difference
in satisfaction level was observed between choosers and nonchoosers.
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The above evidence suggests that consumer motivation can be tied to

perception of control. Specifically, when consumers are more intrinsically moti-
vated in their interaction with marketing messages, they are likely to engage
in more hedonic consumption experiences. Such experience is more consistent
with the value of having control, which has also been argued to be motiva-
tional and self-determining (Burger & Cooper, 1979). As a result, perceived
control may lead to a more positive effect when consumers are intrinsically
motivated. Despite being a relevant factor, consumer motivation and its rela-
tionship with perceived control have not been explored in an interactive
marketing context. As technology advancement fuels the growth of interac-
tive marketing with more powerful tools, it is worth investigating consumers’
motivations to adopt and interact with these sophisticated technologies, such
as virtual reality and artificial intelligence. Future research should investigate
how differences in consumer motivation in marketing activities may interact
with perceived control to influence interactive marketing effectiveness.

5.3 Personalization
Besides the factors associated with the consumer, variables related to marketing
messages may also influence the effects of perceived control. One factor that
is particularly prominent in interactive marketing is personalization. Concep-
tually, personalization refers to the provision of personally relevant content,
products, and services based on individual users’ unique characteristics and
needs (Xiao & Benbasat, 2007). As the application of artificial intelligence, big
data, and social recommendation system increases more focused and personal-
ized marketing activities (Wang, 2021), personalization has now become a
common feature of interactive marketing that facilitates system catering to
consumers’ interests and needs.
Marketing scholars have argued that personalization is relevant to
consumers’ perception of control. While the presumptive advantage of person-
alization is reduced customer effort, this comes at the cost of restricting
consumers’ options, which may put consumers in a more passive role
(de Groot, 2022; Hoffman & Novak, 2009). Other researchers have also
compared personalization with customization, both of which are common
features in interactive marketing. Customization refers to the ability of
consumers to take control and make changes to the presentation and function
of an interface (Marathe & Sundar, 2011). It has been argued that the key
difference between personalization and customization is the source of interac-
tion: personalization is system-initiated while customization is user-driven (Lee
et al., 2015; Sundar & Marathe, 2010). When consumers are able to customize
marketing information, they are taking a more active role in determining their
marketing experience. Whereas in personalization, new technologies such as
artificial intelligence and recommendation systems automatically generate rele-
vant information and consumers are more passive in receiving the messages.
This means that personalization may restrict consumers’ active engagement
 6 EMPOWERING CONSUMERS IN INTERACTIVE … 131

in interactive marketing processes and negatively influence the perception of

control.
Despite the above arguments on the conceptual relationship between
personalization and perceived control, empirical research on how personal-
ization influences the effects of control in an interactive marketing context is
a largely neglected topic so far. Even within the limited research on this topic,
findings regarding the influence of personalization on consumers’ perception
of control are mixed. In one recent study on personalized marketing promo-
tions, Kim et al. (2019) explored how consumer control affected the effective-
ness of personalization. They found that when consumers with difficult-choice
tasks received personalized promotions, they could more easily complete their
chosen task and felt more control over their choice, which further posi-
tively influenced their attitude and behavior. But for consumers with an
easy choice task, a personalized promotion did not affect their perceived
control and attitude as compared to non-personalized promotion. However,
one significant limitation of this study is the possible confounding between
personalization and choice. The authors manipulated personalization by
providing consumers with only one recommended product that was relevant
to the consumer’s interest. However, in the non-personalization condition,
consumers were given multiple choices to actively choose from. Therefore, it
was unclear whether personalization or choice influenced consumers’ percep-
tion of control. Another recent study compared reactive personalization, a
type of personalization service offering users options of receiving personalized
information, and proactive personalization, a personalization service without
option (Zhang & Sundar, 2019). Results from this study showed no signif-
icant difference between reactive and proactive personalization in affecting
users’ perception of control. Since the authors did not include a condition
where non-personalized messages were offered, it was also unclear whether
having personalized information, with or without choices, influenced users’
perceptions differently.
In sum, personalization, as a prominent feature in interactive marketing,
is conceptually related to consumers’ perception of control (e.g. Hoffman &
Novak, 2009). Despite the trend of changing consumers’ role from passive
to active, from reactive to proactive in interactive marketing, personal-
ization seems to take away some level of control from consumers and
enable more automatic and effortless marketing experience. This warrants the
research question of how personalized marketing information might influence
consumers’ perception of control and the effectiveness of interactive marketing
activities. However, very limited research has directly investigated the rela-
tionship between personalization, perceived control, and consumer responses.
Future research should more deeply explore the role of personalization in
affecting consumers’ perceptions and responses in an interactive marketing
context.
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6 General Discussion
Newly developed technologies have empowered consumers with a more active
role in interactive marketing activities. A direct consequence of such empow-
erment is that consumers today have more control over their interactions with
marketing messages and processes. As a fundamental psychological construct,
perceived control refers to people’s subjective feelings toward their ability to
change the environment and obtain desired outcomes (e.g. Skinner, 1996).
Such feeling of control is, on one hand, deeply grounded in the interactive
nature of contemporary marketing practice, and on the other hand, closely
associated with consumer’s psychology processing of marketing messages.
Therefore, perceived control can be a key concept to understand the effec-
tiveness of interactive marketing. Table 1 summarizes the perceived control
literature in interactive marketing research.

6.1 Theoretical Implications

By reviewing literature on perceived control and interactive marketing, this
chapter builds a theoretical framework that explicates the relationship between
interactivity and perceived control, the effects of perceived control on multi-
dimensional consumer responses, and possible moderating factors. Within this
framework, several directions for future research in interactive marketing are
identified.
One area to be more fully explored is the relationship between newly devel-
oped technologies in interactive marketing and perceived control. Although
a handful of studies have investigated how interactive features influence
consumers’ perceived control and psychological processing of marketing infor-
mation, many of them still focus on relatively more traditional forms of
interactive technologies, such as the Internet and SST (e.g. Robertson et al.,
2016; Wang, 2015; Zhu et al., 2013). As interactive marketing has dramati-
cally expanded its scale and scope because of the newly developed and more
sophisticated technologies, such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and
augmented reality (Wang, 2021), a more profound understanding of how
these new technologies impact perceived control and consumer responses
would be important. Some recent interactive marketing research has paid
attention to psychological processing associated with new marketing technolo-
gies, such as gamification, interactive advertising, and virtual shopping (e.g.
Hu & Wise, 2021; Kim et al., 2021; Moes et al., 2021; Wang & Chen, 2019).
Future research should further explore the newly developed technologies in
interactive marketing and how perceived control may explain the influence of
interactive features on consumer engagement and experience.
Another area that should receive more research interest includes the effects
of perceived control on multidimensional consumer responses. Whereas the
effects of perceived control have been tested extensively on affective responses
such as consumer attitude, research on cognitive and behavioral outcomes
Table 1 Summary of literature in perceived control and interactive marketing research

Author and year Interactive marketing Control definition Interactivity definition Effects of control Theory
context

Ariffin et al. (2021) Mobile marketing People’s perception of ease or • Intention to use e-wallet Theory of Planned
difficulty in performing the Behavior
behavior
Choi and Kim (2022) Online advertising Behavioral control is the • Ad intrusiveness and ad Psychological
(in-stream video ad) perceived ability to perform irritation, which further Reactance Theory
an intended behavior to influence ad attitude
influence a given situation
(Averill, 1973; Ajzen, 1991;
6

Bobbitt and Dabholkar,

2001). In the context of
digital media, behavioral
control reflects the perceived
difficulty of behaving in a
certain way on a media
platform (e.g. high control
means low difficulty).
Cognitive control is the
perceived ability to interpret
and appraise a given situation
(Averill, 1973; Kim et al.,
2019). Decisional control is
confidence in one’s ability to
make an autonomous decision
(Averill, 1973)

(continued)
EMPOWERING CONSUMERS IN INTERACTIVE …
133
Table 1 (continued)
Author and year Interactive marketing Control definition
context
Collier and Sherrell Self-service technology Perceived control from a
(2010) (SST) self-service perspective is
defined as a belief in one’s
ability to command and exert
power over the process and
outcome of a self-service
encounter. With self-service
technology, perceived control
refers to the ability to dictate
the pace of the transaction,
the nature of the information
flow, and the level of
interactivity
Fan et al. (2022) Artificial intelligence Perceived control in consumer
behavior research refers to
consumers’ belief that they
have the means to control the
service encounter outcomes
(Grewal et al., 2007)
Hanus and Fox (2017) Online advertising The perception that one is
able to manipulate a
customizable interface in a
predictable way
Interactivity definition
Jensen (1998) stated that
interactivity is “a measure of
a media’s potential ability to
let the user exert an
influence on the content
and/or form of the mediated
communication” (p. 201)
Interactive affordances of
customizable media often
increase a sense of control in
users by means of providing
choices that allow users to
change content in predictable
ways
134
Effects of control Theory
X. HU
• Speed of transaction Theory of Planned
evaluation Behavior
• Exploration
• Trust in service provider
• Intention to use the SST
• Perceived value
• Satisfaction with the
technology, which further
influences consumption
preference and
word-of-mouth
• Reactance Psychological
• Product liking Reactance Theory
Author and year Interactive marketing Control definition
context
Hu and Wise (2020) Online product display Perceived control refers to
(image interactivity the belief about the extent to
technology) which people have control
over the environments
(Skinner 1996)
Hu and Wise (2021) Gamified marketing Control has been
conceptualized as a key
component of interactivity
(Liu and Shrum 2002).
Empirical research has also
revealed that interactive
message features can enhance
perceived control
Interactivity definition
Image interactivity
technology refers to website
features that enable the
“creation and manipulation
of product or environment
images to simulate (or
surpass) actual experience
with the product or
environment” (Fiore, Kim,
and Lee 2005, p. 39)
Effects of control Theory
• Perceived informativeness
• Product attitude
• Purchase intention
• Willingness to pay
6
• Attitude toward the Psychological
advertised product Reactance Theory
• Freedom threat
• Reactance
(continued)
EMPOWERING CONSUMERS IN INTERACTIVE …
135
Table 1 (continued)
Author and year Interactive marketing
context
Kirk et al. (2015) Online advertising
Lee et al. (2018) Gamified marketing;
augmented reality
Li and Yin (2021) online advertising
Control definition
Active control generally is
viewed as a key dimension of
perceived interactivity (Liu,
2003; Voorveld et al., 2011).
Active control gives customers
greater control over the
information search and
acquisition process
(Chakraborty, Lala, and
Warren, 2003; Liu and
Shrum, 2002)
We define perceived control
as the users’ sense that the
game precisely executes their
intended actions (Koufaris,
2002). In a computer game
context, perceived control is
also related to the user
interface. A well-designed user
interface helps users control
their actions in the game
Perceived control, which is a
psychological need, refers to
the cognitive condition of the
individual’s ability to control
a specific environment (Quick
& Stephenson, 2007)
136
Interactivity definition Effects of control Theory
X. HU
Functional interactivity is • Attitude
viewed as a characteristic, • Behavioral intention to
feature, property, or adopt the digital product
capability inherent in a
medium (Kim et al.,
2011)—such as hyperlinks,
clickable maps, or
graphics—that can be
user-modified. Research in
marketing, however, takes
the view that a device or
interface is interactive only
truly if a consumer perceives
it to be so
• Flow, which mediates the Flow Theory
effect on game satisfaction
and game stickiness
• Perceived intrusiveness Theory of Planned
• Ad avoidance intention Behavior
Author and year Interactive marketing Control definition
context
Moes et al. (2021) In-store interactive Self-agency refers to the
advertising screens feeling that one shapes
her/his own actions and,
therefore, is frequently
intertwined with freedom of
choice
Nelson et al. (2006) Gamified marketing We manipulate control by
instructing participants to play different type of interactive
(user control) or watch
(computer-control) the game
Interactivity definition Effects of control Theory
Based on different • Impulse-visit urges Psychological
interactivity types, Liu and • Impulse-buying urges Reactance Theory
Shrum (2002, p. 54)
propose the following
definition of interactivity:
“The degree to which two
or more communication
parties can act on each
other, on the communication
medium, and on the
6
messages and the degree to
which such influences are
synchronized
Games typically provide a • Recall of brands Theories of working
memory and cognitive
environment from other load
media, including interactive
online media. According to
Grodal (2000): “a video
game provides an interactive
interface, which enables the
player to control actions and
often also perceptions by an
ability to control the point
of view, that is, to control
the point from which, and
the direction by which, the
game world is represented.
This leads to several dramatic
changes compared to film
viewing” (p. 202)
EMPOWERING CONSUMERS IN INTERACTIVE …
(continued)
137
Table 1 (continued)
Author and year Interactive marketing Control definition
context
Overmars and Poels Online product display Potential of users to modify
(2015) (image interactivity their environments. It has
technology) been conceptualized as a key
component of interactivity
(Klein, 2003; Steuer, 1992)
Papagiannidis et al. Virtual reality The ability to control the
(2017) relationship of one’s senses to
the stimulus
Users’ ability to use a certain
technology
Richard and Meuli Mobile marketing; Individual’s perception of the
(2013) location-based marketing ease or difficulty of
performing a specific task or
action
Robertson et al. Self-service technology Perceived control is a
(2016) (SST) function of an individual’s felt
ability to perform a particular
behavior, such as
commanding the process and
outcome of an SST encounter
(Collier and Sherrell, 2010)
Wang and Chen Virtual reality Perceived control, according
(2019) to the Planned Behavior
Theory (Ajzen, 1991), refers
to people’s perception of
their ability to perform a
given behavior
Interactivity definition
The capacity of the
technology to let the user
exert an influence on its
content and/or form
Reflecting a perceptual
perspective, perceived
interactivity refers to a
psychological state
experienced by users during
their interaction with an
interactive medium (Wu,
2006)
138
Effects of control Theory
X. HU
• Tactile sensations
• Perceived diagnosticity of
experience attributes
• Simulated experience, Flow Theory
which further influences
engagement and enjoyment
• Intention of using Theory of Planned
PBLAMA Behavior
• SST satisfaction
• Positive word-of-mouth
intentions
• Interest in the brand Theory of Planned
• Willingness to consider the Behavior
brand
Author and year Interactive marketing Control definition Interactivity definition Effects of control Theory
context

Wang (2015) Website Control of navigation refers Web-based interactivity refers • Attitude toward the
to the ease or difficulty with to users’ perception and website, which mediates
which users can work out psychological experience of the effects of control on
where they are on a website the direction, control and attitude toward the
and then choose the course time of the communication sponsor’s brand and
of their visit (Wu, 2006) (Wu, 2006; McMillan & attitude toward the
Hwang, 2002) non-profit organization
Whang et al. (2021) Augmented reality In new media, behavioral Interactivity refers to the • Purchase intention
control is defined as the sense degree to which two or
of autonomy surrounding more communications act on
6

how easy or difficult it is to each other, as well as the

behave in a certain way degree of synchronizability
(Compeau, 1995; Venkatesh (Liu, 2003). It can also be
et al., 2003). Cognitive defined as “the degree to
control occurs when people which consumers perceive
are able to predict the next that a product presentation
step and understand the is two-way, controllable, and
situation in performing a task responsive to input” (Mollen
(Averill, 1973; Kim et al., & Wilson, 2010)
2019)
Xi et al. (2018) Gamified marketing; Effort is regarded as the • Game enjoyment
mobile marketing primary means to get sense
of control. Prior research has
shown that the more effort
people devote, the more they
suggestively believe that they
can control the outcomes
with the help of the effort,
and the greater sense of
efficacy people experience
(Carver and Scheier 2001;
Higgins 2012; Lee and Qiu
EMPOWERING CONSUMERS IN INTERACTIVE …

2009; Schunk 1983)

(continued)
139
Table 1 (continued)
Author and year Interactive marketing Control definition
context
Yen (2005) Self-service technology The amount of control a
(SST) customer feels that she or he
holds over the process or
outcome of a service
encounter
Youn and Kim (2019) Social media advertising Individuals feel autonomous
when they make their own
decisions freely without being
influenced by an external
force (Deci & Ryan, 2000)
Zhu et al. (2007) Self-service technology The term “perceived control”
(SST) describes a subjective
assessment of control over a
task in an environment. In an
SST setting, it refers to a
customer’s sense of mastery
over the processes and
outcomes of the service
interface (Langeard et al.
1981)
Zhu et al. (2013) Self-service technology Perceived control over SST
(SST) refers to the degree to which
a customer believes he or she
has the ability to adapt to
and direct the SST to fulfill
service needs
It refers to the perception of
mastery over a technology in
a particular situation
Interactivity definition
The degree to which users
can modify the form or
content of the mediated
environment in real time
SST interactivity is the
degree to which a customer
believes the SST enables
arrangement of the amount,
style, and sequence of
presented information (Steuer
1992). It is an external,
stable, and uncontrollable
factor that reflects the ease
of the recovery task and
contributes to expectancy
140
Effects of control Theory
X. HU
• User satisfaction with
service
• Perceived ad intrusiveness, Psychological
which further influences Reactance Theory
perceived threat to
freedom, reactance, and ad
avoidance
• Costumer recovery Attribution Theory
expectancy, which further
affects consumer behaviors
such as customer-recovery
effort, customer-recovery
strategy
 6 EMPOWERING CONSUMERS IN INTERACTIVE … 141

is relatively scarce thus far. For example, a few empirical studies have exam-
ined perceived control and consumers’ cognitive thoughts toward interactive
marketing messages (e.g. Wang, 2015; Youn & Kim, 2019). However, such
effects have not been fully explored on a broader types of cognitive processing,
such as attention and recall, which are also fundamental factors to under-
stand marketing and advertising effectiveness. For behavioral responses, most
research primarily focuses on consumers’ behavioral intentions (e.g. Ariffin
et al., 2021; Moes et al., 2021). Considering that consumers today are more
actively generating marketing content and participating in marketing activities,
it would be interesting to see more studies that investigate how interac-
tive marketing shapes consumers’ actual behaviors, such as adoption of new
technologies, word-of-mouth, co-creation, etc. Future research that employs
relevant theoretical frameworks to better explain the effects of perceived
control in interactive marketing is needed.
Finally, special interest needs to be devoted to possible moderating factors
that influence the effects of perceived control in interactive marketing.
Although interactive marketing increasingly involves consumer controlling
and modifying the marketing environment, more control may not always
equal a better experience. The amount of control that is most beneficial may
depend on both consumers’ dispositional and situational factors in interactive
marketing activities (Hoffman & Novak, 2009; Klein, 2003). As outlined in
the framework, research on how these moderating factors such as personal-
ization impact interactive marketing effectiveness is less frequently found in
current literature, despite the fact that conceptually these factors are closely
associated with perceived control and psychological responses. The necessity
to obtain a better understanding of this topic is amplified by the current
interactive marketing practice where not only the consumers are actively
controlling marketing messages, but the algorithm driving the technologies,
such as artificial intelligence, personalization, and recommendation system,
is also determining what information consumers are exposed to. Identi-
fying and exploring how these algorithm-controlled applications may influence
consumers’ active role in interactive marketing activities should advance both
interactive marketing research and practice.

6.2 Managerial Implications

This chapter also provides several implications for practitioners in the
marketing industry. By reviewing interactive marketing literature, this chapter
provides insights into the important role of perceived control in various inter-
active marketing context, including self-service, gamified marketing, virtual
and augmented reality, etc. The effects of perceived control suggest that
perceived control can positively influence consumers’ affective, cognitive, and
behavioral responses. This implies that marketers can work on strategies to
increase consumers’ perceived control in order to gain better marketing effects.
Prior research has demonstrated the relationship between perceived control
142 X. HU

and interactive technologies and features. For instance, Ariely (2000) studied
control as the degree to which consumers had the freedom in determining the
sequence of information reception. Recent research also showed that gami-
fied marketing technologies enhance perceived control by allowing consumers
to actively interact with gamified marketing messages such as playable ad
(Hu & Wise, 2021). Therefore, marketers may apply more interactive tech-
nologies and incorporate more control elements in marketing messages, such
as customizable options and game elements, to enhance the effectiveness of
marketing communication.
This chapter also sheds light on possible moderators of the effects of
control, such as dispositional factors and consumer motivations. This implies
that consumer insights related to consumers’ traits and motivations of using
interactive technologies may be particularly beneficial for marketers to design
more effective messages. With technological innovation in big data analytics,
insights may be generated from big data indicating consumers’ traits and
preferences.
This chapter also suggests that as interactive marketing technologies such as
personalization and artificial intelligence facilitate a more automatic and effort-
less marketing experience, the possible issue may arise because of restricted
consumers’ control (e.g. Fan et al., 2022). Therefore, marketers should recog-
nize consumers’ underlying needs and offer solutions to enhance consumers’
perceived control of the technologies. One possible solution is to offer
consumers more choices. For example, marketers may provide several person-
alized options for consumers to choose from so that they may perceive
higher control of such personalization technology. Additional research, both
in academia and industry, should explore in greater detail how to balance
consumer control and technology control in interactive marketing.

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 CHAPTER 7

How Brands Drive Electronic Word-of-Mouth

in an Interactive Marketing Environment:
An Overview and Future Research Directions

Ya You and Yi He

1 Introduction
With the ability to facilitate bidirectional communication among a large set
of participants separated by time and space, electronic WOM (eWOM) has
enabled consumers to obtain or exchange product information and experience
at any time and anywhere. In recent years, eWOM has certainly revolutionized
the consumer experience. A recent survey shows that nearly nine out of ten
(89%) consumers worldwide make the effort to read reviews before buying
products (Trustpilot, 2020). Similarly, the latest online review statistics show
that nearly four in five (79%) consumers mention that they trust the reviews
they read online as much as personal recommendations (BrightLocal, 2020).
These studies indicate that eWOM has become a credible source of infor-
mation about products or services and has also had a significant impact on
consumer purchase behaviors. From a firm’s perspective, social media expendi-
tures have increased from 3.5% of marketing budgets in 2009 to 58% in 2021,
especially during the pandemic (The CMO Survey, 2021). Recognizing the
power of eWOM, companies now actively utilize various branding strategies

Y. You (B) · Y. He
College of Business and Economics, California State University, East Bay, Hayward,
CA, USA
e-mail: ya.you@csueastbay.edu
Y. He
e-mail: yi.he@csueastbay.edu

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 149

Switzerland AG 2023
C. L. Wang (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Interactive Marketing,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14961-0_7
150 Y. YOU AND Y. HE

to motivate consumers to engage with the brand and become online brand
advocates.
Which kind of brands will drive more eWOM? How do brand character-
istics affect eWOM? How does the new interactive marketing environment
facilitate the way consumers talk about the brands? How can brands leverage
interactive marketing tools and promote consumer eWOM? These are impor-
tant questions for academic scholars and managers to explore. In particular,
the construct of eWOM is considered to be multifaceted, which has multiple
components such as eWOM modality, eWOM valence, and eWOM audience
size.
Thus, this chapter aims to synthesize the literature on brand characteristics
and relationships and eWOM from a variety of fields such as marketing and
management to offer a comprehensive conceptual framework that describes
the role of brand characteristics/relationships as an important antecedent of
eWOM in the interactive marketing environment, and to provide insightful
research questions regarding how branding influences eWOM in the rapidly
changing interactive marketing environment. Specifically, this chapter applies
the “Five As” model (i.e., awareness, associations, attitude, attachment, and
activity; Keller & Lehmann, 2006) of brand-knowledge structures (e.g., brand
associations and relationships) to illustrate how various brand characteristics
affect different components of eWOM (i.e., what and where consumers talk
about brands), that is, modality, valence, and audience size, and identifies inter-
active marketing environmental factors including new age technology (e.g.,
AI, AR, VR), platform revolution (e.g., social shopping sites, virtual brand
communities), and participatory culture (e.g., digital influencers, virtual influ-
encers) (i.e., how interactive marketing environment facilitates eWOM toward
brands; Wang, 2021) that may moderate the brand-eWOM relationships (See
Fig. 1 for our conceptual framework). As such, the authors offer important
managerial insights on how interactive marketing environmental factors facil-
itate the impact of brand factors on consumer eWOM to guide interactive
marketing practice. Furthermore, based on the conceptual framework that
summarizes the wealth of branding and eWOM research, the authors suggest
several promising future research directions in this fertile ground of scholarly
inquiry.

2 Summary of Brand and WOM Research

2.1 The Definitions of WOM and eWOM
Word-of-mouth (WOM) is defined as “informal communications directed at
other consumers about the ownership, usage, or characteristics of particular
goods and services or their sellers” (Westbrook, 1987, p. 261). Discussing any
issues related to products or sharing brand-related contents with others could
be considered WOM (Berger, 2014). Prior research has reported that WOM
has profound impacts on consumer attitudes and behavioral responses to a
 7 HOW BRANDS DRIVE ELECTRONIC WORD-OF-MOUTH … 151

Interactive Marketing Environment

New age technology (AI, VR, AR)
Platform revolution (social shopping
sites, virtual brand communities)
Participatory culture (digital influencers,
virtual influencers)

Brand-Knowledge Components of
Structures eWOM:

Awareness Modality
Associations Valence
Attitude Audience size
Attachment
Activity

Fig. 1 Conceptual model

product or a brand (e.g., selection of movies, Godes & Mayzlin, 2009; website
visits, Trusov et al., 2009). In addition, WOM will affect product awareness,
product trial intent (Van den Bulte & Wuyts, 2009), and purchase decision
(Bughin et al., 2010). As a result, it has been reported that WOM commu-
nications influence nearly 70% of all buying decisions (Balter, 2008) and are
considered the primary driving force of sales in two-thirds of all industries
(Dye, 2000).
The emergence of new media, which provides all consumers a venue to
distribute and broadcast their individual ideas and opinions, has amplified the
role of WOM in marketing (Wilson et al., 2012). Electronic word-of-mouth
(eWOM) has become a common way of communicating and exchanging
product-related information in the virtual community (Blazevic et al., 2013).
eWOM is defined as “any positive or negative statement made by poten-
tial, actual, or former customers about a product or company, which is made
available to a multitude of people and institutions via the Internet” (Hennig-
Thurau et al., 2004, p. 39). Within the context of interactive marketing, new
media has certainly transformed how information is transmitted and received,
and eWOM has become a concept of great strategic importance for most
companies. For example, Forbes magazine calls eWOM the most important
social media for marketers (Whitler, 2014). Eisingerich et al. (2014), in their
survey among 30 senior executives in various industries, find that 82% of the
152 Y. YOU AND Y. HE

managers actively and systematically encouraged their customers to recom-

mend their company to others. As a result, eWOM has become an important
agenda in marketing research (Chan & Ngai, 2011), and marketing scholars
have examined the impact of eWOM in a variety of contexts including social
networking sites (Trusov et al., 2009), product reviews (Tirunillai & Tellis,
2012), discussion forums (Andreassen & Streukens, 2009), and blogs (Dhar &
Chang, 2009).

2.2 WOM Research and Branding

With regard to WOM research, prior research has examined the effects of
WOM characteristics, including modality, valence, and audience size, among
others, on WOM generation and transmission. First, prior research has inves-
tigated the effect of changing communication channels on WOM generation
and transmission (e.g., Berger & Iyengar, 2013; Eelen et al., 2017; Eisin-
gerich et al., 2015; Klesse et al., 2015). One important difference is that online
communication provides consumers more time to think about what to say and
what not to say (Berger & Iyengar, 2013; Eisingerich et al., 2015), whereas
offline communication tends to be more spontaneous (Klesse et al., 2015),
and therefore, people often speak about what comes to mind without much
deliberation (Berger & Schwartz, 2011). Second, prior research has examined
different ways under which positive vs. negative WOM is generated, trans-
mitted, and received by consumers (e.g., Bi et al., 2018; Mafael et al., 2016;
Rodríguez-Torrico et al., 2021; Wakefield & Wakefield, 2017). For instance,
De Angelis et al. (2012) demonstrate that consumers are more likely to share
positive than negative WOM during the WOM generation stage, but they
share more negative than positive WOM during the transmission stage. Third,
marketing researchers have also highlighted the importance of audience size in
determining the underlying process by which people spread WOM (Barasch &
Berger, 2014; Ju et al., 2017) For example, Barasch and Berger (2014) suggest
that the ways consumers transmit WOM largely depend on the size of the
audience, in that they often share information to make them look good via
broadcasting (i.e., communicating to a large audience), while they usually
share information to help others through narrowcasting (i.e., communicating
to a small audience).
As another important area of WOM research, previous research has studied
a variety of antecedents to WOM activities, such as content characteristics
(Akpinar & Berger, 2017; Berger & Milkman, 2012), product characteris-
tics (Nguyen & Chaudhuri, 2019), source characteristics (Muda & Hamzah,
2021; Shen, 2021; Wien, 2019), and incentive characteristics (López et al.,
2021). Findings show that emotional appeals are more likely to be shared
than informative appeals (Akpinar & Berger, 2017), as well as positive content
is more likely to be transmitted than negative content and this difference is
partially driven by physiological arousal (Berger & Milkman, 2012). More
innovative products generate more eWOM volume, but surprisingly less
 7 HOW BRANDS DRIVE ELECTRONIC WORD-OF-MOUTH … 153

positive sentiment (Nguyen & Chaudhuri, 2019). Providing non-monetary

incentives such as a product free of charge increases the likelihood to spread
eWOM, while monetary incentives could have an indirect negative impact
on eWOM intention (López et al., 2021). Among the four types of micro-
influencers, market mavens and their online messages have the highest impact
on consumer engagement on social media (Shen, 2021).
Within this research area, there is yet another important research stream
that specifically evaluates the effects of brand relationship and brand charac-
teristics on how WOM is generated, transmitted, and received by consumers
(Eelen et al., 2017; Karjaluoto et al., 2016; Lovett et al., 2013; Paharia
et al., 2014; Torres et al., 2019). Given the increasingly prominent role of
branding in the general marketing research and practice, an increasing amount
of scholarly effort has been put into exploring the relationship between how
consumers respond to a brand (e.g., how consumers think, feel, and do
about a brand) and their WOM generation and transmission. These consumer
responses to a brand are typically captured in brand-knowledge structures.
While a number of different knowledge structures have been proposed by
marketing researchers, in this chapter, the authors apply the “Five As” model
put forward by Keller and Lehmann (2006, p. 745) to comprehensively
synthesize the marketing literature on the relationship between branding and
WOM. The “Five As” model includes five aspects of consumer responses to a
brand that form a hierarchy as follows:

a. awareness (ranging from recognition to recall);

b. associations (encompassing tangible and intangible product or service
considerations);
c. attitude (ranging from acceptability to attraction);
d. attachment (ranging from loyalty to addiction);
e. activity (including purchase and consumption frequency and involvement
with the marketing program, other customers through WOM, etc., or
the company).

Building upon the “Five As” model, the wealth of marketing literature on
branding and WOM has generally suggested that all the five different levels in
brand-knowledge structures in the mind of consumers will jointly shape WOM
generation and transmission. In what to follow, the authors will describe the
complexity of these important relationships in detail.
Brand Awareness and Associations Brand memory and associations are
essential in providing information cues to WOM generation. For example,
in a seminal research conducted by Lovett et al. (2013), based on a dataset
on online and offline WOM and characteristics for more than 600 of the
most talked-about U.S. brands, the authors identified a set of 13 brand char-
acteristics that stimulate WOM. These characteristics are grouped into three
categories, namely, social (quality, differentiation, premium/value, relevance,
154 Y. YOU AND Y. HE

and visibility), emotional (excitement, satisfaction, perceived risk, and involve-

ment), and functional (age, complexity, type of good, knowledge, perceived
risk, and involvement). The findings show that whereas the social and func-
tional drivers are the most important for online WOM, the emotional driver
is the most important for offline WOM. Other research has also demonstrated
that perceived brand authenticity, social exclusion, and brand strength increase
positive WOM (Kumar & Kaushal, 2021; Wymer & Casidy, 2019).
Recent research has also examined the effect of brand positioning on WOM
intention and behavior. To illustrate, He et al. (2020) evaluate the effect of
underdog versus top dog brand positioning on different stages of eWOM
generation, from mental representation (i.e., eWOM intention) to action
implementation (i.e., eWOM behavior) and the underlying mechanism. The
findings show that an underdog (versus top dog) positioning leads to higher
eWOM intention, whereas its effect on actual eWOM behavior demonstrates
a reverse pattern. Paharia et al. (2014) show that positioning brands against
large competitors, that is, highlighting a large competitor’s size and close prox-
imity can help smaller brands receive more positive eWOM through online
reviews.
Brand Attitude Research in WOM generally suggests a U-shaped relation-
ship between brand attitude and consumers’ likelihood of sharing information
about a brand with other consumers (Anderson, 1998). Prior research has
suggested that consumers are likely to talk about a brand they like as a form of
reciprocating for previous benefits the brand provided (Berger, 2014; Hennig-
Thurau et al., 2004). On the other hand, as consumers’ negative attitude
toward a brand becomes more negative, their desire to vent is likely to increase;
as a result, negative attitude corresponds to negative WOM (Berger, 2014;
Hennig-Thurau et al., 2004). When it comes to sharing with brands, Hydock
et al. (2020) find a hockey stick-shaped relationship between brand attitude
and sharing with brands. Those with positive attitudes (vs. neutral attitude)
are more likely to share their opinion, but those with negative attitudes do not
show a similar increase in sharing. Mafael et al. (2016) examine the impact of
pre-existing brand attitudes on consumer processing of eWOM. Consumers
perceive positive (negative) arguments in online reviews as more (less) persua-
sive when having a positive (negative) attitude toward the brand. Perceived
persuasiveness in turn influences behavioral intentions. In other words, brand
attitude amplifies the positive (negative) effects of positive (negative) eWOM
on subsequent consumer behavioral intentions.
Brand Attachment Marketing researchers are paying increasing attention
to the relationship between brand attachment and WOM. Overall, numerous
marketing studies have provided compelling empirical evidence supporting
the connection between strong positive brand relationships/attachments and
offline WOM and eWOM. Examples of these strong positive brand relation-
ships include brand love (Batra et al., 2012; Kaiser et al., 2020; Karjaluoto
et al., 2016), brand passion (Albert et al., 2013), brand trust and commit-
ment (Akrout & Nagy, 2018), and brand loyalty (Eelen et al., 2017). It is also
 7 HOW BRANDS DRIVE ELECTRONIC WORD-OF-MOUTH … 155

worth noting that brand loyalty is less positively related to spreading eWOM
than in-person WOM (Eelen et al., 2017). You et al. (2021) further suggest
that the nature of brand relationships and ease of sharing jointly shape eWOM
generation. They find that when sharing is difficult, compared to those in a
communal brand relationship, consumers in an exchange brand relationship
are more likely to generate eWOM. Conversely, when sharing is easy and self-
brand connection is deep, consumers in a communal brand relationship are
more likely to contribute eWOM than those in an exchange brand relation-
ship. Tuškej et al. (2013) show that congruity of consumers and brand values
tends to have positive influence on consumers’ identification. Consumers who
identify with a brand tend to commit stronger to a brand and generate positive
WOM.
More interestingly, positive consumer-brand relationships will make a brand
become potentially more resilient in the face of negative WOM or a brand
crisis. To illustrate, Wilson et al. (2017) show that when self-brand connec-
tion is high, consumers process negative WOM defensively—a process that
actually increases their behavioral intentions toward the brand. Baghi and
Gabrielli (2021) find that self-brand connection protects the brand when it
is involved in a performance-related crisis, although it does increase people’s
negative WOM when the brand is involved in a values-related crisis. Augusto
et al. (2019) show that customer-brand identification can be combined with
eWOM to achieve high resilience to negative information.
Besides the benefits that come with positive brand relationships, branding
researchers have also provided important findings that help marketing
managers to carefully consider the danger of negative brand relationships,
such as brand hate. For example, Curina et al. (2020) show that brand hate
positively influences offline negative WOM and online complaining. Other
research (Kähr et al., 2016) has reported a new type of more alarming nega-
tive consumer behavior, which seems to be an extreme form of negative WOM
driven by brand hate. That is, consumers who have turned hostile and who are
strongly determined to cause damage to the brand. Empowered by new tech-
nological possibilities, an individual consumer can now wreak havoc on a brand
with relatively little effort. This phenomenon is termed “consumer brand
sabotage,” and the authors have urged marketing managers to be mindful of
destructive nature of consumer brand sabotage and provided suggestions to
detect and prevent consumer brand sabotage before it occurs.
Brand Activity Consumer brand activity/experience is often considered the
most important part of brand knowledge used by consumers to generate the
actual content of WOM. Klein et al. (2016) find that pop-up brand stores’
hedonic shopping value, store uniqueness, and store atmosphere increase
consumers’ WOM toward the brand. Brand experience mediates the effect
of these pop-up brand store characteristics on WOM. Wakefield and Wake-
field (2017) find that consumers composing eWOM about a negative brand
encounter experience anxiety, and the anxiety relates to online impression
management. As the brand experience stimulates anxiety (and negativity)
156 Y. YOU AND Y. HE

while messages are being composed, consumer anxiety leads to the altering
of message availability. Table 1 summarizes relevant research on branding and
WOM.

3 Overview of Interactive
Marketing Environment
Interactive marketing is defined as “the bi-directional value creation
and mutual-influence marketing process through active customer connec-
tion, engagement, participation and interaction” (Wang, 2021). Recently,
marketing communication media and distribution channels has become more
interactive as a result of technological advancements, social media revolution,
and participatory culture (Malthouse & Hofacker, 2010; Wang, 2021). In this
chapter, the authors provide an overview of these environmental factors that
reshape interaction marketing.
First, new age technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality
(VR), and augmented reality (AR) have expanded the scale and scope of
interactive marketing. In particular, these technologies have reshaped brand-
consumer interactive relations and improved consumers’ shopping experience
with portable and wearable devices and highly interactive virtual connec-
tions (Flavián et al., 2019). Second, social media platform revolution as
reflected in the advent and development of interactive social shopping sites
and virtual brand communities has facilitated a new business ecosystem for
customer connections and communications. The evolution of digital platforms
has helped build a complex network of producers and consumers in an inter-
connected ecosystem and allowed for a greater level of brand-consumer and
consumer–consumer interactions and engagement. Finally, due to digital tech-
nologies, the growing participatory culture including digital influencers and
virtual influencers has promoted active consumer engagement, which improves
consumer-brand relationships. Table 2 provides a detailed summary of each
element of interactive marketing environment discussed.

4 Future Research Questions

While the relationships between various brand factors and WOM have been
investigated extensively in the literature as discussed earlier, the evolution of
the interactive marketing environment offers great opportunities to under-
stand whether and how these new environmental factors would moderate
the brands-eWOM relationships. Hence, our conceptual framework high-
lights the important role of new interactive marketing environmental elements
such as new age technologies (e.g., AI, VR, AR), platform revolution (e.g.,
social shopping sites, virtual brand communities), and participatory culture
(e.g., digital influencers, virtual influencers) in moderating the relationships
between brand characteristics and eWOM generation and transmission. Next,
this chapter will present relevant real-world examples and propose research
Table 1 Summary of selected studies of how brands drive WOM

Studies Operationalization of Brand factor Research context Key theories Key findings
WOM

Akrout and WOM intention Brand relationship quality Facebook Social exchange Trust and
Nagy (2018) theory; Uses and commitment
gratifications theory developed within the
7

brand fan page will

be transformed into
positive WOM for
the respective brand
if fans have a strong
relationship quality
with the brand
Albert et al. WOM behavior Brand passion Participants’ favored Consumer-brand relationship Brand passion
(2013) brands of their own paradigm; Relationship depends on brand
choice quality theory identification and, to
a lesser degree, on
brand trust. Brand
passion relates
positively to WOM
Augusto et al. eWOM behavior Resilience to negative Airline industry Social identity theory, Customer-brand
(2019) information cognitive dissonance theory, identification can be
and self-perception theory combined with
eWOM to achieve
high resilience to
negative information

(continued)
HOW BRANDS DRIVE ELECTRONIC WORD-OF-MOUTH …
157
Table 1 (continued)
158

Studies Operationalization of Brand factor Research context Key theories Key findings
WOM

Baghi and Negative WOM intention Self-brand connectedness Fashion brands Brand crisis, values-related Self-brand
Gabrielli (2021) crisis, and connection protects
performance-related crisis the brand when it is
involved in a
Y. YOU AND Y. HE

performance-related
crisis, although it
does increase
people’s negative
WOM when the
brand is involved in
a values-related crisis
Batra et al. WOM behavior Brand love Study 1: Loved and Grounded theory, triangular The nature and
(2012) not-loved items, as theory of interpersonal love consequences of
well as interpersonal brand love. Brand
and non-interpersonal love leads to brand
love; Study 2: loyalty, WOM, and
Interpersonal love and resistance to
consumer choice loved negative information
brands (e.g., Apple,
Victoria’s Secret)
Studies Operationalization of Brand factor Research context Key theories Key findings
WOM

Curina et al. Online/offline WOM Brand hate Service products Consumer culture theory, Brand hate positively
(2020) behavior consumer-brand relationships influences offline
negative
word-of-mouth
(NWOM), online
7

complaining, and
non-repurchase
intention
Dalman et al. WOM intention Brand failure (higher vs. Technological Brand equity and innovation Among higher-OL
(2020) lower equity) products failures, negative WOM and (opinion leadership)
the desire to be opinion consumers,
leaders, the role of higher-equity brands
consumer testimonials attract more (less)
NWOM than
lower-equity brands
in the absence
(presence) of
testimonials
Eelen et al. In-person WOM; eWOM Brand loyalty CPG brands Brand loyalty and WOM Brand loyalty is less
(2017) intention positively related to
spreading eWOM
than in-person
WOM

(continued)
HOW BRANDS DRIVE ELECTRONIC WORD-OF-MOUTH …
159
Table 1 (continued)
160

Studies Operationalization of Brand factor Research context Key theories Key findings
WOM

He et al. WOM intention/behavior Underdog (vs. top dog) A learning website and Lay theory of achievement An underdog (versus
(2020) (whether shared online) brand positioning Kickstarter (incremental/entity) top dog) positioning
(Crowd-funding leads to higher
platform) eWOM intention,
Y. YOU AND Y. HE

whereas its effect on

actual eWOM
behavior
demonstrates a
reverse pattern.
Consumer lay theory
of achievement
moderates the effect
of brand positioning
on WOM behavior
Studies Operationalization of Brand factor Research context Key theories Key findings
WOM

Hydock et al. WOM behavior Brand Study 1: On-campus The effect of attitude on A hockey
(2020) feedback/consumer-to-brand retailer sharing, the effect of the stick-shaped
sharing Study 2: Wireless aversion to criticize on relationship between
service provider sharing with brands brand attitude and
Study 3: Tech sharing with brands.
7

companies Those with positive

Study 4: Cable attitudes (vs. neutral
company attitudes) are more
Study 5: Wireless likely to share their
service provider opinion, but those
Study 6: with negative
TV/electronics retailer attitudes do not
Study 7: show a similar
Cable/internet increase in sharing
company

(continued)
HOW BRANDS DRIVE ELECTRONIC WORD-OF-MOUTH …
161
Table 1 (continued)
162

Studies Operationalization of Brand factor Research context Key theories Key findings
WOM

Kähr et al. WOM behavior Consumer brand sabotage Qualitative Interviews: Aggression and appraisal A conceptual
(2016) Real cases of negative theories; General Aggression framework for
WOM, boycott Model (GAM) consumer brand
activities, or customer sabotage: Consumers
Y. YOU AND Y. HE

retaliation who have turned

Preliminary Study 1: hostile and who are
Real cases of negative strongly determined
consumer to cause damage to
behavior/TripAdvisor the brand.
Preliminary Study 2: Empowered by new
Clothing brand technological
(fictitious) possibilities, an
individual consumer
can now wreak
havoc on a brand
with relatively little
effort
Karjaluoto et al. Offline WOM intention; Brand love Consumer brands; Brand love and WOM Brand love is
(2016) eWOM intention Facebook positively associated
with offline WOM
and eWOM
Studies Operationalization of Brand factor Research context Key theories Key findings
WOM

Klein et al. WOM intention Pop-up brand Luxury car retail Brand experience in luxury Pop-up brand stores’
(2016) stores/experiential retail, characteristics of hedonic shopping
retail/brand experience pop-up brand stores, WOM value, store
for luxury brands uniqueness, and
store atmosphere
7

increase consumer
(WOM) intentions
toward the brand.
Brand experience
mediates the effect
of these pop-up
brand store
characteristics on
WOM
Kumar and WOM behavior Psychological brand Automobile industry Psychological ownership Both perceived
Kaushal (2021) ownership; perceived brand theory, extant theory, brand authenticity
authenticity; and social psychological reactance and social exclusion
exclusion theory, brand authenticity engender a sense of
theory psychological brand
ownership. In
addition, the
findings also lend
support to positive
WOM and purchase
intentions as the
outcomes of
psychological brand
HOW BRANDS DRIVE ELECTRONIC WORD-OF-MOUTH …

ownership
163

(continued)
Table 1 (continued)
164

Studies Operationalization of Brand factor Research context Key theories Key findings
WOM

Lovett et al. Offline WOM/eWOM Social, emotional, and Consumer and service Brand characteristics and Social and functional
(2013) behavior (# of mentions) functional brand brands, sports teams, WOM brand characteristics
characteristics and TV shows are most important
for online WOM,
Y. YOU AND Y. HE

while the emotional

brand characteristics
are most important
for offline WOM
Mafael et al. eWOM behavior Biased assimilation Study 1 and 2: Biased assimilation theory, Consumers perceive
(2016) McDonald’s dual process theory positive (negative)
Study 3a and 3b: arguments in online
Abercrombie & Fitch reviews as more
(less) persuasive
when having a
positive (negative)
attitude toward the
brand. Perceived
persuasiveness in
turn influences
behavioral intentions
Paharia et al. WOM behavior (# of Brand positioning Yelp Positioning and branding Highlighting a large
(2014) reviews) competitor’s size
and close proximity
gets more online
reviews for smaller
brands
Studies Operationalization of Brand factor Research context Key theories Key findings
WOM

Tuškej et al. WOM behavior Consumer-brand Consumers’ favorite Identification theory, social
Congruity of
(2013) identification/brand brand identity theory, consumer and brand
relationships self-congruity theory, values tends to have
organizational identity a positive influence
theory on consumers’
7

identification.
Consumers who
identify with a brand
tend to commit
stronger to a brand
and generate
positive WOM
Wakefield and eWOM behavior Anxiety and ephemeral Study 1: Consumers’ Stimulus-Organism-Response Consumers
Wakefield 2017) (self-deleting) social media favorite professional Theory composing eWOM
sports team from any about a negative
of the professional brand encounter
leagues experience anxiety,
Study 2: Six brand and the anxiety
categories (clothing, relates to online
automobiles, and impression
restaurants) and management. As the
experience goods brand experience
(banks, insurance, and stimulates anxiety
hotels) (and negativity)
while messages are
being composed,
consumer anxiety
HOW BRANDS DRIVE ELECTRONIC WORD-OF-MOUTH …

leads to the altering

of message
165

availability

(continued)
Table 1 (continued)
166

Studies Operationalization of Brand factor Research context Key theories Key findings
WOM

Wilson et al. eWOM behavior Self-brand connection Study 1: Clothing Self-brand connection, Self-brand
(2017) brands homophily, susceptibility to connection is high,
Study 2: Smartphones informational influence, consumers process
Study 3: Hotels product life cycle, product NWOM
Y. YOU AND Y. HE

familiarity, brand strength defensively—a

process that actually
increases their
behavioral intentions
toward the brand
ara>
Wymer and WOM behavior Brand strength Study 1: Coke Brand strength Brand familiarity has
Casidy (2019) Study 2: T-Mobile inter-dimensional dynamics, an antecedent
brand equity, nomological influence on brand
net, social learning theory, attitude and brand
social cognitive theory remarkability, and
that the influence of
brand strength on
WOM is partially
mediated by brand
preference
Studies Operationalization of Brand factor Research context Key theories Key findings
WOM

You et al. eWOM behavior Brand relationship norms Study 1: Instagram Brand relationship norms When sharing is
(2021) social media campaign between consumers and difficult, compared
for the learning brands, ease of sharing of to those in a
website online content communal
Study 2: Twitter relationship,
7

consumers in an
exchange
relationship are
more likely to
generate eWOM and
pay a higher price
premium.
Conversely, when
sharing is easy and
the self-brand
connection is deep,
consumers in a
communal
relationship are
more likely to
contribute eWOM
and a higher WTP
than those in an
exchange
relationship

(continued)
HOW BRANDS DRIVE ELECTRONIC WORD-OF-MOUTH …
167
Table 1 (continued)
168

Studies Operationalization of Brand factor Research context Key theories Key findings
WOM

Zhang et al. WOM/eWOM behavior Brand heritage China’s time-honored Stimulus-organism-response Positive antecedent
(2021) catering brands theory, consumer behavior of brand authenticity
theory, brand management for customers’
theory, cultural theory in-person WOM and
Y. YOU AND Y. HE

eWOM. The path is

influenced by the
mediation
mechanisms of
response (awakening
of interest),
cognition (brand
experience), and
affection (brand
identification)
 7 HOW BRANDS DRIVE ELECTRONIC WORD-OF-MOUTH … 169

Table 2 Summary of elements of interactive marketing environment

Element of Definition Key benefits to brands Real-world examples

interactive marketing and consumers
environment

New age technologies

AI AI “refers to • Gain insights on • Amazon’s
programs, algorithms, consumer behaviors, Personalize
systems and machines usage, and • Roomba vacuum
that demonstrate preferences cleaner
intelligence” • Improve customer • Robot dog Aibo
(Shankar, 2018), with experience by
the ability to process offering
large amounts of data personalized
and recognize recommendations,
patterns in the data, communications,
and learn from and feedback to
experience, adjust to consumers
new inputs and • “Word-of-machine”
perform human-like effect stems from a
tasks lay belief that AI
recommenders are
more competent
than human
recommenders in
the utilitarian realm
and less competent
than human
recommenders in
the hedonic realm
(Longoni & Cian,
2022)
VR VR is a simulated • Allow consumers to • Oculus Quest
experience that experience and test • HTC Vive Pro
typically uses a products or services Eye
wearable device such in 3D in real time, • Sony Playstation
as headsets to which enhances
generate realistic their product
images, sounds, and knowledge,
other sensations that curiosity, and
to immerse users in enjoyment during
virtual, often the process
entertaining 3-D • Upgrade and enrich
worlds (e.g., virtual consumption for
videogames) (Hoyer consumers
et al., 2020)

(continued)
170 Y. YOU AND Y. HE

Table 2 (continued)

Element of Definition Key benefits to brands Real-world examples

interactive marketing and consumers
environment

AR AR is an interactive • Create novel and • IKEA’s Place

experience of a engaging • L’Oreal’s Virtual
real-world experiences for Try-On feature
environment where consumers • LEGO’s Hidden
the objects that reside • Help consumers Side
in the real world are better understand
enhanced by complex
computer-generated mechanisms and
perceptual product value
information, typically • Increase the
using sensors and confidence in
object recognition consumer purchase
capabilities from decisions
input devices such as
cameras (Tan et al.,
2022)
Platform revolution
Social shopping sites Social shopping sites • Facilitate two-way • Instagram
are online shopping communications • Etsy
platforms that allow between brands and • Fancy
for consumers • Wanelo
customer-to-customer • Help customers to
interactions and make informed
influence. On social purchase decisions
shopping sites, users • Improve customer
can interact with each experience through
other by providing consumer-to-
likes or comments, consumer
and either purchase communications
directly on the and connections
website or click on an
image to purchase
from a retail partner
(Weeks et al., 2021)

(continued)

questions on each of these interactive marketing environment elements in our

framework.

4.1 Future Research Questions on New Age Technologies: AI

• Real-world example: In 2019, Amazon launched Personalize, a fully
managed AI-powered recommendation service, which facilitates the
development of websites, mobile apps, and content management and
 7 HOW BRANDS DRIVE ELECTRONIC WORD-OF-MOUTH … 171

Table 2 (continued)

Element of Definition Key benefits to brands Real-world examples

interactive marketing and consumers
environment

Virtual brand Virtual brand • Create a two-way • Nike Run

communities communities are relationship between • Sephora Beauty
“specialized, brands and Insider
non-geographically consumers Community
bound online • Reinforce brand • My Starbucks Idea
communities based positioning by • Kraft Recipes
on social co-creating brand
communications and meanings through
relationships among a consumer
brand’s consumers” engagement with
(De Valck et al., brand content
2009) • Enhance consumer
brand loyalty
Participatory culture
Digital influencers Digital influencers are • Help brands to • Tim "Shmee"
individuals who have build relationship, Burton
established credibility trust, and credibility (Automotive
with large social with consumers by vlogger)
media audiences providing authentic • Huda Kattan
because of their and engaging (Makeup artist
knowledge and content and blogger)
expertise on particular • Better reach out to
topics, and thereby target consumers
exert a significant and connect to
influence on their wider consumer
followers’ and peer segments
consumers’ decisions
(Ki & Kim, 2019)
Virtual influencers A virtual influencer is • Improve the • Gorillaz
a computer-generated stability of brand • Miquela Sousa
fictional character that image through the • Shudu Gram
is used in social control of brand
media marketing as a communication
substitute for a • Help brands to
human “influencer” develop stronger
relationship with
consumers

email marketing systems that suggest products, provide tailored search

results, and customize funnels on the fly (Wiggers, 2019).
• Suggested research questions:
– How does AI technology moderate the impact of brand-consumer
relationship on eWOM generation?
172 Y. YOU AND Y. HE

– How does the interplay between different types of AI technology

(e.g., physical robot or embedded algorithm) and brand-consumer
relationship jointly affect eWOM generation and transmission?
– How does AI technology interact with brand attachment to affect
eWOM valence?

4.2 Future Research Questions on New Age Technologies: VR

• Real-world example: In 2015, Marriott International launches VRoom
Service, a virtual reality experience in its hotels. VRoom Service allows
guests to test the product by ordering the valise containing a Samsung
Gear VR headset. The headset and earphones transport the guest to
another dimension for 25 hours, the rental period of the device (Marriott,
2015).
• Suggested research questions:
– How does VR experience influence the relationships between
different brand emotional characteristics (e.g., excitement, satisfac-
tion, involvement) and consumer eWOM?
– How does the valence (i.e., positive or negative) of VR experience
affect the link between brand relationships and eWOM?
– How does VR experience affect the impact of perceived brand
authenticity on eWOM valence?

4.3 Future Research Questions on New Age Technologies: AR

• Real-world example: In 2017, IKEA launched IKEA Place, a new AR
application that allows users to test IKEA’s products in real time. Users
can browse through over 2,000 IKEA products on an online database to
make their selections. IKEA Place can also save each user’s favorite prod-
ucts, share their selections on social media, and facilitate direct purchases
through the IKEA website (Ayoubi, 2017).
• Suggested research questions:
– Does AR application affect the way brand experience drives eWOM?
– How does AR technology moderate the relationship between
brand functional characteristics (e.g., complexity, perceived risk) and
eWOM?
– How does AR application interact with brand positioning to affect
eWOM?

4.4 Future Research Questions on Platform Revolution: Social

Shopping Sites
• Real-world example: MAC, a luxury cosmetic brand, launched the
stellar Instagram hashtag campaign where the brand’s senior makeup
artists introduced #SeniorArtistsSlayHalloween. This Instagram hashtag
 7 HOW BRANDS DRIVE ELECTRONIC WORD-OF-MOUTH … 173

campaign encourages fans and makeup artists to use MAC’s products,

and share creative Halloween looks and new style in makeup (Morris,
2021).
• Suggested research questions:
– How do social shopping sites promote the impact of brand love
(hate) on positive (negative) eWOM?
– Do different social shopping sites have differentiated effects on the
relationship between brand loyalty and eWOM?
– What are the most effective recommendation and referral tools
of social shopping sites to facilitate the driving force of brand
attachment on eWOM?

4.5 Future Research Questions on Platform Revolution: Virtual Brand

Communities
• Real-world example: In 2017, Sephora launched a new online and app-
based tool called the Beauty Insider Community, which consists of
five responsive features aimed to give virtual customers an open line
of communication to its experts and fellow shoppers. The goal is to
empower customers to create a better shopping experience and make
informed product choices (Arneson, 2017).
• Suggested research questions:
– How can brand positioning be strengthened through building
virtual communities and its impact on consumer eWOM?
– Do virtual brand communities moderate the relationship between
brand attitude and positive/negative eWOM?
– How do virtual brand communities interact with brand attachment
to drive eWOM within different channels?

4.6 Future Research Questions on Participatory Culture: Digital

Influencers
• Real-world example: Baggit, a handbag brand from India, launched an
influencer campaign to engage their audience and build interaction with
them. The influencers (bloggers) showcased the product by carrying a
Baggit handbag throughout the event and shared the story behind their
new handbag collection. The brand created a pre-buzz on social media
with their set of bloggers from Mumbai, where they shared their tweets
using #PlayTheLifeGame (Sabharwal, 2021).
• Suggested research questions:
– How do digital influencers facilitate the impact of consumer-brand
identification on eWOM?
174 Y. YOU AND Y. HE

– How do digital influencers affect the role of social and emotional

brand characteristics on eWOM components (e.g., audience size;
valence; online vs. offline)?
– How do different types of digital influencers (e.g., micro-
influencers, macro-influencers, mega-influencers) affect the relation-
ship between brand passion on eWOM?

4.7 Future Research Questions on Participatory Culture: Virtual

Influencers
• Real-world example: In 2021, a virtual influencer, Reah Keem, intro-
duced the LG Electronics’ latest products during the company’s virtual
press conference. Keem is a 23-year-old musician and her name means
“a child from the future.“ She has thousands of followers and interacts
with consumers on Instagram and Twitter. LG Electronics worked with
Keem to reach the MZ generation, the combination of millennials and
Generation Z, or those born between 1980 and 2000 (Lee, 2021).
• Suggested research questions:
– Do virtual influencers dilute the positive effect of perceived brand
authenticity on eWOM?
– How do virtual influencers interact with brand loyalty to drive
eWOM?
– How do different forms of influencers (e.g., virtual influencers
vs. digital influencers) moderate the relationship between brand
relationships and eWOM?

5 Conclusion
In the field of interactive marketing, many have observed transformational
changes as a result of many emerging phenomena, such as new technolo-
gies (e.g., AI, AR, VR), platform revolution (e.g., social shopping sites,
virtual brand communities), and participatory culture (e.g., digital influencers,
virtual influencers). How can brand managers leverage these phenomena to
encourage positive eWOM generation and transmission for their brands? To
answer this question, this chapter first synthesizes the extant literature on the
relationships between a variety of branding factors and WOM using the “Five
As” brand-knowledge structures model (i.e., awareness, associations, atti-
tude, attachment, and activity; Keller & Lehmann, 2006). Then, the chapter
provides an overview of these emerging phenomena with illustrative real-
world examples, and suggests potential future research questions. The authors
link brand characteristics and relationships, new interactive marketing envi-
ronmental elements, and eWOM in a comprehensive conceptual model, and
propose opportunities to explore complex interplays among these constructs.
In doing so, the authors offer managerial guidance to brand managers to take
the advantage of such a new interactive marketing environment to promote
 7 HOW BRANDS DRIVE ELECTRONIC WORD-OF-MOUTH … 175

consumer online engagement, and provide a roadmap to guide future research

effort in this line of inquiry.

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 PART II

Technology Development and Interactive

Marketing
 CHAPTER 8

Technological Innovations in Interactive

Marketing: Enhancing Customer Experience
at the New Retail Age

Sahil Singh Jasrotia

1 Introduction
The advancements in new technologies, including artificial intelligence
(Manser Payne et al., 2021), virtual reality and augmented reality (Chiang &
Chung, 2021) (Kim et al., 2021) and Smart speakers (Chen et al., 2021;
Hsieh & Lee, 2021) and chatbot (Tsai et al., 2021), big data and machine
learning (Yu, 2021), etc., the retail sector has moved from a traditional brick
and mortar store to an online to mobile and voice-based platforms to the
Omni-channel retailing (Wang, 2021). Even the shopping from E-commerce
has started shifting towards Social Commerce and Mobile Commerce (Wang,
2021). There have been many technological transformations, and in the
upcoming times, there will be many more advanced technologies impacting
the retail world (Zaki, 2019). The covid-19 pandemic caused major disrup-
tions around the world and businesses were rocked by its impact. However,
the disruption in businesses brought in many new innovations in both digital
and physical retail stores and it became incumbent for both small and large
retailers to adopt new technologies to survive in the competitive market.
Digital marketing has made the decision-making process easy (Dahiya &
Gayatri, 2021). Now people can make many intelligent decisions; they can get
an update on the market with just a few clicks and research. People across the

S. S. Jasrotia (B)
Jaipuria Institute of Management, Indore, India
e-mail: sahiljasrotia93@gmail.com

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 183

Switzerland AG 2023
C. L. Wang (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Interactive Marketing,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14961-0_8
184 S. S. JASROTIA

globe are still afraid to buy products or services online, and this trend has been
changing recently (Guru et al., 2020).
Nevertheless, the driving variables behind their transactions are the same for
buyers. People want their items as soon as possible and at a fair price (Some
may also prefer to have them shipped and ready inside their front doors). The
most popular retailers understand this and at all touchpoints offer smooth
service. Only think about it: you can now go shopping at Amazon on your
mobile, laptop, brick and mortar store (with a summer order of about $13.7
billion from the Whole Foods grocery chain), or by Alexa. Shoppers shift and
forth between these numerous touchpoints. A survey of forty thousand shop-
pers established that merely 7% shop entirely online and only 20% shop just
in stores (Sopadjieva et al., 2017). The study also found that retailers can
get more profits by proposing a unified experience to their customers across
the cell, desktop and in-store. The survey found that patrons who search
for a retailer’s website devote 13% more in-store characteristically. However,
as customers become more content with digital platforms, in-store traffic
decreases.
Digital media is a media form that comprises of various common facts
involving digitisation, content, communication and technology (Guinibert,
2022). This type of media can be produced, viewed, changed and distributed
through electronic devices. Software, video games, videos, blogs, social
networking and online ads are the most widely used interactive media (kalski
et al., 2017). Even though digital media is part of our daily culture, busi-
ness owners are still dissatisfied with digital marketing platforms replacing their
paper ads (Sharma et al., 2020). Nevertheless, with the continuous advances
in technology, one cannot ignore the impact of new media on our way of life.
It affects how we teach, entertain, publish and communicate regularly. Digital
media is moving the business world out of the industrial age and into the
information age due to this impact. We’re not writing stuff on paper with pens
anymore but talking with digital devices instead. There is very significant scope
for companies in the global market, and there are enormous opportunities for
solid penetration, with the help of factors such as population in countries like
China and India, increasing people’s buying power globally, better internet
connectivity, adoption of smartphones and increasing literacy (Amankwah-
Amoah et al., 2021). Marketers and researchers can be attributed to the
prospect of being a profitable segment in the retail sector. One way to cross
the gap is in-store technology, but online, mobile and other user interfaces
keep changing, too. The current chapter presents several global innovations
for retailers changing the game. The scope of the chapter is widespread as it
offers several implications for managers and academicians. The managers can
understand the importance of usage of innovative interactive technologies and
how with their usage.
This chapter provides an overview of the merging technological inno-
vations for interactive marketing, including physical showrooms for online
purchases, smart mirrors, virtual worlds and enhanced, checkout-free stores,
 8 TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS IN INTERACTIVE MARKETING … 185

facial recognition-based shopping, visual and voice-based search, drones and

the chatbots. The chapter is organised as follows: First, it presents a theoretical
background based on a literature review. Second, it offers some applications
of new technologies in retail industries. Third, it discussed the influences of
new technologies on retailing from an interactive marketing perspective, with
managerial implications.

2 Literature Review and Theoretical Background

Innovations are key in today’s competitive environment and the retail scenario
is ever-changing with many disruptive innovations taking place in the area.
As defined by (Nagy et al., 2016, p. 122), a disruptive innovation is “an
innovation that changes the performance metrics, or consumer expectations,
of a market by providing radically new functionality, discontinuous technical
standards, or new forms of ownership.” Interactive Marketing in the past
three decades has evolved from a basic traditional form of marketing to
the fastest developing business model which offers interactive content to its
customers. The primary reasons for the growth of interactive marketing are the
evolution and rapid development of innovative technologies. Innovations like
chatbots, messaging applications and virtual reality simulations have become
essential in today’s marketing (Wang, 2021). Interactive marketing is effec-
tive in offering tailor-made services to the customers. In varying forms, such
as social media, mobile or mobile, Interactive Marketing provides dynamic
and engaging content to users with the help of newly developed technologies
(Barger et al., 2016). Various studies have discussed innovative technologies
and how they are used in interactive marketing. (Hsieh & Lee, 2021), their
study examined how AI-enabled smart speakers are bringing a revolution in
marketing by changing how people interact with smart products. Furthermore
(Tsai et al., 2021) discussed the influences of chatbots on customer engage-
ment and how chatbots are advancing as an interactive technology. Chiang
and Chung (2021) discussed how modern retail can utilise augmented reality
and bring online customers into the retail settings; the study indicated that
augmented reality creates excitement among users and motivates them to
buy the products/services. The current chapter explores multiple innovative
technologies in retailing and how they create interactive marketing.

2.1 New Retail

New retail is a recent concept in the retailing environment that offers an
integrated delivery model uniting online, offline, supply-chains, logistics and
information of the organisation to provide an enhanced experience to the
customers (Helm et al., 2020). Brands continuously focus on shifting their
businesses from single-channel to multi-channel to further towards Omni-
channel, thus, offering more possibilities to their customers to transact. The
186 S. S. JASROTIA

more options a brand provides to its customers, the higher the chances for its
growth (Hinterhuber & Liozu, 2017).
The omni-channel model of retailing offers the consumers a shopping expe-
rience that is entirely integrated by uniting the offline, digital and every other
channel the brand is operating in (Verhoef et al., 2015). Omni-channel enables
the connection with all the checkpoints of the company, thus, offering a seam-
less experience to customers. The concept of New Retail is also similar to
omni-channel. Still, it differentiates itself from omni-channel on certain key
features that include innovativeness in delivery and experience, effective use of
technology where the concept is being applied, digitising supply chain opera-
tions, integrating the online and offline marketing, optimising speed and scale
of implementation, driving engagement and offering better brand experience.
The New retail concept stores would become the future of retail. The key
drivers will be the technological innovations and value-added services, thus,
creating a clear difference between traditional stores and new retail concept
stores.

2.2 Retail Customer Experience

Present-day retailing is symbolised by the development and emergence of
“Experience stores” across the globe (Pantano & Gandini, 2018). These expe-
rience retail stores offer pleasant shopping experiences to the customers to
enhance customer loyalty and satisfaction (Terblanche, 2018). As defined by
__ retail customer experience include all those essential elements that motivate
or prevent customers from decision making while interacting with the retailer
(Puccinelli et al., 2009). Customers involve themselves in various activities
while selecting to shop from a retail store; those activities may include ease,
post-shopping service experiences, availability of multiple products under one
roof and speed and scale of operations. Previous studies have noted a signif-
icant impact of retail service experience with enhanced sales, customer repeat
behaviour, loyalty, goodwill, reputation, word of mouth, frequent shopping
behaviour and image creation (Jalilvand et al., 2012; Walsh & Bartikowski,
2013).
Creating a superior shopping experience is essential for both brick and
mortar and digital retail stores to survive in this competitive market (Reinartz
et al., 2019). Retailers need to invest in innovative and emerging technologies
to stay competitive. With the latest technology, retailers will be able to provide
a superior customer experience and generate a loyal customer base. Techno-
logical advancements in retail will encourage more customer interaction and
involvement, thus creating an interactive environment.
Retailers need to focus on several dimensions of creating a better retail expe-
rience for their customers, and for that, they need to have a unique personality
which may make them distinctive from their competitors; many studies have
reported shopping as a leisure time activity, and thus retailers must work on
 8 TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS IN INTERACTIVE MARKETING … 187

creating some entertaining and delightful experiences resulting into pleasure

and enjoyment of shoppers.

3 Emerging Retail Innovations

for Interactive Marketing
3.1 Physical Showrooms for Online Purchases
Physical showrooms for online purchases are kinds of offline stores offered by
online retailers to provide information to their customers (Hilken et al., 2018).
These kinds of stores help the online retailers to encourage customers’ show-
rooming behaviour. Physical showrooms for online purchases are the stores
where the customers cannot make the actual purchases but can have a look
at the final product and place their orders. These stores are curated stores for
online service providers wherein they can have their physical presence. Most
customers want to see and feel the product, interact with the salesperson and
know more about it before buying it (Haridasan & Fernando, 2018). These
kinds of physical stores by online retailers offer solutions to such problems.
Companies like Lenskart in India have been pioneers in opening Phys-
ical stores where customers can try glasses and spectacles to have their frame
recommendations and order from their online website and get them deliv-
ered to their homes. They have even started with Virtual reality checks for
their customers to try and test which product suits them. Home-Décor brand
Pepperfry also follows this approach. They have recently launched its studio
stores where the customers can visit and make their purchases online after
looking at the quality and features of the product. Since there is not much
stock, such showrooms need less retail space than conventional stores, so not
much retail space is required (Bell et al., 2018). Clients can take a stab at
different items, yet they can’t leave with any. The “guide shop” of the busi-
ness has each size that customers could like, and “aides” at the stores help
them locate the best match. They need to place their orders in the shop and
convey them to their homes. The possibility of display area stores will help
pull in more youthful purchasers (Spence & Gallace, 2011). A recent KPMG
survey showed that the concept of a showroom store was liked by 55 per cent
of Millennials versus 28 per cent of Baby Boomers (KPMG, 2017).
Physical showrooms for making online purchases offer several benefits to
the customers and organisations. (i) Benefits to the customers—the major limi-
tation with just having a digital presence was that the customers could not
touch and feel the product, whereas, with these physical stores, the customers
can see the product first; identify and understand the quality and then make a
conscious decision of buying. (ii) Benefits to the organisation—the customer
conversion rate can be optimised, lesser returns; thus saving the costs, better
customer loyalty can be created and the concept may help generate more sales.
188 S. S. JASROTIA

3.2 The Smart Mirrors

Smart mirrors are an interactive technology that offers a real-world environ-
ment to the users; it enables the customers to stand in front of the mirror and
choose from the variety of products/services provided by the firm (Ogunjimi
et al., 2021). Fitting rooms are an inevitable part of shopping for garments,
but they are hated by clients (Garcia, 2016). A study by Body Labs in 2016
reported that 46 per cent of customers in a fitting room “hate” putting on
clothing (Garcia, 2016). However, according to Warn Tech, shoppers who
take a stab at garments in the store are multiple times more bound to make a
buy than the individuals who peruse products on the business floor.
The Virtual Trial Room of Zovi.com in India aims to overcome this
problem. The Trial room presents a Smart mirror to the consumers, a camera
and a screen that records a short video to give a 360-degree perspective on
how a garment resembles a dress. A one next to the other correlation of how
a customer glances in two distinct dresses is likewise introduced. Many other
companies in India are also implementing this technology in their businesses
to attract more consumers (Kamble et al., 2019).
The Ralph Lauren Polo Flagship store in the United States uses innovative
fitting stores with the smart mirrors made by Oak Labs company. The organ-
isation has installed this mirror in their physical store where customers can
see how the product looks on them. They can also change the environment
lights, and the mirror recommends different clothes and accessories according
to their body types. The organisation’s representatives say that after installing
these smart mirrors, they have seen an increase in sales up to threefold (Tagiev,
2017).
The smart mirrors offer several benefits to the customer and organisations
(i) Benefits to the Customers: It provides different product combinations to
the customers, it offers various product recommendations based on body type
and previous purchases, it provides an easy check for availability of the product,
and it displays the complete range of products that are available at the store.
(ii) Benefits to the organisations: It can help the organisation, offer to increase
their sales, new data and insights for stores and helps the organisation in
increasing their basket size.

3.3 Virtual Worlds and Enhanced

A virtual world or Virtual reality (VR) is a simulated environment created with
the help of a computer or other media, wherein the users can feel their pres-
ence (Kim et al., 2021). For example, in virtual worlds, the customers can
browse 3D images of products in a retail store, travel anywhere and check
for visual product representation if placed in different locations without phys-
ically visiting the stores. Virtual worlds are created so that they can enhance
the user’s experience (Kim et al., 2021). There is a similar issue for retailers
of bulkier items like furniture: how do customers decide how a sofa would
 8 TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS IN INTERACTIVE MARKETING … 189

look in their home environment? The response by Ikea is AR applications

that allow consumers to get a visual representation of how an object looks in
their respective homes. “You can hold the phone up, and the app will calcu,”
Burrows said. Let’s say you’ve got a six-foot gap. It’s going to offer furniture
that fits into that space, so it’s not offering an eight-foot couch.
Similarly, Tanishq, a leading Jewellery store in India, opened virtual trial
kiosks at various places like Delhi and Bangalore airports. Consumers can
virtually try jewellery as many times as they want, leading to an enhanced
customer experience.
Furthermore, RentItBae, a fashion enterprise started in 2006, aims to offer
various clothing from various brands to its customers on a rental basis. The
company has installed different AI solutions allowing the consumers to know
about the product and its prices and rental charges. The company has also
established a voice-enabled system enabling the consumers to speak their
demands to the bright screens of the company. Apple is a significant enabler
of such technology; the implementations of Ikea, Tanishq and RentItbae use
AR kit, the platform for Apple to build AR experiences.
The virtual worlds offer several benefits; it enables superior customer
service, enables better user engagement, enables higher conversion rate and
better customer retention.

3.4 Checkout-Free Stores

Checkout-free stores are a new concept in the retailing scenario wherein the
customers can choose the products from the store, pay from their mobile appli-
cation and leave the store without even standing/waiting in queues for their
billing (Spanke, 2020). These stores provide flexibility to employees to focus
on other essential areas, assist in shopping for customers and offer ease.
People in India spend around 7 hours 50 minutes daily using the Internet
on any device (Chow, 2021) but for shopping, they love to go out, but the
main point of discomfort for shoppers is waiting in queues. Indians, by one
calculation, spend most hours a year standing in lines. Although Perpule 1
Pay was released in 2017, a self-checkout app Claims that consumers can
decrease their average shopping time by 80 per cent by using their services.
The company found the issue of time being wasted by Indians by standing in
queues as a significant problem, and being a highly populous nation, the rush
in shopping malls can be too much sometimes. Perpule 1 Pay allows consumers
to scan products, pay and move out of the shopping malls without wasting
time standing in queues. Similarly, other hypermarkets in India have started
self-checkout stores to provide their consumers with a seamless experience
(Aradhana, 2016).
To make brick and mortar stores effective, retailers should utilise self-
checkout to a greater extent, a high-contact insight to redistribute their
present representatives (Jasrotia et al., 2019). It provides them with a more
significant online point of distinction. The Checkout-free stores offer several
190 S. S. JASROTIA

benefits: they provide a convenient shopping experience to the users, it saves

the customer time, as they need not stand in long queues, it saves time for
employees as they are not involved in the billing processes, and it helps in
enhancing the storage capacity.

3.5 Facial Recognition Based Shopping

Facial recognition shopping is an innovative technology in retailing where
customers can make payments for their shopping through facial recognition
(Dang et al., 2021). This system enables a cashless payment system with a
motive to reduce customer waiting time; this innovative technology would
further grow in the area of retail as it offers convenience to customers and also
relieves them from the risks of carrying cash, credit/debit cards for payment
(Dang et al., 2021).
What is more appropriate than the application-based checkouts of Perpule
1 Pay? A system where even a smartphone is not required? The catch: it’s
available only in China, but it is the future that many companies will be
eying on. In Hangzhou, China, Alibaba’s Ant Financial Unit recently initi-
ated facial recognition payment in partnership with Kentucky Fried Chicken
(KFC) (Russell, 2017). To utilise it, consumers need to glance at an in-store
stand with facial recognition technologies. Consumers should have installed
and logged in to the Alipay app, and then they can visit the stores and just
with their face, the application will deduct the payment from their account. A
3D camera is installed at KFC, and consumers have to look into the camera.
Along similar lines, the Indian Government has planned to add facial recog-
nition and iris scan in India for making digital payments which will enhance
the consumer shopping experience (Jain, 2020). The recent acceptance of
digital payments like Unified Payment Interface (UPI) is a critical indicator
that Indian consumers are willing to adopt the new technological changes.
Facial recognition-based shopping and price offers several benefits: It provides
convenience to the users, it reduces customer touchpoints, it is time-saving
and it is secure, as the picture is destroyed immediately and the data is not
shared.

3.6 Visual and Voice-Based Search

Urban youths are getting tempted to voice-based services, be it Google Assis-
tant or Amazon’s Alexa. People are using these services for playing music,
setting alarms, calling and many more. It is tempting to write off this cate-
gory because the Echo system from Amazon appears to have an early market
lead. Companies like Genie are coming up with voice-led services to offer
B2C services to the consumers. Furthermore, Delhi-based company Goldseat
offers consumers updates on destinations, offline entertainment free of cost
based on IoT services and wifi on railway stations, buses and public spaces.
 8 TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS IN INTERACTIVE MARKETING … 191

Moreover, when customers ask for generic goods, such as a new jacket or flat-
ware package, Google Home technology can recommend local distributors.
Meanwhile, Apple’s Siri calls up local stores via Apple Charts.
As the “Internet Trends Study” by Mary Meeker noted last year, voice-
based technology helps customers shop while doing household chores, driving,
or on the go. It’s a magnet for millennials, too. A new Walker Sands study
found that 43% of Millennials made a voice-based buy over the earlier year.
Customers revealed in that report that the essential motivation behind why
shoppers were careful about the voice-based hunt was assurance, protection
and the absence of visuals.
There has been a lot of exposure to voice-based communication, but
another new way for consumers to find new products is through visual search
(Pagani et al., 2019). Google unveiled Google Lens in October, enabling users
to point to an object and get an overview of it. For example, Google Lens
could reveal to her the image and where she could buy it if an individual sees
somebody wearing a decent pair of shoes.
Visual and voice-based search offers several benefits to the users and
organisations; it improves product discoverability, offers a competitive advan-
tage, provides an ease to the customer and helps the organisation increase
conversions.

3.7 The Drones

The usage of drone technology is on the rise in the area of retail. As an inno-
vative technology the retailers are using drones for majorly two purposes i.e.
for creating an integrated supply chain and enabling contactless retail experi-
ences to its customers. The drones majorly used in the retail environment are
augmented robots controlled by mobile devices and are mostly used to fulfil
last mile delivery.
The drone is a flying robot that can be remotely controlled using a software
controlled flight plan in its system (Jacob et al., 2022). Amazon indicated
starting Drone services for delivery of its products to the consumers. Since
then, many companies have been working on drone-based deliveries. In India,
Food Delivery applications like Zomato and Swiggy have started testing
drone-based delivery (Ray, 2021). Through this innovation, companies are
willing to reduce the human touch involved in the delivery of the products,
especially after Covid-19 when people are focusing majorly on their hygiene
and want reduced human touch; this innovation can prove to be a great asset
for some organisations. The Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) in
India has also given the go-ahead to these companies to operate at the virtual
sight level.
Consumers are increasingly looking for a retail experience customised to
suit their personal shopping preferences (Evanschitzky et al., 2015). Studies
show that 75% of customers are more likely to buy from a retailer who
recognises them by name and recommends alternatives based on their past
192 S. S. JASROTIA

buying history (Accenture, 2016). Brick and mortar stores aim to appeal to
the consumer needs of customers through strategies such as targeted ads and
incentive schemes to succeed.
When shopping both online and offline, the average customer now
embraces and anticipates a customised retail experience (Roy et al., 2017).
This is due to the increase in millennial purchasing power in a generation that
is more used to personalisation. Through channels such as Netflix, Spotify
and Amazon, all customers have become accustomed to personalised, tailored
digital experiences.
Using Drones services offers many advantages; It helps optimise the
customer experience, helps in ensuring safety, helps in avoiding physical touch,
is time-saving and is cost-effective.

3.8 Chatbots
A chatbot is a virtual assistant capable of having meaningful conversations with
the users (Tsai et al., 2021). The chatbots have the essence of interactive
marketing because they are highly interactive and provide two-way commu-
nication and personalised information and services. Retail companies are using
chatbots to fill the gap between online and offline experiences. Customers visit
offline stores to interact and suggest with the human workers, ask queries and
provide customer service (Vannucci & Pantano, 2020). Chatbots can replace
all these tasks, thus, bridging the online-offline gap. Many retail chains use
chatbots to stay ahead of their competitors and provide interactive solutions to
their customers. Retail giant H&M 2016 launched chatbot services allowing
the customers to see, share and purchase products from the catalogue of H&M
(Jin et al., 2019). Along similar lines, Tommy Hilfiger launched their chatbot
service wherein their chatbot would greet the user and then introduces the
user to the collection of products of the organisation (Beriault-Poirier et al.,
2019).Chatbots can provide the organisations will multiple advantages as they
can increase customer engagement, offer unrestricted 24*7 availability, provide
customised flexibility and provide smoother communication experiences to
customers.

4 Retail Innovations and Interactive Retailing

To enhance customer experiences, the retailers are innovating by
bringing interactive retailing coupled with technology as retail innovations
(Alexander & Kent, 2022). Interactive retailing involves using technology
in distinctive ways that create better engagement with customers in retail
outlets (Colombi et al., 2018). For instance, Toy retailer Hamley’s creates
an immersive experience for their prospective customers at some premium
locations where the children can explore things and play to have a motive
to visit again. The phenomenon of creating interactive retailing is common
now all over the globe, and several brands are experimenting with it (Bradlow
 8 TECHNOLOGICAL INNOVATIONS IN INTERACTIVE MARKETING … 193

et al., 2017). As the customer of today have evolved and are more aware
of technology, thus, brands must immerse themselves with technology and
change their way of interacting with customers.
Offering interactive experiences to customers makes customers’ experience
with the brand memorable. It prompts the customers to talk about it with
their social groups, helping the organisation reach a wider audience and
gain a competitive edge. Interactive retailing offers a seamless experience to
customers where the customer can have options from both online and offline
stores at once and make a wise decision based on their expertise (Shi et al.,
2020). For example, interactive displays allow customers to check a product
digitally while being present at a physical store or a physical store and buy it
online.
Interactive retailing provokes users to talk about their experiences and
create a buzz on social media and among their peers about the unique expe-
rience while interacting with the brand (Roggeveen & Sethuraman, 2020).
Interactive marketing offers various advantages to the organisation as by
providing memorable experiences, they would be able to see an increase in
footfall, helps in improving the brand reputation, interactive retailing offers
a personalised experience which further helps in improved revenues for the
organisation, provides an edge over competitors, helps in gauging customer
reactions in a better manner and thus, better marketing strategies can be made.
The manpower and other organisational resources can be used efficiently.

5 Managerial Implications
to Interactive Marketing the Retailing
This chapter offers various implications for retail managers on how they can
make effective use of technology and interactive retailing to stand out from
their competitors by providing unique brand experiences. Interactive retailing
and innovative technologies would help the retail managers create a niche
for themselves and build a loyal customer base. Since the use of technology
and creative experiences is not much in vogue in developing and emerging
economies, retailers in such nations can become pioneers and gain first-move
advantages. Adapting to innovative retail technologies would not only add to
their revenues but also help in generating goodwill for their brand. Interac-
tive retailing is getting recognition, and retailers should adapt to this with
time to sustain and grow in the market. Retail managers can use social media
as a practical part of their interactive retailing strategy and strengthen their
presence online.
Looking into the growing acceptance and growth of interactive technolo-
gies, retail managers need to instal these innovative technologies in their
businesses to survive in this environment. These interactive technologies assist
in improving the functionality of retail stores wherein ease of use and process
is offered to the customers. Smart mirrors can help the retailers in expediting
the purchase decision process of customers as fitting rooms are essential for
194 S. S. JASROTIA

buyers when they decide on apparel products; smart mirrors as an alternative

would assist in their faster decision making (Vidushi & Kashyap, 2021). Addi-
tionally, chatbots would create an interactive marketing wherein they can help
the customers in searching for the products, getting recommendations and
many more; the managers can use chatbots as an interactive tool to reduce
the limitation of human interaction prevailing with online retailers and offer
personalised services to users. Furthermore, with the help of virtual reality,
managers can enhance the immersive experiences of their customers. They can
provide them with enjoyment and curiosity about their brand leading to better
and enhanced decision making (Lavoye et al., 2021).

6 Conclusion
Retail is expected to grow exponentially, and there is a lot of scope for
managers to encash the opportunity. Consumers are shifting and adapting to
the digital world and want products and services conveniently. For buyers,
the driving variables behind their transactions are the same. People want their
items as soon as possible and at a fair price.
Some the Retail companies are finding it difficult to attract new consumers
as they don’t want to update themselves with the technology. The biggest
problem they have is to bring individuals back into shops. One of the ways
they do this is to get the digital experience into the world. Omni-Channel
retailing is one way to bridge this gap as it offers a seamless experience to the
consumers across different channels.
Companies across the globe are coming up with various innovative ideas to
sustain in the market and enhance their market share. One such technology
application may be an alternative to intelligent/smart mirrors. While some
retailers, such as H&M, have introduced innovations AI-based fitting rooms
for their customers to try on garments. Progressively, clients are looking for
a retail experience that has been adjusted to suit their very own shopping
inclinations.
The current chapter can be helpful to marketers in understanding current
market trends and take specific insights from the chapter that may be of their
help. The present chapter also adds theory in the field of retail, by offering
information on recent technologies used in the area of interactive retail which
can be helpful for various scholars.

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 CHAPTER 9

The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Interactive

Marketing: Improving Customer-Brand
Relationship

Wajeeha Aslam and Kashif Farhat

1 Introduction
Interactive marketing is a “bi-directional value generation and mutual-
influence marketing process through active consumer connection, engage-
ment, involvement, and interaction” (Wang, 2021, p. 1). The evolving
concept of “interactive marketing” forced the technologies for advancement
and innovation (Wang, 2021), and vice versa. For example, AI has brought
a significant revolution in business markets (Cheng & Jiang, 2022; Kietz-
mann & Pitt, 2020), and become a fundamental part of marketing practice.
AI-based service provides brand-related information and enables two-way
communication (Hsieh & Lee, 2021). The chatbot (an interactive messaging
service) powered by AI has gained popularity at a rapid rate (Cheng & Jiang,
2022), and has been introduced on many consumer-facing platforms (Li et al.,
2021). A rising number of organizations are transitioning from traditional
customer care methods to chatbot digital solutions across many industries
(Forbes, 2017). This transition allows customers to communicate 24/7 and
from any location (Cheng & Jiang, 2020) at a lower cost (Pantano & Pizzi,
2020). Hence, chatbots benefit both customers and businesses as they offer

W. Aslam (B)
IQRA University, Karachi, Pakistan
e-mail: wajeeha_aslam_87@live.com
K. Farhat
Higher Colleges of Technology, Sharjah, United Arab Emirates

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 199

Switzerland AG 2023
C. L. Wang (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Interactive Marketing,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14961-0_9
200 W. ASLAM AND K. FARHAT

flexibility, accessibility, and low-cost operations in comparison with a human

assistant (Aslam et al., 2022).
Chatbots are developed to interact with humans, and due to continual
developments in AI to replicate natural language, it is expected that they
will replace human agents (Kumar et al., 2016). Instead of one-way sales,
the human–computer connection allows firms to create deeper relationships
with customers through continuing and tailored “dialogues” (Huang & Rust,
2018; Rajkumar & Ganapathy, 2020). Hence, it promotes the concept of
“interactive marketing” as it offers customers to relish the interactive process
on a deeper level (Verma et al., 2021; Wang, 2021).
From 2019 to 2026, the chatbot sector is expected to develop at the fastest
rate in the customer service area, with a compound annual growth rate of
31.6%. (Business Insider, 2020). The effective role of chatbots especially rose
to prominence during the Covid-19 pandemic to gather information, deter-
mine the potential products, and pick the brands for customers to purchase
while many countries enforced lockdown and interacting with on-floor staff in
retail stores was not possible (Li et al., 2021). Though chatbots have gained
importance in the business industry, however before implementation, it is
essential for the marketers to know the key service quality dimensions (Jain
et al., 2018; Li et al., 2021) that affect the customer-brand relationship and
the response. Mainstream studies emphasized on the features and the applica-
tions of AI-based technologies for marketers (Chung et al., 2018; Kietzmann
et al., 2018). However, there is a dearth of literature available related to the
aspects of chatbot service quality. Jain et al. (2018) also emphasized consid-
ering chatbot service quality dimensions before implementing in business.
Moreover, the past literature has not evident the impact of customer-brand
relationship on consumer response (Cheng & Jiang, 2022). Hence, it is impor-
tant to discuss the linkage of chatbot service quality with customer-brand
relationships and with customer responses. The studies that have consid-
ered customer response mainly focused on the attitudinal responses of the
consumer in the context of chatbots and have ignored the behavioral aspect of
the response, for example, e-WOM (Cheng & Jiang, 2022). Marketing litera-
ture has endorsed that strong brand relations motivate the customers to create
WOM i.e., a voluntary behavior of the consumer and show customer partic-
ipation. The recent study also suggested examining the link between chatbot
services with e-WOM in relation to brand-relationship factors (Eren, 2021).
Thus, in light of the foregoing literature gaps, this chapter aims to identify
the influence of chatbot service quality dimensions on customer-brand rela-
tionship and their impact on e-WOM (i.e., response). The chapter considers
stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) theory as a theoretical ground to explain
the relation of chatbot service quality dimensions with customer-brand rela-
tionship and e-WOM. The chapter has numerous theoretical and managerial
contributions in the field of interactive marketing and offers useful insights
related to the chatbot service quality dimensions that foster brand-relationship.
This is one of the earlier chapters that have introduced the S-O-R model in
 9 THE ROLE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE … 201

explaining the context of chatbot-based service. The chapter also highlighted

e-WOM as a behavioral response and an antecedent of customer-brand rela-
tionship that is absent in earlier literature on AI. Moreover, the chapter offers
critical insights to businesses to enjoy the benefits of AI in fostering interactive
marketing.
The chapter is organized as follows: In Sect. 2, the chatbot service quality
dimensions are introduced and discussed. In Sect. 3, the conceptualization of
the customer-brand relationship and its dimension are mentioned followed
by Sect. 4 which explains the response of the consumer, based on the
customer-brand relationship. Section 5 presents the theoretical background
that explained the flow of the proposed model. Lastly, Sect. 6 provides a
discussion, conclusion, implications, and area for future research.

2 Chatbot Service Quality Dimensions

Customers’ perception of service quality has long been considered a key aspect
in firms’ efforts to differentiate their products and services from the competi-
tors (Parasuraman et al., 1988). Therefore, to improve the service quality
of the firms, several studies have proposed quality dimensions in the field
of information systems (IS) (DeLone & McLean, 2003; Lee et al., 2002;
Nelson et al., 2005; Parasuraman et al., 1988; Wang & Strong, 1996; Zmud,
1978). The SERVQUAL model proposed by Parasuraman et al. (1988) has
arguably gained the highest popularity among other quality models in the
literature. The SERVQUAL dimensions (tangibles, reliability, responsiveness,
assurance, and empathy) were proposed for service industry i.e., banking,
appliance repair, and telecommunication, and several studies have endorsed the
importance of these dimensions (Ali & Raza, 2017; Li et al., 2021). However,
Bloemer et al. (1999) argued that service quality is a multi-dimensional
concept while other scholars contended that service quality dimensions may
vary on basis of the situation and context (Kuo et al., 2009). Hence, a
variety of service quality dimensions have featured in the literature for various
services such as for e-commerce services (DeLone & McLean, 1992), e-
service quality (Jun et al., 2004), etc. Hence, the scholars agree that service
quality dimensions may vary according to the context and the information
system type (Li et al., 2021). The studies have categorized the quality dimen-
sions in numerous categories. For example, system-related, service-related, and
information-related (Li et al., 2021). However, some of the quality dimen-
sions fit in different fields, such as accessibility and reliability lie in both
system-related and service-related (Nelson et al., 2005; Wang & Strong,
1996). Hence, the dimensions of the service quality were considered based
on technical and service aspects (Li et al., 2021).
In the context of chatbots, three dimensions are proposed by Parasuraman
et al. (1988); reliability, responsiveness, and assurance are salient to explore.
These dimensions of service quality were proposed to determine the service of
202 W. ASLAM AND K. FARHAT

the telecommunication and banking industry, and hence it is somehow rele-

vant to the chatbot service. In the past, Li et al. (2021) also considered these
as a quality dimension of chatbot service. The term reliability refers to the
system or service “has the ability to perform the promised service dependably
and accurately” (Parasuraman et al., 1988, p. 23), and hence, in the context
of a chatbot, it refers to the chatbot service’s ability to provide reliable and
accurate service. The term responsiveness refers to the system or service’s “capa-
bility to help users and provide prompt service to users” (Parasuraman et al.,
1988, p. 23), and it is critical for chatbot-based services to respond promptly.
The studies related to chatbots have considered the element of responsive-
ness as “accessibility”, and have interchangeably used this term to explain
timely responses by the chatbot service. Lastly, the term assurance refers to
the system or service’s “knowledge and ability to inspire trust and confidence”
in the user (Parasuraman et al., 1988, p. 23). Therefore, in the context of a
chatbot, it refers to the perception of the users for chatbot-based service being
trustworthy and knowledgeable to respond.
Moreover, chatbots are meant to be equipped with natural language
processing (NLP) technologies that allow them to interpret human dialogue
and engage in interactive conversations with people (Li et al., 2021). The
literature considered two more quality dimensions, namely understandability
(McKinney et al., 2002) and interactivity for the smart technologies (Cho
et al., 2019), and hence, for the chatbot-based service these two dimen-
sions are relevant as these reflect the ability to interpret human discourse
and provide interactive discussions. The term understandability refers to the
“user’s perception that a chatbot service understands human dialogues, the
context of a conversation, and the nuance of human language” (Li et al.,
2021), and the term interactivity refers to “a user’s perception that her/his
communications with a chatbot service resemble the dialogues she/he has with
human agents” (Cho et al., 2019). Various studies have argued that the ability
to comprehend human conversation is the essential assessment benchmark to
determine the quality of chatbot service (Kuligowska, 2015; Nguyen, 2019).
Park et al. (2018) designed a study to examine the quality of chatbots by their
capability of understanding human conversation. The studies also compre-
hend that chatbots who understand human dialogues intelligently are more
likable (Nguyen, 2019; Sensuse et al., 2019). Lastly, interactivity is consid-
ered a distinguishing factor for end-users as it offers increased engagement
(Neuhofer et al., 2015), humanness (Go & Sundar, 2019), and improved
perceived quality (Li et al., 2021). Hence, the quality of the interactivity can
influence the evaluation of the service.
Figure 1 presents the five dimensions of a chatbot service quality i.e.,
reliability, responsiveness, assurance, understandability, and interactivity.
 9 THE ROLE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE … 203

Assurance

Reliability Chatbot Understandability

Service
Quality

Responsiveness Interactivity

Fig. 1 Chatbot service quality

3 Customer-Brand Relationship (CUBR)

With the proliferation of brands and the competition, today’s brands seek to
build relationships aiming for a long-term and reciprocal engagement with
their customers (Morgan-Thomas et al., 2020). The advancements in the
field of online marketing and technology also encourage the concept of inter-
active marketing as it allows two-way communication that increases brand
relationships through active participation, interaction, and engagement. This
bi-directional relationship mutually benefits both customers and businesses
(Wang, 2021).
Brand relations can be individual and collective (Veloutsou & Ruiz-Mafé,
2020). Individual brand-centric relationships exist when consumers act as
self-contained individuals and interact with brands, forming emotional or
even functional bonds with them (Veloutsou, 2007). In contrast, collective
brand-centric relationships are “relationships that members/affiliates of brand-
focused groups, such as brand communities and brand tribes, develop as
individuals with other group members, other individuals associated with the
group, or as a collective with the brand” (Cova & Pace, 2006). However,
this chapter focuses on the individual aspect as a customer-brand relationship,
and hence consumers are considered independent entities (Cheng & Jiang,
204 W. ASLAM AND K. FARHAT

Table 1 Dimensions of customer-brand relationship

Definitions

Commitment A customer’s level of attachment or expectation for a continuous

relationship with a brand
Trust A level of confidence of a customer on a brand
Control mutuality The degree to which parties agree on who has rightful power to
influence one another
Satisfaction The pleasing experience of a customer with the brand

2022). Scholars from several disciplines have considered multiple compo-

nents to measure customer-brand relationships (Cheng & Jiang, 2022). For
example, a theoretical framework was proposed in which the brand is viewed
as an important partner in consumer relationships measured through commit-
ment, partner quality, love, passion, intimacy, and self-connection, conceived
as the five components of a customer-brand relationship (Fournier, 1998).
Another theoretical paradigm is composed of three characteristics of the
customer-brand relationship: satisfaction, trust, and affective commitment
(Zhang & Bloemer, 2008). Since brands must sustain strong consumer rela-
tionships, one notable notion of this relationship construct includes four
strength indicators: commitment, self-connection, intimacy, and satisfaction
(Jeon & Baeck, 2016). Among all, Grunig and Huang (2000) proposed the
most prominent frameworks that grounded customer-brand relationships in
the sub-dimensions: commitment, trust, control mutuality, and satisfaction.
Many relationship management studies have embraced the model conceptu-
alized by Grunig and Huang (Cheng, 2020). For instance, Cheng and Jiang
(2022) employed the dimensions of commitment, trust, control mutuality, and
satisfaction as sub-dimensions of customer-brand relationships in the context
of chatbots. Having discussed this, the chapter considers commitment, trust,
control mutuality, and satisfaction as sub-dimensions of the customer-brand
relationship as suggested by Grunig and Huang (2000). Table 1 present the
definitions of the dimensions of the customer-brand relationship.

4 Response
In the past, marketing literature has demonstrated numerous customer
responses arising from the brand relationship. Studies have divided customer
responses into behavioral and attitudinal responses. Behavioral responses
reflect the choice of the customer to remain with the firm or brand (Athanas-
sopoulos et al., 2001), and attitudinal responses reflect the person’s attitude
or feeling toward the brand. Studies have discussed various responses such
as word-of-mouth, patronage, loyalty, etc. (Martínez & Del Bosque, 2013;
Kim & Ham, 2016).
 9 THE ROLE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE … 205

In the context of chatbots, Cheng and Jiang (2022) considered the atti-
tudinal customer’s responses such as brand preference, brand loyalty, and
purchase intention as customer responses and neglected various other behav-
ioral responses of the consumer such as WOM. Even though, studies in
the past have furnished evidence that consumer relationship with the brand
also affects behavioral responses such as WOM (Anderson & Mittal, 2000;
Aslam & Farhat, 2020). The study of Cheng and Jiang (2022) also suggested
that future studies consider e-WOM as a response of the consumer in studies
related to chatbots. Therefore, considering the highlighted gap, this chapter
considers e-WOM as a response to the customer-brand relationship.

5 Theoretical Background
For developing a connection in between the chatbot service quality dimen-
sions, customer-brand relationship, and e-WOM, stimulus-organism-response
(S-O-R) theory is considered, which explains the mechanism of the system
that supports a customer’s attitude and actions (Russell & Mehrabian, 1974).
This theory is developed in the field of environmental psychology, but it is
also effective in a variety of other areas, including consumer behavior and
decision-making (Arif et al., 2020; Sohaib & Kang, 2015). The theory postu-
lates that environmental stimuli influence individuals’ cognitive and emotive
reactions (i.e. organisms), which eventually lead to behavioral responses
(Russell & Mehrabian, 1974). Many researchers have considered this theory
in explaining the different phenomena, such as online shopping behavior
(Aslam & Luna, 2021; Peng & Kim, 2014), retail environment (Cachero-
Martínez & Vázquez-Casielles, 2017), consumer behavior (Arif et al., 2020),
tourism industry (Kim et al., 2020), etc. In this chapter, stimuli are the
chatbot service quality dimensions that affect customer-brand relationship (i.e.
organism) and that eventually lead to the response (e-WOM). The conceptual
model is present in Fig. 2.

5.1 Stimulus: Chatbot Service Quality Dimensions

In the context of a chatbot, stimuli are text-based chatbot’s distinguishing
features that will entice customers (Cheng et al., 2022). The distinguishing
features of chatbot service quality could be reliability, understandability, inter-
activity, responsiveness, and assurance (as discussed in Sect. 2). Table 2
summarizes the definitions and explanation of the chatbot service quality
dimensions.
Extant literature supports that accurate information provided by the
chatbot positively affects trust (Cheng & Jiang, 2022), satisfaction
(Kettinger & Lee, 1994), an important element for customers (Chung & Park,
2019). Various studies also confirm that understandability positively influences
users’ positive reactions (Kuligowska, 2015; Li et al., 2021). Similarly, the reli-
ability of the information provided by the chatbot is important for the users
206 W. ASLAM AND K. FARHAT

Stimulus Organism Response

Chatbot Service Quality

Dimensions

Understandability

Reliability
Customer-brand
E-WOM
relationship
Responsiveness

Assurance

Interactivity

Fig. 2 Conceptual model

Table 2 Chatbot service quality dimensions

Definition and explanation

Reliability Definition: The chatbot has an aptitude to accomplish the job

correctly and dependably
Explanation: This ability of chatbot benefits in increasing the
chatbot-based service usage and improving the efficacy of the task
performance (AlHagbani & Khan, 2016; Sensuse et al., 2019)
Understandability Definition: The ability of the chatbot to comprehend human
dialogues appropriately
Explanation: This distinguishing feature of chatbot is deemed
important in improving customer-support service (Nguyen, 2019)
Interactivity Definition: The chatbot capability of developing a perception that
chatbot-based interaction is like human-based interaction
Explanation: This ability of the chatbot enhance the element of
“humanness” (Go & Sundar, 2019), and that is essential for users’
engagement with chatbot-based service (Neuhofer et al., 2015)
Responsiveness Definition: The ability of the chatbot to respond promptly to the
user’s request
Explanation: This ability of the chatbot benefits customer-support
service (Nguyen, 2019) as users appreciate a quick response and
immediate service
Assurance Definition: The ability of the chatbot to develop the trust of the
user
Explanation: This ability of the chatbot assures the user to rely
on the chatbot-based service and develops satisfaction (Lee &
Park, 2019)
 9 THE ROLE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE … 207

(Chung & Park, 2019) and positively affects satisfaction (Kettinger & Lee,
1994). The prompt response provided by the chatbot also helps in building the
consumer-brand relationship, and the chatbot’s ability to develop confidence
in the user also promotes the customer-brand relationship (Li et al., 2021).
Similarly, the interactive feature plays an important role in developing users’
positive feelings toward smart devices (Cho et al., 2019). Based on the liter-
ature, current chapter considers chatbot service quality dimensions as stimuli
and influences the customer-brand relationship.

5.2 Organism: Customer-Brand Relationship

Organism basically refers to “individuals’ cognitive or affective condition”
(Cheng et al., 2022). In this chapter, the customer-brand relationship is
considered as an organism. As discussed earlier in the chapter, commitment,
trust, control mutuality, and satisfaction are considered customer-brand rela-
tionship dimensions as proposed by Grunig and Huang (2000). Commitment,
trust, control mutuality, and satisfaction involve emotions and feelings, and
hence, these are considered as an organism in this chapter.
Earlier studies have validated that chatbot communication quality affects
customer satisfaction, commitment, and trust (Cheng & Jiang, 2022; Chung
et al., 2018). Similarly, credible information provided by the chatbot affects
customer satisfaction (Mimoun et al., 2017). This reflects that chatbot service
quality dimensions act as stimuli and trigger consumer feelings that build a
strong relationship with the brand.

5.3 Response: e-WOM

Word of mouth (WOM) marketing is an important component of interactive
marketing since it involves customers and turns them into brand ambas-
sadors (López et al., 2021; Srivastava & Sharma, 2017). In this chapter,
e-WOM is considered a response to the customer-brand relationship (i.e.,
organism). WOM is a voluntary behavior (Aslam & Luna, 2021) that reflects
the customer engagement intention of the consumer (Carlson et al., 2018).
Literature supports that positive e-WOM plays a significant role in the success
of a brand (Aslam et al., 2019). Therefore, brands are focusing on identi-
fying the elements that motivate customers to create positive WOM (Aslam &
Luna, 2021), because positive feedback or reviews shared by the consumer
bring huge consumer traffic to the brand’s website (Roy, 2018). The advent
of the technology allows users to act as contributors (Jenkins et al., 2006).
User-generated content is particularly more effective since it allows people
to develop and share media content and reach a large audience through
dynamic social networks (Ho et al., 2020). Hence, WOM plays an essential
role in brand co-production, creation, promotion, and distribution, enticing
new players, and accelerating market expansion (Humphrey et al., 2018).
208 W. ASLAM AND K. FARHAT

6 Discussion
To support value co-creation and contribute to the knowledge of value co-
creation, it is vital to incorporate customers’ perspectives into the development
of new service systems (Peltier et al., 2020; Pizzi et al., 2021). For example, AI
can be utilized to deliver online customer support that goes beyond standard
personalized recommender systems (Pizzi et al., 2021). The emergence of AI
benefits marketers as it offers various options for marketing and is gaining
interest among practitioners (Fagella, 2018; Perez-Vega et al., 2021). Hence,
marketers are using AI-based technologies for improved business operations
(Ameen et al., 2021). Among all AI-aided customer service tools, chatbot has
received immense attention as it offers low-cost (Aslam et al., 2022; Feng,
2022). The rise of chatbot-based services may be directly related to increased
demand for self-service that is more convenient, rapid, on-demand, and less
stressful (Li et al., 2021; Terpening & Littleton, 2016). Nowadays, various
businesses are transitioning from traditional customer care methods to chatbot
digital solutions (Cheng & Jiang, 2022) because human–computer connection
allows firms to build deeper relationships with customers through continuing
and tailored conversation (Huang & Rust, 2018). Thus, the chatbot-based
service creates bi-directional value and fosters interaction and participation.
The increased adoption of chatbots in businesses has earned the attention of
marketers to fully utilize this technology for maximum benefits. For this, the
understanding related to chatbot service quality dimensions should be neces-
sary for the marketers to improve customer-brand relationships that promote
voluntary behavior (i.e., positive e-WOM).
The chatbot service quality dimensions such as interactivity, understand-
ability, reliability, assurance, and responsiveness are critical for building a strong
brand relationship. The existing literature contends that reliability plays an
important role across various industries, such as bookstores, restaurants, and
healthcare (Rosen & Karwan, 1994). A past study also elaborated that the
reliability feature of the chatbot service develops satisfaction which motivates
the user to continuously use the chatbot-based service (Li et al., 2021). This
revealed that chatbot-based service should be dependable, sympathetic, reas-
suring, and compatible to the user’s needs. The literature also stated that the
reliability of the chatbot builds consumer trust (Yagoda & Gillan, 2012).
Another chatbot service quality, assurance also affects the consumer-brand
relationship. This finding is consistent with the past findings of Rosen and
Karwan (1994) as they claimed that the assurance element plays a crucial role
in many industries. Li et al. (2021) also identified that assurance develops a
state of confirmation that leads to satisfaction. This indicates that the chatbot
service should be trustworthy and has substantive information to answer
queries of the user. Moreover, understandability, the ability of a chatbot to
understand human language plays a key role in fostering brand relationships.
The ability of chatbots to understand human discourse is an essential char-
acteristic of chatbot services (Kuligowska, 2015). The interactive quality of a
 9 THE ROLE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE … 209

chatbot is also significant as it influences the consumer’s positive emotions and

builds customer satisfaction. The literature related to smart devices has high-
lighted the importance of interactivity in fostering a positive attitude (Cho
et al., 2019; Shin et al., 2013). The literature also provides the evidence that
interactivity affects positive experiences in e-commerce (Yoo et al., 2010). In
line with this, Shin et al. (2013) argued that a positive impact of interactivity
of smart television affects satisfaction and positive feelings. Lastly, the respon-
siveness quality of the chatbot service also positively affects customer-brand
relationship. This finding is consistent with the study of Cheng and Jiang
(2022) as they determined that the prompt response provided by the chatbot
also builds customer confidence and satisfaction. Past studies have demon-
strated that consumers perceive a service as credible and competent if a virtual
agent provides relevant, up-to-date, and timely information (Chakrabarty
et al., 2014). The existing study also elaborates that customers are more likely
to regard human–bot contact as professional, accurate, and credible when
firms’ e-service agents engage in interactive marketing initiatives, share the
latest information about new products and services, and proactively cater to
humans’ needs (Chung et al., 2018). This reflects that chatbot service quality
dimensions play a crucial role in fostering customer-brand relationships, and
chatbot service quality dimensions act as “stimuli” and trigger organisms (i.e.,
customer-brand relationship).
In the end, the findings of this chapter highlight the effectiveness of
customer-brand relationship on customer behavioral response. The improved
customer-brand relationship generates consumer response—positive e-WOM
which is an important aspect of interactive marketing. Hence, the customer-
brand relationship plays a role to foster the concept of interactive marketing as
brands desire to develop long-term relationships with customers to motivate
them to act as brand ambassadors (López et al., 2021).

6.1 Theoretical Contributions and Implications

The chapter offers several theoretical contributions in the field of AI and
interactive marketing. Businesses today are increasingly adopting AI in their
business operations. For instance, digital marketers are implementing interac-
tive messaging services, such as using chatbots powered by AI. Focusing this,
the chapter demonstrates the chatbot service quality dimensions that can foster
customer-brand relationships to promote the interactive marketing concept.
The chapter discusses three service quality aspects (reliability, responsiveness,
and assurance) proposed by Parasuraman et al. (1988) and determined the
other two quality aspects of chatbots, namely understandability and interac-
tivity as relevant service quality dimensions. The chapter adds to the body of
knowledge on chatbot user experience (UX) by defining the key quality aspects
of chatbot services. Moreover, the chapter demonstrates that the S-O-R theory
effectively explains the influence of chatbot service quality dimensions on
customer-brand relationships and its impact on e-WOM. This is one of the
210 W. ASLAM AND K. FARHAT

first scholarly works that have introduced the S-O-R model in the context of
chatbot-based service. Furthermore, the chapter confirms that chatbot service
quality dimensions act as stimuli that trigger the organism (customer-brand
relationship), and this organism leads to response (voluntary behavior of the
consumer). Hence, the chapter established the understanding of the worth of
chatbot in the business operations as the chatbot use promotes the voluntary
behavior of the user and therefore; benefits the interactive marketing concept.
Additionally, the chapter also shows that e-WOM is a behavioral response and
an antecedent of customer-brand relationship which is absent in the extant
literature on AI. Therefore, the chapter extends the literature on the customer-
brand relationship by measuring the relationship itself, antecedents (chatbot
service quality dimensions), and outcome (e-WOM). There is a critical gap in
the literature in terms of an integrated model of the causes, state, and conse-
quences of customer-brand relationships. Thus, this chapter fills an important
void in the literature on customer-brand relationship activated through AI-
powered chatbots. Lastly, the chapter offers critical insights to businesses to
enjoy the benefits of AI in fostering interactive marketing since chatbots are
considered an influential marketing tool that effectively serves the needs of
customers, facilitates decision-making, and encourages interactivity.
The findings of the chapter also serve as the bases to implement the
chatbot-based solution in the industry and tenders insights to the busi-
nesses that are currently involved in using the AI-based chatbot to facilitate
customers. The chapter reveals the role of chatbot service quality dimensions
in developing a customer-brand relationship and their influence on electronic
word-of-mouth (e-WOM) in promoting interactive marketing. Chatbot is
a positive tool for communication, addressing consumer demands, assisting
their decision-making process, and creating strong customer-brand relations
across industries. The findings of the chapter are applicable and beneficial for
chatbot developers, design teams, quality assurance specialists, and businesses
who aim to engage customers through chatbots. Developers and designers
should assess the quality dimensions to ensure that customers and end-users
have an engaging experience that in turn encourages customers to re-use the
chatbot service. The findings reveal that chatbot service quality dimensions
play a significant role in developing customer-brand relationships. There-
fore, chatbot developers and quality assurance managers should improve the
elements of reliability and assurance. It is essential that chatbots provide rele-
vant and accurate information. The element of responsiveness is also vital in
developing customer-brand relations and consequently, the chatbot service
should be capable to give prompt responses and render service in to meet
the user expectations. Similarly, chatbots should understand customers’ queries
and concerns effectively and should be interactive. This quality dimension of
chatbots enhances the relationship with customers that eventually helps in
motivating consumers for e-WOM; a voluntary behavior that promotes the
concept of interactive marketing. Earlier researchers have discussed the impor-
tance of customer participation (Aslam & Luna, 2021) and have furnished
 9 THE ROLE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE … 211

evidence that the customer who shares brand-related information becomes the
focal person (Vries & Carlson, 2014), and the reviews shared by the customer
brings high customer traffic (Roy et al., 2018).
Though the chapter extends the literature on AI and interactive marketing,
there remain a few areas that can be the future path of research. The chapter
presents five chatbot service quality dimensions, but future studies may explore
other relevant service quality aspects. Further, the chapter considered only e-
WOM as a behavioral response of the customer. Future studies may study
customer engagement behavior as well to extend the knowledge of interactive
marketing. The chapter focused on the customer-brand relationship elements
proposed by Grunig and Huang (2000) but studies may study other brand-
relationship components discussed in other theories. Lastly, the chapter has
not explored any specific industry or business and therefore, there is an issue
of generalizability that needs to be addressed in future. It is recommended to
review the proposed framework in specific types of businesses such as airlines,
banking, hotel, etc.

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 CHAPTER 10

How Internet of Things Is Shaping Consumer

Behavior? The Interactive Experience Between
Customer and Smart Object

Ching-Jui Keng, Hsin-Ying Liu, and Yu-Hsin Chen

1 Introduction
With the rapid development of digital technology, enterprises have greater
access to increasingly diversified information communication channels to
directly interact with consumers. Due to artificial intelligence (AI), the target
market has become clearer and more visible, enabling most businesses to
realize how many advantages AI development offer and to invest more
resources in developing AI technology and related application services (Hu
et al., 2021; Ki et al., 2020), such as the Internet of Things (IoT), big
data, cloud computing, Augmented Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR), mixed
reality, virtual assistants, chatbots, and robots. Through AI, many people have
embraced more important innovations in 2021, including “Customer Expe-
rience (CX)”, which is ubiquitous and critical to personal life. “Experience
is everything” is a strategy adopted by companies to improve CX and gain
more competitive advantages (Clarke & Kinghorn, 2018). By utilizing LUCI
(Listening, Understanding, Dialogue, Improvement), AI can gather valuable
customer feedback and provide personalized services and product recommen-
dations by analyzing customers’ past purchases and preferences (Maras, 2020).

C.-J. Keng (B)

National Taipei University of Technology, Taipei, Taiwan
e-mail: cjkeng@ntut.edu.tw; keng.chingjui@gmail.com
H.-Y. Liu · Y.-H. Chen
Shih Chien University, Taipei, Taiwan
e-mail: chenyuhsin@g2.usc.edu.tw

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 219

Switzerland AG 2023
C. L. Wang (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Interactive Marketing,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14961-0_10
220 C.-J. KENG ET AL.

E-commerce sites use AI chatbots to answer customers’ questions, encourage

them to decide the time of buying, change brands’ understanding of serving
customers all the way, and promote more relevant products and product
discount information (De Cicco et al., 2020).
The rise of IoT has been proclaimed to be essential for organizational
innovation, adaptation, and success in a changing environment (Nolin &
Olson, 2016). In IoT, electronic products are embedded in smart systems
to make them smart objects, where they can communicate with users actively
or passively through such systems. Smart objects can exchange high amounts
of connectivity, network, and data and include smartwatches, smart speakers,
smart TVs, robotic vacuum cleaners, smart cars, and smart home appliances.
These smart objects are seamlessly integrated into the virtual world, enabling
them to connect at anytime and anywhere, thus forming a ubiquitous network
environment. Users’ interaction with them provides a fascinating possibility for
easing everyday work.
During the process of communication, both parties continuously exchange
information, and for them it is an interactive process in which the roles of
sender and receiver of messages are switched. IoT has become a major topic
in the consumer behavior literature to explore how consumers and smart
objects interact with each other. In the past, scholars have argued that the
interactive experience between customers and smart objects involves humans
and non-humans and focused on their ability to influence each other with
paired entities. Smart objects have their own unique capabilities and varied
experiences when interacting with consumers. In addition, smart objects and
devices provide functions that promote social interaction and personal needs.
The application of social content is the interaction between IoT devices and
existing social network services. Therefore, it is necessary to examine the
potential social and personal impacts on IoT.
Based on previous literature, this chapter proposes Human–Computer
Interaction (HCI) and Human–Human Interaction (HHI) and presents a new
framework for consumers in regards to the smart object interaction experi-
ence, which is grounded in the assemblage theory and in the hierarchy of
the social customer engagement experience. The optimal scenario of interac-
tive experience between customer and smart object has been explored under
the framework of IoT by observing the said experience among interper-
sonal orientation, object orientation, and social orientation. Moreover, with
the knowledge frame derived from social psychology, this chapter explores
the behavior effect and interaction experience between consumers and smart
objects. Figure 1 illustrates a research concept of a customer-smart object
interaction experience.
Voice-powered AI technologies and individuals’ interactions with them are
a timely and important area of research, given the limited understanding on
how consumers interact with smart objects and how smart objects interact with
consumers. However, few empirical studies have focused on users’ experience-
based connectedness from when they feel linked to a smart object in a smart
 10 HOW INTERNET OF THINGS … 221

Fig. 1 Concepts of the customer-smart object interaction experience

environment. Based on a literature review, this chapter develops an integrated

model for examining the interactions between the consumer and the smart
speaker. The proposed model is validated by an experiment, in which the levels
of the interaction experience between the customers and the smart objects
are divided into two types (high vs. low), and their influences on customers’
engagement with the smart object are investigated. The moderating variables
of parasocial interaction and user types in the proposed relationship are also
discussed. More specifically, this chapter explores the relationship of smart
objects that are likely to emerge from the interaction of consumers with these
unique products.

2 Literature Review
2.1 AI Technology Advancement Optimization of the Customer
Experience
The digital revolution has fundamentally changed the customer experience
over the past two decades, as new technologies lead to new concepts of
it—how shoppers experience the consumption journey, how they get along
with others, and how they perceive tangible objects in the world (Schmitt,
2019). Through AI, people’s lives have embraced more important innovations
in 2021, including customer experience, which is ubiquitous and critical to
one’s personal life. Customer experience refers to the overall value recognition
222 C.-J. KENG ET AL.

of the interaction between customers and enterprises, including information

search before buying products, purchase process, enterprise processing mode
of problems, product distribution, and after-sales service, with an emphasis
on all service encounters. Given this, the product and service itself are only a
part of customer value recognition. The implementation of all assignment links
in the interactive process affects customers’ willingness to purchase again, to
recommend products to others, and how much money they plan to spend.
Therefore, understanding customer experience with smart products is the
focus of interactive marketing research (Wang, 2021).
Marketers are presently trying to use AI to improve customer experience.
As the core of said experience, AI can enhance the application of technology
to create a consumer-centered service experience, which is the key to enter-
prises’ future success. Hoyer et al. (2020) pointed out that AI and IoT have
significantly changed customer experience and even combined together to
form artificial intelligence of things (AIoT). IoT means a network of intercon-
nected things, which is a result of equipping the carrier with a sensor or radio
frequency identification tag, to support sensory information transmission by
those carriers with communication technology and to achieve intelligent auto-
matic control of objects and other application functions (Ng & Wakenshaw,
2017; Reaidy et al., 2015; Wang et al., 2015; Yu et al., 2017). In other words,
AIoT allows things, people, and processes to be connected at any time and at
any place to anyone via anything (Côrte-Real et al., 2020; Hoyer et al., 2020).
By understanding how new technologies will enable customers to conduct
shopping and create potentially new experience values, AIoT can enhance this
value creation and increase a company’s understanding of its customers’ pref-
erences and shopping patterns (Ameen et al., 2021; Evans, 2019). Different
key customer contact points can bring significant benefits to the company and
increase overall customer satisfaction.
The development of AI can be divided into technology-oriented and
human-oriented aspects with the former focusing on massive data, algorithm
improvement, and optimized computing hardware, while the latter emphasizes
different types and effects of interaction between humans and AI, such as “cus-
tomer (people) - service provider (people)”, “customer (AI) - service provider
(people)”, “customer (people) - service provider (AI)”, and “customer (AI)
- service provider (AI)” (Robinson et al., 2020). According to MIT Tech-
nology Review, 90% of enterprises introduce AI in order to improve customer
experience and seek more profits, while 50% of companies use AI to solve all
customer inquiries (Ciuffo, 2019). AI technology can process customers’ past
purchases and preference data to help offer personalized services and product
recommendations. For example, beauty brands can make effective customized
style and product recommendation lists according to customers’ needs and
preferences (Maras, 2020).
Recent studies have explored user experiences when interacting with AI
(Lim & Ayyagari, 2018; McLean et al., 2018; Scholz & Duffy, 2018;
 10 HOW INTERNET OF THINGS … 223

Cowan & Ketron, 2019; Novak & Hoffman, 2019; Lucia-Palacios & Pérez-
López, 2022). The literature on AI applications mostly has focused on
the antecedent variation of AI technology applications adapted by users,
which is based on the technology acceptance model (TAM) (Gao & Huang,
2019; Pillai et al., 2020; Rese et al., 2020), unified theory of acceptance
and use of technology (UTAUT) (Cabrera-Sánchez et al., 2021), expected
confirmation model (ECM) (Park, 2020), and use and satisfaction (U&G)
(McLean & Osei-Frimpong, 2019; Rese et al., 2020). Since the application
of AI technology emphasizes personalization, connectivity, accessibility, and
anthropomorphism compared to past technologies (Gummerus et al., 2019),
most scholars have looked to explain the interaction between users and AI
technology applications with interactive experience (interpersonal interaction
and human–computer interaction), which, however, may be explained from
the perspective of intelligent experience. For example, Lucia-Palacios and
Pérez-López (2022) empirically analyzed that autonomy increases the likeli-
hood of consumer experience leading to the continued use of smart home
speakers. Furthermore, discussions of the antecedent variation should not only
depend on the functional performance of AI, but also need to consider social,
emotional, and relational capabilities (Van Doorn et al., 2017; Wirtz et al.,
2018). Sidaoui et al. (2020) developed the customer experience feeling model
(CEFM) of AI with dimensions including mood, emotion, and value.
Ki et al. (2020) proposed four relational qualities of AI—Intimacy, Under-
standing, Enjoyability, and Involvement. Based on the customer journey and
experience and from the perspectives of cognition, emotion, and society,
Hoyer et al. (2020) came up with the influence of AI equipment on the three
stages of customer shopping (pre-delivery, transaction, and post-transaction),
so as to create experience value. Chaves and Gerosaa (2021) aimed to
understand how to maximize the benefits of human–computer interaction
from the perspective of social features. They summarized and analyzed 56
studies from different fields, derived 11 social features, and divided them
into three categories of conversational intelligence, social intelligence, and
personification.

2.2 Consumer Experience and Object Experience Emergence

in the Internet of Things
In the age of digital interaction, products are no longer the final “finished”
outputs in the traditional sense. Instead, players (typically consumers and
associated social networks) interact with an organization, which is the same
as actors in the ecosystem space (typically companies and associated orga-
nizational ecosystems) that continue to create value. The scholars Novak
and Hoffman have devoted themselves to researching and understanding
consumers’ interactive experience and consumer behavior in a virtual environ-
ment for many years (Hoffman & Novak, 1996; Novak & Hoffman, 1997;
Novak et al., 1999). Few academic studies have explored the interaction
224 C.-J. KENG ET AL.

experience between customers and intelligent objects in the context of IoT.

DeLanda (2016) and Hoffman and Novak (2018) explained the interaction
experience between consumers and smart objects, based on the assemblage
theory. Consumer-smart object relationship styles can be divided into two
expressive roles: agency and communion (Novak & Hoffman, 2019). Chen
et al. (2021) discussed the interactive experience between users and smart
speakers based on the assemblage theory and revealed that a highly interactive
experience improves customer engagement.
According to the assemblage theory, the interactive experience between
people and intelligent objects, through empowering and limiting capabilities in
the human–computer linkage and together with the characters of agency and
communion, can be classified into four different types of experience combi-
nation attributes (Hoffman & Novak, 2018): self-extension, self-restriction,
self-expansion, and self-reduction. When combining empowering ability, the
agency character gives rise to self-extension, giving integral capabilities to
parts and leading to new capacities of this combination, while the commu-
nion character brings out self-expansion, empowering the parts of the whole.
Consumers who serve as a part of the combination will gain more capacities.
After combining the limiting ability, the agency character has self-reduction,
as shown by components limiting overall capabilities (the ability of consumers
to remove some items or limit some items from making the overall combina-
tion less capable). When the communion character starts being characterized
with self-reduction, the overall capacity of the component declines, and the
consumer’s capacity is limited. In the first case, the range of capabilities is
expanded to acquire more power or abilities, while in the second case the
opposite is true. These four different types of experience combinations are
further illustrated as follows.

1. Self-extension

Belk (1988) was the first to propose the concept of self-extension in his
research and applied it to the commercial market or consumer research, so as
to explore how individuals extend their own personality from themselves to
objects or others. In other words, some brand products are not only posses-
sions for consumers, but also a representation of their feelings or emotions
for the brand with special meaning. The product is not just regarded as “my”
(self) belongings, but also as a metaphor for “myself”. This kind of consumers
has positive attitudes, can develop self-construction independently, and can
put their own personalities into the whole combination. Due to the popularity
of smart objects, consumers extend their personal abilities to the combina-
tion of smart objects and themselves, making the combination more capable
with both personal abilities and characteristics. For example, a consumer intel-
ligent surveillance camera can monitor and timely control the behavior of pets
 10 HOW INTERNET OF THINGS … 225

at home. It is fair to say that consumers extend their “self” to the camera,
allowing pets to feel like their owners are at home.

2. Self-expansion

Self-expansion is a concept that incorporates other people’s features into

the self (Aron et al., 2004), in which “others’ features” include other people’s
resources, ideas, and identity. Self-expansion is a concept that incorporates
the characteristics of others into the self, in that the stronger the ability of
the smart object itself is, the more ability it gives the consumers to expand
(Hoffman & Novak, 2018). For example, a smart speaker provides clothing
suggestions according to meteorological conditions, is set to automatically tell
the whole family what to wear, and adapts to the weather conditions of the
day when the alarm clock rings in the morning. Family members trust the reli-
ability of the information and will gradually rely on the clothing suggestions
provided by the smart speaker.

3. Self-restriction

When consumers are under some pressure, they will show an attitude of self-
resistance in their interaction and make choices in line with personal interests
(Brehm & Brehm, 2013), thus limiting the use of intelligent objects and the
generation of creativity. In the self-restriction experience, consumers therefore
can constrain the combination of intelligent objects by, for example, removing
parts of the component, by limiting the capability of the component, or by not
installing or refusing to enjoy some specific functions of IoT, leading to self-
restriction (Hoffman & Novak, 2018). In other words, when consumers limit
the ability to combine, they limit the spark that might arise in a consumer-
intelligence combination, such as the possibility of doubting security, thus not
wanting to gain access to mobile fingerprinting and facial recognition.

4. Self-reduction

Self-reduction is characterized by the fact that the stronger the ability of

the smart object is, the more limited the consumer’s ability is. For example,
when consumers use smart air conditioning devices to keep the indoor temper-
ature under consistent control, they will mistrust their devices at first and
constantly check the indoor temperature. After a period, they will check the
room temperature less frequently, due to the convenience brought about by
smart air conditioning devices.
226 C.-J. KENG ET AL.

3 How Interaction Experience

Enhances Customer Engagement
in a Smart Speaker: An Empirical Study
3.1 Research Purposes and Questions
With the advancements of IoT, AI, and 5G in recent years, smart objects
have become more widely applied in the lives of consumers to fulfill a variety
of functions (Wang, 2021). Smart speakers are currently one of the few
consumer terminal products on the market that use voice control as the main
human–machine interface (Hoy, 2018; Hsieh & Lee, 2021). AI technology
enables smart speakers to have natural language processing and machine-
learning functions, which are more advanced and more humanized than ever
before (Guzman, 2018). Therefore, the need for consumers to feel comfort-
able while interacting with electronic devices or an AI agent is important
for enhancing customer experience and boosting consumer engagement (Kim
et al., 2021; Payne et al., 2021; Wang, 2021). However, few empirical studies
have focused on users’ experience-based connectedness from when they feel
connected to smart speakers in a smart environment. The framework of our
research is based on three viewpoints: Internet of people, Internet of object,
and Internet of social. This chapter explores the new interactive experiences
between consumers and a smart speaker that can create the effect of customer
engagement by enhancing parasocial interaction and user types. Thus, our
research questions are as follows.

RQ1. How do different levels of customer to smart speaker experience influence

customer engagement with a smart speaker?
RQ2. How do the moderating variables of user types influence customer
engagement with a smart speaker in a proposed relationship?
RQ3. How do the moderating variables of parasocial interaction influence
customer engagement with a smart speaker in a proposed relationship?

3.2 Literature Review and Hypotheses’ Development

3.2.1 Effects of Interaction Experience Levels on Customer Engagement
Research on the topic of customer engagement has developed into an impor-
tant strategic imperative in recent years (Rather, 2018; Rather & Hollebeek,
2021). Voorhees et al. (2017) emphasized that customer experience takes
place throughout many interactions and even influences customer outcomes.
Customer engagement is the psychological state that occurs through an inter-
active co-creative customer experience with a focal agent/object in focal
service relationships (Brodie et al., 2011, 2013). Hollebeek et al. (2014)
defined customer brand engagement as the level of customers’ motivational,
brand-related, and context dependent state of mind, as characterized by
a specific level of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral activity during or
 10 HOW INTERNET OF THINGS … 227

related to focal consumer/brand interactions. Customer engagement should

be treated as a multidimensional construct that comprises emotional, cogni-
tive, and behavioral facets in accordance with suggestions made by Brodie
et al. (2011) and Hollebeek et al. (2014). Smart speaker communication
is inherently interactive. The assemblage theory explains various combina-
tions of specific interactive experiences between consumers and smart objects.
Consumers can access them through an object-oriented personality, which is
a non-human-centered method, to evaluate their own agentic or communal
roles when interacting with smart objects. In other words, smart objects and
consumers have their own unique abilities and experiences when interacting
with each other. Consumer experience can be thought of as an assemblage
that is always contingent upon the existence of a consumer-object assemblage
(Canniford & Bajde, 2016; Canniford & Shankar, 2013; DeLanda, 2016;
Hoffman & Novak, 2018; Novak & Hoffman, 2019). Chen et al. (2021)
discussed the interactive experience between users and smart speakers based
on the assemblage theory and revealed that a highly interactive experience
improves customer engagement. Thus, we propose the following research
hypothesis.

H1. A high-level interactive experience results in a higher level of customer

engagement compared to a low-level interactive experience.

3.2.2 The Moderating Effects of User Types

Reversal theory is a psychological theory that captures the dynamic nature of
psychological experience by positing pairs of opposite met motivational states
(Apter, 1984). This theory indicates that there are two different phenomeno-
logical states of mind: telic and paratelic states (Chiu & Chang, 2020). The
reversal theory proposes that telic-oriented people are especially drawn to calm
arousal, whereas paratelic-oriented people are especially drawn to energetic
arousal (Fan et al., 2015). This chapter focuses on the telic and paratelic states.
Telic individuals are goal-oriented and delightfully relaxed when tasks given
to them are completed, while paratelic individuals are sense-oriented and feel
more excited and happier with their increasing emotional involvement (Apter,
1982, 2001; Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Rose et al., 2022). Jung et al. (2014)
pointed out that different user types influence different interactive advertising
types. In the telic state, individuals become anxious, because of their greater
awareness due to threatening or demanding events, but they become relaxed
and happy when the task is accomplished. In the paratelic state, with emotional
engagement and arousal, people will feel excited and pleasure, but they will
feel bored without stimulation (Markus & Kitayama, 1991). When customers
are telic, they are goal-oriented, which shows affirmation and confidence. The
higher the level of interaction is between customers and intelligent objects, the
better the telic customers will feel that they can achieve the desired goals, thus
resulting in higher customer engagement. When customers are paratelic, they
value entertainment and enjoy the interaction process. The higher the level of
228 C.-J. KENG ET AL.

interaction is between customers and intelligent objects, the less interest the
paratelic customers will feel, thus resulting in lower customer engagement.
Therefore, this paper proposes the next hypotheses.

H2. When smart speaker devices present different user types, there are significant
differences between the effects of the interactive experience levels on customer
engagement.
H2a. When the user type is telic, the higher the interactive experience level
is, the higher is the customer engagement; on the contrary, the lower the
interactive experience level is, the lower is the customer engagement.
H2b. When the user type is paratelic, there are no significant differences between
the effects of a high-level interactive experience and a low-level interactive
experience on customer engagement.

3.2.3 The Moderating Effects of Parasocial Interaction

Proposed by Horton and Richard Wohl (1956), parasocial interaction is
described as media users’ reaction to media personas such that they perceive
personas as intimate conversational partners (Dibble et al., 2016). According
to Nass et al. (1994), the Computers as Social Actors (CASA) theory
explains that human–machine interactions and human–human interactions
have basically the same social characteristics.
Even without real human characters, an interactive media environment can
create a parasocial interaction. Parasocial interaction is instructive in studying
consumer-bot interactions. For instance, Han and Yang (2018) pointed out
that customers’ parasocial relationships have a positive influence on satisfac-
tion and continuance intention toward intelligent personal assistants. Tsai et al.
(2021) analyzed chatbots and reported that their influences of high social
presence communication on consumer engagement are mediated by paraso-
cial interaction and dialogue. Compared with one-to-many communication in
social media, one-on-one chat communication may require a higher level of
parasocial interaction. Youn and Jin (2021) found that the consumer-chatbot
relationship type affects CRM-related outcomes (behavioral intention, satisfac-
tion, and trust) through parasocial interaction. Therefore, this chapter infers
parasocial interaction has a moderating effect in the interaction process, which
will affect customer engagement.

H3. When smart speaker devices present different levels of parasocial interaction,
there are significant differences between the effects of the interactive experience
levels on customer engagement.
H3a. When smart speaker devices present high parasocial interaction, the high-
level interactive experience has high customer engagement.
H3b. When smart speaker devices present low parasocial interaction, a high-level
interactive experience has high customer engagement; conversely, a low-level
interactive experience has lower customer engagement.
 10 HOW INTERNET OF THINGS … 229

3.3 Method and Experimental Design

3.3.1 Experimental Design and Participants
To examine the proposed hypotheses, we conduct a 2 (high vs. low interac-
tive experience levels) × 2 (telic vs. paratelic-user types) × 2 (high vs. low
parasocial interactions) factorial between-subjects experiment. Thus, in total
eight interaction situations are derived, with participants being randomly and
equally assigned to one of them.
By means of university bulletin boards and several online communities of
local universities, university students interested in smart IoT-related issues
were invited to participate in the field experiment. In total, 263 participants
were recruited for this experiment, made up of 136 (51.7%) males and 127
(43.8%) females, whose ages ranged from 20 to 29 years (68.8%). This chapter
also used Pearson’s chi-square testing for cross-tabulation to analyze the
randomization of the main characteristics, including gender (χ 2 = 4.678, p =
0.699), age (χ 2 = 38.837, p = 0.301), education (χ 2 = 22.659, p = 0.362),
and occupation (χ 2 = 56.969, p = 0.061), which are non-significant with the
randomness of the test group assignment. Hence, the intended purpose of the
random assignment was achieved.

3.3.2 Stimulus Materials

Experimental products. A smart speaker plays an important role in the IoT
environment and arguably has changed traditional forms of human–computer
interaction (Kowalczuk, 2018). The use of voice interaction can be the control
terminal for a smart house. A smart speaker often provides a range of ways
to interact with a device (McLean & Osei-Frimpong, 2019). Therefore, this
chapter adopts the smart speaker as the main device for interaction with the
users. The interaction of tasks and messages given to smart speakers by the
users creates an experience level interaction (Hoffman & Novak, 2018).
High and low interactive experience levels. We design the command task
and messages from the users to the smart speaker to provide interactive expe-
rience levels. Through these command tasks and messages, the smart speaker
offered answers and contextual information about the users’ needs. Further-
more, the users responded with their opinions, and the smart speaker operated
accordingly. If tasks could not be resolved by the smart speaker, then collab-
oration was encouraged by the smart speaker to ask for the users’ help. For
the high interactive experience levels, we gave the smart speaker five different
tasks for interaction: answering questions, a to-do list, setting an alarm clock,
providing weather, and giving traffic conditions. When the users find that
the smart speaker can complete the overall task and technical functionality
is abundant, which promotes the expansion of its ability to fulfill its expected
functions, they are willing to share this experience with others. With low inter-
active experience levels, when the user finds that the command task given to
the smart speaker cannot meet the requirements or obtain satisfactory answers
and technical functionality is not high, then the user’s ability is limited, the
230 C.-J. KENG ET AL.

influence is reduced, and the information or experience shared with others is

limited.
User types and parasocial interaction level. In this experiment we designed
a smart speaker that can present two user types of situations: both telic and
paratelic. The telic user type is an example of how serious searching for
product information can be. The smart speaker was set up to be professional
(skilled) and to perform task-based activities during the interaction. Examples
include answering questions, a to-do list, setting an alarm clock, providing
weather, and giving traffic conditions. The paratelic user type means enter-
taining and/or amusement. The smart speaker was set up to be socially capable
and to perform various entertainment-based activities during the interaction,
such as playing music, playing audiobooks, providing humorous jokes, and
playing various games.
All participants were asked to imagine two interactive tasks for the smart
speaker: task-based (answering questions, a to-do list, setting an alarm clock,
providing weather, and giving traffic conditions) and entertainment-based
(playing music, playing audiobooks, providing humorous jokes, and playing
various games). At a high level of parasocial interaction, the smart speaker will
treat users as friends and give them a hand by caring for them and reminding
them of things. At a low level of parasocial interaction, the opposite occurs.

3.3.3 Procedure
Participants were given a simulated website address and asked to visit it at a
convenient time. First, each participant was informed about the overall exper-
imental procedure by means of a PowerPoint presentation displayed on a
monitor. Second, participants were instructed on how they could interact with
the smart speaker devices. Third, all participants were asked to imagine two
interactive tasks for the smart speaker: task-based and entertainment-based
as noted above. Fourth, after the introduction and once they were on the
website, they were randomly assigned to one of the eight consumer and smart
speaker device interactive experience scenarios, and the experimental activity
officially started. After browsing the stimuli, the participants were asked to
complete a questionnaire pertaining to their demographic data, the interactive
experience level between the user and the smart speaker, the user types, the
parasocial interaction, and the customer engagement of the smart speaker.

3.3.4 Measurements
All questionnaire items were taken from previously validated studies. They
were translated into Chinese and minimally revised to fit the experimental
smart speaker setting of the current study. The suggestion of Chen et al.
(2021) was used for measuring the interactive experience levels by employing a
5-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree and 5 = strongly agree) on 6 items.
The variables of the user types were assessed by using 10 items, as suggested
by Jung et al. (2014), the parasocial interaction was measured by using 11
items, adapted from Whang (2018), and 10 items were developed to measure
 10 HOW INTERNET OF THINGS … 231

Table 1 Summary of manipulation check results

Construct Group Mean Std. dev F-value

HIEL High 4.097 0.457 119.444***

Low 3.165 0.870
LIEL Low 2.386 0.754 124.615***
High 3.459 0.807
UT Telic 4.973 1.018 144.018***
Paratelic 3.300 1.235
PSI High 5.016 1.084 37.392***
Low 4.213 1.045

Notes * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, and *** p < 0.001. High interaction experience levels (HIEL),
Low interaction experience levels (LIEL), User types (UT), Parasocial interaction (PSI)

customer engagement, based on the work of Vinerean and Opreana (2015).

Three construct measures were scored on a 7-point Likert scale (1 = strongly
disagree and 7 = strongly agree).

3.4 Manipulation Check and Measurement

3.4.1 Manipulation Check
The results of the manipulation check are shown in Table 1. A significantly
high interactive experience level value was reported from the high-level inter-
active experience group, compared with the low-level interactive experience
group. This result is statistically significant. In terms of the low interac-
tive experience levels, the low-level interactive experience condition group
reported a significantly lower interactive experience level value than the high-
level interactive experience condition group. This result was also statistically
significant.
For the check of user types, the subjects allocated to the telic had signif-
icantly higher feelings than those allocated to the paratelic, and there was
a significant difference between the two situations. In the item of paraso-
cial interaction, those allocated to the high parasocial interaction situation
had significantly higher feelings than those allocated to the low parasocial
interaction situation, and there were significant differences between the two
situations. Thus, manipulations of the variables of interactive experience levels,
the user types, and the parasocial interaction in this experiment were successful.

3.4.2 Measurement Validation

The results are shown in Table 2. Nunnally (1978) asserted that a Cronbach’s
α value of 0.5 or higher denotes acceptable reliability, and a value of between
0.806 and 0.931 denotes superior reliability (Nunnally & Bernstein, 1994).
Composite Reliability (CR) for the constructs was higher than 0.865, which is
greater than the suggested cut-off value of 0.70 (Hair et al., 1998). Thus,
232 C.-J. KENG ET AL.

Table 2 Convergent validity, reliability, and discriminant validity

Construct Item Cronbach’s α CR AVE AVE2

HIEL 3 0.802 0.884 0.718 0.847

LIEL 3 0.803 0.884 0.718 0.847
Telic 5 0.896 0.924 0.710 0.843
Paratelic 5 0.806 0.865 0.564 0.751
PSI 11 0.931 0.942 0.600 0.774
CE 10 0.907 0.924 0.550 0.741

Note High interaction experience levels (HIEL), Low interaction experience levels (LIEL),
Parasocial interaction (PSI), Customer engagement (CE)

Table 3 Results of the main effect

IV DV Hypothesis n Mean SD F-value p-value Result

HIEL CE H1 134 5.035 0.693 4.280 0.040* Supported

LIEL 129 4.818 0.989

Notes * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, and p < 0.001*** . SD is standard deviation

they were acceptable. The Average Variance Extracted (AVE) ranged from
0.550 to 0.718, exceeding the recommended value of 0.50 (Hair et al., 2013).
The square root of AVE for each construct in our study had a higher value
than the inter-construct correlations. Therefore, it satisfied the conditions for
discriminant validity (Gefen et al., 2000).

3.5 Findings
3.5.1 Effects of Interaction Experience Levels on Customer Engagement
The hypotheses were tested by using one-way ANOVA, and the results are
displayed in Table 3. The main effect of the interactive experience levels
was significant on customer engagement. The various levels of interactive
experiences influenced consumers’ engagement differentially. Therefore, H1
is supported.

3.5.2 Moderating Effects of User Types and Parasocial Interaction

As indicated in Table 4, the ANOVA analysis results indicate that different
levels of interactive experiences and user types have a significant interaction
effect on customer engagement. Thus, H2 is supported. We next compare
telic and paratelic. The telic values at a high interactive experience level and
a low interactive experience level on customer engagement were significant.
H2a is thus supported. Moreover, the paratelic values did not have a higher
significant influence on customer engagement at a high interactive experience
level than at a low interactive experience level. Thus, H2b is not supported.
 10 HOW INTERNET OF THINGS … 233

Table 4 Results of the moderating effects of user types and parasocial interaction
IV DV Hypothesis Type III SS df Mean SS F-value p-value Result

IEL × UT CE H2 2.888 1 2.888 4.023 0.046 Supported

IEL × PSI CE H3 8.465 1 8.465 12.194 0.001 Supported
UT type: Telic
IV DV Hypothesis n Mean SD F -value p-value Result
HIEL CE H2a 66 5.103 0.749 6.911 0.010 Supported
LIEL 67 4.681 1.073
UT type: Paratelic
HIEL CE H2b 68 4.969 0.631 0.001 0.982 Not Supported
LIEL 62 4.966 0.876
PSI level: HPSI
HIEL CE H3a 65 4.914 0.719 0.924 0.338 Not Supported
LIEL 64 5.061 0.999
PSI level: LPSI
HIEL CE H3b 69 5.149 0.651 17.169 0.000 Supported
LIEL 65 4.579 0.927

Note * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01, and ***p < 0.001

For H3 the results suggest a significant interaction effect on customer

engagement between the different levels of interactive experiences and paraso-
cial interaction as shown in Table 4. Thus, H3 is supported. In high parasocial
interaction, whether for high interactive experience level or low interactive
experience level, both did not have a significant influence on customer engage-
ment. Thus, H3a is not supported. However, low parasocial interaction has a
significant effect on the high interactive experiences on customer engagement.
Thus, H3b is supported.

4 Conclusion
With the proliferation of smart objects and smart home applications that
are available within the IoT context, and given the unique characteristics
of its technology, interactive marketing practices can develop a personalized
approach that allows for customers’ engagement and for them to enjoy the
interactive process experiences (Wang, 2021). The focus of this chapter is
to explore the levels of interaction experience between customers and smart
objects‘ influences on customer engagement. There is hence likely to be a
significant value when contemplating and evaluating the roles of the smart
objects‘ experience and consumer experience in this chapter. Versus a low
interactive experience level, this chapter shows that a high interactive experi-
ence level has a greater impact on customer engagement. Another interesting
result is that user types and parasocial interaction interfere with the interactive
experience levels of users and smart speaker devices and customer engagement.
This chapter contributes to marketing research on interactivity by providing
new evidence on the effect of interaction experience on customer engage-
ment with smart products. First, it combines the theoretical foundations of the
assemblage theory, the customer experience, customer engagement, and HCI
234 C.-J. KENG ET AL.

literature to explain the concept of interaction experience levels between users

and smart speaker devices. Second, this chapter expands the area of consumers
and smart objects’ interaction experience levels. As found in previous research
(Hoffman & Novak, 2018), that smart object-consumer and consumer-smart
object present by no means equivalent experiences. Lastly, the authors find
that marketers need to understand how framing AI smart speaker roles differ-
ently affect the extent and the degree to which user types form parasocial
interaction with the smart speaker. Therefore, designing and programming
smart speaker messages should focus on projecting a high level of affective
(e.g., using humorous dialogue), interactive (e.g., actively asking questions,
acknowledging consumers’ feedback, and showing appreciation of customers),
and cohesive strategies (e.g., phatic language and addressing customers by
names) (Tasi et al., 2021).
Considering these limitations and other observations, the following direc-
tions could be proposed for future research. First, users’ experience toward
smart speaker devices was artificially designed in a controlled laboratory
environment. Second, in the selection of smart objects, future studies are
encouraged to investigate further how consumer engagement influences the
interaction experience of different smart objects. Finally, future research could
explore the expansion of the relationship between consumers and smart
objects, from one-to-one to one-to-many, and examine the differences in the
impact on consumer engagement.

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 CHAPTER 11

The Physical Presence and Relationship

Distance for Efficient Consumer–AI-Business
Interactions and Marketing

Corina Pelau, Dan-Cristian Dabija, and Daniela Serban

1 Introduction
Artificial intelligence has changed and will continue to change the way in
which companies interact with their consumers, having major implications
on the future marketing strategies of companies (Huang & Rust, 2022; Lim
et al., 2022; Puntoni et al., 2021). In the past, classical marketing communi-
cation campaigns targeted only the consumer and their reference groups, as
the only ones able to make buying decisions and choose which products to
buy or to use. Consumers’ permanent use of artificial intelligence systems and
devices will change this communication, with increased input of AI systems
and devices in the consumers’ buying decisions (Dawar, 2018). From simple
recommendations provided by intelligent systems (such as search engines and
social media) based on the past online behavior of consumers, to complex
automated decisions made by intelligent assistants (such as Alexa, Siri, Bixby)
used by the consumers, AI will play a crucial role in the future marketing

C. Pelau (B) · D. Serban

Bucharest University of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Romania
e-mail: corina.pelau@fabiz.ase.ro
D. Serban
e-mail: daniela.serban@csie.ase.ro
D.-C. Dabija
Babes-Bolyai University Cluj-Napoca, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
e-mail: cristian.dabija@econ.ubbcluj.ro

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 239

Switzerland AG 2023
C. L. Wang (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Interactive Marketing,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14961-0_11
240 C. PELAU ET AL.

campaigns of companies (Dawar, 2018; McLean et al., 2021; Puntoni et al.,

2021; Yu, 2021). Due to the fact that several consumer activities will be taken
over by smart AI systems, it will not be enough just to convince the consumer
about the characteristics and image of a product, but it will also be important
to appear in the recommendation list of the AI device on which the consumer
relies (Dawar, 2018). Different scenarios predict that each consumer will have
their own AI systems which will do the shopping, make vacation reservations
and even solve administrative tasks such as paying bills, car maintenance and
home appliances (Dawar, 2018). Therefore, future marketing campaigns will
be bi-directional, targeting both the consumers and the AI devices used. In
effect, the AI assistant will make decisions for the consumer.
The objective of this chapter is to give an overview of the different
scenarios concerning the implementation of several forms of artificial intel-
ligence systems or devices in the everyday life of consumers and the way they
interfere in the communication between companies and consumers. Starting
from this main objective, the authors will focus on the key elements regarding
the role of AI systems and devices in the future marketing strategies of
companies.

2 Classification of AI
Systems and Devices in Marketing
One important aspect in analyzing the role of AI in marketing is to have an
overview on the different forms and classifications of AI systems and devices
which affect the buying decisions of consumers. Depending on the type of
AI, they will play different roles in the future interactions between companies
and consumers. The main classifications on which the authors will focus in
this chapter are AI with a physical or virtual presence and the distance of the
relationship between consumers and AI.
In terms of physical presence, there is AI with physical presence and AI
without physical presence. According to Wirtz et al. (2018), AI without phys-
ical presence includes also virtual AI and holograms. The difference between
the two lies mainly in the design and anthropomorphic characteristics of AI.
While for the AI without physical presence, the focus is on creating a human-
like, warm voice and developing communication and interaction skills (Chong
et al., 2021; Hoy, 2018; McLean & Osei-Frimpong, 2019), in the case of
AI with physical presence there is a supplementary challenge for engineers to
design friendly AI with human-like features (Lv et al., 2021; Sundar et al.,
2017) and good mobility. Some authors focus on the design of a friendly
face for AI which can mimic human body language with features like a direct
gaze design or head nodding (Song & Luximon, 2020). Although studies
have not proven any direct impact of the physical appearance of AI on accep-
tance by consumers (Blut et al., 2021; Lu et al., 2019), an anthropomorphic
design may enhance the psychological characteristics of AI (Pelau et al., 2021;
Tan et al., 2020) and create a social presence (Adam et al., 2021; Araujo,
 11 THE PHYSICAL PRESENCE … 241

2018; Feine et al., 2019; Wang, 2017). Moreover, AI with physical presence
will need more maintenance in comparison to virtual AI, which only requires
system updates.
The second classification criterion is the distance of the relationship between
consumers and AI. Clark and Mills (1993) define the interpersonal relations
between humans as communal and exchange relations and depending on the
type, there is a certain etiquette for communication and mutual behavior based
on the type of relation. Similar relations occur between consumers and AI.
There are external company-owned AI, which will take over several service
tasks from human employees and there are personal AI assistants which are
owned by the consumer and which affect the relation between consumers
and companies. Taking into consideration the different relations between
consumers and the two types of AI, there are likely to be different implica-
tions for the marketing activity of companies. The main difference between
the two types of AI is that personal assistants are continuously in the pres-
ence of the consumer, having access to their private data, while the interaction
with company-owned AI happens only occasionally and they have less access to
consumer data. Having access to more personal data, the interaction between
a personal AI assistant and consumer is more focused on their needs and pref-
erences, leading to a familiar relation with rather informal communication and
higher attachment from the consumer. In opposition to this, the relationship
with an external company-owned AI is more distant, as interaction only takes
place occasionally when the consumer needs the offered service. Consequently,
the AI has access only to the information required for service delivery and the
relation is more formal and comparable to a human service employee.
Taking into consideration these aspects, the expectations from the types of
AI will be different and consequently also the implications for the marketing
strategies of companies. In Fig. 1, there can be observed a classification of AI
based on the previously described criteria and the main challenges for each.
As can be observed in Fig. 1, based on the physical presence and the rela-
tion to the consumer, the authors have identified four categories of AI. The
first category includes service robots which take over certain tasks from human
employees. They have physical presence and they are outside the private sphere
of consumers, being employed by companies for delivering different services.
The second category is chatbots and voice assistants. They usually take over
tasks from call center agents by providing support for products and services.
They do not have physical presence and they are outside the private sphere
of consumers. The third category includes personal home assistants like Alexa
or other intelligent devices and home appliances. Although not yet anthropo-
morphic, they have a physical presence and by taking over different tasks in the
home, they are present in the private sphere of consumers. The fourth category
is personal voice assistants like Siri or Bixby. They usually take over different
secretary tasks, by completing the assignments delegated by the consumer.
242 C. PELAU ET AL.

Fig. 1 Classification of AI based on physical presence and relationship distance to

the consumers

They do not have physical presence, but they accompany the consumer contin-
uously and have access to their private information, being present on their
smartphone.

3 The Role of AI in the Marketing

Strategy of Companies
Based on the characteristics of AI and the relation it has with the consumer,
they will play different roles in the marketing strategy of companies. In the
following section, the authors will analyze the main challenges for each type
of AI and the implication it will have on the marketing strategies of companies.

3.1 External Service Robots and Their Role for Consumer Interactions
in Service Delivery
With evolving technology, the presence of physical AI has increased in the
past years, taking over different roles in service delivery. From receptionist
robots in hotels and customer touchpoints served by robots, to different types
of industrial robots (Wirtz et al., 2018), there is a wide variety of AI with
physical presence which intervenes in the business–consumer interactions. A
special role in marketing will have service robots taking over different tasks
from human employees and fulfilling the expectations and needs of consumers
(Choi et al., 2021; Zhu & Chang, 2020). Service robots will need good
 11 THE PHYSICAL PRESENCE … 243

communication and interaction skills in order to provide all the information

expected by consumers (Ashfaq et al., 2020), but at the same time, they will
have to entertain and be empathetic in relation to the customer (Gursoy et al.,
2019; Longoni & Cian, 2022; Pelau et al., 2021). An especially challenging
situation is the case of service failure, when the customer is more sensitive than
usual and when the pre-programmed algorithms do not provide the desired
solution (Choi et al., 2021).
Anthropomorphism (Grewal et al., 2020; Wirtz et al., 2018) and social
presence (Blut et al., 2021; van Doorn et al., 2017) are important features
of service robots, for increasing the consumers’ trust and acceptance of AI.
Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human-like characteristics to objects
(Epley et al., 2007) or brands (Golossenko et al., 2020). The anthropomor-
phic characteristics of service robots can be of several types, from a human-like
physical appearance (Liu et al., 2022; Song & Luximon, 2020), including a
human voice (Chong et al., 2021) to psychological and behavioral characteris-
tics like free will and consciousness (Lu et al., 2019) or the ability to care and
show empathy (Kervenoael et al., 2020; Pelau et al., 2021). Although several
authors have shown that the physical human-like characteristics do not neces-
sarily influence the acceptance of AI (Blut et al., 2021; Lu et al., 2019), they
apparently enhance the psychological characteristics of AI, which impact more
on consumers (Pelau et al., 2021; Tan et al., 2020).
Although the acceptance of service robots instead of human employees is
still the main challenge for companies, the Covid-19 pandemic has fastened
their implementation, as service robots are immune to viruses and therefore
in times of social distancing the interaction with a service robot is safer (Kim
et al., 2021; Seyitoglu & Ivanov, 2021).

3.2 External Chatbots and Voice Assistants and Their Role

in Consumer Services and Support
One of the most promising AI technologies used by companies is chatbots
and intelligent voice assistants (Araujo, 2018; Chung et al., 2020). These
types of AI have the ability to interact with consumers by voice or text and
are frequently involved in activities relating to sales, customer support and
marketing (Ashfaq et al., 2020; Wang, 2021). Often when consumers get in
touch with a company, they telephone or chat with a non-physical, virtual assis-
tant. With the help of voice assistants, consumers can place orders or demand
information or assistance regarding products (Chung et al., 2020).
Analyzing the types of voice assistants, two categories can be observed. On
one hand, there are the chatbots which interact with consumers mainly by
text (Ashfaq et al., 2020). On the other hand, there are voice assistants, which
interact with the consumers by voice (Feine et al., 2019; Fernandes & Oliveira,
2021; Wang, 2021). Taking into consideration the fact that these types of AI
are the companies’ representatives in relation to consumers, customer satisfac-
tion is the main predictor for their acceptance and use (Ashfaq et al., 2020;
244 C. PELAU ET AL.

Chung et al., 2020). According to Ashfaq et al. (2020), information and

service quality, perceived usefulness and perceived enjoyment are the main
determinants of consumer satisfaction with intelligent voice assistants.
Anthropomorphism also plays an important role in the case of voice
assistants, as apparently consumers have a stronger affective response
(Ciechanowski et al., 2019) and would rather comply with instructions
provided by AI with human-like features (Adam et al., 2021). Social presence
and social cues also play an important role in the interaction between AI and
consumer (Adam et al., 2021; Araujo, 2018; Feine et al., 2019). As intelligent
voice assistants don’t have a physical presence, anthropomorphic characteristics
are incorporated by giving them names and creating avatars for them (Crolic
et al., 2022). In addition, social cues are incorporated in their language and
reactions. According to Feine et al. (2019), there are four types of social cues:
verbal, visual, auditory and invisible. In order to increase their social presence,
AI frequently has small talk as a verbal social cue, facial expression as a visual
cue, tonality of voice as an auditory cue and identity as an invisible cue.
There is also a negative side to anthropomorphic characteristics. According
to Crolic et al. (2022), the consumer’s emotional context impacts the posi-
tive or negative effects of the anthropomorphic characteristics of AI chatbots
and voice assistants. Moreover, some anthropomorphic features might produce
feelings of discomfort in the communication between consumer and AI (Luo
et al., 2019). Therefore, the development of the features of AI voice assistants
is important in order to optimize the interaction between consumer and AI,
and therefore its acceptance.

3.3 Personal Voice Assistants and Their Role in Consumers’ Buying

Decisions
Personal voice assistants are software agents that run on a purpose-built
speaker or smartphone and have the ability to interact with the consumer by
voice (Hoy & Pomputius, 2018). They have the ability to react by voice to a
listened word, by accessing an artificial intelligence-driven server that supplies
the voice assistant with the necessary information (Hoy & Pomputius, 2018).
The use of intelligent voice assistants has increased in past years because of
their functionality, consumers frequently using them for information searches,
for completing basic tasks, to deliver orders, purchase products and for inter-
action with companies (McLean & Osei-Frimpong, 2019). Among the best
known personal voice assistants are Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana and
Amazon’s Alexa. In comparison with previous technologies, they have the
ability to interact with consumers in a similar way to the interaction between
humans, using natural language processing and machine learning technologies
(McLean & Osei-Frimpong, 2019). According to McLean and Osei-Frimpong
(2019), the main drivers of the use of intelligent voice assistants are utili-
tarian benefits and social presence and attraction. Moreover, the interaction
quality between consumers and AI voice assistants enhances future usage
 11 THE PHYSICAL PRESENCE … 245

intention (Hsieh & Lee, 2021; Lucia-Palacios & Perez-Lopez, 2021). Taking
into account the fact that the intelligent voice assistant is permanently present
around the consumer, several authors have researched the relation and attach-
ment between consumers and intelligent voice assistants, confirming that
friendship and similar para-relations can occur between them (Ki et al., 2020;
McLean & Osei-Frimpong, 2019; Tsai et al., 2021). Moreover, the induced
personality (Poushneh, 2021) and gender (Chen et al., 2021; Loideain &
Adams, 2020) of the voice assistant can be an important predictor for defining
the para-relation between consumer and AI. This para-friendship between
consumer and AI can be of importance for companies, as closer relationships
lead to more self-disclosing behavior (Ki et al., 2020) and less data privacy
concerns. Besides, the AI friend can have an important role in recommending
the products and services acquired by the consumer (Dawar, 2018; McLean
et al., 2021; Yu, 2021). Moreover, some studies show that AI assistants can
take over the co-creation role in traditional customer–company interactions
(Payne et al., 2021). Based on this role of AI in advising and recommending
products to the consumer, future marketing will be bi-directional, targeting
both the consumer and the AI system. On one hand, the consumer has to be
convinced about the brand image and its characteristics, while on the other
hand, a brand or a product has to be attractive from the point of view of
the AI system, in order to be recommended to the consumer or bought in
an automatic way by the AI assistant (Dawar, 2018). Therefore, the future of
marketing will focus more on the ability and efficiency of using AI devices and
systems in order to make products and brands attractive and to be included in
their automated buying decisions.

3.4 Personal AI Assistants and Their Role in Assisting Consumers’

Household Activities
Personal AI assistants are intelligent devices that take over several of the daily
activities of consumers and have in the same time a physical presence. Although
their development is so far incipient, there are several fields where personal
robots are implemented, such as AI companions for senior and elderly people
(Sundar et al., 2017) or shopping companions (Bertacchini et al., 2017), while
future scenarios include them for taking over different activities in the house-
hold (Dawar, 2018). Depending on their behavioral characteristics, personal
AI will bring both utilitarian and hedonic benefits. For instance, in the case
of elderly people, humanoid robots can take the place of human caregivers by
assisting in the daily routine and reminding them of things they have to do.
At the same time, caregiving robots can help them move around the house
and lift heavy objects. Especially for those elderly people living alone, these
caregiving robots have an essential role in communicating with the outside
world and even alerting medical institutions in the case of medical emergency
(Sorell & Draper, 2014). They can also be involved in different spare-time
activities like shopping (Bertacchini et al., 2017). AI with a physical presence
246 C. PELAU ET AL.

can assist the human consumer and take over certain tasks such as lifting and
carrying shopping bags. As previously described, anthropomorphism and social
presence will play an important role in the acceptance of these AI companions.
According to Sundar et al. (2017), the preferred human-like features of the
AI depend on their role.
AI with a physical presence can substitute different personal activities which
are not taken over by other humans. Some authors describe the future of
humans as being permanently surrounded by intelligent devices, which will act
as personal assistants and take over some of the daily activities of consumers
(Dawar, 2018). An important aspect in the implementation of AI is their posi-
tion of equality or subordination: more precisely should AI be considered as
assistants or companions? According to Bryson (2009), all AI should be subor-
dinated to their human owner. This is easy to implement in the case of AI
which takes over functional tasks, but it is more difficult to fulfill in the case
of social-interactive robots which accompany the consumer for spare-time and
entertainment activities. The personality of consumers plays an important role
in this equality-subordination positioning of AI. Some consumers who like
to express power will be willing to subordinate their AI assistants (Hu et al.,
2022), in opposition to introverted persons, who might enjoy the companion-
ship of AI (Yuan et al., 2022). The integration of AI as assistant or companion
will have important implications for the marketing strategies of companies, as
the influence of AI on the consumer will depend on this integration.

4 Discussions and Future Implications

4.1 Implications for Consumer–AI Relations
In this chapter, the main categories of AI are presented, classified based on
their physical or virtual presence and their social distance to their human owner
as well as the main challenges they pose for the marketing strategies of compa-
nies. As seen in this classification, the big variety of AI with different functions
and roles will have important implications for consumer–AI interactions in the
future. However, it is important to make the distinction between these types
of AI, as they will have different roles in the lives of consumers and conse-
quently in the future marketing strategies of companies. In our opinion, one
main distinction will be based on social distance. External service robots or
voice assistants will be seen as similar to service employees and therefore the
relation with them will be more distant, implying a formal communication and
lower attachment. In opposition to this, the relation to personal voice assis-
tance or to personal AI assistants with physical presence is closer and more
personal, leading to an informal communication and also to the AI’s higher
access to the consumers’ personal data. Trust and acceptance are concepts that
are frequently measured in relation to AI. Based on the categories of AI, these
constructs will have different valences for research. On one hand, in the case
of external AI, the consumer will have to trust the AI to do the job well and
 11 THE PHYSICAL PRESENCE … 247

accept it instead of a human employee. On the other hand, in the case of

the personal AI, trust implies the access to personal data and to keeping this
information private, while acceptance refers to accepting the AI in the private
sphere and allowing it to perform certain tasks for the consumer. The satisfac-
tion related to AI will depend on the expectations set by the consumers and
the expected relations between consumer and AI.

4.2 Implications of the Consumer–AI Relations on the Marketing

Strategies of Companies
The categorization of AI has different valences for the marketing strategies
of companies. In the case of the external AI, the main challenge is to design
competent and friendly AI with similar characteristics to human employees.
Such AI should be able to fulfill the tasks in a similar way to human employees.
In the case of personal AI, the design and features are important for the
connection and relationship between the consumer and AI, and the ability of
the AI to intervene in the buying decisions of the consumer. Personal AI will
have the task either to recommend or to take buying decisions for the human
consumer, gaining an important role for the marketing strategies of compa-
nies. Thus, companies should focus not only on convincing the consumer to
buy their products, but also on getting the personal AI to recommend and
include the product in the shopping list of the human consumer. One impor-
tant question here concerns who is in control of the AI. The AI will have the
ability through machine learning to know the preferences of the consumer,
but at the same time, the system behind the AI is designed by a company
which might have control of the AI’s systems and recommendations. Espe-
cially in the case of a para-friendship relationship between consumer and AI,
the human might be exposed by relying only on the recommendations of the
AI, which might be controlled by a company. An AI device can play an impor-
tant role in communication between company and consumer, but only if the
consumer trusts the AI device and if he/she is willing to provide personal data
to the AI device. Therefore, it is important to consider how these intelligent
systems should be designed in order to protect the consumer, while at the
same time allowing companies to gain competitive advantage.

4.3 Implications of Consumer–AI Interaction on the Marketing

Strategies of Companies
The interaction between consumer and AI is another key aspect for the
successful implementation of AI devices. On one hand, there is the interac-
tion quality in the sense that the exchanged information between consumer
and AI should be mutually understandable. If the AI does not understand
the commands of the human consumer, it will not be able to perform the
task efficiently and according to the expectations of the human consumer. On
248 C. PELAU ET AL.

the other hand, if the consumer has difficulties in understanding the recom-
mendations of the AI, he/she will choose a purchasing method that involves
easier and simpler learning processes. However, there is also the engagement
and fun in the interaction between consumer and AI. An empathetic, engaging
and funny interaction will increase the attachment of the consumer toward the
AI and therefore the willingness to continue using the AI. Positive emotions
related to the interaction with the AI will determine whether the consumer
intensifies its usage.
Consequently, it is important to design the communication and interaction
between consumer and AI in order to make it functional, efficient, interactive
and engaging at the same time. This interaction will play a role in the intensity
and volume of the commercial transactions and it will determine the buying
decisions of the consumer.

4.4 Managerial and Practical Implications

The conceptual analysis presented in this chapter has major managerial and
practical implications. For companies and managers, it is important to clearly
define what type of robot will take over a certain function. Managers must
be aware of the fact that there are different types of AI and it is impor-
tant to implement them correctly depending on the context and tasks for
which they interact with the consumer. As shown above, there are certain
operations with a low involvement, in which the interaction and relations
between the consumer and AI are rather functional, while there are also oper-
ations with an emotional involvement, where the interaction and relations
should be designed accordingly. For marketing departments, it is impor-
tant to determine the expectations of consumers and design the interaction
accordingly. For instance, a consumer might find overwhelming the impli-
cation of emotional reactions in an expected functional relationship, while
conversely, if the emotional elements are lacking in an expected engaging rela-
tionship, the consumer will find the interaction cold and unempathetic. Based
on consumer and marketing research, it is important to determine the right
balance between functional and social-interactive components in each dealing
between consumer and AI. Of course, the correct balance can be established
based on previous consumer–employees interactions, but at the same time, it
might depend on each consumer and their expectations.
Another important aspect in the implementation of AI is the equality–
subordination relation between consumers and AI and their role as assistants or
companions. Depending on the programmed behavioral characteristics of AI,
there can be distinguished between functional and social-interactive robots. In
the case of the functional role of AI, it is expected to have a subordination
relationship, in which the AI will execute the tasks commanded by the human
owner and will have less power in influencing the decisions of the consumer. In
the case of a social-interactive AI, emotional relations between consumer and
AI will occur, leading to a rather equal relationship. In this case, the AI will
 11 THE PHYSICAL PRESENCE … 249

have emotional power to make recommendations for the human consumer.

Both scenarios and both types of robots will impact the interaction between
consumer and company, by having rather analytical relations in the case of the
functional AI or rather emotional relations in the case of the social-interactive
AI. In both cases the interaction between company and consumer will take
place with the help of AI.

4.5 Future Research Directions

The research directions for consumer–AI interactions and their implication on
the marketing strategies of companies are vast, but there is no golden rule
for their implementation. In future research, the authors consider that it is
important to make a delimitation between the different types of AI. Most of
the existent studies have been done on AI in general with the delimitation
based on the AI type used in the research. In future research, the authors aim
to investigate empirically both the anthropomorphic features of AI devices and
robots as well as the social relations between consumer and AI.
In this chapter, there is presented a conceptual classification of AI types
and their role for the marketing strategies of companies, but the topic needs
further empirical investigation. As mentioned before, it is important to assess
the role of each AI involved in the relation between companies and consumers,
to establish the expectations of the consumer and implement the AI accord-
ingly. In each case, the relation between AI and consumers depends on several
positive and negative outcomes that he/she receives from this relationship. On
one hand, there is the increased efficiency brought by the AI to the consumers’
activities, the hedonic pleasure and even the social presence and interaction
with the AI. On the other hand, the consumer might feel threatened by the
interference of the AI device in his/her private life and even lose his/her social
capabilities because of the communication with the AI device to the detriment
of other human beings. Consequently, it is important to balance the posi-
tive and negative aspects of the consumer–AI relations, in order to optimize
the benefits for the consumer and companies. Consequently, the relation has
to be further investigated in order to optimize its outcomes for consumers,
companies and society in general.

5 Conclusions
The results of this conceptual analysis on the implementation of AI in the
interaction between consumers and companies show the importance of the
role played by AI in service and product delivery. The analysis of the different
features of AI, such as physical, psychological and behavioral anthropomor-
phic features as well as social presence depends a lot on the expectations
of consumers. In their interaction with a company or in service delivery,
consumers, depending on the context, might want an easy functional rela-
tionship or more complex and engaging social relations with the AI and with
250 C. PELAU ET AL.

the company. It is important for companies to establish for each product

and each service, the amount of engagement the consumers want in order
to enhance the implementation of different types of AI. Companies must be
aware of the fact that each type of AI plays a different role in their relation to
consumers and therefore anthropomorphic characteristics, behavior and social
presence should be designed according to expectations. Some AIs will act as
personal assistants and will have more access to consumers’ personal data and
private life, while others will keep a social distance and serve the consumer
according to its commands. The same is valid for the physical presence of AI
and robots. Consequently, there is no golden rule for the implementation of
AI. Each company has to adapt according to the interaction context and to
the expectations and personality of the consumer.

Acknowledgements This work was supported by a grant from the Romanian

Ministry of Education and Research, CNCS–UEFISCDI, project number PN-III-P1-
1.1-TE-2021-0795, within PNCDI III.

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 CHAPTER 12

Humanizing Chatbots for Interactive Marketing

Wan-Hsiu Sunny Tsai and Ching-Hua Chuan

1 Introduction
The advances in artificial intelligence (AI) technologies have transformed
interactive marketing, elevating the field in automation, reach, acceleration,
precision, and accuracy. AI-powered self-service tools can further empower
consumers in value co-creation (Payne et al., 2021). Among the various AI-
enabled tools, chatbots represent a new frontier of interactive marketing (Tsai
et al., 2021a, 2021b). Chatbots, also known as conversational agents, are
automated computer programs powered by natural language processing to
engage consumers in interactive, one-on-one, personalized text- or voice-
based conversations. Given the dialogic nature, Sundar et al. (2016) argue that
chatbots may realize the promise of media technologies to simulate interper-
sonal communication. Across various industries, from e-learning, healthcare,
to e-commerce, chatbots have been adopted for their responsiveness, 24–
7 availability, and cost-efficiency (Adam et al., 2021; Loveys et al., 2020).
Pizzi et al. (2021) suggest that chatbot assistants are particularly favored by e-
commerce websites to subrogate salespeople and add a human touch. During
the COVID-19 pandemic, the US Centers for Disease Control and Preven-
tion’s chatbot has answered over a million inquiries per day from users in

W.-H. S. Tsai (B) · C.-H. Chuan

University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL, USA
e-mail: wanhsiu@miami.edu
C.-H. Chuan
e-mail: c.chuan@miami.edu

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 255

Switzerland AG 2023
C. L. Wang (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Interactive Marketing,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14961-0_12
256 W.-H. S. TSAI AND C.-H. CHUAN

the US (Smith, 2020), an impossible feat if such support were to be admin-

istered by human representatives. Particularly relevant to the pandemic that
has dramatically shifted the majority of consumers’ everyday interactions from
face-to-face to virtual, chatbots can be easily implemented on various digital
platforms, from websites to mobile apps. On Facebook alone, there are more
than 400,000 chatbots working hard to generate leads, provide assistance, and
close sales (Kim, 2020). Industry reports predict that e-commerce via chat-
bots will grow from $2.8 billion in 2019 to $142 billion in 2024 (Juniper
Research, 2020), creating new buzzwords such as chatvertising (Mims, 2014)
and conversational marketing (Cancel & Gerhardt, 2019).
The most common use of chatbots in interactive marketing today is for
customer service (Tsai et al., 2021a, 2021b). Research has confirmed the
effectiveness of chatbots as e-service agents to provide engaging service experi-
ences to improve marketing outcomes including user compliance (Adam et al.,
2021), trust (Youn & Jin, 2021), and customer–brand relationship (Chung
et al., 2018). In online customer service, chatbots do not get frustrated or lose
their temper when communicating with angry, difficult customers as humans
sometimes do (Luo et al., 2019; Tsai et al., 2021a, 2021b). The majority of
chatbot research has focused on the utilitarian usage of chatbots (Ling et al.,
2021) for customer service (e.g., Araujo, 2018; Go & Sundar, 2019) and eval-
uated task-oriented factors such as perceived usefulness (e.g., Zarouali et al.,
2018) and communication accuracy (e.g., Cheng & Jiang, 2021). However, as
a personalized, one-on-one communication tool, the potential of chatbots for
interactive marketing extends far beyond providing information (Ramerman,
2020).
Huang and Rust (2018) note that emotional intelligence enabling
computers to understand people’s emotional status and respond with empathy
will be the driving force of consumer acceptance of AI technologies. Prior
research in interactive marketing also attests to the importance of social
communication style for brand avatars in facilitating consumer–brand relation-
ships (e.g., Foster et al., 2021). Recently, scholars have noted the increasing
popularity of “social chatbots” that are “humanlike, with personality and
appropriate emotions” (Croes & Antheunis, 2021, p. 280) that satisfy people’s
social and relational needs (Shum et al., 2018) and enhance consumer–brand
relationships (Youn & Jin, 2021). Social chatbots like Kuki, who introduces
“herself” as “your AI BFF,” and Replika, “an AI companion who cares,” are
designed to communicate in a highly personable, affectionate manner to stim-
ulate attraction and offer emotional and social support. Focusing on text-based
social chatbots that can be easily implemented on websites and messenger plat-
forms, this book chapter synthesizes the relevant literature from the fields of
computer-mediated communication (CMC) and human–computer interaction
(HCI) to highlight the key factors driving chatbot persuasiveness.
Specifically, this chapter is organized as follows. To explicate the poten-
tial of computer-controlled chatbots in relation to human-controlled avatars,
this chapter first discusses the HCI literature comparing the social influence
 12 HUMANIZING CHATBOTS FOR INTERACTIVE MARKETING 257

of computers versus human agents. Then, the chapter delves into the various
anthropomorphic cues to humanize chatbots, including visual-oriented human
identity cues (e.g., appearance, name, gender), content and style-specific verbal
cues, as well as non-verbal cues such as typing indicators. To mitigate the
negative consequences when chatbots fail to understand consumers’ inputs,
strategies for chatbots to communicate humility are provided. The chapter
next addresses some of the most widely studied mediators of chatbot anthro-
pomorphism—social presence and parasocial interaction—and highlights the
under-researched role of emotions in consumer–chatbot interactions. The
chapter further elaborates on the “uncanny valley” effect pertaining to people’s
feelings of eeriness toward highly human-like chatbots.

2 Computer Agents Versus Human Avatars

As social beings, human perceptions, feelings, and experiences are shaped
by the actual, perceptual, and implied presence of others (Allport, 1985).
However, the source and mechanism of such social influence in today’s digital
world is constantly being redefined and transformed, particularly when users
encounter computer agents that can demonstrate human-like intelligence or
intentions. Kim and Sundar (2012) argue that when interacting with chat-
bots, people perceive that they are interacting with another intelligent being,
despite their awareness of the bot’s non-human identity, and respond to it as
a meaningful source of interaction.
Extensive research in CMC has compared the social influence of computer-
controlled agents versus human-controlled avatars but the findings are contra-
dictory. Some studies reported that users respond differently to virtual char-
acters based on whether they believe the character is being controlled by a
computer or by another person (e.g., Blascovich et al., 2002). This line of
research suggests that, due to the prevailing schema regarding computers as
unfeeling and mechanical, users will be more susceptible to the social influ-
ences (e.g., persuasiveness) of a perceived human than a computer (Blascovich,
2002). For instance, users tend to be more open, agreeable, and extroverted;
and use less profanity, more and longer words per message, and more positive
emotions when communicating with perceived humans rather than chatbots
(Hill et al., 2015; Mou & Xu, 2017). With a chatbot, users are less likely
to establish common ground and sustain personal relationships during the
conversation (Corti & Gillespie, 2016).
In contrast, other studies have shown that computer agents can be received
as well as human avatars. The computers are social actors (CASA) literature
suggests that when a computer mimics humans by demonstrating social cues,
people intuitively and unconsciously respond to the computer as though they
were interacting with another human being, rather than cognitively determine
how they should respond differently (Nass & Moon, 2000; Reeves & Nass,
1996). Although users are aware that a computer agent is not human and
might not warrant human attributions, they respond to it as a real person,
258 W.-H. S. TSAI AND C.-H. CHUAN

without consciously intending to do so (Reeves & Nass, 1996). For instance,

Nowak and Biocca (2003) found that human avatars and computer agents
evoke similar levels of perceived copresence, social presence, and telepres-
ence. In fact, being ostracized by a computer agent when playing Cyberball
can generate similar levels of damage to self-esteem, sense of belonging, and
meaningful existence as being ostracized by a human partner (Zadro et al.,
2004). Specific to the conversational advantage of chatbots, Ho et al. (2018)
observed that users’ emotional self-disclosure to a perceived chatbot partner
generated emotional, relational, and psychological benefits that are comparable
to disclosures to a human partner. As chatbots have been increasingly adopted
in various industries, the crucial question is no longer about whether chatbots
may perform equally well or differently from human avatars, but what factors
can enhance the effectiveness of chatbots for what outcomes.
Specific to interactive marketing, Luo et al.’s (2019) field experiment on
voice-based chatbots for online financial services found that when companies
do not disclose to customers the computer identity of the sales representative
in sales phone calls, chatbots are as effective as proficient human representa-
tives and four times more effective than inexperienced ones in engendering
customer purchases. However, when customers are told that they are inter-
acting with a bot, purchase rates drop by more than 79.7%. Based on survey
data, they further confirm that when customers know they are talking to
a bot, they are more brusque, purchase less, and even terminate the calls
early because they perceive the bot as less knowledgeable and empathetic.
It is important to note that consumers are likely to respond differently to
voice-based versus text-based bots, and more importantly, they may be more
cautious and skeptical toward the uses of chatbots for complicated, high-risk
financial services studied in Luo et al.’s (2019) experiment. Indeed, Mozafari
et al. (2021) found that for highly critical services, if the text-based chatbot is
able to solve the service issue, chatbot disclosure reduces customer trust and
consequently hampers retention. By contrast, for less critical services, chatbot
disclosure has no impact on customer trust. Unexpectedly, they also observed
that when the chatbot fails to handle the service issue, disclosing the chatbot
identity can mitigate the negative failure effect and improve customer reten-
tion. They explained that the chatbot disclosure serves as a type of explanation
of the service failure and may be regarded as akin to an apology. Nonethe-
less, given the increasing demand from regulators and consumers for corporate
transparency, including chatbot disclosure (Federal Trade Commission, 2017),
marketers are strongly encouraged to explicitly inform consumers that they
are interacting with a bot. Adam et al. (2021) further argue that instead
of attempting to disguise a chatbot’s machine identity or tricking users into
thinking they are interacting with a human, marketers should focus on strate-
gies and factors that can enhance chatbots’ effectiveness. Next, this chapter
will discuss the key variables that drive chatbots’ persuasiveness, from chatbot
design to consumer attributes, contextual considerations, and key mediators.
 12 HUMANIZING CHATBOTS FOR INTERACTIVE MARKETING 259

3 Anthropomorphism of Chatbots
Research highlights people’s skepticism or resistance to chatbots, likely due to
the understanding that chatbots are devoid of feelings and empathy, and are
thus incapable of genuinely understanding their personal needs. Not surpris-
ingly, extensive research has explored ways to imbue chatbots with “humanity”
by boosting perceived anthropomorphism—the degree to which non-human
entities can project human-like characteristics, behaviors, emotions, and inten-
tions (Powers & Kiesler, 2006). Higher anthropomorphism has been shown
to lower reactance (Pizzi et al., 2021) and improve consumer trust, interac-
tion, and experience (De Visser et al., 2016). For instance, Roy and Naidoo
(2021) found that perceived humanness of chatbots based on social judgment
cues of warmth and competence contributes to consumer perception of the
target brand as more humane. Blut et al.’s (2021) meta-analysis of the service
literature further confirms that anthropomorphism is positively associated with
robots’ perceived animacy, intelligence, and likability. Not surprisingly, anthro-
pomorphism is the most commonly implemented and tested factor in chatbot
research.
While chatbots can be either disembodied (e.g., Bank of America’s “Erica”)
or embodied with a virtual representation, the majority of chatbot studies
have focused on embodied chatbots that can be easily designed to look like
humans, such as IKEA’s “Anna.” Go and Sundar (2019) suggest that the
easiest way to infuse a chatbot with humanness might be the use of human
figures that can encapsulate various human identity cues (e.g., human-like
face, name, age, gender, occupational role) as explicit visual cues to give the
bot a human identity (Liew & Tan, 2021). Feine et al.’s (2019) taxonomy
of social cues for chatbots also identified agent appearance (e.g., gender, age,
race, hair color, occupational role) as an important visual cue. Hence, it has
been argued that appearance-oriented human identity cues have primacy over
other anthropomorphic cues such as language (Roy & Naidoo, 2021). Indeed,
anthropomorphic appearance has become the default of chatbot design in the
literature (e.g., Roy & Naidoo, 2021), while the manipulation and opera-
tionalization of anthropomorphic appearance can vary from a cartoon-like,
animated picture to a real person’s photo. Not surprisingly, many brands have
created embodied chatbots that have human-like figures or profile pictures in
the design.
Another key factor driving chatbots’ persuasiveness is anthropomorphic
verbal cues in messages, which are not as directly and immediately observ-
able as human identity visual cues (Youn & Jin, 2021). Research has examined
various communication strategies or conversational styles utilizing anthropo-
morphic verbal cues to enhance chatbots’ perceived humanness. Feine et al.’s
(2019) taxonomy of chatbot social cues differentiates verbal cues into content
(i.e., what is said) and style (how something is said). For instance, Tsai et al.
and’s (2021a, 2021b) experiment tested chatbot messages that use content
cues of humor and phatics (i.e., communications that serve a purely social
260 W.-H. S. TSAI AND C.-H. CHUAN

function such as “Great weather today!”), of addressing users by name and

expressing agreement and appreciation with the user. They reported that such
verbal cues effectively boost user perception of having a dialogue with the bot,
which in turn improves consumer evaluation. Youn and Jin (2021) reported
that verbal cues of the first-person singular pronoun, small talk, and empathy
positively drive consumer compliance. In particular, AI tools’ “empathetic
intelligence” in recognizing and understanding people’s emotional expres-
sions, responding with proper emotions, and influencing others’ emotions,
has been advocated as the next key step for improving consumer accep-
tance (Huang & Rust, 2018). Increasing research efforts have been dedicated
to exploring how chatbots can express empathy to improve user response.
For instance, Liu and Sundar (2018) tested three types of empathic expres-
sion—sympathy (e.g., “I feel sorry for your pain”), cognitive empathy (i.e.,
acknowledgment of users’ situations and feelings), and affective empathy (e.g.,
“I could imagine how annoying it is”)—and found that chatbots’ expression
of sympathy and affective empathy is perceived as more supportive.
Research has also evaluated style-oriented verbal cues. For instance, Nass
et al. (1995) suggest that personalities of computers can be easily constructed
and conveyed via dominant language style (e.g., assertions and commands;
speaking first in the conversation) or submissive style (e.g., questions and
suggestions; speaking second in the interaction). Roy and Naidoo (2021)
experimented with anthropomorphic conversational styles of warm versus
competent and found that the varying communication style persuaded
consumers to demonstrate different psychological predispositions toward the
chatbot. Liebrecht and van Hooijdonk (2020) similarly suggest applying
conversational human voice, an informal style of organizational communica-
tion to enhance the chatbot’s perceived humanness.
A critical style-oriented verbal cue that has not been sufficiently studied is
the chatbot’s projected brand personality or character. Prior HCI studies have
highlighted the importance of the general “friendly” personality trait (e.g.,
Mehra, 2021) and compared easily differentiated, dichotomous personalities
of extraversion versus introversion (e.g., Lee et al., 2006). At the same time,
marketing literature has documented that consumers commonly attribute
human properties to brands (Verčič & Verčič, 2007), and multi-dimensional
brand personalities (i.e., sincerity, excitement, competence, sophistication, and
ruggedness; Aaker, 1997) have been widely studied. For example, sincerity
and ruggedness positively influence trust toward the brand while excitement
and sophistication help create an emotional bond with the brand (Sung &
Kim, 2010). Similarly, Davies et al. (2004) developed a corporate character
scale in public relations that consists of five key dimensions: agreeableness,
enterprise, competence, chic, and ruthlessness. However, research has not
adequately explored how well chatbots can project a specific brand personality
dimension or corporate character or the impact of specific brand person-
ality in chatbot–consumer interactions and the associated brand–consumer
relationship.
 12 HUMANIZING CHATBOTS FOR INTERACTIVE MARKETING 261

Lastly, a widely recognized disadvantage of text-based platforms is their

relative limitation in facilitating non-verbal communication. Despite the
limited affordance of text-based chatbots, non-verbal anthropomorphic cues
such as “typing” indicators, longer response time signifying “thinking,” as well
as emojis could be perceived as part of the communication processed by users
and accordingly can evoke social responses in human–machine communication
(Feine et al., 2019; Xu & Liao, 2020; Seeger et al., 2021).

3.1 Chatbot Humility

Although many studies focus on anthropomorphic verbal cues that can boost a
chatbot’s perceived competence and expertise (Liew & Tan, 2021), a chatbot’s
self-disclosure of limitations and shortcomings in performance can, in fact,
boost trustworthiness and thus elevate user engagement (Rheu et al., 2021).
In particular, anthropomorphic chatbots may set high expectations although
they have only a limited ability to understand all types of input, including
grammatical and syntactic errors in users’ responses that human representa-
tives would be able to comprehend. With substantial buzz and hype about
AI advances in media coverage, consumers’ expectations of what AI-powered
chatbots can do are likely to be further inflated, leading to great frustra-
tion when such expectations are not met. Indeed, Luger and Sellen (2016)
reported “user expectations dramatically out of step with the operation of the
systems, particularly in terms of known machine intelligence, system capabili-
ties and goals” (p. 5286). It is thus imperative to employ strategies to mitigate
the detrimental impacts when chatbots’ response failures occur.
If a chatbot’s self-introduction is infused with humility by explicitly commu-
nicating that it is still “learning” as a technology-in-progress, as well as
acknowledging its limitations and potential failure in understanding their
input, users may lower their expectations or even become more patient or
tolerant when the chatbot fails to understand them or respond appropriately.
For instance, the weather forecast bot “Poncho” informed users “I’m good at
talking about the weather. Other stuff, not so good” and Slack’s chatbot states
“I try to be helpful (But I’m still just a bot. Sorry!)” in its self-introduction
(Waddell, 2017) Additionally, fallback responses (e.g., “I did not understand
your request. Can you rephrase?”) are necessary when response failure occurs
(Ashktorab et al., 2019). Instead of simply stating that the chatbot could
not understand the user’s questions, including humility in chatbots’ fallback
responses is also crucial.
Relatedly, as AI tools become increasingly prevalent, consumers’ aware-
ness of the limitation and imperfection of the technology may lead to a
general tendency toward algorithm aversion (Dietvorst et al., 2015), defined
as people’s reluctance to use algorithms that they know to be superior but
imperfect. Focusing on test score forecast algorithms, Dietvorst et al. (2018)
suggest that giving users the freedom to modify the algorithm, even in a
262 W.-H. S. TSAI AND C.-H. CHUAN

very restricted manner, can induce a sense of control that increases satisfac-
tion and preference with the algorithm. Pizzi et al. (2021) further suggest
that conversation initiation (i.e., conversation initiated by the chatbot or by
the user) should be considered since unsolicited help or advice from chatbots
may evoke reactance similar to the negative effects of pop-up advertisements.
They found that initiation locus significantly interacts with anthropomorphic
chatbot design so that consumer reactance is lower for user-initiated anthro-
pomorphic chatbots. More research is needed to explore whether allowing
users to modify or customize aspects of the chatbot design and communica-
tion might lead to higher acceptance, more tolerance of chatbot failures, or
greater interaction satisfaction.

3.2 Anthropomorphism, Social Presence, and Parasocial Interaction

Related to the widely recognized importance of anthropomorphism in chatbot
design, social presence has been extensively documented as the key factor
mediating the effects of chatbot anthropomorphism on interpersonal effects.
Defined as a degree of salience of another intelligent being (living or synthetic)
in mediated interactions (Qiu & Benbasat, 2009; Short et al., 1976), social
presence addresses people’s perceptions of human contact (i.e., warmth,
empathy, sociability) and psychological distance with others in CMC and HCI.
Chatbot studies consistently suggest that anthropomorphic chatbots, such as
bots that resemble human appearances, can evoke a sense of social presence
by generating feelings of interacting with the “other person” (Go & Sundar,
2019; Kim & Sundar, 2012). Social presence resulting from anthropomor-
phism has been shown to improve trust, engagement, interaction satisfaction,
as well as attitude and emotional connection with chatbot’s affiliated company
(Araujo, 2018).
To understand how chatbots can simulate interpersonal communication,
scholars have also examined the mediating role of parasocial interaction. This
concept was originally conceptualized for audiences’ perception of having an
intimate and personal relationship akin to friendship and companionship with
media personalities, such as fictional TV characters and news hosts (Horton &
Wohl, 1956). Given the dominance of social media, CMC scholars have
studied parasocial interaction with social media personalities, such as bloggers
(Colliander & Dahlén, 2011) and social media influencers (Rasmussen, 2018),
and documented the mediating effects of parasocial interaction on brand atti-
tudes and purchase intentions (Colliander & Dahlén, 2011). In terms of
consumer–chatbot interaction, Youn and Jin (2021) found that consumers
who interacted with a friend chatbot (versus an assistant chatbot) experience
stronger parasocial interaction, which further enhances perceived personality of
chatbot’s represented brand. Tsai et al., (2021a, 2021b) argue that the one-
on-one, interactive, social, and conversational context can facilitate parasocial
interaction compared to traditional media and the public-oriented, one-to-
many communications with brand representatives on social networking sites.
 12 HUMANIZING CHATBOTS FOR INTERACTIVE MARKETING 263

They observed that the effects of chatbots’ anthropomorphic verbal cues

were fully mediated by parasocial interaction. Their results thus suggest that
when pre-testing anthropomorphic cues in design and messaging, parasocial
interaction should be considered as an important evaluation goal.

4 Human Emotions
in Consumer–Chatbot Interaction
Compared to chatbot design and communication factors that have been the
primary focus of prior studies, the role of emotions in consumer–chatbot
interactions demands more research attention. In particular, in settings where
consumers need to share information on sensitive, embarrassing, and poten-
tially stigmatized issues such as financial difficulty, mental health, or sexual
activity, consumers may be more willing to speak to computers that are viewed
as impersonal but non-judgmental. It has long been speculated that “people
would tell an impartial machine personal or embarrassing things about them-
selves, without fear of negative evaluation” (Weisband & Kiesler, 1996, p. 3).
In health communication, research suggests that people tend to avoid face-
to-face conversations on embarrassing or stigmatized topics (e.g., Redston
et al., 2018). For instance, embarrassment is a major barrier to colon cancer
prevention (Terdiman, 2006) and for young people in discussing sexual health
with their physicians. Consequently, Planned Parenthood has offered a sex-ed
chatbot, Roo, to answer teens’ questions about puberty, sex, and relation-
ships (Segran, 2019). Beyond health issues, Katsanis (1994) indicates that
when purchasing embarrassing “unmentionable products” that are unhealthy,
stigmatized, or sexually oriented, embarrassment is involved in all stages of
buying and consumption (Dahl et al., 2001). However, there exist few studies
assessing the effectiveness of chatbots in handling embarrassing topics and
the preliminary results are mixed. Lucas et al. (2014) observed that partic-
ipants who believed they were interacting with a computer agent reported
lower evaluation fears and impression management, and were more honest in
disclosing and displaying their sadness. They explained that because people
believe that pre-programmed chatbots lack the ability to think independently,
hence believe that chatbots do not judge them. Qualitative evidence further
supports the notion that chatbot acceptability can be higher for sensitive
content or stigmatized health issues (e.g., Nadarzynski et al., 2019; Zamora,
2017). By contrast, Tsai et al.’s (2021a, 2021b) experiment comparing
chatbot versus human brand representative in the context of discussing sexu-
ally transmitted diseases and HPV vaccines found that embarrassed participants
were more likely to disclose concerns of HPV risks and provide more elabo-
rate answers to the perceived human representative. Even when participants
experienced embarrassment, they responded similarly to chatbots and human
representatives, rather than favoring chatbots. Along this line of reasoning,
non-anthropomorphic bots highlighting the computer identity may be better
suited to handle embarrassing conversations.
264 W.-H. S. TSAI AND C.-H. CHUAN

Specific to the prevalent use of chatbots in customer service, anger has

been recognized as a powerful driver of consumer dissatisfaction with failed
service encounters or product malfunction (Funches, 2011). However, angry
consumers may get even more irritated when encountering a chatbot agent
that is viewed as incapable of genuine understanding of their emotional
stress and turmoil caused by the product and the company. Additionally,
when angry consumers contact customer service, the first thing they want
is to vent (Forbes, 2013). However, as an interaction-based anger regula-
tory strategy, venting is closely related to people’s need to be understood
by others that can bring a sense of validation. Without the emotional
capacity to truly understand angry consumers’ frustrations, chatbots are inher-
ently poorly equipped in venting interactions. Angry consumers also contact
customer service to seek a heartfelt apology (Worthington, 1998). However,
the remorse and apology communicated by chatbots can be dismissed as
pre-programmed, automated reactions. Indeed, Tsai et al., (2021a, 2021b)
reported that angry participants reported lower interaction satisfaction with
the chatbot than with the human representative. Moreover, Crolic et al.
(2022) found that angry consumers interacting with an anthropomorphic
(versus non-anthropomorphic) chatbot are more likely to report lower satis-
faction, company evaluation, and future purchase intentions. They further
verified that the anthropomorphic chatbot design elevates consumers’ expec-
tation of chatbot efficacy, and angry consumers respond more punitively to
the expectancy violations compared with non-angry customers. In this way,
although chatbots may function as well as human representatives in providing
solutions or compensations to angry consumers, chatbots in general are disfa-
vored by angry consumers, who may further “punish” the anthropomorphic
ones that violated their expectations. Overall, there exists scarce empirical data
about the effects of other powerful emotions, such as hope, aspiration, sadness,
and fear, in the chatbot context. While chatbots can increasingly recognize
and respond to a greater variety of human emotions, more research is needed
to explicate the role of different emotions in influencing consumer–chatbot
interactions.

5 Emotional and Empathetic Intelligence

Beyond chatbot design factors, scholars have advocated for the integration
of consumer psychological traits to offer more personalized chatbot inter-
actions (Pizzi et al., 2021). For instance, Youn and Jin (2021) focused on
consumers’ ideological perspective in embracing or resisting AI (technopians
versus luddites) and found that technopians perceive an assistant chatbot
(versus friend chatbot) to be more sincere, whereas luddites do not view the
chatbot to be sincere regardless of whether the bot introduces itself as an
assistant or a friend. Specific to their increasing popularity, anthropomorphic
social chatbots have been found to be particularly appealing to consumers
who either have a higher need for human interaction (Sheehan & Gottlieb,
 12 HUMANIZING CHATBOTS FOR INTERACTIVE MARKETING 265

2020) or social phobia (Jin & Youn, 2021). In social psychology, De Gennaro
et al. (2020) demonstrated that after experiencing social exclusion on social
media, interacting with an anthropomorphic chatbot that can offer empathy
can help participants to achieve a more positive mood. Given the pervasive
experience of social exclusion that can be experienced in our interactions
with family members, friends, colleagues, and strangers (Chen et al., 2017)—
an experience that is likely made more common by political polarization
and the COVID-19 pandemic—fortifying chatbots’ empathetic intelligence to
better satisfy consumers’ emotional and social needs is key to providing more
engaging interactions. However, two of the most well-known mental health
support chatbots adopt non-anthropomorphic appearances—Woebot resem-
bles a less slick Wall-E while Wysa takes the form of a cartoon penguin. More
research thus is needed to verify the importance of human identity cues in
consumer evaluation of chatbots’ emotional and empathetic intelligence.

6 From Consumer–Chatbot
Interaction to Relationship
While research has underscored the effectiveness of chatbots in inducing posi-
tive interpersonal outcomes from trust to engagement, whether consumers
can establish meaningful relationships with chatbots remains an unanswered
question. Based on qualitative interviews on participants’ experiences with the
social chatbot Replika, Skjuve et al. (2021) suggest that participants’ interac-
tions with the chatbot that were initially fueled by curiosity were later trans-
formed by substantial affective exploration and engagement and developed
into relationships that are rewarding with affective and social value. However,
Croes and Antheunis’ (2021) longitudinal study on the social chatbot Mitsuku
(now Kuki) observed that participants’ repeated interactions with the social
chatbot over three weeks did not translate into friendship. In fact, most
social processes associated with relationship formation, including perceived
social attraction, interaction quality, empathy, and communication competence
of the chatbot deteriorated over time. After a few interactions, the chatbot
was viewed as predictable and less empathetic, and the interactions became
less enjoyable. The researchers thus conclude that although chatbots can be
programmed to be highly social and human-like and act as if they care about
the human interactants, users do not develop feelings of “friendship” with a
chatbot. They further point out that even today’s most advanced chatbots can
only learn from real-time interaction instead of referencing prior conversations,
which seriously hinders relationship formation and maintenance. However, in
the case of Replika, not only can users create and customize the chatbot’s
appearance as their own virtual companion, but the chatbot can learn and
mimic their “creator” human friend’s texting styles (Huang & Rust, 2018),
and more importantly, create “shared memories” based on prior conversa-
tions with the user. In this way, each human–chatbot interaction contributes
to accumulated shared experiences and common history, creating feelings of
266 W.-H. S. TSAI AND C.-H. CHUAN

getting acquainted with each other, and may ultimately contribute to relation-
ship formation. Similarly, in order to provide more personalized interactions
based on prior conversations with each individual user, future chatbots should
recognize each distinct customer, either based on IP address or consumer
account.

7 The Uncanny Valley Effects

of Chatbot Anthropomorphism
Despite the popularity and advantages of anthropomorphic chatbots, Sundar
(2008) suggests that as part of the “machine heuristic,” computers can also
be perceived as unbiased, objective, inherently logic-driven, and thus may be
more credible. Therefore, it is likely that in marketing contexts when perceived
credibility and objectivity is key, it may be more beneficial for the chatbot to
explicitly communicate its computer identity instead of appearing to be more
human-like.
More importantly, research based on the uncanny valley theory for
humanoid technologies suggests that highly anthropomorphic objects can
induce adverse reactions, such as feelings of eeriness, leading to negative eval-
uation (e.g., Seyama & Nagayama, 2007). Specifically, the theory suggests
a curvilinear relationship between a computer agent’s degree of human like-
ness and user response. While a low to medium degree of anthropomorphism
can increase positive responses, negative affective responses occur when the
computer is highly anthropomorphic, yet still not perfect (Mara et al., 2022).
Ciechanowski et al.’s (2019) experiments comparing a simple text-based
chatbot with a highly anthropomorphic animated chatbot that can move and
read its responses in addition to the text responses showed that the simple text-
based bot was more positively evaluated in terms of more pleasant interaction.
In the context of computer-generated imagery (CGI) influencers, Arsenyan
and Mirowska (2021) found that highly anthropomorphic CGI influencers
received fewer positive emojis, more anger and anxiety emotions, and more
doubts in user comments, as compared to less anthropomorphic influencers.
The majority of uncanny valley studies evaluated physical robots. For instance,
Kim et al.’s (2019) study on physical social robots observed the uncanny effect
that anthropomorphism of a consumer robot decreases favorable attitudes.
Mara et al.’s (2022) meta-analysis of uncanny valley studies with human-
like robots confirms more positive responses for human-like robots at low to
medium anthropomorphism. However, due to the scarcity of highly anthro-
pomorphic robots tested in the literature, results regarding the adverse effects
are inconclusive. Critically, scholars have suggested that feelings of eeriness
are likely to occur when higher expectations of social interaction induced by
human identity cues are unmet when highly human-like computer agents fail
to understand users’ responses or respond appropriately (Kontogiorgos et al.,
2019; Nowak & Biocca, 2003). Human identity cues, especially anthropo-
morphic appearances, thus can be a double-edged sword, as they can set high
 12 HUMANIZING CHATBOTS FOR INTERACTIVE MARKETING 267

expectations when consumers first encounter a chatbot, leading to frustration

and negative brand evaluation when such expectations are not met. However,
with advances in AI, particularly in the area of affective computing that can
boost chatbots’ emotional and empathetic intelligence (Huang & Rust, 2018),
future chatbots may one day meet consumers’ high expectations.

8 Conclusion
As a state-of-the-art technology, one embodying two-way communication as
well as facilitating consumer participation in interactive marketing (Wang,
2021), chatbots are poised to become the next major marketing communica-
tion channel and e-commerce platform. This chapter highlights the advantages
of anthropomorphic chatbots in enhancing social presence and parasocial inter-
action via human identity, verbal, and non-verbal cues. At the same time,
the disadvantages of chatbots in general and human-like chatbots in partic-
ular in handling embarrassing conversations and placating angry customers
are noted. Given the increasing popularity of highly social, human-like chat-
bots that can act as virtual friends or companions, future research should
carefully explore how consumers interpret and respond to chatbots’ expressed
emotions (e.g., remorse) and empathy in relation to perceived agency and
authenticity. Relatedly, as chatbots are becoming more sophisticated and can
even hold memories of prior conversations with an individual user, critical
research attention is needed to explore the evolving parasocial relationships
that consumers may form with brand chatbots, which is especially important
in today’s digital world where “the distinction between truth and falsehood
has become irrelevant” (Kalpokas et al., 2019, p. 9).

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 CHAPTER 13

Affective Interaction with Technology: The

Role of Virtual Assistants in Interactive
Marketing

Guillermo Calahorra Candao, Carolina Herrando,

and María José Martín-De Hoyos

1 Introduction
The evolution of the internet has culminated in the sensory or emotional
web (5.0), which collects tools that can stimulate emotions in the individual
through text, images, or sounds. The inclusion of artificial intelligence to opti-
mize online interactions through the use of virtual assistants has presented a
new challenge for interactive marketing researchers (Wang, 2021). The latest
technological developments in business relationships are closely related to the
generation of emotions between individuals who interact with technology
throughout the purchase process. As early as 1955, Abbot (1955, p. 40)
stated that “what people really want are not products but satisfying expe-
riences.” Other authors have recently expanded on this idea, attributing to
the customer experiences of a holistic nature that incorporate the customer’s
cognitive, emotional, social, and spiritual responses in all interactions with
the company (Lemon & Verhoef, 2016; Schmitt et al., 2015). Consumers
are looking not just for an effective transaction but for an overall hedonic
consumption experience (Wang et al., 2020).

G. C. Candao · C. Herrando (B) · M. J. M.-D. Hoyos

University of Zaragoza, Zaragoza, Spain
e-mail: cherrando@unizar.es
M. J. M.-D. Hoyos
e-mail: mjhoyos@unizar.es

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 275

Switzerland AG 2023
C. L. Wang (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Interactive Marketing,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14961-0_13
276 G. C. CANDAO ET AL.

Social interaction on the internet is a fundamental factor that influences

the experience of individuals (Hernández-Ortega, 2019). That is, these expe-
riences are determined by the information generated by other users, by shared
experiences, by the quality of this information, by its purpose (utilitarian or
hedonic), by the sender of this message (the company, other users, chatbots, or
virtual assistants), or by the value of the comments shared (positive, negative,
or neutral).
Many e-commerce platforms already have a customer service with their
own virtual assistant that helps and advises in the purchase process. In this
way, these assistants exert an influence on the consumer’s purchase decision
process, due to the idiosyncrasy of their acoustic and sound characteristics
(Chattaraman et al., 2019), or even due to the image or visual appearance of
the virtual assistant (Benbasat et al., 2020).
The experiences and emotions generated from interaction with technology
have been and continue to be one of the most relevant research topics in
marketing (Lemon & Verhoef, 2016; McKechnie et al., 2018). The virtual
relationships (social and commercial) that exist through different devices basi-
cally use three forms of communication: text, image, and sound. All of these
forms make it possible to transmit a message in different contexts, and each
message supposes a stimulus for the sender and receiver, which leads to a
cognitive or physiological response.
Consequently, one of the main challenges researchers and marketers are
facing is to tackle the emotions the customer experiences during online inter-
actions along the customer journey (Lemon & Verhoef, 2016). The objective
of this chapter is to review the state of the art on the field of emotions, the
tools involved in the affective interaction with VA, and to deep dive into the
role of VA in this interaction. Second section of this chapter presents a liter-
ature review about the emotion concept and approaches. The third section
describes the three main communication tools (text, sound, and image), which
allow boosting of interactive marketing experiences, and contextualizes the
role of emotions in these experiences. The fourth section introduces virtual
assistants as part of interactive marketing strategy and discusses their role in
transmitting emotions to consumers through anthropomorphic features. The
final section provides an overall discussion with a proposed future agenda and
a summary of the main key points of this chapter.

2 Theoretical Revision of Emotion

The definition of emotion varies depending on how it is measured. According
to the categorical approach, emotions are classified into categories that are
different from each other. These categories are known as basic emotions,
which are limited, universal, and primary (e.g., happiness, sadness, fear, etc.)
from which secondary emotions are constructed (Ekman, 1992; Picard et al.,
2001). They are considered universal emotions because humans can find them
in all cultures, and they are also related to specific physiological patterns or
 13 AFFECTIVE INTERACTION WITH TECHNOLOGY: THE ROLE … 277

emotional expressions. Unlike the following approaches, there is not a specific

and defined number of emotions that might or might not be represented
under this perspective.
The approach sustained by Ekman (1992) is taken as a reference in cate-
gorical emotions, where only 6 of them were considered basic (anger, disgust,
fear, happiness, sadness and surprise). Later virtual personal assistants’ (VPA)
literature has used this theory to explain basic aspects of the communica-
tion between consumers and virtual assistants (Castillo et al., 2018; Wang
et al., 2005), separating some emotions from others and assuming, as well,
a dichotomous approach where the used sound by the VPA cannot be fit in
more than just one category of emotion (e.g., the emotion transmitted is/isn’t
happiness). The limited possibilities of using a finite variety of emotion-led
researchers to adopt a wider approach.
The dimensional approach focuses on the identification of emotions located
in a specific dimension that corresponds to an internal emotional representa-
tion of the human being (Yang & Chen, 2012). These dimensions are based
on the analysis of the correlation between affective concepts, usually defined
as VAD: valence (which collects positive and negative affective states), arousal
(measuring the level of energy or stimulus), and dominance (the feeling of
being in control of a situation) (Osgood, 1957).
Valence, as the value of an emotion, ranging from pleasant to unpleasant
(Bradley & Lang, 2000), has received little attention within the OCR litera-
ture, and the existing research remains largely inconclusive. For example, while
some studies have pointed out the effects of valence in OCRs on businesses,
others have found no such correlation (Forman et al., 2008; Liu, 2006). Even
within each of these positions, there is no consensus. While some researchers
have found a relation between positive emotions and OCRs (Park & Nicolau,
2015), others have argued the opposite (Wilson et al., 2017), and neither
of the studies concerned considered the affective outcomes and managerial
benefits that emotional variables might bring. Furthermore, there has been
a tendency within the literature to consider valence in terms of a general
status for a whole review, despite the findings of psycholinguistic studies that
each word has its own affective value (Bradley & Lang, 2000; Hinojosa et al.,
2016; Stadthagen-Gonzalez et al., 2017). Also, in the study of emotions, some
researchers highlight the need to consider the positive or negative valence of
the combination of OCRs read, and not just one-to-to emotional contagion;
since the overall experience while reading OCRs is what impacts the affective
responses in terms of valence and arousal (Herrando et al., 2022).
Valence and arousal have been among the main concepts in the classifica-
tion of affective responses (Wundt, 1912), as both affective states define the
structure of an emotion (Lang, 1994). From the early stages, valence and
arousal have been the foundations of emotion research (Lang, 1994). Valence
and arousal have proved useful in different research fields, including linguis-
tics (Coltheart et al., 2001; Frost et al., 1987), neurology (Mammarella et al.,
2013), and food and beverages (Drobes et al., 2001). Valence and arousal have
278 G. C. CANDAO ET AL.

also been an important part of research related to the effect of word-of-mouth

on sales, especially in terms of reviews and comments on social commerce
websites (Chevalier & Mayzlin, 2006). Interestingly, in virtual environments,
users find more helpful OCRs which accompany text with an image (Wu et al.,
2021).
Valence and arousal are often presented together with a third variable, called
dominance, which measures the state in which a person feels in control of a
situation, has not been studied with the same interest as the first two (Osgood
et al., 1957). This is because dominance explains to a lesser extent the varia-
tion in possible affective judgments, and the values provided for this variable
vary much more between people compared to valence and arousal (Bradley &
Lang, 1994).
Previous research has examined how the three variables influence how
we process words, images, and sounds. The studies that relate the set of
VAD (valence-arousal-dominance) variables in databases of visual and auditory
stimuli are widely known. Table 1 lists some of the most popular databases
with these variables.
Although these studies use valence-arousal-dominance indistinctly to quan-
tify emotions, studies in neuropsychology show that valence has stronger
effects on the activation of the amygdala, the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex
and the ventromedial, regardless of whether the stimulus was text, image, or
audio (Kensinger & Schacter, 2006). Valence and arousal have been used more
extensively because they seem to have stronger effects on the other variables,
especially when compared to dominance (Sutton et al., 2019).
Russell (1980) proposed a circumplex model that, using a circular and two-
dimensional structure, allows us to observe the inverse correlation between
valence and arousal (see Fig. 1).
Figure 1 illustrates the represented two-dimensional space where valence
and arousal are mixed in order to show some examples of complex emotions,
allowing the definition of a greater variety of emotions. The same author
argues that valence and arousal are the key dimensions of affection and a basis
for the construction of emotions (Russell, 2003). The use of dominance, as a
third variable, allows to obtain a more complex image of the representation of
emotions (as shown in Fig. 2). It can be observed an increase in the complexity
of the models using three variables instead of only two (Deng et al., 2015).
For this reason, the use of valence and arousal as variables to represent
emotions is more practical (Deng et al., 2015).

3 Communication Tools in Interactive Marketing

Interactive marketing strategies, aimed to encourage optimal customer experi-
ences, focus on digital content and interactions. Interactive technologies (such
as the internet of things, virtual reality or artificial intelligence) are trans-
forming customer experience (Lucia-Palacio & Pérez-López, 2021; Payne
et al., 2021). The digital environment allows users to interact with a firm,
with other users, or with virtual assistants through text, image, and sound (see
Fig. 3).
 13 AFFECTIVE INTERACTION WITH TECHNOLOGY: THE ROLE … 279

Table 1 Databases that integrate emotions and stimuli (text-image-sound)

Stimulus Study Authors

Sound IADS Affective auditory stimuli: Characterization of the

International Affective Digitized Sounds (IADS) by
discrete emotional categories (Stevenson et al., 2008)
IADS-E Affective auditory stimulus database: An expanded version
of the International Affective Digitized Sounds (IADS-E)
(Yang et al., 2018)
IADS-2 Affective auditory stimuli: Adaptation of the international
affective digitized sounds (IADS-2) for European
Portuguese (Soares et al., 2013)
Spanish IADS El sistema internacional de sonidos afectivos (IADS):
adaptación española (Fernández-Abascal et al., 2008)
Image IAPS The International Affective Picture System (IAPS) in the
study of emotion and attention (Lang & Bradley, 2007)
Brazilian IAPS Brazilian norms for the International Affective Picture
System (IAPS): comparison of the affective ratings for new
stimuli between Brazilian and North-American subjects
(Lasaitis et al., 2008)
Spanish IAPS Un método para el estudio experimental de las emociones:
el International Affective Picture System (IAPS).
Adaptación española (Moltó et al., 1999)
NAPS The Nencki Affective Picture System (NAPS):
Introduction to a novel, standardized, wide-range,
high-quality, realistic picture database (Marchewka et al.,
2014)
Text ANEW Affective norms for English words (ANEW): Instruction
manual and affective ratings (Bradley, & Lang, 1999)
New ANEW A new ANEW: Evaluation of a word list for sentiment
analysis in microblogs (Nielsen, 2011)
Spanish ANEW The Spanish adaptation of ANEW (affective norms for
English words) (Redondo et al., 2007)
Italian ANEW The adaptation of the affective norms for English words
(ANEW) for Italian (Montefinese et al., 2014)
ANGST ANGST: Affective norms for German sentiment terms,
derived from the affective norms for English words
(Schmidtke et al., 2014)
FAN and FANChild Affective norms for french words (FAN) (Monnier &
Syssau, 2014)
Affective norms for 720 French words rated by children
and adolescents (FANchild). (Monnier & Syssau, 2017)

3.1 Text
Research has afforded special attention to the emotional analysis of the text
since the late 1990s. Bradley and Lang (1999) popularized the tools of
valence, arousal, and dominance that Russell (2003) later used to quantify
the emotional perception of thousands of words.
280 G. C. CANDAO ET AL.

Fig. 1 Circumplex model representing valence and arousal. Own elaboration from
(Russell, 1980)

Fig. 2 Valence-arousal-
dominance emotional
space

Online consumer reviews (hereafter OCRs) allow consumers to share their

experiences online by writing comments about the quality of products and
services (Filieri et al., 2021; Wang et al., 2019), thereby developing an
 13 AFFECTIVE INTERACTION WITH TECHNOLOGY: THE ROLE … 281

Fig. 3 Communication
tools in interactive
marketing

associated image and reducing uncertainties about the products’ characteris-

tics (Filieri, 2016). OCRs influence consumer decisions (Filieri & McLeay,
2014), consumer perceptions and attitudes (Vermeulen & Seegers, 2009),
and product sales (Ye et al., 2009). Therefore, OCRs are used strategically to
establish a reputation among consumers, and they are considered a powerful
marketing tool (Wang et al., 2019). When users review a product, they tend
to share their experiences showing satisfaction or dissatisfaction. Thus, OCRs
entail sharing positive, negative, or neutral experiences and, consequently, also
expose some emotions.
The OCR literature has given considerable attention to affective values
(Purnawirawan et al., 2015). However, most of the findings about the role
of valence have been inconclusive. Liu (2006) found that the volume of
reviews correlated to sales but that the reviews’ valence did not. Forman
et al. (2008) found no connection between valence and sales, while Chevalier
and Mayzlin (2006) found that negative valence reviews hurt sales. Park and
Nicolau (2015) found that consumers consider extreme reviews more useful
than moderate ratings. Even though the conclusions of previous studies are far
from straightforward, they share a common approach: they understand valence
as a concept applying to a whole review, instead of analyzing individual stimuli
in each word, as proposed previously (Bradley et al., 1999).

3.2 Image
Different branches of science have studied the relationship that may exist
between the components of an image and how these components can serve as
stimuli to generate emotions (Kim et al., 2021; Wu et al., 2022).
Avatars are animated characters that some companies incorporate on their
websites to facilitate interactions with the consumer through the use of virtual
assistants. These visual perceptions influence the user’s perceived emotions
(Van Pinxteren et al., 2020) and increase the probability that consumers buy
in online environments (e.g., Etemad-Sajadi, 2016), since they evoke a high
social presence (Lin et al., 2020). This social presence can be enhanced by
282 G. C. CANDAO ET AL.

anthropomorphic images (the attribution of similar characteristics and traits

of humans to objects, Epley et al., 2007), which influence the emotions of
users (Banks & Bowman, 2016; Tsai et al., 2021). Despite these results, the
research is still in an early stage, and researchers suggest that “further research
is needed to assess the critical role that appearance and visual characteristics
play in avatars and chatbots” (Lin et al., 2020, p. 14).

3.3 Sound
The appearance of virtual personal assistants integrated into smart devices
is permeating all activities of human daily life: medical assistance, learning,
information searching, home automation, and shopping. In this context,
voice-controlled personal assistants are defined as wireless devices equipped
with artificial intelligence, capable of assimilating and reproducing the human
voice through interactions with synthesized and personalized responses which
provide personal, professional, administrative, or technical assistance (Hoy,
2018). Personalized content is seen as one of the most effective interactive
marketing tools for advertising (Brinson & Britt, 2021). In this line, virtual
personal assistant services have become a fundamental component of different
technological devices (smartphones, voice assistants, etc.), social commerce
web pages, and appliances that are part of the internet of things (White, 2019).
Although numerous authors have given their attention to the study of
sound and emotions, its analysis continues to require special attention. There is
a call for research that focuses on the characteristics in the style of the interac-
tion between virtual assistants and users that gauges the value virtual assistants
bring (Chattaraman et al., 2019). Previous studies have realized the neces-
sity of including human behavior characteristics in virtual assistants, such as
warmth, competence, and believability (Niewiadomski et al., 2010), or even
adding an extra dimension of reality (Kopp et al., 2003; Schmeil & Broll,
2007). Thus, the Marketing Science Institute and various discussion forums
about marketing tendencies (McKechnie et al., 2018) propose to continue
researching the science of emotion to explore the possibilities of consumption-
based emotions and self-determined relational engagement with a particular
company or service provider through the use of virtual assistants.
The process of humanizing an object triggers a mental perception similar
to that experienced when interacting with a human on the part of consumers
(Puzakova et al., 2013), and the use of virtual personal assistants (VPA) such
as Siri or Alexa elevates this perception (MacInnis & Folkes, 2017).
Anthropomorphism is defined as “the universal human tendency to ascribe
human physical and mental characteristics to nonhuman entities, objects and
events” (Zawieska et al., 2012). Robots’ anthropomorphic design cues have
been identified as significant drivers to favorable customer responses, they can
for example increase trust and social bonding with the firm (Wirtz et al.,
2018). The defining cues of anthropomorphism include both, the physical
 13 AFFECTIVE INTERACTION WITH TECHNOLOGY: THE ROLE … 283

features or embodiment of a robot (head, body and face) and the non-
physical features (emotion, gaze, voice, gesture and mimicry) and all of them
contributing to increase the perception of human presence (Blut et al., 2021).
Voice is an effective anthropomorphic cue as human–robot interaction litera-
ture confirmed, since users anthropomorphize robots when these have a voice
(Lee & Nass, 2004).
Theories such as parasocial interaction (Horton and Wohl, 1956) explain
that people can develop a relationship through an imagined interaction with
other people. When the other party to the relationship is not human, their
perceived humanity is a fundamental condition that precedes parasocial inter-
action, since it allows people to see the other being as real (Banks & Bowman,
2016; Giles, 2002). VAs fulfill the precondition of the parasocial interaction
theory due to the high level of human likeness by their voice. Voice assistants
have many anthropomorphic features that automatically cause users to assign
human characteristics to the device. The way voice assistants work provides
anthropomorphic cues due to their resemblance to the way humans speak (for
example, due to the ability to generate immediate and relevant responses to
user questions).
As to emotion transmission through the use of sounds, there are two types
of studies in the literature that use this method: those that divide the audio
block into segments of short duration and represent each one in the valence-
arousal matrix (Korhonen et al., 2006), and those that analyze these blocks
individually and offer a global result (Lu et al., 2005).
When assigning dimensional values to an audio file, there are different
sound characteristics that influence each value. The elements of sound that
affect the prediction of emotion are, among others, timbre, dynamics, rhythm,
tempo, and harmony (Grekow, 2018). Mode or harmony are usually related
to valence, while rhythm, energy, and timbre have a greater impact on arousal
(Gabrielsson & Lindström, 2001). However, none of these characteristics
works individually, it is the effect of all of them together (and their own
configuration) that affects the assignment of values (Hevner, 1935). The use
of specialized and specific software allows researchers to provide numerical
values to all these sound characteristics that affect the emotional perception of
an audio file.
In addition, there is an academic need to continue research on the inter-
action between virtual assistants and users to assess the benefit for the latter
(Chattaraman et al., 2019).

4 Virtual Assistants
4.1 The Evolution of Virtual Assistants
There are multiple definitions of virtual assistant, but according to Hoy
(2018), “virtual assistants are the realization of the science fiction dream of
interacting with our computers by talking to them.”
284 G. C. CANDAO ET AL.

A dog-shaped toy named Radio Rex released in 1922 was the first device
that could be considered a virtual assistant. The improvement of technology
became a turning point in the development of virtual assistants. A few decades
later, in 1952, Audrey was introduced to the market. Audrey was an automatic
digit identification device that was able to understand phonemes, consid-
ered the basic component of communication. MIT developed the first natural
language processing bot, ELIZA, between 1964 and 1966. It was created
to show the superficiality of communication between robots and humans,
stimulating conversations using previously established patterns.
The decade of the 1990s was essential for the development of today’s virtual
assistants. Companies such as Philips and IBM started to integrate digital voice
recognition into personal computers. In fact, it was in 1994 when the first
smartphone was introduced, laying the groundwork for what we know as a
smartphone these days. Since Apple’s Siri was the first virtual assistant intro-
duced to the mainstream, it has been the most used option. The next to
come was Microsoft’s Cortana in 2013, followed by Amazon’s Alexa in 2014.
Amazon’s Alexa was the first virtual assistant that was released with its own
device, the Echo Dot home speaker (see the study of Hsieh & Lee, 2021).
Lastly, Google’s Go was released in 2016 with its own home speaker and as
an app for Android-based smartphones.
The current most popular virtual assistants are continually listening for a
specific keyword to wake them up, although this can be changed once the
assistant is configured and ready to use. The most popular virtual assistants’
keywords are summarized in Table 2.
According to a report by a market research firm (Forrest, 2021), Apple’s
Siri and Google’s Go assistant were tied in top position for market share in
the first months of 2021. The third position belonged to Baidu’s assistant,
a Chinese-only assistant for the company’s website. Even though each virtual
assistant has their unique features, all of them share some features that they are
able to perform even if using different voice commands. Any virtual assistant
will remember where a user parked their car by the user giving the virtual
assistant one of the following commands:

– “This is where I parked.”

– “I left the car on ____ Street.”
– “Please, remember where I parked.”

Table 2 Most popular

virtual assistants and their Developer Virtual assistant Wake word Release
keyword to wake up. Amazon Alexa Alexa 2014
Own elaboration Apple Siri Hey, Siri 2011
Google Google Go OK, Google 2016
Microsoft Cortana Cortana 2013
 13 AFFECTIVE INTERACTION WITH TECHNOLOGY: THE ROLE … 285

In any of those cases, Google’s assistant will use geolocation to establish

the address where the car has been parked to store the task in its memory.
Similarly, users can ask different questions to learn where the car is at:

– “Can you remind me where I parked?”

– “Where did I park?”
– “Is my car near this place?”

Unlike previous virtual assistants developed back in the XX century and in

the first years of the XXI, current natural language processors do not require
specific commands in order to work effectively (Hoy, 2018). Once the assistant
hears the key or wake word (see Table 1), the user’s voice is recorded and
sent to a specialized server, where it is processed in order to return a specific
command. Depending on the command, the server will look up the function
to be executed based on the request, sending the output of the back-end
process as a response. This output is translated to speech and given to the
user in less than a second. Figure 4 illustrates this process.
Depending on the type of request, the back-end entity or server will supply
the virtual assistant with a suitable piece of information to read out loud to
the user or complete the task asked for. Fortunately, the number of actions
and services supported by voice commands and virtual assistants is growing
rapidly, since the internet of things is adopting more devices every year
(Kumar et al., 2021), while manufacturers are trying to build voice control
systems into their products. Every virtual assistant works in its own unique
way, even though their basic functions are the same. Current virtual assistants
differ from previous devices in that answers are more complex and diverse
in response to questions and commands. This is because virtual assistants are
always connected to the internet.

Fig. 4 How a virtual assistant works. Own elaboration

286 G. C. CANDAO ET AL.

4.2 Virtual Assistants in Interactive Marketing

Sci-fi movies and future-inspired books have treated technology and
computers like human beings since the former were invented: KITT in Knight
Rider (1982), C-3PO in Star Wars (1977), or RoboCop (1987), for example.
The tendency to include humanized objects and tools has been a recurrent
factor in pop culture and, thus, in anthropomorphic and sociological studies
in the literature (MacInnis & Folkes, 2017). This humanization process is
made due to specific expression re-creations (Kim & McGill, 2011), through
an avatar (Nowak & Rauh, 2005), or even due to cultural and recreational
factors (Epley et al., 2007). Some researchers suggest that the process of
making a brand or an object human triggers a human-like mind perception
by the consumers (Puzakova et al., 2013), and the use of VPA such as Siri or
Alexa might increase that perception (MacInnis & Folkes, 2017). The idea of
holding conscious and meaningful conversations with robots and computers
seemed futuristic only decades ago, but nowadays this is no longer a mere
possibility: human–robot interaction is an available option. Various consumer-
level products have been developed in the past years, bringing inexpensive
voice assistants into users’ everyday tasks. This revolution seems to be just
starting, since more and more features are being added to these assistants every
year.
VPA services have become a fundamental component of different tech-
nological devices (smartphones, voice assistants, etc.), social commerce web
pages, and appliances that are part of the internet of things (White, 2019). The
virtual assistant market is projected to be worth $7.8 billion by 2023 (Market
Research Future, 2018) and their global sales in 2022 are expected to outshine
computers, tablets, and smartphones as devices for online purchases (Gartner,
2016). The previous study expects that at least 75% of households worldwide
will own a virtual personal assistant in 2022 (Gartner, 2016). In relation to
the shopping process, it is hoped that there will be an increase in the number
of online shopping orders triggered by the virtual assistant speaker, instead
of through a computer or smartphone. In fact, there is an important line
of research on sound regarding human–robot interactions, which focuses on
voice analytics and the effect of voice on emotions (Hildebrand et al., 2020).
These are significantly important reasons why the overall shopping process
needs to be improved in order to offer a significantly valuable experience.

4.3 Emotions When Interacting with Virtual Assistants

Since the proposal of the Computers are social actors (CASA) paradigm
whereby consumers act naturally when they interact with virtual assistants, just
as if they were interacting with other people (Nass et al., 1994), researchers
have found the relationship between classic social psychology theories and
 13 AFFECTIVE INTERACTION WITH TECHNOLOGY: THE ROLE … 287

the success of a determined configuration of virtual assistants. The similarity-

attraction theory (proposed by Byrne & Griffitt, 1969), the emotional conta-
gion theory (Hennig-Thurau et al., 2006) or the dress-code theory by Cardon
and Okoro (2009) are just some examples of the theories used to study the
relationship between VPAs and users. Previous research has confirmed that
attractiveness is associated with increased emotional bonding (Kim & Kim,
2022). Table 3 shows some results found in these previous theories.
As Pérez Marco et al. (2017) maintain, there is a need to include more
“cognitive-affective architectures in modern intelligent agents,” and none of
the previous studies take into account the transmission of complex emotions
during the shopping process, besides the projection of a certain aesthetic and
looks (gender, skin color, or type of clothing) restricting their configuration to
what it is established in the European Civil Law Rules in Robotics (Nevejans,
2016). Yet the new technological advances and modern structures impact and
allow adjustment of the virtual assistant’s conduct in real time, accomplishing
a more realistic and emotive connection with the user.

Table 3 Examples of anthropomorphic theories and their application in VPA studies.

Own elaboration

Theory Study Finding

Similarity-attraction theory Qiu and Benbasat (2010) Ethnicity matching improves

Emotional contagion theory
Dress-code theory
Gender theories (Foster &
Resnick, 2013)
perceptions of social presence
and increases enjoyment and
usefulness
Verhagen et al. (2014) Friendliness rise in
task-oriented communications
during transactions in
telecommunication services
Lunardo et al. (2016) Using clothes increases
purchase intention, trust, and
social presence due to a rise in
the perceived attractiveness of
female VPA
Beldad et al. (2016) Rise of the purchase intention,
credibility, and perceived trust
from the assistant and the
seller to the buyer depending
on the gender
Liew and Tan (2018) Importance of gender within
specialist and generalist
environments (female VPA are
more effective in specialized
transactions)
288 G. C. CANDAO ET AL.

The literature on this topic highlights emotional cognition using three

dimensions to explore the relationship between consumers and virtual assis-
tants: perceived social presence, perceived social interactions, and perceived
humanity. Table 4 summarizes the three dimensions and the main studies that
support each one.

5 General Discussion
The focus of this chapter was to explore the challenges of current avail-
able interactive technologies. Emotions are produced in any interaction. Text,
image and sound can be seen as communication tools where emotions are
transferred which shapes interactive customer experiences. In the interac-
tive marketplace, consumers and firms interact through text (OCRs), image
(avatars), and sound (virtual assistants). This interactivity between humans and
technology through text, image, or sound conveys emotions with different
valence.
There is, at the moment, an academic necessity to continue research into
the characteristics in the style of interaction between virtual assistants and users
that allow valuing the benefit for them (Chattaraman et al., 2019). Thus, the
Marketing Science Institute and various discussion forums about marketing
tendencies (McKechnie et al., 2018) propose to continue researching the
science of emotion to explore the possibilities of consumption-based emotions
and self-determined relational engagement with a particular company or
service provider through the use of virtual assistants. This chapter contributes
to presenting the state of the art regarding the investigation of emotions trans-
mitted in virtual interactions and proposes different paths in which to continue
advancing in the investigation.
Regarding the interaction through the text, they transmit emotions with
negative or positive valence, OCRs influence consumer decisions, consumer
perceptions, attitudes, and product sales. Although there is still no consensus
on which level of valence or arousal is most appropriate for a message, we can
affirm that the dominance variable has been largely discarded for research in
this field, that neutral comments do not produce an emotional effect on the
consumer (Herrando et al., 2022) and that extreme valences do not produce
positive effects in commercial environments (Hernández-Ortega, 2019).
Regarding voiced virtual assistants, the interaction through the sound there
is not just one single variable that can define the emotion of a sound file.
However, timbre, dynamics, rhythm, tempo, and harmony are some of the
most important variables that influence sound and the prediction of emotion.
In relation to image, previous studies point to the need of including human
behavior characteristics in virtual assistants, such as warmth, competence, and
believability (Niewiadomski et al., 2010), or even adding an extra dimension
of reality (Schmeil & Broll, 2007).
The future of the research has to focus on the study of the design of
anthropomorphism features as embodiment (head, body and face) and the
Table 4 Dimensions of the interactive relationships between consumers and virtual assistants. Own elaboration
Component
Perceived social presence
Perceived social interactivity
Definition Studies
Defined as the feeling of “being with another” (Biocca Hassanein and Head (2007); Qiu and Benbasat (2010);
et al., 2003), to describe the relationships between the Vilaro et al. (2021)
assistant and the users, evaluating the user’s perception of
13
the assistant’s characteristics. This is likely to be influenced
by a variety of anthropomorphic cues
Perception that a virtual assistant displays appropriate McLean and Wilson (2019); Cobos-Guzman et al. (2021);
emotions and actions according to established social norms Kim et al. (2018)
(Wirtz et al., 2018). The trustworthiness of a virtual
assistant is increased by its social intelligence, measured by
the voice, which is one of the main cues that lets users feel
they can interact with a virtual assistant as with other
people (Chattaraman et al., 2019)
(continued)
AFFECTIVE INTERACTION WITH TECHNOLOGY: THE ROLE …
289
Table 4 (continued)
290

Component Definition Studies

Perceived humanity “Type of emotions that users experience when using a Whang (2018); Patrizi et al. (2021); McLean and
product” (Velez & Jentsch, 2016). Current products and Osei-Frimpong (2019)
brands tend to display human characteristics (MacInnis &
Folkes, 2017), such as psychological cues (emotions,
gestures) and nonpsychological characteristics
(anthropomorphic figures and faces). Previous studies have
G. C. CANDAO ET AL.

shown that perceived humanness is crucial in order to

understand the interaction between users and virtual
assistants (Doorn et al., 2017), since virtual assistants mimic
human behavior, adapting their language, emotions, and
gestures
 13 AFFECTIVE INTERACTION WITH TECHNOLOGY: THE ROLE … 291

non-physical features (emotion, gaze, voice, gesture and mimicry). Theo-

ries such as “Uncanny Valley Theory” (Mori, 1970) or “Similarity attraction
theory and dissimilarity repulsion theory” (Byrne, 1971), once again acquire
relevance in research.
The measurement of perceived social presence, perceived social interac-
tivity and perceived humanity in online environments and its consequences,
both social and commercial, will be key to advancing research on the inter-
action between humans and virtual assistants. The CASA paradigm is one of
the most important theories that explains how humans interact with virtual
assistants. Both categorical and dimensional approaches allow the measure-
ment of emotions. The first approach uses basic emotions (anger, disgust, fear,
happiness, sadness, and surprise), and the second allows the identification of
emotions on different dimensions (valence and arousal).
The context in which the interaction occurs and the objective of the
message will be decisive in the design of the text, image, and sound. Valence,
rhythm, tone, or human-like voice will change depending on whether it is a
message with hedonic or utilitarian purposes. The experience expected by the
user in a context in which his objective is to solve a doubt about the use of
a product, to search for information, to buy, or to make a complaint, will be
considerably different. As future research, this chapter proposed the study of
the relationship between the objective of the interaction and expected user
emotions in each situation, in order to later be able to capture them in the
design of the tool with which it interacts.
In general, this chapter concludes that, as society evolves and virtual assis-
tants are used more frequently, new trends arise, proposing new insights into
the idiosyncrasy of virtual assistants, their conception, and future. Virtual assis-
tants are here to stay. Research in the field is already looking for ways to
improve social interactions between agents and analyzing different cues (voice,
form, gestures, words) to keep offering better experiences.

Acknowledgements The authors are grateful for the financial support of the Spanish
Government (research project: PID2020-118425RBI00) and the Government of
Aragon and the European Social Fund (GENERES Group S-54).

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 PART III

Interactivity in the Virtual World

 CHAPTER 14

Augmented Reality in Interactive Marketing:

The State-Of-The-Art and Emerging Trends

Marc Riar, Jakob J. Korbel, Nannan Xi, Sophia Meywirth,

Rüdiger Zarnekow, and Juho Hamari

1 Introduction
With the development of virtual technologies and information systems such
as mixed reality (MR), multisensory modalities, big data, cloud computing,
robotics, and Internet of Things (IoT), the current marketing practices are
facing various opportunities and challenges. Especially during the COVID-19
pandemic, increasing numbers of marketing activities relied on digital tech-
nologies to communicate with consumers remotely (Donthu & Gustafsson,

M. Riar (B) · J. J. Korbel · S. Meywirth · R. Zarnekow

Technical University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany
e-mail: marc.riar@tu-berlin.de
J. J. Korbel
e-mail: jakob.j.korbel@tu-berlin.de
S. Meywirth
e-mail: sophia.meywirth@campus.tu-berlin.de
R. Zarnekow
e-mail: ruediger.zarnekow@tu-berlin.de
N. Xi · J. Hamari
Tampere University, Tampere, Finland
e-mail: nannan.xi@tuni.fi
J. Hamari
e-mail: juho.hamari@tuni.fi

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 301

Switzerland AG 2023
C. L. Wang (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Interactive Marketing,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14961-0_14
302 M. RIAR ET AL.

2020; Jiang & Stylos, 2021). On one hand, marketers have the opportu-
nities to present more vivid, rich, and creative product, service, brand, and
advertising information with the aid of digital platforms and tools (Sheng
et al., 2021; Soto-Acosta, 2020) as well as to conduct customer manage-
ment in a more efficient way (Barnes, 2020; Jiang & Stylos, 2021). On the
other hand, due to the lack of guidance on designing and implementing
virtual technologies in marketing practices, unpleasant user experience, low
usability, information overload, privacy risk, and ethical concerns are becoming
the hurdles to consumers’ adoption and continued use of these virtual
technologies.
One of the relatively mature virtual technologies that has been applied
widely in current marketing practices is augmented reality (AR). The AR
market was valued at USD 14.7 billion in 2020 and is expected to grow at
a CAGR of 31.5% from 2021 to 2026.1 AR technology allows to superim-
pose virtual content (e.g., objects, information, videos, sounds, etc.) into the
physical environment (Azuma, 1997) with the aim to modify the perceived
reality with virtual elements in an interactive manner (Xi & Hamari, 2021).
The typical AR marketing practices include AR fitting rooms (Chiang et al.,
2021), AR interactive advertisement (Feng & Xie, 2018), AR product presen-
tation, and customization (e.g., IKEA catalog and Amazon AR view) as well
as location-based AR shopping. These marketing information, that are being
created and provided by AR, can modify consumers’ multisensory experience
(e.g., visual, sound, olfactory, and haptic) and have been believed to increase
consumer engagement and loyalty as well as facilitate consumer decision-
making (Chiang et al., 2021). However, while the potential affordances of AR
for interactive marketing have become more prominent (Carrozzi et al., 2019;
Wang, 2021), a synthesized understanding of the effects of AR in marketing
is still lacking. A few critical views have considered AR as a kind of marketing
gimmick to attract consumers rather than an effective marketing tool for
increased sales conversions. AR-mediated advertising, information presenta-
tion, promotion, and shopping have not replaced the traditional marketing
techniques (Yaoyuneyong et al., 2016). In addition, the long-term effect of
AR on marketing performance remains unknown. Due to the lack of under-
standing of the mechanisms and boundary conditions of how AR influences
consumers’ psychological and behavioral aspects, marketing practitioners rarely
incorporate AR into their long-term marketing strategies (Tan et al., 2022).
Thus, a thorough and comprehensive understanding of interactive AR
marketing can help understand a) what kind of psychological experience and
behavioral outcomes AR marketing can evoke; b) what sorts of products and
what marketing contexts AR has been applied to; c) what sort of different AR

1https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2021/10/06/2309582/28124/en/
Global-Augmented-Reality-Market-Report-2021-Surging-Demand-for-AR-Devices-and-
Applications-in-Healthcare-Forecast-to-2026.html.
 14 AUGMENTED REALITY IN INTERACTIVE … 303

technologies have been implemented; and d) what opportunities and chal-

lenges are perceived by practitioners in terms of using AR for marketing
praxis. To address these questions, this chapter aims to develop a compre-
hensive understanding of the current state of the literature on interactive AR
marketing and to expand this with the view of practitioners by conducting five
interviews with small online shop providers. Based on the obtained results,
a future outlook of trends for AR as an interactive marketing technology is
presented.

2 Background and Related Work

2.1 AR and Interchangeable Terms
Since the presented information and content are both digital in AR and virtual
reality (VR), in some of the early literature, AR was often treated as an inter-
changeable term with VR (Novak-Marcincin et al., 2014) or one branch of
VR technology (Y. Huang et al., 2011). Xi and Hamari (2021) defined and
clarified the difference between AR and VR from the perspective of applying
technology: AR aims at modifying the perceived real world while VR aims at
replacing reality with a virtual environment. VR is touted to block out the real
world (Manis & Choi, 2019) and digitally duplicate or substitute the “real
reality” (Kim et al., 2021; Xi & Hamari, 2021; Yim et al., 2017). VR can
provide a highly immersive, natural, and realistic digital world for users and a
sensation of “being there” (Hardiess et al., 2015; Kipper, 2013). In compar-
ison, AR provides access to additional “augmenting” information (Pantano &
Servidio, 2012; Rese et al., 2014) that can take any form and can be related
to the stimulation of any senses (van Krevelen & Poelman, 2010) (e.g., scent,
tactile sense, etc.) (Azuma, 1997; Lu & Smith, 2007). Most commonly, AR is
employed to augment consumers’ visual experiences and to provide the possi-
bility of interacting with visual virtual information. Especially, with the help
of recognition and tracking techniques, the digitalized content (e.g., text,
pictures, 3D models, audio, and video) can be triggered and displayed on
the screen according to specific elements (e.g., images, objects, barcodes, QR
codes, and location) in the current surroundings (Aggarwal & Singhal, 2019;
Hilken et al., 2018).
In the existing literature, AR has been considered with three main
attributes: vividness, novelty, and interactivity (Azuma, 1997; McLean &
Wilson, 2019). The vividness of AR is the ability to produce a sensory-rich
mediated environment (Steuer, 1992), and is usually related to the display
quality and aesthetic aspect of information (Flavián et al., 2019; McLean &
Wilson, 2019). The novelty of AR refers to the unique and personalized
content experienced through the AR display, which can lead to consumers’
curiosity and being engrossed (McLean & Wilson, 2019), while it can even
act as a central cue that enhances consumers’ understanding toward a brand’s
features (Feng & Xie, 2019). The third attribute, i.e., interactivity, is related
304 M. RIAR ET AL.

to AR systems’ capacity to allow consumers to modify (e.g., move, resize,

reshape, etc.) the digitally overlaid virtual content (McLean & Wilson, 2019).

2.2 A Theoretical Framework for Interactive AR Marketing

In the realm of marketing, AR has been regarded as a strategic concept that
incorporates digital content into users’ perception to attain organizational
goals and to present consumer benefits (Rauschnabel et al., 2019), such as
extraordinary experiences, convenience, as well as personalized content (Wang,
2021). Understanding consumer behavior is one of the major themes in inter-
active marketing (Lim et al., 2022) and various theories have been employed
to understand how AR technology influences consumers during shopping
(Riar et al., 2022). One of the most relevant theoretical concepts in research
on immersive technologies is grounded in the Stimulus-Organism-Response
(S–O-R) model (Loureiro et al., 2019). The model specifies that different
environmental conditions serve as stimuli (S) that affect the internal evaluation
processes of consumers (O), leading to a response (R). Recently, the S–O-R
model has also become a relevant theoretical basis for explaining consumer
decision processes and behavior in the literature on interactive AR marketing
(Nikhashemi et al., 2021; Qin et al., 2021). The main notion is that the
technological characteristics of AR serve as stimuli to elicit cognitive and affec-
tive states in consumers which consequently lead to behavioral outcomes (see
Fig. 1). While recent studies have used this notion to empirically investigate
the effects of AR on consumers, there is a lack of a synthesized overview of the
diverse technological proficiencies of AR and what psychological and behav-
ioral responses these are capable to evoke. Therefore, guided by the S–O-R
framework, the present study aims at closing this gap.

3 Method
The methodology of this chapter is divided into two parts. First, a system-
atic review of the academic corpus of literature on the phenomenon of using
AR for interactive marketing purposes is performed. Second, semi-structured
interviews with small online shop providers are conducted to complement the

Stimulus (S) Organism (O) Response (R)

Consumers’ Behavioral (intention)

Stimuli provided by AR
cognitive and affective outcomes as response
technology characteristics
psychological outcomes to using AR

Fig. 1 Framework for consumer response in interactive AR marketing based on

S–O-R theory
 14 AUGMENTED REALITY IN INTERACTIVE … 305

findings from research with initial insights into the practitioners’ perspectives
on AR use in the marketing context.

3.1 Literature Review

Search strategy: The systematic literature review was performed by following
the instructions of Brereton et al. (2007) and the search was conducted within
the Web of Science database. This database was selected because it is indexing
further bibliographic sources that, among other areas, provide access to rele-
vant literature in the fields of information technology as well as marketing,
retail, and shopping. The search string was constructed to include the relevant
terms (i.e., “augmented reality” and “marketing”) as well as the extended
sphere of retail and shopping in order to ensure an exhaustive search. The
final search string looks as follows and was performed to search the titles,
abstracts, and keywords in the selected database: (“augmented reality” OR
AR OR “virtual try-on”) AND (marketing OR advertis* OR brand* OR
shop* OR retail* OR commerce). The search term “virtual try-on” was added
because AR is sometimes used for self-representation in form of virtual mirrors
by which consumers can superimpose virtual products on themselves, such as
sunglasses, clothes, makeup, etc. On the other hand, terms related to “virtual
reality/VR” were excluded from the search string because the present chapter
focuses specifically on AR. In order to capture the most recent developments
and trends, the search was conducted to cover the academic literature of the
past 5 years (January 2016–August 2021).
Study selection: The search returned an initial set of 889 studies. This
initial set was pre-screened and duplicates, short papers, commentaries, non-
peer-reviewed articles, studies that were written in languages other than
English, studies on other technologies, such as VR, and non-empirical studies
were excluded. The final pool consists of 43 studies. The included studies are
highlighted with “*” in the references.
Data extraction: In accordance with recommendations by Brereton et al.
(2007), a data extraction form was created to systematically obtain the relevant
information from the screened literature. Specifically, this form was construed
to obtain general information about the literature (e.g., authors, publication
venue, etc.) and in line with the conceptualization based on the S–O-R theory
presented in Fig. 1, information related to the technological characteristics of
AR as well as the psychological and behavioral responses of consumers were
extracted. In addition, to provide further contextual information and to eluci-
date a more comprehensive picture of interactive AR marketing, information
related to the use contexts of AR marketing, devices, and product types that
have been investigated in the screened literature were extracted.
306 M. RIAR ET AL.

Table 1 Overview of the conducted interviews

Interview Industry/Branch Position of Interview Date Interview

Interviewee within Duration
Company

IW1 Electronic Managing director 08.11.2021 24:59

cigarettes
IW2 Bedding eCommerce & 11.11.2021 32:36
Marketing manager
IW3 Water purification IT & HR Manager 16.11.2021 32:54
IW4 Consumer Managing director 18.11.2021 38:28
electronics
IW5 Gift boxes Managing director 19.11.2021 45:15

3.2 Practitioner Interviews

Preparation: The first point of contact with the interviewees was established
via E-Mail. Five respondents of small businesses (1–15 employees) agreed to
take part in the interviews (see Table 1). Due to the request of the inter-
view partners, their company names and details remain anonymous. A short
summary of the research objectives was sent to the interviewees and inter-
view dates were scheduled. An interview guideline containing 21 questions
and 15 sub-questions was designed prior to conducting the interviews. The
interview guideline was divided into six parts, each covering a specific topic:
(1) the background and prior experiences with AR, (2) the perceived useful-
ness of AR for marketing, (3) the prerequisites that must be met in order
to implement AR successfully in marketing, including potential barriers, risks,
estimated costs, etc., (4) the usage of AR applications by their competitors
and the suitability of AR within their branch, (5) the internal factors such as
the employee structure and priorities within the business, and (6) the general
view of AR applications as a future trend in marketing.
Interviews, data coding, and analysis: To establish a common under-
standing of the research scope, the participants were presented with a demo
of an AR application at the beginning of the interviews. The interviews
were conducted semi-structured (Helfferich, 2014) and therefore contained
no standardized but open questions to encourage the interview partners to
share their subjective opinion. The data derived from the interviews were
analyzed following the guidelines of Mayring (i.e., Mayring, 2015, 2019).
First, the interviews were transcribed to allow the coding and analysis of
the data. The coding and analysis were conducted software-supported relying
on the software tool QCAmap.2 Second, a category system was established
consisting of (1) opportunities of AR in marketing, and (2) challenges of
AR in marketing with the subcategories AR technology, customer outcome,

2 https://www.qcamap.org/ui/de/home.
 14 AUGMENTED REALITY IN INTERACTIVE … 307

and economic outcome. Finally, the data were qualitatively analyzed and
interpreted (Sect. 4.5).

4 Conceptual Overview
of Interactive AR Marketing
In this section, a holistic framework of interactive AR marketing is incremen-
tally derived from the combined results of the literature review (Sect. 4.1–4.4)
and the practitioner interviews (Sect. 4.5). The unified results are illustrated
in Fig. 2.

4.1 Use Scenarios and Contexts

The screened literature reveals diverse use scenarios for employing AR tech-
nology for the purpose of interactive marketing that spans across location-
independent online situations as well as solutions for physical (brick-and-
mortar) stores (see Fig. 2: segment 4.1). Importantly, from a marketing

4.1
Online web-based (e.g., home environment) In stationary stores (e.g., shopping mall)
Shopping Environment

4.2 4.4 Consumer Responses to AR Marketing and Shopping 4.3

Devices /
Behavioural Product Types
Technologies AR technology Psychological
(intention) outcomes
characteristics outcomes
of consumers Furniture/decorations
Hand-based
mobile devices AR attributes Cognitive Intentions Clothing / fashion /
e.g., Interactivity, vividness, e.g., Perceived usefulness, e.g., to use / reuse AR, to Accessories / eyewear
innovativeness, etc. usability, cognitive support, etc. purchase products, to
Desktop PC recommend AR app, etc.
Affective Makeup /cosmetics
Informativeness
e.g., Product complexity, e.g., Enjoyment, playfulness,
Head-based recommendations, etc. brand love, desire for product, Brand engagement Technology-
AR hardware satisfaction, immersion, etc. related devices
Quality / Performance
e.g., visual quality, response Social Willingness to share Cars
Pseudo-holo- time, mapping quality, etc. e.g., subjective norms, personal data
graphic stereogram perceived socialization, etc.
…

Opportunities

AR attributes Behavior Product Portfolio

Interactivity / innovativeness as marketing Attention to the product, reduced customer Extended product portfolio
effect, usability support, reduced product returns (stationary stores)
Informativeness Sales
Intentions
Product, product complexity, spatial Higher conversion rates,
Higher purchase intention
information higher sustainability

AR technology Consumer outcomes Economic outcomes

Integration Quality Investments

Integration in IT infrastructure / shop systems Lower perceived quality of 3D models Expenses for AR integration / creation of
/ product database compared to high quality pictures, virtual product replicas / market analysis,
frustration due to limited AR performance revision of product portfolio
Product
Availability of virtual product replicas Performance
Devices
Customer devices not AR ready Customer churn due to limited website
Performance performance, negative effect on SEO
Negative effect on website performance

Challenges
4.5 Small Retailers’ Perspective on Opportunities and Challenges of AR Marketing and Shopping

Fig. 2 Unified overview of interactive AR marketing

308 M. RIAR ET AL.

perspective, sellers can attract consumers to a brand by providing AR function-

ality and giving them a new sense of experiencing products, both in-store and
in online shopping scenarios. The advantages of AR in online shops involve
that consumers can interact with virtual 3D representations of products in real-
time, which unquestionably enhances the product experience beyond simply
viewing non-interactive 2D pictures of products. Above all, consumers can
often place virtual products in private environments, for example at home,
where the product can be viewed and experienced within the environment it
is intended for (Brengman et al., 2019; Fan et al., 2020; Haile & Kang, 2020;
Kowalczuk et al., 2021; Pantano et al., 2017). Thereby, consumers can better
assess the particular features of products, customize them and get a better idea
of how these will fit into the intended surroundings, which can affect owner-
ship perceptions (Brengman et al., 2019; Carrozzi et al., 2019) and enhance
purchase decisions (Haile & Kang, 2020; Kowalczuk et al., 2021).
In addition to location-independent online solutions, AR can also provide
unique consumer experiences in brick-and-mortar shopping environments.
Specifically, marketers can make use of consumers’ curiosity by offering virtual
mirrors or interactive screens (Javornik et al., 2016, 2021) within their stores
or in shopping malls, thereby drawing the consumers’ attention to stores and
making the interaction with brands more enticing. Stores can also offer solu-
tions by which consumers can use the AR capabilities of their own mobile
devices. For example, AR can help shoppers navigate through supermarkets
to find particular products (Chylinski et al., 2020) or superimpose additional
virtual product cues to increase the consumers’ informativeness (Qin et al.,
2021; Rese et al., 2017; Smink et al., 2019) and support their purchase
decisions. Overall, the interactive AR experiences can, among other factors,
positively influence product (Xu et al., 2020) and brand attitudes (T.-L.
Huang, 2019; Rauschnabel et al., 2019; Uribe et al., 2021; van Esch et al.,
2019), which may directly translate into a sales conversion. Hence, both in-
store and online AR solutions provide appealing opportunities for marketers
to advertise products, improve product management and consumer services,
making AR technology a desirable instrument for marketing praxis.

4.2 Devices and Technologies

The rapid technological development of the past decades has opened up
various possibilities to enter the AR sphere (see Fig. 2: segment 4.2). Desktop-
PCs with external or built-in web cameras are an entry-level option by which
users can, for instance, experience try-on products (e.g., sunglasses, clothes,
makeup, etc.) as a sort of virtual mirror on themselves (T.-L. Huang, 2019;
Smink et al., 2019). This concept has also been taken up in malls as well
as brick-and-mortar stores via designated (mostly physically fixed) interac-
tive screens that support so-called virtual or smart mirror functionalities by
which users can virtually try on products. Thereby, these interactive screens
 14 AUGMENTED REALITY IN INTERACTIVE … 309

provide personalized experiences, prompt playful interaction, and allow for

self-referencing, which can in turn affect brand attitudes (T.-L. Huang, 2019).
Another frontier for creating AR experiences is the use of pseudo-
holographic technology by which the users themselves do not use any
technology to superimpose virtual content. Instead, a visualization system
generates a 3D illusion of content, for example, to create a virtual exhibition
of products within a store (Morillo et al., 2019).
The rise of mobile devices has been one of the most prominent factors for
the diffusion of AR technology. Present-day mobile devices are largely rolled
out with AR capabilities which makes them a particularly interesting channel
for marketers to connect with and bind consumers on a large scale. Besides
having advantages in terms of diffusion, mobile devices also entail other
important properties that enhance the experience with augmented content.
Touch displays and the maneuverability of light-weight mobile devices, such as
smartphones and tablets, enable users to effortlessly interact with augmented
content (e.g., moving a virtually displayed and true-to-scale couch from one
side of the room to the other, placing a virtually presented lamp on a physical
desk, etc.). Therefore, it is unsurprising that the vast majority of the reviewed
literature has relied on exploring the benefits of mobile AR marketing.
Designated AR devices, such as AR glasses (Heller et al., 2019b) offer an
even more immersive experience by providing hands-free interaction and by
overlaying augmented information directly in the users’ field of view. While
examples of AR glasses in research and practice are still relatively limited
compared to the use of mobile devices, it is foreseeable that these will become
more prevalent in the future as more affordable and technologically mature
devices emerge. Therefore, marketers should keep an eye on these develop-
ments and appropriate themselves with the necessary knowledge to exploit
the future potentials of contemporary AR technology.

4.3 Virtual Product Types

Creating personalized product experiences is one of the essential marketing
strategies to generate brand engagement. Current literature on AR marketing
is in accord with this because studies are largely focusing on how AR can create
personalized consumer experiences. This becomes especially evident in terms
of the product types that are offered to consumers via AR technology. Most
prominently, these involve wearables such as accessories, eyewear, cosmetics,
fashion, and clothing. Usually, these products are presented via try-on profi-
ciencies by which AR operates as a virtual mirror. From a marketing perspec-
tive, this is a highly relevant feature of AR because it can connect consumers
directly with products by letting them experience these wearables on them-
selves, thereby inducing self-brand connections (Baek et al., 2018), brand
awareness, and shaping brand attitudes (T.-L. Huang, 2019).
Another popular trend has evolved around letting consumers place virtual
furniture and decorations directly into their homes. In the past, consumers
310 M. RIAR ET AL.

relied on the impressions and information that they could gather by visiting
furniture stores and afterward used this information to map out or mentally
picture and measure whether or not these items fit size-wise or in terms of
the existing décor and interior design. Today, consumers can utilize AR tech-
nology to display virtual furniture and decorations true-to-scale directly in
their intended environments. Thereby, AR technology supports the mental
imagery of consumers and provides the necessary information to support
purchase decisions (Heller et al., 2019a, 2019b).
While wearables and furniture or decorations currently seem to be the main
two product categories of AR solutions, there are numerous other product
categories that marketers can consider in order to offer unique product expe-
riences to consumers and to draw them to a brand (see Fig. 2: segment 4.3
for selected further examples).

4.4 Consumer Response to AR Marketing

The use of AR has been argued to increase store attractiveness (Bonnin, 2020)
by addressing different consumer needs, both of pragmatic and hedonic nature
(Javornik et al., 2016; Qin et al., 2021; Rauschnabel, 2021; Rauschnabel et al.,
2019; Riar et al., 2021). The extant literature on AR in marketing contexts
largely explores how AR can address pragmatic and hedonic consumer needs
by investigating how the specific technological features of AR affect psycho-
logical outcomes, which ultimately transcend into behavioral outcomes (see
Fig. 2: segment 4.4.). Some of the most explored AR attributes are interac-
tivity and vividness. interactivity refers to the technological ability to perform
modifications with virtual content in real-time, whereas vividness refers to
the representational richness of a medium. Both technological attributes are
highly relevant to generating immersive experiences (Steuer, 1992). Further
important characteristics to attain desired consumer responses in marketing
practice are the informativeness of the AR application (e.g., the quality and
degree of provided information, product contextuality, information sharing
capabilities, etc.) (Heller et al., 2019a; Hilken et al., 2020; Kowalczuk et al.,
2021; Pantano et al., 2017) as well as aspects pertaining to the quality or
performance of the AR solution (e.g., the visual quality, mapping quality,
responsiveness of the AR app, etc.) (Kowalczuk et al., 2021; Pantano et al.,
2017; Park & Yoo, 2020).
In terms of the psychological outcomes, AR can give rise to diverse cogni-
tive responses, such as usefulness perceptions (Pantano et al., 2017; Rese et al.,
2017; Zhang et al., 2019), perceived informativeness (Feng & Xie, 2018; Qin
et al., 2021; Rese et al., 2017; Smink et al., 2019), curiosity (Beck & Crié,
2018; Yang et al., 2020), brand awareness (Feng & Xie, 2019), creativity
(Jessen et al., 2020) as well as self-referencing (T.-L. Huang, 2019), which
is decisive in creating a personalized experience with products, forging owner-
ship perceptions (Song et al., 2020), and attachment with a brand (Yuan et al.,
2021).
 14 AUGMENTED REALITY IN INTERACTIVE … 311

Marketers may also take a special interest in the ability of AR to produce

affective consumer responses. The reviewed literature suggests that consumers
can perceive nostalgia (Hinsch et al., 2020) and higher sensations of enjoy-
ment when interacting with AR-mediated product presentations. The hedonic
value can create intrinsically fulfilling experiences, such as immersion (Hilken
et al., 2020; Kowalczuk et al., 2021; Smink et al., 2020), brand love (T.-
L. Huang, 2019), desire for products (Hilken et al., 2017), and consumer
satisfaction (Jessen et al., 2020; McLean & Wilson, 2019; Moriuchi et al.,
2021; Poushneh & Vasquez-Parraga, 2017). These are all aptitudes that set
AR as an interactive marketing technology apart from more conventional
non-interactive technologies.
In addition to the cognitive and affective responses that have been encoun-
tered, the analyzed body of literature also indicates that it can be imperative
to cultivate social dynamics between consumers. Albeit considered only to
a marginal extent, the reviewed studies indicate that AR can be combined
with social media features (Zhang et al., 2019) and other social constituents,
such as point-of-view sharing (Hilken et al., 2020) or further communicative
acts. It is assumed, that social experiences can be facilitated via AR, which
can result in viral marketing behavior and unpaid brand endorsements (Sung,
2021). Groundwork on interactive marketing indicates that the proliferation
of social media, content-sharing, brand, and fandom communities is becoming
increasingly relevant for marketers and users to share brand and product-
related information (Wang, 2021). Accordingly, marketers should consider
today’s participatory culture where subjective norms (McLean & Wilson,
2019) are shaped through online communities, customer recommendations,
(internet) celebrities as well as significant others such as family and friends,
which ultimately influences consumers’ attitudes toward companies, brands,
and products. Thus, in order to transform AR into an effective marketing
tool, it seems relevant to consider functionalities that can satisfy the need of
consumers to socialize and communicate about products and brands.
In a similar vein, when turning the attention to the encountered behavioral
outcomes in Fig. 2, consumers have also been found to breed word-of-mouth
intentions (Heller et al., 2019a; Mishra et al., 2021; Park & Yoo, 2020)
when engaging with AR technology because it is largely regarded as fun
and interesting, thus prompting consumers to share their experience with
others. Willingness to share personal data is another outcome addressed in
the reviewed literature (Smink et al., 2019). AR often requires users to reveal
their current surroundings, or their own face, body, hands, etc., and its use
may thus result in privacy concerns or perceived intrusiveness. However, it
has also been argued that the perceived informativeness as a result of using
AR can encourage users to share their personal information (Smink et al.,
2019). Therefore, it seems that the positive aspects of AR can overcome poten-
tial hesitancies of consumers when it comes to sharing personal information.
Besides word-of-mouth intentions and willingness to share personal data, the
reviewed literature chiefly agrees that AR can induce intentions to revisit stores
312 M. RIAR ET AL.

(Javornik, 2016; Park & Yoo, 2020) that support AR functionality as well
as increase purchase intentions (Beck & Crié, 2018; Brengman et al., 2019;
Moriuchi et al., 2021; Zhang et al., 2019). This is important for marketers,
as it pinpoints AR technology as a medium with the potential not only to
increase sales conversion but also to maintain customer relations.

4.5 Small Retailers’ Perspective

Opportunities for adopting AR in marketing: Pertaining to the practitioner
perspectives on AR marketing in the domain of small shop owners, all inter-
viewees showed a positive attitude toward AR, considering it as a relevant
application “in the near future” (IW3) and stated several advantages that they
expect from the technology. In the experience of the retailers, the descrip-
tion of the products in online shops is the most important criterion for the
consumers’ purchase decision (“the better the description on the website, the
better the sales” (IW2)) while the product pictures are vital since they “are
what haptics are for stationary retail” (IW2). Therefore, an advanced visu-
alization of the products is of great importance to the online retailers and
considered by the interviewees as the most prominent benefit of AR applica-
tions (IW1, IW2, IW3, IW4, IW5). The enhanced visual and spatial impression
allows the consumers to get more detailed information about the product
(IW2, IW3) and assess the size of the products which is still an issue in E-
commerce (IW3, IW5). Consumers often order a product twice due to the
limited size evaluation possibilities (IW5). Compared to product pictures, 3D
visualizations have the advantage that the users can evaluate the entire product
with a simple click rather than go through the entire photo gallery (IW2) while
the product itself comes “within reach” (IW3). Specifically, the opportunity to
interact with and evaluate specific components of a complex product, to expe-
rience the product from the in- and outside, and to customize several parts
of the product simultaneously is stressed by the interviewees as a great advan-
tage (IW2, IW4, IW5). In addition, the integration of the products in their
spatial contexts can solve the challenge of product installation issues (IW3)
which also affects stationary retail. In the case of IW2, the product port-
folio differs online and offline since some of their products are only sold in
the stationary store. AR is considered as a great complement to allow the
consumers to experience the products from the stationary store beforehand at
home in their spatial context (IW2, IW3). The stationary retail can additionally
benefit from AR by using the application to provide the consumers with online
information about the product in the stationary environment (e.g., product
reviews) (IW5). Furthermore, offline retailers might use the AR application
to let the users experience or see products that are not exhibited on the shop
floor based on a catalog with products, QR codes, and AR functionality (IW5).
Hence, the shop owners expect from the integration of the AR functionalities a
reduction of user complaints and product returns (IW1, IW4), higher sustain-
ability (IW5), and a higher purchase intention (IW2) as well as a reduction
 14 AUGMENTED REALITY IN INTERACTIVE … 313

of customer support due to the higher informativeness (IW5). Overall, AR is

regarded as a technology that can generate positive marketing effects due to
its newness and the curiosity toward the technology that increases the interest
in the products. Consumers are predicted to “stay longer with the product”
(IW2), leading to increasing sales (IW2).
The early adoption of the technology provides an additional marketing
advantage since the shops can advertise themselves as “the only store where
you can assess the products in AR that fits you” (IW5). AR can also be
included in traditional marketing approaches such as newsletters to allow the
consumers to get a teaser of new products (IW3). In addition, IW5 would
welcome the integration of the AR functionality in social media stores, such
as the Instagram shop, to facilitate the interaction with the consumer base
(IW5). Therefore, social media is not only a platform to enhance the marketing
capabilities via AR but a medium to foster AR adoption from the intervie-
wee’s perspective: Advertising AR over influencers and social media may shift
attention to the benefits of the technology (IW1, IW2).
Challenges for adopting AR in marketing: Apart from the expected
benefits from the inclusion of AR in marketing, the interviewees emphasize
challenges concerning the integration of the technology and virtual product
replica, i.e., 3D models of the products (Korbel, 2021). The integrational chal-
lenges mainly stem from the consumer devices in use as well as the integration
in the IT infrastructure and existing shop systems. The interviewees state that
a multitude of consumers may not possess smartphones that allow the usage
of AR applications (IW4, IW5). If users see the AR feature but are not able
to use it or have problems using the AR application, they could get frustrated
and even tend to leave the website (IW5). The same applies to the compu-
tational requirements of AR applications. The computational requirements
might be too high (IW5), leading, in the worst case, to a limited functionality
or even a crash of the website. If the AR application impairs the functionality
of the website, it can lead to customer churn (IW4) and negatively influence
SEO (IW5). Therefore, the IT infrastructure and servers must be migrated
to enable the AR functionalities (IW1) and short loading times (IW5). In
addition, settings should be available and editable so that website owners can
adjust the resource insensitivity of the AR application (IW5). Furthermore, the
interviewees stress that the integration of the AR functionalities should be a
one-time IT effort (IW4), feasible “with a few clicks” (IW4), and compatible
with existing shop systems (IW2). The provision of AR as a plugin for existing
shop systems would tremendously decrease the integrational challenges (IW3).
If an easy integration of the AR functionalities is not possible, shop owners
tend to think about adopting and investing in AR twice (IW4).
The challenges regarding the virtual product replicas mainly derive from
the creation, provisioning, and quality of the 3D models that are mandatory
to use the AR application at all. How the models are created or provided
depends on the firm’s access to supplier and manufacturing media data. While
the firm in the case of IW5 creates product pictures themselves (also in 360
314 M. RIAR ET AL.

degrees) and would require a software tool or pipeline to convert their product
pictures to 3D models, the firms of IW1 and IW4 rely entirely on pictures
from the suppliers or manufacturers based on partnerships and do not even
have the products at hand (IW1). Hence, the virtual product replicas must
be provided by the manufacturer, supplier, or the vendor of the AR environ-
ment in the opinion of the interviewees (IW1, IW2, IW3, IW4), otherwise
the added value is not comparable with the efforts and investments in the
AR environment (IW4). Therefore, the providers of AR applications should
coordinate and arrange terms with suppliers and manufacturers to integrate
the virtual product replicas in the supplier or manufacturer API where firms
can access all the other information about the products (IW1, IW4). Apart
from the provisioning of the 3D models, the interviewees raise concerns about
their quality. The quality of the 3D models in the AR application must be
comparable to the high-quality pictures on the websites (IW3, IW5). The
visualization of the products may differ from the actual products, especially
in terms of colors (IW2). However, inaccurate visualizations of product char-
acteristics are a general problem in E-Commerce (IW2) and may be resolved
by technology development (IW3).
The challenges have a direct effect on the investments, expenses, and efforts
of small retailers. The interviewees agree that additional personnel is required
to adopt AR for their shop systems, either to implement and integrate the
AR environment (IW1, IW5), to conduct market analyses on whether AR is
desired by the consumers (IW3), or to create the virtual product replicas (IW3,
IW2, IW4, IW5) while the latter is considered as mandatory to use AR at all,
especially if new products are added to the portfolio (IW4, IW5).
Implications of adopting AR in marketing: The opportunities and chal-
lenges are summarized in Fig. 2 (segment 4.5). In addition, three main
implications can be derived from the interviews: First, manufacturers and
suppliers as well as the shop owners must be provided with evidence that the
technology is well received by consumers and that it has positive effects on,
e.g., brand awareness, purchase intention, etc. Otherwise, they seem reluctant
to create 3D models at extra expenses, and in turn the technology will not be
adopted by small shop owners since the effort to provide their own virtual 3D
models is considered too high for a currently not quantifiable benefit. Second,
the software tools to create virtual product replicas need to advance to allow
shop owners to quickly generate 3D models of their products, preferably based
on already existing data such as product pictures. Third, an easy integration of
AR functionalities (e.g., via plugin) within the existing IT infrastructure and
shop systems is pivotal for the diffusion of AR as a marketing tool and to keep
the expenses for additional personnel and resources low.
 14 AUGMENTED REALITY IN INTERACTIVE … 315

5 Discussion
In the present chapter, the academic literature of the past five years was
explored to conceptualize a holistic picture of the use of AR as an interac-
tive marketing technology and five interviews with small online retailers were
conducted to complement the findings with an initial practitioners’ perspec-
tive (see Fig. 2). Specifically, in the literature review part, focus was set on
the use scenarios of AR in marketing, the virtual product types that are most
commonly investigated, and importantly, in line with the S–O-R framework,
the technological characteristics of AR were explored and the psychological as
well as behavioral outcomes that AR is capable of evoking was reported on.
The interviews revealed that small online shop owners see several opportu-
nities and challenges for introducing AR as part of their marketing strategy,
which are also reflected in Fig. 2 and from which three practical implications
were derived in Sect. 4.5. In the following, as part of the interpretation of
the combined results from the interviews and observations in the literature,
several future trends for using AR in marketing are discussed.

5.1 Future Trends in Research and Practice

Layered augmented product information: A crucial challenge for marketers
consists in effectively communicating product and brand-related information
to consumers. Specifically, this entails providing the right amount of infor-
mation so that consumers can make informed decisions while not being
overwhelmed with too much information that would be too strenuous to
mentally process (B.-K. Lee & Lee, 2004). What makes this even more chal-
lenging, recent research indicates that engagement with AR technology itself
can increase the mental workload of users due to the task of cognitively
processing the virtually overlayed content within the physical surrounding (Xi
et al., 2022) which induces even more challenges in terms of information load.
Marketers need to be aware of these challenges in order to mitigate negative
consumer experiences, such as irritation or less satisfied consumers in general
(B.-K. Lee & Lee, 2004). Some of the recommendations to deal with this is
to consider dynamically embedded information that users themselves display
or hide via the interactive proficiencies of AR technology (Riar et al., 2022).
For example, AR solutions may be designed in a way to empower users to
interact with the different features of a product, by which information related
to the particular features is being dynamically displayed. This way, consumers
can learn about the product features and gather relevant pre-purchase informa-
tion in snippets to support learning processes and avoid information overload
as well as unsatisfying consumer experiences.
Integrating interactive marketing practice with gamification and
location-based services: One of the rising trends in recent years that has
also penetrated into the marketing literature is gamification, i.e., the employ-
ment of principles through which a system or service becomes more gameful.
316 M. RIAR ET AL.

From a marketing perspective, the goal of gamification is to afford services in

a way to enhance consumers’ experienced value of the core service (Huotari &
Hamari, 2017). Previous studies have indicated that gamification possesses
the ability to increase brand engagement (Xi & Hamari, 2020), brand experi-
ence (Sung, 2021), and consumer-brand satisfaction (J.-Y. Lee & Jin, 2019).
Thus, it should be recognized as a desirable approach for marketers to connect
consumers to a brand. More importantly, gamification can be combined with
AR and location-based services to unleash even greater potential for marketing
praxis. One of many examples exists in notifying consumers via push notifica-
tions of place-dependent special offers. These offers may entail virtual coupons
that are overlaid via AR technology into the real world and that can be
collected and redeemed at a nearby store. Thereby, AR and gamification can
be used in combination with the navigational aspects of location-based services
and draw consumers to stores. In addition, AR has been used to provide added
value to consumers via in-store navigation functionalities (Jayagoda et al.,
2021). There seems to be much potential in creating in-store marketing solu-
tions via combining AR with gamification and location-based services because
they may be perceived as both useful and fun. Important implications can
also be drawn from full-fledged location-based AR games (Laato et al., 2021;
Morschheuser et al., 2017), which have lately been investigated for their
potential to attract consumers to points of interest and for increasing place
attachment (Oleksy & Wnuk, 2017), as well as general number of customers
(Pamuru et al., 2021) via increased foot traffic in and around neighborhoods
and stores. These potentials should not go unnoticed by marketers because
harnessing the power of location-based AR games and gamification solu-
tions may hold important economic implications for competitive advantage.
Accordingly, in addition to looking into options for adding a gameful AR
layer to their existing mobile apps to increase the experienced value of their
core services, marketers may find it profitable to look into partnerships with
suppliers of location-based AR games to establish unique marketing strategies
and campaigns.
Social Capabilities: Another intriguing direction for interactive marketing
praxis is to utilize the potential social capabilities of AR technology to connect
consumers with each other and to create shared social experiences (Sung,
2021). The influence of significant others to shape brand attitudes or induce
the purchase of products has become an exceedingly vital phenomenon among
marketers. Thus, it seems important to scrutinize whether and how AR may
be used to support connectedness and socialization between consumers. The
reviewed literature supports the notion that AR can have unique potentials
to connect users with each other, such as via sharing, social media, recom-
mender, and perspective-taking functionalities. Specifically, AR may introduce
novel ways for consumers to share content and information, such as point-of-
view sharing (Hilken et al., 2020) through which a user can select products
and modify their features (e.g., color) in the AR view and share the augmented
content with the exact modifications with significant others. Through such
 14 AUGMENTED REALITY IN INTERACTIVE … 317

functionality, AR enables two or more individuals to mutually participate

in shopping-related decision processes. Besides asynchronous point-of-view
sharing, the technological leaps in the AR realm may also allow users to
synchronously participate in co-shopping activities where two or more indi-
viduals simultaneously interact (e.g., reshape, resize, move, change color or
other features) with virtual content, thereby enhancing collective decision
processes. So far, the potential socializing features of AR seem underrepre-
sented in industry contexts as well as not sufficiently addressed in academia.
Due to the benefits of social features to induce, for example, co-shopping
or word-of-mouth, these potentials should be regarded as a worthwhile and
intriguing future waypoint for both researchers and marketing practitioners.
Augmentation of other sensory information besides visual: The present
literature review on interactive AR marketing made it evident that current
investigations are chiefly limited to exploring the effects of augmented visual
content, whereas investigations into other sensory experiences (i.e., touch,
smell, sound, taste) largely remain uncharted territory. This is striking because
essentially any human sense can in some way be augmented and utilized
for marketing purposes. Sensory marketing is the discipline of involving the
human senses for shaping consumers’ perceptions toward firms, brands, and
products (Hultén et al., 2009). Specifically, marketers can consider involving
touch and movement-based features (e.g., via haptic gloves) as well as smell
(e.g., via scent masks), or audio information to provide an even richer and
more immersive experience when consumers engage with products or brands
via AR technology. Marketing literature suggests that involving the human
senses for branding purposes can have many merits. For example, sound has
been suggested to express brand identity (Hultén et al., 2009), while smell can
trigger memories (Goldkuhl & Styvén, 2007), positive emotional and cogni-
tive responses (Rimkute et al., 2016), both consciously and unconsciously,
thus making sensory information an efficacious instrument for marketing.
However, so far, there is little knowledge on the effectiveness of AR tech-
nology that utilizes the human senses beyond the visual. Due to the above-
mentioned possible merits for marketing, it seems important to investigate
how involving other sensory information in AR beyond the visual can affect
consumer responses.
Marketplace for virtual products: Lastly, the diffusion of AR in retail and
interactive marketing strongly depends on the availability of virtual product
replicas that are the basis for the product visualization regardless of whether
the aim is to sell (virtual) products or to use the objects as virtual assets
for interactive marketing campaigns. Although manufacturers and suppliers
possess 3D models of their products, these models cannot be directly trans-
ferred to AR environments due to their complexity and concerns regarding
intellectual property (Korbel & Zarnekow, 2021). Thus, online trading plat-
forms emerged that allow the trade of 3D models which are sufficient for AR
environments (e.g., Sketchfab). However, these platforms comprise a variety
of 3D models for identical physical products while most of the models are
318 M. RIAR ET AL.

neither approved by the manufacturers or suppliers nor are they even aware
of their existence. Therefore, the currently existing virtual assets can only be
used in AR environments to a limited extent. Furthermore, the search for
and integration of the models remains in the hands of the retailers, which
induces additional expenses that especially small online retailers might not be
willing to invest in (see Sect. 4.5 Small retailers’ perspective). Consequently,
there is a need for new virtual asset online platforms that incorporate 3D
models of physical products with explicit identifiers (e.g., European Article
Number (EAN) or Universal Product Code (UPC)) and provide interfaces
that allow an automatic search and assignment of the virtual objects to the
real products in online stores and on websites. Alternatively, software architec-
tures and programming interfaces must be created that allow manufacturers
and suppliers to include 3D models in databases that can be accessed by the
consumers, i.e., online shop providers, and directly assigned to the products in
their AR applications. Without the availability of virtual product replicas and
sufficient processes to include these models in virtual environments, firms will
neither be able to use AR applications to their full extent nor participate in
the realm of virtual shopping and marketing.

5.2 Limitations
The search of the literature in the present chapter has been limited to the
Web of Science database and even though it is one of the most recognized
proprietary databases for peer-reviewed and high-quality publications, there
is still a chance that some publications have been missed. Therefore, future
studies may consider using additional and multiple databases such as JSTOR,
Scopus, Google Scholar, EBSCO, etc.
Furthermore, only literature written in English was reviewed. Undeniably,
important AR marketing-related studies which were written in languages other
than English are excluded from this study. Especially, the application of AR in
marketing practice is in full swing in Asia, such as China, Japan, and South
Korea. Thus, other search languages can also be considered in future studies.
Even though the interviews turned out to be very informative pertaining to
the perceived opportunities and challenges of using AR in marketing, a limi-
tation may exist in the small sample size of five interviewees to capture the
practitioner stance as well as in the selected business domain (small retailers),
thus the generalizability of these perceptions cannot be ensured. It is also
worth noticing that none of the interviewees already use AR as part of their
marketing strategies. Consequently, the results obtained from the interviews
are based on pre-adoption perceptions of the opportunities and challenges of
utilizing AR in marketing and can be understood as initial findings from a
small retailer perspective. While this is highly relevant for understanding the
stance of practitioners that have not yet integrated AR technology within their
marketing campaigns, insights on post-adoption perceptions of integrating AR
as an interactive marketing tool from practitioners are missing from this study.
 14 AUGMENTED REALITY IN INTERACTIVE … 319

Despite these limitations, the present study contains vital contributions by

(1) providing a synopsis of the results from interactive AR marketing research,
by (2) revealing the standpoint of five practitioners in terms of the perceived
opportunities and challenges of integrating AR as a marketing instrument, and
by (3) spotlighting several waypoints for interactive AR marketing in future
research and practice endeavors.

6 Conclusion
In the present chapter, a comprehensive framework (see Fig. 2) of interactive
AR marketing was presented by combining results from a review of academic
literature and initial findings of using AR in interactive marketing from a prac-
titioner perspective based on interviews with small retailers that operate online
shops.
Based on the theoretical premise of the S–O-R model (see Fig. 1), the
results of this chapter contribute to understanding the dynamics of interactive
AR marketing by showing how AR evokes diverse psychological outcomes,
which essentially translate into behavioral outcomes of consumers. Specifically,
the obtained results in this chapter indicate that the technological characteris-
tics of AR (e.g., interactivity, vividness, informativeness, quality, performance,
etc.) can give rise to several cognitive, affective, and social-psychological
outcomes, which can positively impact consumers’ brand engagement and will-
ingness to share personal data, as well as behavioral intentions to purchase
products, use AR applications, or to recommend it to others. Moreover, the
environments (i.e., online and stationary), the technologies and devices, as
well as the product types that have been subject to interactive AR marketing
in the current scientific literature were outlined.
To provide an even more comprehensive overview, the present chapter
supplemented the consumer view with a practitioner’s view. For this purpose,
five interviews with online shop providers were conducted to understand the
perceived opportunities and challenges of integrating AR in praxis from a small
retailer perspective. From the interviews, three implications could be derived,
including that awareness and confidence of the benefits of integrating AR
needs to be proliferated more widely among practitioners, and that an easy
integration of AR within existing IT infrastructures as well as efficient ways to
create virtual product replicas are necessary before small retailers see a tangible
pay off in entering the AR sphere for their business and marketing strategies.
In retrospect of the combined observations from the literature review and
the conducted interviews, this chapter paves a way forward via a discussion of
several emergent trends of applying AR in interactive marketing. In partic-
ular, the present chapter exposes the need to further investigate (1) how
virtual information should be presented to users (e.g., layered, interactive,
embedded); (2) what needs to be considered in terms of the amount of
presented information, and the trade-off between informativeness and infor-
mation overload; (3) how gamification and location-based services can be
320 M. RIAR ET AL.

utilized to produce better marketing campaigns via AR; (4) how to create
social experiences or make use of other sensory information (e.g., touch,
smell, sound) to generate even more immersive consumer experiences; and
(5) how the diffusion of AR in interactive marketing can be fostered by
establishing marketplaces and IT architectures for the provisioning of virtual
product replicas.

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 CHAPTER 15

Interactive Marketing with Virtual Commerce

Tools: Purchasing Right Size and Fitted
Garment in Fashion Metaverse

Sadia Idrees, Gianpaolo Vignali, and Simeon Gill

1 Introduction
The information and communication technology experiences a paradigm shift
every 10 years. In 1990s, there was a paradigm of PC communications, in
the 2000s the internet, and mobile in 2010s. For 2020s, the significant
words of the current paradigm are the metaverse world, virtual commerce
or v-commerce (Lee, 2021). The chapter aims to enrich the function and
practicability of fashion metaverse mobile 3D body scanner applications for
interactive selection of right size and fitted garment through v-commerce plat-
forms. Additionally, v-commerce tools such as virtual, augmented, and mixed
reality have a potential to enhance interactivity in terms of virtual fashion
viewing technology during online purchase of garments. The chapter further
elaborates on the function of v-commerce tools such as mobile body scanners,
VR, AR, and MR for enhancing fashion metaverse by reflecting the consolida-
tive view of consumer behaviour in terms of their adoption of the technology,

S. Idrees (B) · G. Vignali · S. Gill

University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
e-mail: sadia.idrees@manchester.ac.uk
G. Vignali
e-mail: gianpaolo.vignali@manchester.ac.uk
S. Gill
e-mail: simeon.gill@manchester.ac.uk

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 329

Switzerland AG 2023
C. L. Wang (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Interactive Marketing,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14961-0_15
330 S. IDREES ET AL.

and their intention to use it for confident garment purchase online. In addi-
tion, recent studies on the enhancement and development of v-commerce
tools and examples of interactive tools employed by fashion industry have been
analysed for in-depth understanding of phenomenon of fashion metaverse.
Thus, the recent studies and examples show how these interactive features
of virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, and mobile scanning apps
have aided in enhancing the confidence in viewing and buying the right size
and fitted garments during online shopping of apparel products. Furthermore,
v-commerce platforms have contributed positively for managers in making
informed decisions when designing their interactive marketing and retailing
strategies.
As established, the predicted fast pace growth of the industry has been
noted with the worldwide VR market size estimated to grow from less than
5 billion US dollars in 2021 to more than 12 billion US dollars by 2024
(Statista, 2021b). Currently, the application of AR technology is advancing in
online and in-store retail. The mobile augmented reality users worldwide have
risen by 1.5 billion from the noted 200 million since 2015; they are estimated
to increase to 1.7 billion by 2024 (Statista, 2021a). Therefore, VR and AR
strengths have been utilised and will prove useful for the future. For instance,
VR tools are applicable in the development stage of products such as virtual
prototyping. Whereas AR tools are more appropriate at the point of consumer
integration, for example, testing concepts and fitting assessments. Garments
need to be customised in terms of virtual clothing according to consumers’
body dimensions and consumers can view fitting simulations before making a
purchase. (De Silva et al., 2019).
The global virtual fitting room market grew from $ 3.50 billion in 2021
to $12.97 billion in 2028 (Johnson, 2021). V-commerce technology offers a
convenient way to try-on products, and findings from Johnson in 2021 show
that 34% consumers find virtual fitting shopping experience more entertaining,
useful, and attractive (Johnson, 2021). V-commerce interactive tools share
commonalities and variations in terms of solutions of providing experience
of virtual fitting room with accuracy, attraction, interactivity, and immersion
with fashion viewing AR, VR, and MR tools as well as body measurements
and personalised avatar acquired from scanning apps. The scanning apps
detect the user’s 2D facial and body shape and provide output in 3D facil-
itated with 360-degree viewing (Kim & Sung, 2021). The 3D body scanning
along with VR, AR, and MR provide an accurate virtual fitting experience by
reflecting personalised body dimensions and avatars along with metaverse envi-
ronment immersion and attraction such as virtual catwalk, and 3D 360-degree
view of virtual outfit on personalised avatars. They also offer customisation,
size recommendation, heat maps to analyse the tightness and looseness of a
garment, mix and match of apparel and accessories (triMirror, 2021; Lim &
Jafari, 2021).
 15 INTERACTIVE MARKETING WITH VIRTUAL COMMERCE … 331

2 Limitations of E- and M-Commerce

for Interactive Marketing in Fashion Retail
The following section of this chapter outlines the limitations of both e-
commerce and m-commerce marketing tools in terms of immersion, inter-
activity, attraction, and accuracy, with regard to fashion viewing as well as size
and fitting issues in online shopping atmosphere.

2.1 E-Commerce
E-commerce extensively encompasses with the sales and purchase of goods and
services through interfaces aided with internet as well as any transaction that is
done solely through online platforms. E-commerce offers, online consumers,
an opportunity to experience a unified omnichannel or multichannel retailing
(Bargavi et al., 2022).

2.2 M-Commerce
The term m-commerce is used to indicate the advancing practice of
performing economic, advertising, and transactions endeavours by using wire-
less smart devices such as smartphones, iPad, and tablets with wireless internet,
3G and 4G, web browsers, and mobile apps. The term m-commerce can also
be named: e-shop, e-store, Internet shop, web shop, web-store, online store,
and virtual store (Sharma & Madan, 2022).

2.3 Limitation of Immersion, Interactivity, and Attraction During

Product Examination
Despite many advantages there are limitations to the experience of immersion,
interaction, and attraction with products in online setting, that sometimes
discourage customers to shop. Consumers frequently buy apparel prod-
ucts online, which is about 50.7% of the population (Afrin et al., 2022).
However, through e-commerce and mobile apps, online buyers are not able
to experience a real store setting including salespeople, trying-on garments,
mixing and matching of products, or to seeking sensory stimulation (Escobar-
Rodriguez & Bonson-Fernandez, 2017) all of which inhibit their overall
attractive and immersive experience. In online shopping platforms, interac-
tivity, rich data representation, and realism are important features to fulfil the
consumer’s relational expectations. The former approach used for the presen-
tations of products in digital stores does not go beyond two-dimensional (2D)
images or animation/video-footage/catwalk. The current approach is inher-
ently deficient in provision of information with no interactivity as compared
to a three-dimensional (3D) virtual model (Altarteer & Charissis, 2019). A
functional web app that offers useable and clear information with high-level
interactivity, immersion, and attraction is deemed essential to compensate for
332 S. IDREES ET AL.

the non-physical presence of a product. The latter can be accomplished by

incorporating (VR, AR, and MR) interactive tools for intuitive interaction
between consumers and virtual products (Altarteer & Charissis, 2019).

2.4 Inaccuracy of Size and Fit During Online Shopping

Size selection is the most critical phase while online shopping. Consumers
around the globe have variations in their body types and sizes (Hwangbo
et al., 2020). Ready-to-wear garments are constructed using specific standard
body sizes and standard sizing system varies from country to country. The
US, UK, and EU have specific sizing systems in terms of their population
body structure (Reid et al., 2020). Moreover, consumers are dissatisfied with
ready-to-wear garments constructed using standard sizing system and with
the inability to try-on garments online, halt to make a confident purchase
(Lee & Xu, 2020). Furthermore, variations have been noted in fashion brands
sizing charts. Therefore, high clothing return rates have been experienced in
online buying, chiefly because shoppers could not verify whether the product
fits their bodies well, for example there are expressed concerns about product
length and circumference, when online purchases are being made (Hwangbo
et al., 2020). Consumers have a relationship between body types and attitudes
towards online shopping, because of their distinct body shapes; and each buyer
has different fit difficulties (Altarteer & Charissis, 2019). Apparel buyers lack
the prepared knowledge regarding the measurement of their body dimensions.
Additionally, there are technical challenges involved in taking body dimensions
manually by buyers themselves such as exact landmarking points to be consid-
ered while measuring the human body (8559–1, 2017; Almalki et al., 2020).
Therefore, customising apparel products in an online setting is challenging
using the traditional manual method of capturing body dimensions (Idrees
et al., 2020a).
Traditionally consumers try on clothes during offline shopping. Whereas
during online shopping consumers need to correlate their body size with size
charts or images of products to make the size decision. To correlate body
dimensions to available standard size charts consumers need to remember their
body measurements or to measure themselves using tape measurements which
is a time-consuming process, and also requires one to have a profound knowl-
edge to get accurate body dimensions (Hwangbo et al., 2020). Therefore, size
selection is a highly tricky process in an online environment. For convenience
in online shopping, fashion platforms offer free returns. Consequently, higher
return rate has been noted due to size and fit issues in online apparel shop-
ping which adds significant operational costs (Abdulla et al., 2019). Moreover,
an approach such as Fit Analytics and True fit has been developed for online
consumers to deliver size and fit recommendations and visualisation in online
fashion interfaces. The interfaces approach is through a manual entering of
anthropometric data and garment data such as past purchase history, preferred
fit, and preferred style explicitly through online surveys or questionnaires
 15 INTERACTIVE MARKETING WITH VIRTUAL COMMERCE … 333

which is also a lengthy and uncertain approach (Januszkiewicz et al., 2017).

Thus, to cater to the needs of online buyers to shop confidently online, it
is essential to develop a system that has the potential to serve all body types
equally and that size choices are expanded (Jain et al., 2018). Therefore, to
rectify these challenges, an interactive 3D body scanning tool (digital human
dimensions) has been instituted to enhance fashion v-commerce interfaces
globally to deliver the right size and fitted garment (Idrees et al., 2020a).

3 Advantages of Virtual Commerce

for Interactive Marketing in Fashion Retail
V-commerce has distinctive features from both e-commerce and m-commerce;
it is an emerging interactive marketing shopping channel. In v-commerce, a
virtual three-dimensional (3D) environment is offered with enhanced func-
tionality, immersion, interactivity, attraction, and accuracy to visualise online
products as well as to find the right size and fitted garment. Additionally,
this way of delivery overcomes the lack of direct interaction with product
and people (Wang, 2021). V-commerce also has improved sensory depth
in contrast to e-commerce, as it can communicate with highly detailed
3D features than 2D static images; consumers can experience realistic and
engaging distinct features (Altarteer & Charissis, 2019). Compared to tradi-
tional e-commerce interfaces, the metaverse technology has a great potential
to enhance customers’ experience and trust by providing hedonist and util-
itarian values via its distinctive interactive features such as augmented and
virtual reality features (Wang, 2021). A thriving online interface has a poten-
tial to offer various categories to online consumers from the amateur to the
expert and from the goal directed to the empirical user (Rajan et al., 2021).
Additionally, buyers demand an engaging, interactive, and memorable online
environment to make a confident purchase (Brannon Barhorst et al., 2021).
Similarly buyers visit and purchase from an online interface if it presents a
practical alternative to offline services or if it adds value (Battistoni et al.,
2022). V-commerce technologies have been developed extensively, including
Metaverse fashion technology which offers interaction with 3D features via
3D body scanning apps, augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality;
this has proven to be one of the most visited features and enhanced interac-
tivity to boost online sales (Idrees et al., 2020a, 2020b; Xue & Parker, 2020).
V-commerce includes the metaverse environment and interactive v-commerce
tools, those are explained in detail in the following sections of the chapter.

3.1 Metaverse Environment

Immersive technology comprises of the computer software and hardware that
accelerate the five senses of humans (i.e., vision, hearing, touch, smell, and
taste) in a virtual atmosphere to generate the experience of being there, i.e.,
the sense of existence (Suh & Prophet, 2018; Xue et al., 2019). The notion
334 S. IDREES ET AL.

of metaverse was derived from the novel ‘Snow Crash’ published by Neal
Stephenson in 1992; it signifies a three-dimensional virtual world in which
‘Meta’ means virtual and abstract, and ‘verse’ means universe (Lee, 2021).
The participants interact with themselves through their own avatars generated
by themselves in a virtual construct of metaverse to participate or redevelop
real life in a virtual metaphorical environment without temporal and spatial
restrictions (Díaz et al., 2020). The notion of a metaverse or virtual world
serves beyond commerce and entertainment to generate a real virtual non-
natural community in which digital operators or avatars become human users
and communicate socially and economically with each other in an immersive
three-dimensional virtual and multi-user online atmosphere. Recently, with
the advancement of smartphones AR and VR devices, interaction between
numerous actual and virtual objects is viable, and a novel world of metaverse is
expanding swiftly (Lee, 2021). Furthermore, meta-commerce could become a
future trend of online shopping due to the amalgamation of v-commerce and
metaverse environments.

3.1.1 Fashion Metaverse

Fashion consumers can interact with the metaverse through interactive,
immersive, and attractive consumer-facing interfaces. There are several types of
metaverse environments and avatar solutions offered by technological enter-
prises to enhance consumer experience in fashion metaverse. These display
different levels of realism of virtual environment with actual image and virtual
image. Various solutions have been introduced such as Roblox, Sandbox,
Second life, Body lab’s triMirrorTM, Metail’s MeModelTM, Fitle’s 3D model,
EZ faceTM, Zugara, Fits.meTM, Fitiquette to facilitate virtual catwalk, 3D
360-degree rotation, customisation, garment fit visualisation with heat maps,
and the mixing and match of products in fashion metaverse (Lee & Xu, 2020;
Narin, 2021).

Avatar Realism in Fashion Metaverse

The avatar’s realism and fashion metaverse environment have been created
in terms of accuracy, interactivity, immersion, and attractiveness. Some VFR
online shopping platforms have offered various solutions such as (1) VFRs
using body scanning device such as 3D look and MeThreeSixty/Formcut
3D by Size Stream (3Dlook, 2021; Stream, 2022), (2) 3D avatar, (3) 3D
customer’s model, (4) 3D mannequin which offers fitting room with real 3D
simulation, (5) Augmented reality fitting room, (6) Robotic mannequins, (7)
Dress-up mannequins for mix and match, (8) The real fashion model. Type 1
to Type 5 VFRs, from the solutions listed above, have utilised real consumer
figures with body dimensions data. However, they have variation in terms of
accuracy and attractiveness. Type 6 to Type 8, on the other hand, utilised
virtual figures; for instance, virtual mannequin or image of actual model which
is in some way identical to the real user’s figure. The eight types of tech-
nologies display various levels of realism in the simulation process, therefore
 15 INTERACTIVE MARKETING WITH VIRTUAL COMMERCE … 335

provide various levels of user experience and satisfaction in fashion metaverse.

They present variations in technology regarding accuracy, attraction, immer-
sion, and interactivity. The research concluded that VFR technology can aid in
enhancing personalise experiences in terms of accuracy, attraction, immersion,
and interactivity and can deliver seamless experience to consumers by opti-
mizing and improving its technological features. Additionally, it contributes
to enhancing fashion v-commerce by influencing the adoption and utilisation
of VFR technology (Lee & Xu, 2020).

Fashion Metaverse Environment

Gaming companies have entered the fashion world to offer more unique expe-
riences to their users, through announcements of the metaverse as the future
of the internet. In the gaming world, the examples of metaverse such as
Roblox, Sandbox, and Fortnite are becoming very popular (Narin, 2021).
Roblox has an average of 46.6 million daily users covering 180 countries.
Fashion brands have entered into this metaverse to deliver consumers new
experiences and emulate brand awareness (Gibson, 2021). Gucci consumers
can have an immersive experience within Roblox, where users can walk into
the Gucci Garden with a blank avatar. The avatar can be manipulated through
several experience areas, various colours, and patterns, which can be added to
the character distinctively designed by Gucci. Five active users daily and 50%
users monthly update their avatar on Roblox. The users customise their avatars
with the most recent virtual fashion products and merchandise, exhibiting their
real-life style. (Gibson, 2021). Tommy Hilfiger has used the service of eight
native Roblox designers to generate 30 digital fashion products based on their
brand’s pieces. Forever 21, employed with metaverse construction organisa-
tion Virtual Brand Group, outset a ‘Shop City’ in which Roblox influencers
generate and oversee their own stores, combating against each other. The latest
products in the physical world of brands will be available in their virtual world.
Human driven and totally virtual avatar influencers have become prominent.
Tamara Hoogeweegen future laboratory strategist elaborates that metaverse
environment of fashion brands will become customisable with user-generated
products, as noticed with Forever 21; for example Tommy Hilfiger and Ralph
Lauren’s Roblox world, was inspired by user behaviour (Mcdowell, 2022).
This demonstrates that there are various practical applications of fashion meta-
verse to display virtual fashion and goods in fashion industry. There are great
ways for online retailers to test novel notions, modernise or even launch entire
latest trends in an entirely low-risk, sustainable approach (Gibsons, 2021).

3.2 Interactive Features of Fashion Metaverse in Virtual Commerce

The fashion metaverse has been enhanced by v-commerce tools such as Virtual
Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), Mixed Reality (MR), and 3D Body
scanning mobile apps. The following section of the chapter discusses the
recent developments in application design of VR, AR, MR, and 3D body
336 S. IDREES ET AL.

scanning technology for enhancing fashion metaverse. Additionally, outlines

the consumer behaviour research regarding intention to use, satisfaction, and
purchase with v-commerce tools and sheds light on the recent examples of
interactive technology application in the fashion industry. The chapter also
assessed v-commerce tools and fashion metaverse environment with AIDA
marketing model to provide effectiveness of interactive marketing strategy for
consumers’ and retailers’ benefit.

3.2.1 Virtual Reality (VR)

VR is formally defined as ‘the illusion of participation in a synthetic envi-
ronment rather than external observation of such an environment. VR relies
on three-dimensional (3D), stereoscopic, head tracked displays, hand/body
tracking and binaural sound. VR is an immersive, multisensory experience’
(Gigante, 1993 p. 3). In other words, the virtual environment does not appear
within physical surroundings and is detached from the real environment by a
VR screen or head-mounted display such as VR glasses (Belova, 2020).

Recent Developments in Virtual Reality

VR is a system of multisource information. It has a potential to deliver human–
computer interaction and deliver immersive feeling to the participants. It can
be facilitated with multi-perception of vision, hearing, force sense, touch,
movement, and other human perceptions. Various imaginative environments
can be created in the virtual world. A recent paper by Jian (2022), presented
a clothing business model from three aspects such as product manufacturing
end, client end, and shopping experience under C2M clothing customisation
mode. The system utilised 3D human body measurement extraction tech-
nology along with VR. By using real body shapes the garment can be adjusted
to deliver successful fitting and garment customisation services (Jian, 2022).
Similarly, study in 2019 enhanced time efficiency and improved the accessi-
bility of garment trying-on by creating a virtual dressing room smartphone
application via Microsoft Kinect sensor. The system approach is based on the
extraction of user body dimensions to create an avatar via video stream, avatar
alignment, and detection of skin colour. The system utilised modules for loca-
tion of the joints for positioning, scaling, and rotation to align the 2D cloth
models with the user. The avatar is superimposed on the user in real time. The
study concluded that VFR application is acceptable in terms of easy control,
user-friendliness, flexibility, and real-look cloth model for users to choose the
right size (Masri & Al-Jabi, 2019). Furthermore, research has been conducted
for the development of an in-home virtual dressing room for garment fitting
by employing an integrated system comprising of personalised 3D body model
reconstruction and garment fitting simulation. The paper contributes to these
innovative developments by proposing a simple and new virtual 3D fitting
room app that creates personalised body model reconstruction of the user for
virtual garment fitting. The app entails minimum involvement from the user.
Only needed two images (front and profile images) using smart phone camera;
 15 INTERACTIVE MARKETING WITH VIRTUAL COMMERCE … 337

then the user selects their specification for either loose or fitted garment.
The reconstruction method is convenient, efficient, and is an easy replace-
ment to taking accurate body dimensions such as those taken by a tailor. The
3D reconstruction presents high-level accuracy when assessed with the average
resolution of the original model utilising the CAESAR dataset. The app can
be applied as a virtual fitting system for online stores, clothing design, and
personalised garment simulations (Li & Cohen, 2021).

Consumer Behaviour Research of VR Technology

The study evaluated the 3D semi-immersive virtual reality (VR) system for
online luxury product visualisation and customisation service. The outcomes
revealed that the perceived presence, usefulness, ease of use, and the perceived
experience value showed a significantly positive impact on the attitudes of
users towards the 3D VR semi-immersive system. The outcomes also revealed
that using the advantage of 3D VR systems in context with real-time manip-
ulation of the products and the adaptability in customising the 3D models’
features in real time, positively impacted the attitudes of users towards the
3D VR technology. Moreover, online luxury brand product customisation
features displayed a positive impact on the attitudes of users towards the 3D
VR system as well (Altarteer & Charissis, 2019). Similarly, the study team in
2019 designed and created StereoVR, called ‘FutureShop’, for incorporating
a virtual fashion retailing practice and for evaluating consumers’ responses for
further development. The participants completed the shopping process from
a selection of products to purchase in FutureShop. The participants reported
that they found technology highly interactive which improves their satisfac-
tion and encourage their purchase intention. They explained their hedonic
shopping experience in future shops as innovative, fun, and exciting. The
outcomes of the research deliver empirical support for employing the stereo-
scopic displays, interaction, and computer-simulated environment in future
virtual shopping practices, which blend online shopping with real-world shop-
ping (Lau & Lee, 2019). Virtual try-on apps (VTOs) studies have also been
conducted by employing two theories such as Sirgy’s theory of the self and
Sundar’s theory of interactive media effects (Time). The study tested two addi-
tional constructs such as Photo satisfaction and consumer inspiration using
two VTO apps available in the market and their impact on the intent to
adopt/adoption intention. The mixed-methods study examined the effects of
personalisation and customisation in the modern generation of apparel VTOs.
Findings show that customisation affordance encouraged and influenced adop-
tion intention. The users who were satisfied with their avatar picture showed
stronger impact on perceived augmentation. Additionally, study illustrates how
the Time’s Sense of Agency component aided with the reception of a positive
consumer response to mobile marketing technology, which was used in the
study as an app’s mix and match feature. The study reported that perceived
augmentation has been influenced by body-image for affective judgements
built during the pre-task VTO avatar creation phase (Tawira & Ivanov, 2022).
338 S. IDREES ET AL.

Fashion Retailers’ Application of Virtual Reality

Globally businesses have been utilising this technology to lessen the ambiguity
of selecting fashion goods, in terms of right sizing and to cut back on returns.
For example, a virtual try-on application (Asizer) facilitates 3D body scan-
ning and garment simulation by demonstrating a variety of clothing brands
to select. Users can virtually try-on products and can view virtual catwalk
videos for personalised experiences in the online environment (Asizer, 2022).
Similarly, a Canadian-based company triMirror introduced virtual fitting tech-
nology which facilitates a personalised online trying-on experience, utilising
heat maps which envisage tightness and looseness of a garment on personal
avatar and can analyse fabric performance when the buyer virtually moves
around in different styles prior to purchasing a garment (triMirror, 2022).

3.2.2 Augmented Reality (AR)

The AR technology is an interactive technology which permits operators to
view the real environment, with virtual objects added up or blended with the
real environment. The technology allows virtual products to be examined in
the place of physical products. Moreover, it delivers enhanced information
about the product; thus, enhancing the visualisation of the object (Udiono,
2021a, 2021b, 2021c).

Recent Developments in Augmented Reality

A recent study, conducted in 2021, introduced a clothing customisation
full-featured system aided with augmented reality. The system comprises of
material library for making choice of styles, patterns, colours, and fabrics for
the users. The system not only introduced stages of custom designing, but
additionally consumers can also view fitting on the virtual clothes. The system
utilised Azure Kinect somatosensory technology, Open GL 3D rendering,
and a somatosensory virtual fitting room. The user is permitted to play with
various designs to the cloth; after satisfaction with the choice, the user can
try virtual fitting. The augmented reality virtual try-on system comprises
of functional modules. The sub-module comprises a selection of patterns,
colours, fabrics, and styles. In sub-module of virtual fitting, the system scans
the depth data stream of human bones using Azure Kinect Somatosensory
camera and apprehends bone-tracking processing method. Additionally, a
user can try-on 3D clothing, virtually, in the proper position of the human
body. The rendering tools aid in the selection of proper rendering tools
to render clothing textures, lighting, etc., so that users can view virtual
clothing with more accurate effects via display (Feng et al., 2021). Further-
more, another study introduced an android augmented reality technology for
fashion retailing industry and examined its benefits on customer behaviour
to enhance the marketing and sales strategies of various fashion brands. The
three different sections were tested in this research to enhance fashion retailing
industry such as consumer behaviour, consumer experience, and the bene-
fits of augmented reality to retail stores. Initially, the results of consumers’
 15 INTERACTIVE MARKETING WITH VIRTUAL COMMERCE … 339

behaviour showed that the user interface of application was acceptable and
user-friendly. The research supported that 3D dynamic objects enhanced
decision-making processes. Secondly, the consumers agreed on the effective-
ness of technology in decision-making processes, which is replacing traditional
try-on methods. Therefore, the research revealed that augmented reality has a
sustainable impact on the consumer experience during the pre-purchase phase.
The research conducted on the augmented retail stores also revealed that the
technology really enhances consumer experience in the method of decision-
making on buying a product which will drive the improvement of the footfall
of customers in stores, the enhancement of brand image, which will deliver
high sales and profit benefits (El-Seoud & Taj-Eddin, 2019). A recent study
successfully implemented a virtual trial room using Flask Web application with
OpenCV (a Python Module). The application works on devices with built-in
or attached camera, internet, and web browser. This application helped to save
time, why trying on clothes at home which is equivalent to in-store changing
room. The app captures a video of the user and splits the video into specific
frames. The application can monitor the user’s movement and angles accu-
rately, to superimpose the 2D clothes over devices and virtual clothes over
the monitored user without requiring the user to align smart device screen,
ensuring a better user experience. This is a great app for marketing wearable
goods; it can help gain more attention from buyers. The application recom-
mends sizes such as S, M, and L which enhance the quality of the application
(Rajan et al., 2021).

Consumer Behaviour Research of AR Technology

Brannon Barhorst et al. (2021) concluded that learning was a noteworthy
predictor of satisfaction with the AR experience and that flow was a note-
worthy predictor of learning. The state of flow is considered as a sense
of tranquillity, losing the worries of everyday life, immersion, enjoyment,
and focused attention. Thus, the state of flow justifies cognitive information
processing since attention is aimed and distractions free. Moreover, flow has
a more positive impact on information utility and enjoyment with AR apps
when, for example, a shopping experience was compared with AR and without
AR. Therefore, AR apps induce an intensified state of flow and permit the elab-
orated state of information, satisfaction, and overall enjoyment. The unique
components of AR (interactivity, novelty, and vividness) enhance cognitive
processing with useful information, learning, and enjoyment via combination
of real-world and virtual world experiences, which influence consumers’ satis-
faction (Brannon Barhorst et al., 2021). Moreover, a study explored the role
of augmented reality as a meta-user interface, with a focus on its applications
for interactive fitting room systems and influence on the associated shopping
experience. Nine interaction design patterns were developed for AR fitting
rooms to support the shopping experience including: (1) Body measurement;
(2) Intuitive and comfortable interaction; (3) Selecting the garment’s charac-
teristics; (4) Selecting the garment’s characteristics automatically; (5) Selecting
340 S. IDREES ET AL.

a garment in the virtual catalogue of a store; (6) Selecting a garment in the

virtual catalogue of the store using a second device; (7) Physically selecting a
garment in the store using a smart wardrobe; (8) Physically selecting a garment
in the store using a mobile device; (9) Magic shop window. The shopping
experience, based on the proposed patterns, was influenced by three main
factors, such as the perception of the utility, the ability to generate interest
and curiosity, the perceived comfort of the interaction, and the environment
in which the system is installed. The results revealed that the patterns effi-
caciously supported these factors (Battistoni et al., 2022). Similarly, research
regarding customer brand engagement has been studied through augmented
reality (AR) features such as Amazon, ASOS, and IKEA apps via smartphones.
The research studied AR attributes such as AR novelty, AR interactivity,
and AR vividness and established their influence on technology acceptance
attributes such as perceived ease of use, usefulness, enjoyment, and subjec-
tive norms. The AR attributes and technology acceptance attributes positively
influenced brand engagement through the retailer’s AR mobile application.
Additionally results revealed that AR aided in product engagement delivers
an increased satisfaction with the experience of the app and future intention
to use the brand. The research contributes to provide practical incorporation
on the utilisation of AR technology (McLean & Wilson, 2019). Further-
more, Qin et al. (2021) research evaluates the consumer experience about
how mobile augmented reality (MAR) influences behaviours, especially in the
smartphone context. The study employed a cognition–affect–conation frame-
work to explore how MAR experiences enhance consumers’ decision-making
processes. The results show that consumers’ cognitive evaluation of MAR
applications encouraged their intuitive reactions, which ultimately developed
conative behaviours. Therefore, this research permits a unified perception for
mutually examining continuous use and purchase intentions in one research
model. Additionally, the study evaluated how perceived value, a cognitive
trait variable, effects consumer conative replies directly and indirectly through
intuitive reactions. Their findings affirm the relationships projected in the
cognition–affect–conation framework and analytically confirm the direct and
indirect impacts of perceived value on conative efforts in the context of MAR.
Thus, Qin et al. (2021) study findings immensely contribute to application
design and marketing strategy development.

Fashion Retailers’ Application of Augmented Reality

AR technology has enhanced the hedonic value regarding garment viewing
in augmented worlds. Whereas consumers enjoy utilitarian value in terms of
product viewing technology, reducing waiting time for fitting rooms, can
reduce stress, especially for families with children who might get impatient
when they wait for family members to try-on garments. Moreover, the tech-
nology is easily used by any age group (Brannon Barhorst et al., 2021). Ralph
Lauren launched AR virtual mirrors for their in-store fitting rooms; it shows
90 per cent consumers engagement with enhanced hedonic value (Johnson,
 15 INTERACTIVE MARKETING WITH VIRTUAL COMMERCE … 341

2021). Furthermore, AR mobile applications have also been launched by

various fashion retailers such as Sapphire, a Pakistani fashion brand which
allows users to view products on augmented avatars in 360-degree view (Idrees
et al., 2020b; Sapphire, 2019). Additionally, fashion brands such as: H&M
offers six AR filters to advertise 1990s streetwear collection; Louis Vuitton
released a filter regarding the game League of Legends, as company-designed
outfits of the characters; Sack Fifth Ave introduced RPR’s virtual clothing
configurator utilising smart glasses and smartphones, so consumers can visit
virtual clothing rack in-store and at home (Johnson, 2021). The AR expe-
rience makes online recommendations about clothing and accessories, which
ultimately add ease and hedonic value.

3.2.3 Mixed Reality (MR)

The mixed reality (MR) user interface is a compelling concept for improving
a user’s experience by integrating computer-generated knowledge into real-
world situations. This is an attractive way out of combining AR and VR for
the v-commerce environment (Wang & Dunston, 2011). Since the virtual
environment is a metaverse, participants interact with each other and with
objects through digital objects and avatars. This is a concept where technolo-
gies and subjects of augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and mixed
reality (MR) have been incorporated and developed into the virtual world.
VR brings objects into the artificial environment and permits users to engage
themselves, and AR enhances information to the actual world. In addition
to the scenario of AR and VR interaction, the possibilities of their observed
interactions result in MR (Cabero-Almenara et al., 2021; Lee, 2021).

Recent Developments and Consumer Behaviour Research of Mixed

Reality
Collaborative apparel, a new product development model, has been introduced
in study facilitated with virtual simulation technologies. Nowadays, consumers
anticipate virtual experience to develop and design their own apparel, apart
from buying. Garments need to be customised in terms of virtual clothing
according to consumers’ body dimension. Consumers can view fitting simula-
tions before making a purchase. Thus, VR and AR strengths are utilized. For
instance, VR tools are applied in the development stage of the product such
as virtual prototyping, whereas AR tools are more appropriate at the point
of consumer integration in testing concepts and fitting assessments (De Silva
et al., 2019). Virtual fitting has been studied with avatar modes and self-image
modes using MR technology. For example, Kim and Sung’s (2021) study
explores the relationships between experience economy, perceived flow, and
continuous use intention in a mixed reality (MR) environment, for consumer.
Results reported for avatar mode for entertainment and aesthetic experiences
showed a positive impact on continuous use intentions via mediating impacts
on flow; and the education experience showed a positive impact on continuous
intentions to utilise the MR technology. For self-image, results revealed that
342 S. IDREES ET AL.

flow has a mediating effect on entertainment on continuous use intentions.

However, education and escapism had a direct impact on the intention to use
the MR technology (Kim & Sung, 2021). Online purchase has a strong impact
on the sustainability issue, as clothing returns are chiefly caused by the poor
sizing (Fernandes & Morais, 2021a, 2021b, 2021c). Therefore, employing
interactive technologies to resolve sustainability and sizing issues is neces-
sary for the fashion industry. Retailers have employed virtual fitting rooms
to facilitate consumers, in terms of sustainability and sizing. Fashion online
retail sale is also dependent on the presentation of products, therefore realistic
fashion viewing technology should also be incorporated. Fernandes and Morais
(2021a, 2021b, 2021c) concluded that utilising single technology contributes
to poor business model. Thus, new technologies such as Augmented Reality
(AR), Virtual Reality (VR), and Mixed Reality (MR) and interactive mirrors
(IM) can be combined with the latest smartphone evolution to relaunch
solutions like Smart fitting rooms (SFR) to resolve issues of poor fitting,
online returns, realistic online fashion viewing, and sustainability (Fernandes &
Morais, 2021a, 2021b, 2021c).

3.2.4 3D Body Scanning Mobile Applications

Mobile scanning apps have the capability to extract digital measurements and
personalise 3D body avatars by acquiring 2D images using camera-based smart
devices. Such applications have been developed for smartphones, tablets, and
laptops for buyers and retailers, to offer full body scanning, scanning of various
body parts separately, virtual fitting room for visualisations and recommen-
dations of size and fit. The mobile scanners can measure parameters such as
distances, girths, heights, width, surface area, body fat percentage, and circum-
ferences by detecting body landmarks through artificial intelligence (Idrees
et al., 2020a).

Recent Developments and Consumer Behaviour Research of Mobile

Scanning
A recent study presents a mass-produced mobile device with an integrated
LiDAR scanner, in iPhone 12 Pro, for scanning the human body (Mikalai
et al., 2022). The potential of technology was assessed by analysing the raw
3D sensor data using 3D design software MesLab and Rinoceros. The accuracy
of measuring the dimensional traits of a human body utilising a 3D model was
assessed. The scanner results demonstrate the potential to construct garments
using the personalised human dimensions (Mikalai et al., 2022). Similarly,
the potential of 3D body scanners has also been studied via the acquisi-
tion of digital measurements through Styku (MyBodee) scanners for bespoke
garment construction, along with 3D virtual simulations on 3D avatars to
analyse garment fit on virtual avatars. The whole process of virtual fitting has
been reported as a better approach than ready-to-wear garments (Sohn et al.,
2020). Moreover, a comparative study conducted using MeThreeSixty mobile
app, conventional anthropometric, and size stream scanner (SS20) noted that
 15 INTERACTIVE MARKETING WITH VIRTUAL COMMERCE … 343

smartphone apps’ accuracy is comparable to conventional tape measurement

procedures administered by trained technicians (Smith et al., 2021a, 2021b,
2021c). The fashion industry reported high return rates due to sizing issues
online (Lim & Jafari, 2021). Thus, Mobile 3D body scanning technology is
being introduced to aid consumers in choosing the correct garment sizes via
examinations of personalised virtual avatar. The mobile app scanning compa-
nies claim that the technologies they offer are accurate, dependable, and exact.
Therefore, Lim and Jafari (2021) investigated ten 3D mobile body scanning
applications by identifying their characteristics, methods, and advantages. The
expert-evaluated apps showed that the apps demonstrated the capability to be
applied in garment customisation and size recommendations (Lim & Jafari,
2021). Consumer behaviour has been evaluated by research, such as that of
Lin and Kang (2019). In the study, to evaluate scanner tech, students created
their own avatar using an iPad with a structure lens. The majority of the partic-
ipants were satisfied with their own avatar. They also elaborated that the avatars
were moderate to very accurate representations of their bodies. Technology
was affordable and easy to operate; majority showed positive responses, in
terms of future applications in fashion industry (Lin & Kang, 2019). Further-
more, Idrees et al. (2020a) also study consumer behaviour using smartphone
3D body scanning apps, that have been conducted, to analyse consumers’
behaviour in terms of ease of use and usefulness of the Nettelo app. They
found that consumers found it useful for acquiring body dimensions to receive
customised garments and size recommendations of chief international sizing
systems such as US, UK, FR, IT, DE (Idrees et al., 2020a).

Fashion Retailers’ Application of 3D Body Scanning Mobile Apps

The latest mobile 3D body scanning apps have been employed by various
fashion retailers and are easily accessible for consumer to acquire virtual size
and fitting benefits. For instance, Element Pure mobile scanning app has a
fairly simple process, via its 2 picture-click (of front and side poses) by using
an app. The app then creates a model of the torso within 60 s—5 min. The
AI-based app also delivers custom-fitted tailored shirts to their consumers.
The process of scanning is user-friendly, and it is explained by a video on
how to use the app. The additional options in custom shirt fitting include
slim, regular, and relaxed fit (Element Pure, 2019). Moreover, Nettelo has
similar scanning processes through the use of 2D images and quick display
of body dimensions and size recommendations of different countries such as
the EU, UK, USA, etc. (Nettelo, 2022). Size stream also offers MeThreeSixty
mobile body scanner and Formcut 3D measurement technology. The entire
scanning process takes 5 min. The user needs to wear a tight fitted upper and
lower garment which shows its body contour clearly for extraction of exact
body dimensions (Stream, 2022). 3D look offers virtual trying-on using body
scanning technology. More than 100 retailers have partnered with 3D look
companies including uniform industry Safariland and Fechheimer Brothers(a
Berkshire Hathaway company), 1822 denim women brand (a New York-based
344 S. IDREES ET AL.

company) which uses 3Dlook’s Your fit widget, as well as Boost VC, 500 Star-
tups, ICU Ventures, and U Ventures (which are all former consumer retailers
of 3D look) (3Dlook, 2021; Edelson, 2021).

4 The AIDA Model and Interactive

Marketing with Virtual Commerce Tools
The v-commerce tools and metaverse environment have been evaluated with
the AIDA marketing framework to outline the effectiveness of interactive
marketing strategy for consumers’ and retailers’ benefit. The overall goal of
marketing is to attract consumers to buy goods and services either online or
offline. The AIDA model focuses on consumer response to marketing commu-
nications in the cognitive, affective, and conative classifications (Hair et al.,
2009). The AIDA model presumes that marketing drives consumers along
the following four phases (Attention, Interest, Desire, and Action) in the
purchase-decision process (Table 1) (Hair et al., 2009).

5 Discussion and Conclusion

The chapter has provided insights on fashion metaverse environment and
v-commerce tools such as mobile scanners, VR, AR, and MR. The v-
commerce tools were introduced to improve interactive marketing. The
chapter concluded that v-commerce tools and fashion metaverse have distinct
main features to enhance interactive marketing such as immersive technology,
interactivity, attractiveness, and accuracy. (1) Immersive Technology: The
AR, VR, and MR technologies simulate visual, auditory, haptic, and motion
realness which are designated as immersive technology. For instance, VR is
well-accepted as an entirely integrated virtual environment; AR can display
computer engendered content (e.g., user interfaces and images) on actual
world locations in real time. MR, on the other hand, can execute virtual
displays, merge virtual scenes with actual ones, or deliver additional multi-
plex interactivity. Thus, MR accomplishes a vibrant collaboration of virtual and
real content in a similar space. Besides, the character realness of models and
virtual space enhance the perceived immersion in virtual worlds (VWs) tech-
nology. A VW is frequently interacted and positioned with intelligent tools,
permitting its operators to easily interact with the virtual bodies and intelligent
tools, and connect with each other. (2) Interactivity: The interactivity offered
by v-commerce tools contrasts in terms of the correlation between users and
interactive v-commerce tools. The technologies such as realistic avatar, image
enlargement, and 360-degree rotation can aid consumers to examine the
product clearly and can analyse colour contrasting and matching of garments
and accessories on personalise 3D avatars in virtual and augmented reality.
Moreover, virtual trying a garment and online customisation services by 3D
body scanning tools have offered an easier solution for buying right size
and fitted garment online. The perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness,
 15 INTERACTIVE MARKETING WITH VIRTUAL COMMERCE … 345

Table 1 AIDA Marketing framework with assessment Of VR, AR, MR, and 3D
Mobile app scanners for interactive marketing

AIDA marketing framework with assessment of VR, AR, MR, and 3D mobile app
scanners for Interactive Marketing

Attention How to attract attention or awareness among consumers on the existing or

novel products and services being offered?
• Displaying realistic virtual 3D interactive personalise avatars, products, and
environment
• Realistic and interactive experience with metaverse environment
• Convenience of shopping at home
• Use of smartphone or camera enabled hardware
• Realistic right size and fitting visualisation and recommendation
• Consumer-facing interfaces which are affordable, highly interactive, and easy
operatable technology
• Human–computer interaction which deliver immersive, interactive, and
attractive feelings to the participants
Interest How to build interest of customers to acquire more knowledge about the
products or services and permit them to evaluate whether they meet their
requirements or expectations?
• Dress-up mannequins for mix and match and 360-degree rotation view
• Satisfaction with realistic fashion viewing and size and fitting
• Viewing of tightness and looseness of garment
• Time efficiency and improve the accessibility of garment trying on by using
virtual dressing room on personal smartphone application
• Product development and selection is convenient, efficient, and an easy and
quick replacement to acquiring accurate body dimensions as taken by a tailor
• Better perspective of how the final garment will look, fit, and behave in
online environment
• Perceived enjoyment, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness positively
impacts the attitude towards virtual commerce tools for apparel shopping
• Innovative, fun, and exciting
• Blends online shopping with real-world shopping
Desire How to make certain that customers have a desire to purchase the products or
services because they fulfil the needs, wants, and their interest?
• Providing access to use technology free and user-friendly
• By creating smartphone enabled applications
• By creating interaction with technology such as recent use in the fashion
industry
Action How to make certain that customers can take action to make the decision to
buy the products or services?
• Enhanced fashion viewing and interaction in a metaverse
• Virtual trying on like in-store fitting room
• Certainty of right size product through mobile scanners
• Positive experience of virtual fitting rooms with combination of realistic VR
and AR enhances decision-making process to make a purchase during virtual
shopping
346 S. IDREES ET AL.

and entertainment experience have enhanced the perceived interactivity of

consumers with v-commerce tools. Moreover, MR tools offer interactivity
and visualisation by offering interactive feedback when consumers visualise
a product. The interaction with modern systems permits users to employ a
highly functional and thorough evaluation with the utilisation of more specific,
aimed, and pertinent information. Additionally, consumers can enjoy real-
ness, speed, smoothness, accuracy, and enrich information in dynamic ways.
(3) Attractiveness: When consumers perceive an overall positive and pleasant
experience in fashion metaverse, this enhances attractiveness. Moreover, the
opportunity to alter the visually translated figure, visualising themselves in
metaverse environment and in virtual fitting room with different clothing
styles, skin colour, eye colour, and hairstyles, promotes the perceived attrac-
tiveness of the virtual model. The v-commerce also fulfilled the social and
emotional needs of consumers such as sharing of product for reviews with
friends and family to make a purchase that resulted in enhanced attractive-
ness. Attractiveness is interconnected with accuracy of garment fit because a
great level of attractiveness results from viewing the real body-shaped avatar
displaying the garment fit. Since user body shape is closely correlated with
the size and fit of garments, augmented reality, and virtual reality bring a
realistic experience of virtual fitting. Users can examine outfits as if they are
actually wearing outfit in virtual world. Likewise, it presents a great possibility
of enhancing interactive marketing because it displays gamification and enter-
tainment during online purchase, provides ease of size viewing, style, and fit
of an outfit in a virtual fashion shop, with no travel restrictions. The whole
scenario of virtual environment allows consumers to better appraise the prod-
ucts by providing a strong simulation of the virtual buying experience. (4)
Accuracy: Accuracy indicates the match between the real user model and
realistic view of products on personalised avatar. Because consumers glob-
ally vary in body size, shape, hair, and skin colour; thus, it is challenging to
measure each consumer accurately and visualise consumer models with person-
alise fit. Therefore, to provide solution, body scanning mobile applications
have demonstrated high potential to deliver accurate body dimensions and size
recommendations among the v-commerce tools with user-friendly approaches.
When consumers perceive a great level of accuracy while using a technology,
they are more likely to have an enhanced utilitarian experience with prospect of
fulfilling consumer’s functional needs of finding right fit garment in the virtual
environment with involvement of AR and VR tools, which provide haptic
realistic view of products and haptic feedback. Therefore, consumers’ positive
experience of virtual fitting rooms with combination of different v-commerce
tools enhances their decision-making process during virtual shopping.
Furthermore, by assessing the v-commerce tools and metaverse environ-
ment with AIDA marketing model, it has been concluded that fashion
metaverse tools facilitate consumers to make a confident apparel purchase.
Moreover, v-commerce tools and metaverse environment showed high poten-
tial in benefiting retailers with mass customisation business model, inventory
 15 INTERACTIVE MARKETING WITH VIRTUAL COMMERCE … 347

management efficiently, delivering accurate size and fitting visualisation, and

recommendation services as well as the design of interactive marketing and
retailing strategies.

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 CHAPTER 16

Virtual Influencer as a Brand Avatar

in Interactive Marketing

Alice Audrezet and Bernadett Koles

1 Introduction
Social media influencers (SMIs), “people who gained popularity due to their
social media presence and content, such as bloggers, YouTubers, and Instafa-
mous individuals” (Aw & Chuah, 2021 pp. 146), are now well-established
actors in the interactive marketing strategy of brands (López et al., 2022).
SMIs’ competencies to create sophisticated content about brands and prod-
ucts—via tutorials, product reviews, creative product staging in videos or
posted images—federate a community of followers (Lee & Watkins, 2016),
which make them attractive for brands (Hamilton et al., 2016). During the
past fifteen years, many brands developed different types of collaborations
with SMIs, including the simpler forms of product endorsement to the more
complex forms of product co-development, in order to reach their audience
in a more meaningful fashion (Lou & Yuan, 2019). Consequently, influ-
encer marketing—a form of social media marketing that builds on influencer
endorsements of products and services in specific domains of interests and
expertise made available to followers on various social media platforms (De
Jans & Hudders, 2020; Wang, 2021)—has quickly matured into a booming

A. Audrezet (B)
Institut Français de La Mode, Paris, France
e-mail: aaudrezet@ifmparis.fr
B. Koles
IÉSEG School of Management, Lille, France
e-mail: b.koles@ieseg.fr

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 353

Switzerland AG 2023
C. L. Wang (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Interactive Marketing,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14961-0_16
354 A. AUDREZET AND B. KOLES

industry thanks to companies and apps that offer technical support to foster
cooperation between SMIs and brands. With 90% of marketing managers
convinced by its effectiveness, even following the COVID-19 crisis that
negatively impacted many businesses, recent estimates place the influencer
marketing industry at $13.8 billion, representing a 42% increase from 2019.1
Although influencer-brand collaborations enable the establishment of a
larger follower base, research warns that such an institutionalized brand
encroachment vis-à-vis the influencer’s shared content might threaten the
SMI’s ability to remain genuine and true-to-self (Audrezet et al., 2020; van
Reijmersdal et al., 2020); attributes that made them popular in the first place
(Duffy & Hund, 2019). As commercial opportunities are likely to encourage
the promotion of products which influencers might not spontaneously be
interested in (Harms et al., 2022), this cycle presents SMIs with a serious chal-
lenge: how to ensure and maintain their credibility (Al-Emadi & Ben Yahia,
2020; Sokolova & Kefi, 2020), authenticity (Lee & Eastin, 2021; Pöyry et al.,
2019) and trustworthiness (Giuffredi-Kähr et al., 2022; Kim & Kim, 2021).
Beyond these well-documented expectations of followers, the traditional
figure of the SMI faces another notable challenge presented by the emergence
of a new opinion leader: the virtual influencer. The directory—VirtualHu-
mans.org—keeps a log of existing and emerging virtual influencers once
they can account for at least 1,000 followers across social media platforms.
According to Christopher Travers, the founder of this database, “a virtual
influencer is a digital character created in computer graphics software, then
given a personality defined by a first-person view of the world, and made
accessible on media platforms for the sake of influence”. Developed by digital
agencies leveraging sophisticated tools and technologies, non-human and
entirely computer-generated characters can be provided with a human-like
appearance and a unique personality (Moustakas et al., 2020) that might
in turn blur the boundaries between offline and online consumer-perceived
reality (Drenten & Brooks, 2020).
Despite their popularity and increasing prevalence on the influencer
marketing landscape, surprisingly little is known about virtual influencers and
the impact they might have on marketing and on consumer-brand relations.
While computer-generated influencers offer new opportunities for brands, they
also push the boundaries of altered reality which might present a challenge
to adopt by marketers. The current chapter fills this gap in the literature
by providing a detailed presentation of this new phenomenon within its
greater digital ecosystem that includes brands, followers, digital agencies and
social media platforms. More specifically, the objectives of this contribu-
tion are threefold. First, the chapter provides a comparative analysis of the
developmental trajectories of virtual versus human influencers to understand
their similarities and differences more fully. Second, building on empirical

1 Influencer Marketing Benchmark report, Influencer Marketing Hub, 2021.

 16 VIRTUAL INFLUENCER AS A BRAND AVATAR IN INTERACTIVE MARKETING 355

evidence, the authors identify different personas that can be used to approx-
imate follower preferences concerning virtual influencers that in turn can be
used for purposes of segmentation. And third, the chapter provides concrete
strategic directions for brands wishing to collaborate with virtual influencers.
Concerning its structure, the chapter begins with a review of contempo-
rary research on human influencers and their relationships with their followers.
Here the authors reflect upon certain relevant theoretical frameworks—
including social influence and parasocial relationship theory, representing
streams of research that are often engaged within the field of influencer
marketing (Aw & Chuah, 2021; Jin & Ryu, 2020). Next, the authors intro-
duce examples of successful virtual influencers, review existing professional and
scholarly sources that focus on this emerging phenomenon, and—building on
interview research with a group of young consumers—provide comparative
reflections vis-à-vis their human influencer counterparts. Finally, the authors
offer a conceptual framework to assist brands in ways to effectively employ
virtual influencers and conclude the chapter by offering directions for future
research.

2 The Positioning of Human Influencers

2.1 History and Conceptualization of Human Influencers
Starting in the 2000s, a set of adventurous Internet users embarked on a
new opportunity to create a novel form of accessible content building on
their specific interest in a range of areas like fashion, cosmetics, travel and
technology, with the intention to share openly with interested parties via
blogs and social media platforms, such as Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, etc.
(Dinh & Lee, 2021; Rocamora, 2011). This new type of spontaneous and
first-hand experience-based content was found more appealing to customers
in comparison to the distant and more static material dominating specialized
magazines (Evans et al., 2017; Lea et al., 2018). Thanks to the quality of their
content and its amplified effect enabled by the Internet (McQuarrie et al.,
2012), those “who have the potential to create engagement, drive conversa-
tion and/or sell products/services with the intended target audience” (IAB,
2018) became what we are now accustomed to call ‘social media influencers ’
(SMIs). Not surprisingly, brands quickly seized the opportunity to benefit
from such content, especially given their context is increasingly characterized
by a widespread distrust toward traditional forms of advertising (Audrezet
et al., 2020; Corrêa et al., 2020). Consequently, the promotion of prod-
ucts and services through sponsored posts on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube,
Twitch, and other platforms (Ge & Gretzel, 2018) are now considered
‘common expenditures’ of the interactive marketing strategy of firms.
356 A. AUDREZET AND B. KOLES

2.2 Development and Effectiveness of Influencer Marketing

Previous research highlights the effectiveness of influencers as brand manage-
ment tools (Carlson et al., 2020; Ryu & Jin, 2019; Valsesia et al., 2020;
Wang et al., 2021) with beneficial consequences to boost consumer engage-
ment (Al-Emadi & Ben Yahia, 2020; Hughes et al., 2019; Lee & Theokary,
2020; Tafesse & Wood, 2021) and the adoption of (Corrêa et al., 2020) and
purchase intention toward products and services (Weismueller et al., 2020;
Zhang et al., 2021). In addition to the characteristics of authenticity and trust-
worthiness mentioned in the introduction, influencer credibility (Pick, 2020)
and self-disclosure (Leite & Baptista, 2021) have been shown to further impact
consumer-brand connections and purchase intention.
In the emerging influencer marketing industry, rewards depend on the
SMIs’ level of influence, commonly approximated by the number of their
followers on different social media platforms (Pittman & Abell, 2021). To
draw upon their engaged and trusting community, brands at first were
predominantly interested in mega-influencers—both online-born and tradi-
tional celebrities who emerged outside of the Internet—with follower counts
in the millions. More recently, there has been a notable shift toward micro-
influencers—those accounting for less than ten thousand followers—who
represent niche domains and specific interest areas (Pittman & Abell, 2021).
Within the celebrity endorsement literature, it’s been shown that endorse-
ment effectiveness can be better predicted by embracing a customer-centric
(i.e., consumer-endorser identification) as opposed to a product-centric
approach (i.e., product-endorser fit) (Carlson et al., 2020). Furthermore, orig-
inality, uniqueness and innovativeness were found critical to be perceived as an
opinion leader (Akdevelioglu & Kara, 2020; Casaló et al., 2020). Hence, the
approach that seems to work best is one that focuses on expertise, lifestyles,
and takes a consumer-centric approach (De Jans et al., 2021; Seeler et al.,
2019).

2.3 Conceptualization of the Relationship Between Human Influencers

and Their Followers
Several theories within and beyond traditional consumer research have been
engaged to understand the relationships human influencers embody vis-à-vis
their follower community.

2.3.1 Social Influence Theory

One example builds on Social Influence Theory (Tafesse & Wood, 2021) that
distinguishes three processes underlying influential dyads. Compliance is the
first type of social influence that occurs when people accept others’ influence
to gain approval or avoid disapproval. Influence by compliance tends to be
extrinsically motivated and superficially accepted. Identification is the second
 16 VIRTUAL INFLUENCER AS A BRAND AVATAR IN INTERACTIVE MARKETING 357

form of social influence, referring to situations when individuals accept influ-

ence based on the relationship they form and maintain with the influencer that
becomes part of their identity. This type of influence is intrinsically motivated,
deeper and tends to be linked with various influencer qualities like attractive-
ness, creativity or popularity (Pittman &Abell, 2021). Finally, the third and
most complex form of social influence entails internalization, when followers
accept influence given its congruence with their own value systems. Here the
influencers’ credibility, expertise, trustworthiness and authenticity are of special
importance.

2.3.2 Parasocial Relationship Theory

A particularly dominant framework proposed to approximate the relationship
that emerges between influencers and their fans comes from the theory of
parasocial interactions (PSIs), referring to the “feeling of companionship or
illusion of friendship with media figures” (Jin & Muqaddam, 2019 pp. 527).
Parasocial relationship theory has been used to explain the complex connection
formed between users and a wide range of virtual entities, including avatars (Yi,
2022). Within the influencer marketing context, a parasocial relationship has
been found to have a more prominent role when compared to opinion lead-
ership in affecting the purchase intention of followers (Bi Farivar et al., 2021;
Zhang, 2022). When exploring parasocial interaction between influencers and
their audience, along with their perceived credibility, social and physical attrac-
tiveness and attitude homophily on purchase intention, Sokolova and Kefi
(2020) found PSI to be stronger than credibility in predicting purchase inten-
tion—particularly in the case of younger age groups such as the Gen Z
cohort. Both wishful identification and parasocial relationships were found
to have significant but different impact on followers’ stickiness; an important
factor contributing to the economic valorization derived from the influencers’
follower base (Hu et al., 2020). Along the same lines, closeness seemed to
further impact the relationship in a positive fashion (Taillon et al., 2020).

2.3.3 Pseudo Interpersonal Relationship Theory

A promising new direction in the influencer marketing literature concerns the
extent to which levels of perceived intimacy on behalf of consumers might
deviate from the purely parasocial interactions; a point that will be of particular
relevance in our later discussions concerning virtual influencers. In fact, exten-
sive intimate first-person content shared by influencers and the opportunity for
consumers to like and comment on the posted content creates an illusion of
interpersonal connection (Aw & Chuah, 2021; Aw & Labrecque, 2020; Jin &
Ryu, 2020; Kim & Kim, 2020; Moraes et al., 2019), above and beyond the
parasocial relationship that has been widely engaged in contemporary research.
These pseudo relationships that grew out of the celebrity endorsement schol-
arship tend to be more intense with influencers who are perceived as credible
and attractive by their fans and followers (Gong & Li, 2017; Sakib et al.,
2020; Sokolova & Kefi, 2020). These findings are particularly important given
358 A. AUDREZET AND B. KOLES

that the emotional relationships and attachment consumers develop with the
mediated influencer personas might help mitigate self-serving—as opposed to
altruistic—attributions (Aw & Chuah, 2021; Pittman & Abell, 2021), being
advantageous for influencers as well as brands alike. Indeed, Kim and Kim
(2022) demonstrate that attachment tends to enhance influencer credibility
and follower loyalty, in turn reducing overall resistance to advertising.
Importantly, given the limited available research focusing on the area of
virtual influencers, it remains unclear as to how applicable these relational
frameworks might be in the case of virtual influencers. Understanding this
would help firms contemplate effective forms of collaboration with virtual
influencers more fully, in turn assisting them in their selection and strategic
decision-making process. Before elaborating on this further, the authors first
introduce concrete cases of leading virtual influencers and provide examples
for their brand collaborations and branding campaigns.

3 Virtual Influencers---A New

Frontier in Interactive Marketing
Virtual influencers are computer-generated images (CGIs) or avatars who are
created and controlled by teams of individuals often affiliated with digital agen-
cies, and who account for a substantial enough follower base on social media
platforms to attract attention from brands and consumers. Given the unlim-
ited potential of virtual space, virtual influencers can assume many shapes
and forms including robots, animals, cartoons, humans or aliens. They are
similar to robots in that both entities are controlled by humans, and hence
can be positioned as digital robots. At the same time, the content virtual
influencers produce is very sophisticated, which differentiates these characters
from other AI-driven technology such as chatbots or virtual assistants that
are programmed to answer questions according to a script (Tsai et al., 2021;
Wang, 2021).
While tracing the origins of virtual influencers, Brazil served as the cradle for
this industry, with the creation of Lu Do Magalu in 2003, initially developed as
a virtual mascot for the e-commerce sites of Magazine Luiza promoting appli-
ances and electronics. She turned into an influencer in 2009 with the launch
of her YouTube channel and attracted 30 M + followers across various social
platforms. This initial success of a virtual influencer in Brazil was reinforced
by a law in 2011 favoring children’s animation produced by Brazilian studios
on TV, which resulted in the rapid development of the Brazilian animation
industry; with new talents eventually delving into the field of virtual influ-
encers. Such a favorable context gave rise in 2016 to the quintessential Lil
Miquela—a particularly well-known virtual influencer created and managed
by the California-based Brud agency and positioned as a Brazilian-American
robot.
Today, virtual influencers are emerging worldwide. Based on estimates from
VirtualHuman.org—an IMDB-type database compiling relevant information
 16 VIRTUAL INFLUENCER AS A BRAND AVATAR IN INTERACTIVE MARKETING 359

on virtual influencers, there are approximately 200 virtual influencers consid-

ered ‘worthy of interest’; although their real number and impact remain hard
to objectively estimate. Successful examples include virtual influencers with a
human-like appearance, like Lil Miquela, an LA-based robot ‘it’ girl and singer,
or the virtual supermodel Shudu; others with 2D cartoon-like features such
as the Japanese Kizuna AI —a singer, gamer and VTuber (virtual YouTuber;
see Fig. 1 for illustration); virtual influencers with animalistic characteristics
such as bee_nfluencer, a French-born virtual content creator dedicated to
raising awareness about the need for protecting bees; or even ones that exhibit
a completely unrealistic appearance, like the TikTok phenomenon Noboby
Sausage, a colorful 3D dancing stick; and finally branded virtual influencers
like Colonel Sanders from the KFC restaurant chain or Daisy—a creation of
the online lifestyle store YOOX, who’s frequently taking over the brand’s
Instagram account to share her most fashionable lifestyle recommendations.
Table 1 provides a comprehensive account of some of the most prominent
virtual influencers. Examples to be showcased were selected based on their
popularity—as approximated by the number of followers, and type to empha-
size the vast diversity in terms of appearance, purpose of existence and primary
domain of influence. Previous research shows that extreme cases in partic-
ular enable a clearer understanding of a phenomenon (Seawright & Gerring,
2008); which in our case is also advantageous to infer the communication

Fig. 1 Kizuna AI , a
Japanese cartoon-like
virtual singer, gamer and
VTuber (credit: Kizuna
AI Wikipedia page)
360 A. AUDREZET AND B. KOLES

purpose, the target audience, and ultimately the marketing opportunities

associated with virtual influencers.
In addition to these variations, the table also demonstrates that several
digital agencies hide behind these virtual influencers, responsible for their
creation as well as maintenance. Brud, the California-based transmedia
company founded by Trevor McFedries and Sara DeCou, is probably the most
well-known given that they are responsible for the creation of Lil Miquela, one
of the pioneering virtual influencer projects. Since her debut, this forever-19
digital robot posting on social media with content showcasing her entertaining
life in LA, has accounted for more than 3 million followers on Instagram. As
an additional measure of her success, in 2018, TIME magazine designated her
to be among the 25 Most Influential People on the Internet.
Although Miquela defines herself as a robot, she has a human appear-
ance and “displays complex human emotions such as sympathy, affection and
heartbreak” (Moustakas et al., 2020). This line blurring the ‘real’ and the
‘virtual’ is further reinforced by Miquela’s stories that commonly showcase
other influencers; both human and virtual. For instance, @bermudaisbae, a
blond LA-based robot ‘it’ girl who used to support Donald Trump and
@blakow22, a low-life and high-tech LA-based robot, formerly known as
Bermuda’s boyfriend, are parts of her social circle. These characters are also
of Brud’s creations, enabling to enhance Miquela’s storylines with drama-rich
content and opportunities. Regarding her collaborations with brands, Mique-
la’s repertoire includes names like Prada, Calvin Klein, Dior, Balmain and
Fenty Beauty. On the human influencer engagement side, one of Mique-
la’s most remarkable campaigns is with Calvin Klein where she kissed the
supermodel Bella Hadid. Under the influence of Trevor McFedries, Brud’s
co-founder and formal artist manager, Miquela was designed at the time of
her launch as a virtual celebrity. In August 2017, she became a singer, with
her first song ‘Not Mine’ quickly becoming a hit, reaching eighth position on
Spotify Viral the same month. She also is an avid supporter of social campaigns
such as Black Lives Matter and LGBTQI + concerns.
Recently, Brud has been repurposed as an entity for ‘community-owned
media and collectively built worlds’, implying that the agency will offer fans
the opportunity to provide direct input into Lil Miquela’s storytelling. As an
illustration, during the summer of 2021, fans were able to discover Lil Mique-
la’s first job, after voting for this particular ‘memory’ to be revealed—and
essentially developed. In October 2021, it was announced that Brud—along
with its 32-member team—was acquired by Dapper Labs, the NFT startup,
with the aim to build “the decentralized, collectively owned future of media
and social with DAOs”2 (Decentralized Autonomous Organization); a new
kind of digital organizational structure that grants everyone equal decision-
making power. These innovative collaborations present brands as well as the
industry at large with new opportunities to re-envision consumer engagement

2 Tweet of Trevor McFedries, October 4th, 2021.

 16

Table 1 Identification and key attributes of notable virtual influencers

Name Lil Miquela Shudu Noonoori Kizuna AI Bee-nfluencer Nobody Colonel Kenna @thisis.kenna
account @lilmiquela @shudu.gram @noonoori @bee_nfluencer Sausage sanders
name @nobodysau @kfc
sage

Managing Brud The Diigitals Opium Kizuna AI Foundation in Kael Cabral KFC Essence Cosmetics
entity (digital agency) (digital modeling (digital agency) Inc France (freelance (fast food
agency) (exclusively (philanthropic motion restau-
dedicated French network) graphic rants)
digital designer)
agency)
# of 3 M 225 K 346 K 4 M 271 K 13 M N/A 17.2 K Instagram
followers / Instagram Instagram Instagram YouTube Instagram TikTok Appears
prominent only on
social media KFC’s
outlet social
networks
Type Humanoid Humanoid Cartoon Cartoon Animalistic Arbitrary / Branded Branded
unrealistic (virtual (employee as intern)
mascot)
Dominant Lifestyle & music Campaigns & Lifestyle & fashion Gaming Activism & entertainment Colorful, Ironic Cosmetics &
content / songs inspirational groovy lifestyle lifestyle
interviews dance
videos
Primary Entertainment & Racial inclusion Vegan activism Entertainment Bees’ protection Entertainmen Rejuvenation Promotion of the
purpose of promotion of with t & dance of brand’s employer brand
communica- progressive values gaming & image
tion songs
Target Millennials Luxury brands Sustainable fashion Mass Donors Music N/A N/A
consumers targeting brands brands market & brands
technology
brands
VIRTUAL INFLUENCER AS A BRAND AVATAR IN INTERACTIVE MARKETING
361
362 A. AUDREZET AND B. KOLES

Fig. 2 Brud’s activity timeline (Source Adapted from commons.wikimedia.org)

and multi-stakeholder collaborations. As an illustration, Fig. 2 offers a visual

representation of Brud’s activity over the years since its launch.
Another interesting example comes from The Diigitals—the first all-digital
modeling agency created by the young English photographer Cameron-James
Wilson. In 2017, this agency launched Shudu, an enigmatic virtual supermodel
with an ideal body appearance. Shudu has gained public attention thanks to
a repost from Fenty beauty at the beginning of 2018, securing a substan-
tial follower base shortly thereafter (to date 224 K followers on Instagram).
Facing criticisms regarding her idealized and overly perfectionist body shape,
the Diigitals designed @brenn.gram in 2018, a supermodel with more real-
istic proportions and slight body imperfections like stretch marks. Contrary
to Shudu who is dedicated to the world of fashion, Brenn champions sustain-
able lifestyle choices for urban living, sponsoring, for instance, fully electric
Smart cars. As of now, The Diigitals are responsible for a total of seven models
of different genders, ethnic backgrounds, and even the very first digital alien
model Galaxia.
In addition to the virtual influencers with a more-or-less human-like appear-
ance, there are interesting examples of characters that resemble cartoons. For
instance, betting on the interest of fashion brands for renewed endorsements,
Joerg Zuber, the CEO of the German agency Opium in 2018 developed
Noonoori, a cartoon-like model with almost 400 K followers on Insta-
gram. Embodying a dreamy fashionable Parisian with a vegan lifestyle, she
is perfectly positioned to collaborate with sustainably oriented fashion brands,
having secured collaborations with Gucci, Versace, Marc Jacobs, Dior and Kim
Kardashian cosmetics. Her naïve appearance is also designed to attract brands
 16 VIRTUAL INFLUENCER AS A BRAND AVATAR IN INTERACTIVE MARKETING 363

wishing to reach a younger audience, especially those aiming to penetrate the

digital fashion market.
In summary, these virtual opinion leaders and the digital agencies behind
them managed to capture a sizable audience along with an impressive reper-
toire of brands. Positioning virtual influencers as an innovative instrument
between consumers and brands, their future potential to play a prominent
role in marketing is clear. What is less evident is how virtual influencers might
compare to human influencers in terms of potential impact and appeal, and
what options brands might have to incorporate them into their marketing
strategy. The remainder of this chapter will focus on unpacking these questions
more fully to provide firms with concrete and practical takeaways.

4 Human Influencers Versus Virtual Influencers

4.1 Developmental Trajectories
To contemplate the effectiveness of virtual influencers as a branding instru-
ment, first, it is helpful to review the developmental trajectory of human
influencers and see how they might compare to those of their virtual influ-
encer counterparts. Applying the common marketing tool used to capture
product life cycles, Fig. 3 presents the general evolution of influencers across
four stages, highlighting certain key attributes for each.
The official launch of human influencers is usually tied to the beginning of
their content sharing activity on social media sites. Posts tend to concentrate
on key domains linked with a hobby or special interest, over time aiming to
establish a sizable follower base. It is important to mention that at least in
the early days of influencers, those who ended up successful often started out

Number of
followers
Innovation
vs.
Discontinuation

Maturity

Growth

Introduction

Time

Official launch and gaining Crystallization of Re-assessment of Strategic re-alignment

Purpose traction
Content sharing in
domains of interest
Core activity Establishment of follower
base in key segments
influencer identity influencer identity
Confirmation of domain Contemplation of Systematic review of
specific expertise sustainability of core options
Engagement in brand attributes Further investment (i.e.
collaborations Pursuit of selective and time, learning, resources)
mission-critical brands vs. discontinuation

Fig. 3 Key stages of developmental trajectory to approximate the evolution of

influencers
364 A. AUDREZET AND B. KOLES

as pursuing a pastime activity related to their hobby or expertise, not neces-

sarily intending to become famous (McQuarrie et al., 2012). Influencers who
manage to conquer this phase move onto the growth stage, where they gener-
ally crystallize their identity, confirm their lead role in the chosen domain(s),
and—attracting their attention—begin to collaborate more strategically with
brands. It is critical for influencers to maintain their authenticity and true-
to-self content, and to avoid the risk of brand encroachment that presents
a significant challenge as it might jeopardize their very existence (Audrezet
et al., 2020; Pittman & Abell, 2021; Pöyry et al., 2019). In the mature phase,
influencers account for a steady follower base but often need to contem-
plate necessary modifications to keep up their appeal and relevance. In the
final stage, influencers need to carefully consider their options, whether they
are able to maintain their status and continue or instead accept ‘exit’ as the
sensible choice. Being an influencer can be a highly demanding activity that
might become overwhelming and at times can even be leading to burnout
syndrome.
Although this trajectory can be applied relatively well to many traditional
influencer journeys, it is also important to note important changes in the
industry. In particular, starting out as a hobby for pioneer bloggers fifteen years
ago (Duffy & Hund, 2015), the development of commercial opportunities
for influencers resulted in the increasing professionalization of their activity,
which is now perceived by many aspirational entrants as an actual career option
(Rocamora, 2018). It is also not uncommon for influencers to continue to
offer their marketing labor free of charge to brands in order to attract and
secure their interest for future collaborations (Duffy & Hund, 2015). To get
a head start and maximize their potential, an increasing number of ‘wannabe’
influencers enroll in official training programs, such as the Condé Nast Social
Academy that is supported by the S.D.A. Bocconi School of Management.
In these schools, aspirational influencers are trained to produce high-quality
content while maintaining an authentic posture, to prepare them to navigate
the different stages along their influencer journey more effectively.
Undoubtedly, much of the content presented in Fig. 3 concerning the
general trajectory remains valid for virtual influencers as well, but with certain
marked differences. First, the introduction stage can be substantially shortened
by removing the accidental element, as virtual influencers are purposefully
created to trigger consumer engagement. To some extent this move is also
in line with the more recent introduction of aspirational human influencers
who pursue training to launch their career. Second, while human influencers
often need to wait until they generate a large enough follower base to attract
brand attention, virtual influencers are often crafted by digital agencies or
commissioned by corporate entities with a relatively clear branding purpose
and positioning in mind. Third, while by and large there is a single or limited
group of individuals behind a human influencer, there tends to be an entire
team of highly trained expert professionals behind any virtual influencer, who
 16 VIRTUAL INFLUENCER AS A BRAND AVATAR IN INTERACTIVE MARKETING 365

carefully monitor their impact and are quick to react and intervene with
potential modifications, as needed.

4.2 The Consumer Perspective

There are interesting takeaways that can be derived from the earlier parts of
this chapter concerning human and virtual influencers that might assist in
understanding their position in the global interactive marketing landscape.
What has been missing thus far from our discussion is the consumer perspec-
tive—are virtual influencers equally salient and how can brands capture their
full communication potential? To explore these questions more fully, the
following section presents empirical insights based on semi-structured inter-
views the authors conducted with a group of young consumers, asking them
first about their influencer following behaviors, and then about their percep-
tions of and attitudes toward virtual influencers. Participants from the Gen
Z generation were targeted as they are the ones who are most frequent in
the social media platforms—like Instagram—that host a fair amount of influ-
encer activity. Our sample included 42 participants from Italy and France—18
males and 24 females—between the ages of 19 and 25. The majority of our
respondents did not follow—and most were not even aware of the existence
of—virtual influencers, which is not surprising given the relative novelty of this
specialized and innovative digital phenomenon. Thematic content analysis was
used to organize the data and to extract relevant themes (Patton, 2014). This
exploratory research enabled us to get first-hand insights regarding the overall
perceptions of young consumers that might be particularly relevant for brands
to consider.
Based on their influencer following behaviors, three different personas were
identified from a consumer segmentation perspective. On the least engaged
end of the spectrum, the authors find passive bystanders whose main moti-
vations surround entertainment, escapism, and predominantly aesthetic and
hedonic appeal. They gather information and/or inspiration from posts in rele-
vant domains but tend to be non-exclusive and portray limited loyalty. They
are not necessarily interested in establishing any relationship with influencers,
and—as long as their needs are fulfilled—are happy to equally consider human
as well as virtual influencers.
In mid-range, the authors find active community members who are more
committed, and, on the one hand, continue to appreciate information and
aesthetic appeal, but also welcome the benefits of shared interest, meaning
and friendship that are associated with their participation. For this group, the
influencer—human or virtual—enables the network of like-minded individ-
uals to emerge, with the community interactions triggering greater levels of
engagement and loyalty. Based on this network effect, consumers find it suffi-
cient to receive occasional influencer feedback or second-hand engagement
between the influencer and another follower, even when it is different from
themselves. This type of engagement resembles signs of parasocial interaction
366 A. AUDREZET AND B. KOLES

directly targeting the influencer but indirectly targeting the greater network
of followers. From a comparative perspective, techniques employed to trigger
parasocial interactions and create the impression of a relationship—including
the sharing of daily life contents, reacting to comments—could be equally
effective by human as well as virtual influencers.
On the most engaged level, the authors find followers who can be
described as devoted contributors within the influencer’s own network and
who value attachment and continuity, deeper meaning, extensive loyalty, and
resemble signs of pseudo-interpersonal love relationship. These consumers are
so invested in following their beloved human influencer(s) that they do not
see the value or reason for following virtual ones—whom they consider fake
and not at all authentic. They view their chosen human influencers as ‘friends’
and are deeply invested in their everyday lives, portraying emotional connec-
tions that mirror the emotions experienced and revealed by the human opinion
leader. Consumers in this category are likely to establish pseudo-interpersonal
relationships with the human influencer(s) they follow; something that would
not be expected in the case of virtual influencers. In this sense, this last
category is best reserved for campaigns that target human influencers only.
These three personas indicate that depending on the type of consumers,
brands should realistically align their strategy to appeal to the right type of
audience, which is heavily influenced by the domain in which they aim to exert
influence. Certain areas like fashion or cause marketing are likely to appeal to
a broader audience and can benefit from sporadic and accidental visitors (our
first group) as well as somewhat more engaged supporters (our second group)
who are after the community membership. At least for the time being, virtual
influencers are unlikely to appeal to those very dedicated to following their
human influencers as they do not necessarily see the value of spending their
time on such endeavors. Established luxury brands might have a particular role
to play in this regard—in placing emphasis on the innovative nature of this
form of communication and the strategic engagement of virtual influencers.

4.3 Recommendations for the Interactive Strategy of Brands

So, what does this all mean for brands? The remaining part of the chapter
contemplates the strategy that brands can pursue to maximize their investment
and appeal in ways that are congruent with the right type of audience. In
particular, in line with some of the ideas put forth by VirtualHuman.org, the
authors propose three ways in which brands can involve a virtual influencer in
their interactive marketing strategy.
Partnership or sponsorship (low engagement). In collaboration with the
managing agency of the virtual influencer, a brand can negotiate a specific
promotional content to be posted by the digital character to its community.
This is the easiest and simplest way to initiate a first collaboration with a
virtual influencer, offering an ideal and low-risk approach to test the reac-
tion of the audience, or—as our example will demonstrate—to reach a specific
 16 VIRTUAL INFLUENCER AS A BRAND AVATAR IN INTERACTIVE MARKETING 367

and often younger age group more effectively. As an illustration, Imma Gram
(356 K followers on Instagram), a Japanize pink bob human-like influencer,
was involved in a rather innovative partnership with IKEA in 2020. For
three days, Imma moved and lived in a Tokyo-based IKEA. Bystanders could
observe her living room from the street and her bedroom at the first floor
of Harajuku’s shop. Recreated with LEDs, Imma curated her fully furnished
IKEA flat, and her household activities could be followed by her subscribers
on social platforms.
Interestingly, these sponsorship types of engagements can also be rele-
vant for non-commercial organizations. For instance, Knox Frost (674 K
followers on Instagram)—a virtual influencer positioned around wellness
and health-related matters—was sponsored by the World Health Organiza-
tion in the spring of 2020 to promote social distancing and other sanitary
guidelines following the COVID-19 pandemic, especially targeting younger
generations.3
Recurrent collaboration (medium engagement). Representing a deeper level
of mutual engagement and collaboration between the virtual influencer and
the brand, this approach refers to contracts that usually involve long-term and
often exclusive partnerships, in line with more traditional celebrity endorse-
ment strategies. This co-creative form enables the development of richer and
more meaningful storylines and carefully curated promotional messages that
aim to engage with the intended audience more fully. As an example, Astro4 —
an alien musician followed by 111 K users on Instagram, has signed on with
the streetwear brand Supreme. As a result, Astro is dressed from head to toe
in Supreme clothing on its Instagram feed.
Ownership (high engagement). Acting as a brand avatar (Foster et al., 2022),
this approach offers free rein to develop relevant branded storylines to engage
target customers in an interactive dialogue. A particularly emblematic case is
that of Colonel Sanders, the virtual influencer created by KFC.5 This virtual
character built on the KFC mascot is an attractive gray-haired humanoid
showcasing a glamorous lifestyle. The content he posted on the company’s
Instagram account portrayed his everyday life at work with the KFC team, as
well as meeting or traveling with other famous human and virtual influencers.
Colonel Sanders is a particularly interesting case. More specifically, in addition
to his engagement with KFC, he also promoted other brands like DrPepper
or TurboTax, disclosing the partnership with #ad—similarly to any profes-
sional influencer. Such freedom from KFC created a sense of authenticity of its
content, probably explaining why the famous fast-food chain managed to more

3 Further details on this collaboration can be found on the following site: https://
www.marketingdive.com/news/who-enlists-virtual-influencer-for-covid-19-prevention-cam
paign/575493/.
4 https://www.instagram.com/astrolovesu/.
5 For further details please see the following link: https://www.wk.com/work/kfc-vir
tual-colonel/.
368 A. AUDREZET AND B. KOLES

than double consumer engagement on their corporate Instagram account

following the introduction of Colonel Sanders as a virtual influencer. Unfortu-
nately, it was a short-lived communication feature, and KFC returned to their
regularly scheduled corporate social media programming, which resulted in an
intense drop in consumer engagement.
Besides Colonel Sanders, Daisy from YOOX and Lu Do Magalu from Luiza
constitute two other examples of branded and firm-owned influencers. More
recently, Prada created Candy, a human-like purple-eyed virtual muse asso-
ciated with their eponym perfume; while Barbie, the famous Mattel’s doll,
gave birth to a VTuber creating beauty content with more than 10 M channel
subscribers. It is interesting to note that the social media management of these
brand-owned virtual influencers varies from one brand to another, ranging
from the creation of a new dedicated social platform (e.g., Barbie) to taking
over of the brands’ existing online space (e.g., KFC).
Beyond these three strategies, given their very nature of artificial creations,
virtual influencers have been positioned with various benefits vis-à-vis their
human influencer counterparts. First, they provide a good opportunity for
brands to differentiate and escape the followers’ fatigue of collaboration with
human lifestyle influencers. Indeed, virtual influencers provide very sophisti-
cated and unlimited possibilities of content that might range from an alien
endorser to a burning dress on a catwalk. Given their unique and often unex-
pected features, this type of content can be particularly appealing to younger
audiences. More prosaically, their posts and stories are readily available online
24/7 all over the world, and hence they offer a practical solution to battle the
physical limitations of humans. Similarly, virtual influencers do not require rest
and sleep and do not have health-related concerns that might otherwise limit
their availability.
Given their targeted positioning from an early stage, virtual influencers are
highly adaptable to specific brand requests which enable closer alignment with
target groups offering customized engagements and experiences (Robinson,
2020). And as a particularly relevant point for firms, virtual influencers repre-
sent reduced PR risks and offline personal life scandals which in the case
of their human counterparts might easily spill over to the online persona
(Duffy & Hund, 2019). As a result, the engagement rate associated with
virtual influencers tends to be—on average—three times higher than that of
humans.
At any rate, virtual influencers do not only bring benefits along with them.
In particular, their over-controlled communication might present certain limi-
tations by jeopardizing the emotional connection between influencers and
their community, which is one of the pivotal affordances of human influencers
(Duffy & Hund, 2019). As an example, the developmental growth of Mique-
la’s followers has been slower than that of other human influencers with a
similar follower base, which tends to corroborate this idea. This slowdown
might explain why Dapper Labs, the managing entity behind this Brazilian-
American virtual opinion leader, is working to renew their strategy to boost
 16 VIRTUAL INFLUENCER AS A BRAND AVATAR IN INTERACTIVE MARKETING 369

their followers’ involvement. In particular, the research driven by Moustakas

et al. (2020) suggests that sharing an engaging and woven storyline might
be able to humanize virtual influencers. Indeed, the narrative of conflicts,
relationships, personal goals, and desires seems to be very effective in estab-
lishing an emotional connection with followers. Hence, the challenge brands
face to maintain and develop virtual influencer personas would entail finding
innovative ways to humanize them.

5 Avenues for Future Research

When having informal discussions with people (students, experts, marketing
professionals) about virtual influencers, one of the greatest intrigues concerns
the very reason why people might be motivated to follow such a fake digital
persona that does not even exist. Indeed, this question is at the core of the
development of virtual influencers and as such opens various avenues for future
research. For instance, a vast body of research focusing on human influencers
points to authenticity as a key factor to influencer success (Lee & Eastin, 2021;
Pöyry et al., 2019). Nonetheless, according to Robinson (2020), given that
human influencers also face issues surrounding their authenticity, the absence
of the existence of virtual influencers and entirely fake identity and artifi-
cial nature might not pose a problem for their followers. In particular, given
their exposure to AI-enabled technology from a relatively young age, Gen
Z consumers might not be as preoccupied with the question of authenticity,
making such a generational shift worthy of investigation.
A second issue relates to the importance of consumer literacy. Indeed, one
might expect consumers to be more willing to push their comfort zones
toward this new form of media in the future, for two reasons. On the one
hand, consumer awareness about and acceptance toward social media influ-
encers are increasing, indicating that people at large tend to be more familiar
and comfortable with influencers. On the other hand, thanks to the enhanced
technological literacy of consumers, within our era of innovative tools like
social bots—referring to computer algorithms that automatically produce
content (Appel et al., 2020), people are now able to manage fluent conver-
sations and interactions with AI-driven technology to the extent that they
might not even realize that they are not interacting with a human. It might
be interesting to explore further how these new comfort zones might impact
consumer expectations in terms of their interactions with virtual influencers.
One of the latest virtual influencer trends pertains to characters created,
managed and owned by brands. A closer look reveals that linking a virtual
influencer directly to the company as an employee, instead of having a virtual
influencer solely campaigning for a single product, might be a promising
strategic direction. As an illustration, Kenna is a girl bot intern at Essence
Cosmetics who posts content on Instagram related to both her personal
and professional life. Offering an office backstage to her followers, she is
promoting Essence Cosmetics products as well as the company as an employer.
370 A. AUDREZET AND B. KOLES

This approach could ultimately be linked to an employee advocacy strategy,

where employees are expected to become the firm’s ambassadors or spokesper-
sons through their professional and personal social networks. In this sense,
virtual employee advocacy offers a new path for research worthy of further
exploration.
Another interesting area of inquiry concerns the future of the Metaverse
and its impact on virtual influencers. According to Yonatan Ben Shimon, the
founder of theVirtualEstate.net., “the Metaverse is a collective virtual shared
space including the sum of all virtual worlds, augmented reality, and the
Internet as a whole”. Illustrating its diverse affordances, the Metaverse offers
opportunities for innovative workplaces, gaming platforms, social spaces and
virtual markets (Boyd & Koles, 2019). As such, the Metaverse can be asso-
ciated with the development of new types of digital goods and possessions
(Koles & Nagy, 2021), with particular attention to virtual art (verified piece
of digital or graphic work stored and tokenized on the blockchain) and digital
fashion (the visual representation of clothing built using computer technolo-
gies and 3D software). Moreover, the Metaverse can give space for venues to
host virtual concerts run by virtual artists, which could be easily combined
with virtual influencers.
From the consumer angle, these new consumption patterns might be some-
what unusual or unconventional at first, and here virtual influencers might
offer an effective gateway between the two worlds. Because virtual influencers
already live in the virtual ecosystem of the Metaverse, they might be able
to provide legitimate advice to consumers regarding their digital purchases,
similarly to the way their human counterparts do so in their offline exis-
tence. A specific opportunity arises within the digital fashion arena where
clothing is entirely virtual and is not necessarily designed to be replicated in
a physical format. Virtual influencers could become the legitimate models to
showcase brands’ virtual merchandise and inform their followers about new
trends and tricks on how to dress their avatars. Although this point is increas-
ingly recognized in industry-centered outlets,6 future academic research could
dwell further into examining the new role virtual influencers could play as
ambassadors and counselors in the Metaverse.
Along these lines, the development of virtual influencers continues to blur
the fine line between entertainment and advertising. For instance, cartoon
influencers might be seen as a new form of entertaining content easily compa-
rable with traditional animated cartoon fiction. The notable difference is that
they have been created for a commercial purpose. Thus, virtual influencers
envisioned as the ultimate commodification of entertainment is an important
topic to explore in order to anticipate potentially misleading perceptions and
ensure consumer well-being.

6 Concrete examples can be found on the link: https://www.nssgclub.com/en/fashion/

23083/digital-influencer-fashion-industry.
 16 VIRTUAL INFLUENCER AS A BRAND AVATAR IN INTERACTIVE MARKETING 371

Importantly, virtual influencers tend to share content that is rich and often
more immersive than the ones shared by their human counterparts. While
regulations associated with social media influencers have been developed in
most countries encouraging them to disclose their relationships with brands,
as of now apart from India, the activities of virtual influencers are not yet
regulated. In its influencer guidelines released in July 2021, Indian authorities
included for the first time a specific reference to virtual influencers: in addition
to the disclosure rules applicable to human influencers, virtual influencers (and
their managing entities) are required to disclose to consumers that they are not
interacting with a real human being. Such type of disclosure and its impact
need to be assessed, as well as potential complementary or alternative rules;
a topic that is particularly relevant in the case of influencers that resemble
humans.
Finally, virtual influencers mark an important new stage in terms of content
creation. Indeed, human influencers developed in large part thanks to the easy
access to a wide range of content creation tools, which lead many consumers
to become online creators. The creation and maintenance of virtual influencers
assume specific high-level technical expertise and AI-based skills, which might
present an obstacle when aiming for more sophisticated content that only
highly specialized and tech-savvy people might be able to develop. Future
research could explore ways in which the emergence of new major actors—
similarly to Dapper Labs or the Diigitals—might lead the way here and
ultimately bring consumers closer to virtual influencers.

6 Conclusion
The purpose of the current chapter was to extend our understanding of virtual
influencers within the area of interactive marketing. Social media influencers
have been prominent contributors to the marketing strategy of many firms,
but substantially less is known about the impact and role of their virtual coun-
terparts. This chapter started by introducing social media influencers and the
relationship their followers are likely to form with them. It continued with
a detailed review and concrete cases of prominent virtual influencers, high-
lighting their diversity in terms of appearance, target audience and type of
brand collaboration. Then the authors shared some insights gathered on the
basis of a set of semi-structured interviews conducted with young consumers
to understand their general influencer following behaviors on Instagram as
well as their perceptions of opinion concerning virtual influencers.
The authors moved onto taking the perspective of brands and offering
concrete recommendations as to how companies might choose to collabo-
rate with virtual influencers capturing different levels of engagement; ranging
from partnerships and sponsorships at the lowest engagement level, advancing
to recurrent collaborations, and concluding with ownership at the highest
engagement level where brands develop their very own interactive mascots.
The chapter concludes by sharing ideas for interesting research projects that
372 A. AUDREZET AND B. KOLES

might help advance scholarship as well as practice in this innovative but nascent
industry. The authors are confident that new and exciting further innovations
will be launched shortly with the progress and appreciation of the affordances
enabled by the Metaverse, which should trigger additional ease and acceptance
on behalf of consumers toward these virtual opinion leaders.

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 CHAPTER 17

Sentimental Interaction with Virtual Celebrities:

An Assessment from Customer-Generated
Content

Bình Nghiêm-Phú and Jillian Rae Suter

1 Introduction
Celebrity endorsement can be considered one of the most popular and influen-
tial activities of marketing, in general, and interactive marketing, in particular
(Al-Emadi & Yahia, 2020; Halonen-Knight & Hurmerinta, 2010; Wang,
2021). Traditionally, the image of a celebrity figure may be used in product
designs or advertisements. Alternatively, the activities of that celebrity may be
covered in media platforms with obvious connections with the products or
brands that they present. Today, the celebrity themselves (an ordinary celebrity
or a key opinion leader KOL) may also promote the products or brands
via interactive tools on social networking sites, such as livestreams or short
videos. On the other hand, customers tend to choose or to be attached to
brands or products whose celebrity images match with those of the brands or
products (Paul & Bhakar, 2018; Pradhan et al., 2016). Customers’ percep-
tion of the celebrities can significantly affect their evaluation of the products,
and eventually, their purchasing and consumption behaviors (Bergkvist et al.,
2016; Kim et al., 2014; Wang et al., 2017). Customer perception, specifi-
cally, includes cognitive thoughts and affective feelings (Dichter, 1985). The

B. Nghiêm-Phú (B)
University of Hyogo, Kobe, Japan
e-mail: binhnghiem@gmail.com
J. R. Suter
Shizuoka University, Shizuoka, Japan

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 377

Switzerland AG 2023
C. L. Wang (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Interactive Marketing,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14961-0_17
378 B. NGHIÊM-PHÚ AND J. R. SUTER

feelings or sentiments, in particular, can show the intensity of the parasocial

interaction between a customer and a celebrity (Giles, 2002).
Celebrities usually are famous living human beings who are currently
working in certain areas of sociocultural and economic life, such as enter-
tainment, sports, business, politics, science, and education, among others.
However, there also are several unconventional types of celebrities. For
example, Hachiko and Kaikun are two famous dog endorsers of a place
(Tokyo) and of a telecommunication company (Softbank) in Japan (Hansen,
2013). In the former case, the dog was dead yet its image and legend live. This
also holds true with some dead celebrity figures (D’Rozario, 2016; Hudak,
2014; Petty & D’Rozario, 2009). To some extent, these celebrities still are
the endorsers of their own or other companies’ products. And thanks to the
development of computer technology, some of them (e.g., Amy Winehouse,
Michael Jackson, and Whitney Houston) are even resurrected in the forms of
virtual 3D characters (Drenten & Brooks, 2020; Penfold-Mounce & Penfold-
Mounce, 2018; Ross & Labrecque, 2018). In certain cases (e.g., Whitney
Houston since 2016; Rowell, 2019), they are products of the holographic
technique, a photographic method that keeps track of the light emanated from
an object then rebuilds it in a virtual 3D form to be displayed on stages and
perform live on their own or with supporting performers (Johnston, 2008).
These virtual human celebrities, however, have some equal competitors, who
are totally fictional figures, such as Hatsune Miku (Fig. 1), a virtual singer with
a vocaloid (a voice created by computer programs) developed in Japan in 2009
(Annett, 2015; Guga, 2015; Prior, 2018). The innovativeness of technology
and the creative combination of certain sociocultural factors (e.g., Japanese-
ness, type of music, and singer and audience interaction) are some of the main
reasons behind the rise of this Japanese virtual idol (Zaborowski, 2016).

Fig. 1 Hatsune Miku (Source Taken by the second author)

 17 SENTIMENTAL INTERACTION WITH VIRTUAL CELEBRITIES … 379

Since celebrity endorsement is undoubtedly an investment that can produce

both good returns and bad losses (Chung et al., 2013; Knittel & Stango,
2014), a thorough understanding of the perceptions and impacts of the
celebrities is very important, given the figures are real people or artificial char-
acters. However, compared to the knowledge about human being agents, little
is known about virtual or holographic celebrities, except some early discussions
on the legal, ethical, and technological aspects of this issue (Anson, 2014;
Drenten & Brooks, 2020; D’Rozario et al., 2007). Certain important ques-
tions, such as how viewers and customers perceive and interact with virtual
celebrities, and how the perception of and interaction with virtual celebri-
ties can affect viewers and customers’ evaluations of products and services,
remain largely unanswered. More research, thus, is necessary to better under-
stand virtual figures, the new and probably next generation of celebrities. The
outcomes of this attempt can significantly assist the development of virtual
celebrities and the use of them in marketing practices in the future.
The purpose of this chapter is to examine (1) perceptions of virtual celebri-
ties, and (2) the effect that a virtual figure can have as an endorser of a certain
product. Two studies were undertaken to address each of these two objec-
tives. Hatsune Miku, a fictional figure, is selected as the main focus of this
research given the fact that she is one of the first celebrities of her type ever
created (Annett, 2015; Guga, 2015; Prior, 2018). In addition, user-generated
content, the information created and shared by viewers or customers of a given
product, service, event, and the like on public websites and social media plat-
forms, is employed as the source of data in these studies. This database has
widely been employed in academic research in recent years (Fox et al., 2018;
Liu et al., 2017) given its availability and accessibility. This type of data can
also be analyzed to reveal the interactions that viewers and customers might
have with a product, a service, an event, or a celebrity (Feng et al., 2021).

2 Study 1
The objective of this study was to examine viewers’ perceptions of virtual
celebrities. As mentioned earlier, Hatsune Miku was chosen as the main object.
However, to expand the understanding, another type of virtual celebrity,
a virtual presentation of a deceased human figure (Whitney Houston) was
selected as the object for comparison. The practical reason was that both of
them are famous singers and have their own products (e.g., music concerts)
and distinct groups of fans. It should be noted that although the Whitney
Houston figure involved a dead person, this study was not a posthumous
one (Pentz et al., 2005; Wilkinson, 2002) but a study concerning a virtual
character and other events or products related to this character.
The first research question (RQ) is presented as follows.
RQ1. How do viewers perceive the virtual presentations of (a) Hatsune
Miku and (b) Whitney Houston?
380 B. NGHIÊM-PHÚ AND J. R. SUTER

2.1 Literature Review

Research on virtual performers in general, especially that about viewer percep-
tion of these figures, is limited. Black (2008), for example, mentioned cuteness
as one of the main characteristics of the virtual idols. Black (2012) later argued
that the commodification and mass-production of certain level of femininity
support the relationship between a virtual idol and their fans, especially the
male ones. In addition, Zell et al. (2015) discovered that the shape of a virtual
figure could affect viewers’ evaluation of its realness, while the material of the
figure was the major indicator of its appeal. Adamo-Villani et al. (2015) added
that the appeal of a polygonal character (e.g., a virtual singing avatar) could
be improved if it was stylized rather than realistic. Moreover, Prieto et al.
(2015) found that the head and eyebrow movements of a 3D animated char-
acter could influence viewers’ perception of contrastive focus. However, they
also ascertained that the former was more informative than the latter for focus
identification.
In addition, research on viewer perception of human celebrities also
provides more insights. Moulard et al. (2015), for example, found that a tradi-
tional celebrity (e.g., a movie star) is perceived as authentic if they possess
two major qualities: rarity and stability. Alternatively, Al-Emadi and Yahia
(2020) observed that an ordinary celebrity (e.g., a KOL) may have fame and
opinion leadership on social media visual platforms (e.g., Instagram and Face-
book) if they have the following characteristics: credibility, storytelling and
content quality, fit with the platform, actual and aspired image homophily, and
consistency. In another study, Suki (2014) discovered that a human celebri-
ty’s credibility is formed through their expertise, attitude toward the brand,
and physical attractiveness, among others. Nonetheless, Edwards and La Ferle
(2009) and Suki (2014) noticed that viewer perception may differ given
certain personal and environmental factors, such as biological sex and religious
tendency.
The abovementioned information, however, is mostly about the cognitive
aspect of viewer perception (Dichter, 1985). This shows how and how much
a viewer thinks about a celebrity on the one hand. However, there is another
important component of viewer perception: the sentiments. This component
demonstrates how and how much a viewer feels about a celebrity on the other
hand. Generally, the sentiments have a mutual relationship with an interaction
between two agents in the sense that both the sentiments and the interaction
can affect and shape each other (Heise, 2006). To some extents, the more
the sentiments are publicly expressed, the more intense the interaction can be
externally and overtly estimated. In addition, the direction of the sentiments,
whether they are positive, negative, neutral (neither positive nor negative),
or mixed (both positive and negative), can also be implied from the interac-
tion. This may hold true with a parasocial interaction (Giles, 2002) between a
viewer and a celebrity.
 17 SENTIMENTAL INTERACTION WITH VIRTUAL CELEBRITIES … 381

In a recent study in Bangladesh, Khan et al. (2021) identified seven specific

categories of sentiments toward celebrities, including abusive, angry, excited,
happy, religious, sad, and surprise. In another study in Indonesia, Pinem et al.
(2018) presented three general categories of sentiments toward a product after
the celebrities endorsed it, including positive, neutral, and negative. The mate-
rials for analysis in both studies were user-generated content posted on popular
social media networks, such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. This prac-
tice has demonstrated the usability of such a database in understanding the
sentimental interaction between viewers and celebrities.

2.2 Method
As mentioned earlier, this study used user-generated content as its source of
data. The search of the database started with the selection of two most recent
events of the involved virtual celebrities. Coincidentally, both figures had live
concerts in 2020: Hatsune Miku with “Magical Mirai” and Whitney Houston
with “An Evening with Whitney: The Whitney Houston Hologram Tour.” In
addition, both had their commercial ads posted on YouTube almost at the
same time: the former on 12 February 2020 and the latter on 24 February
2020. The numbers of comments on the ads did not greatly differ at the time
of data collection (mid-April 2020): 306 for the former and 294 for the latter.
Therefore, viewers’ comments on YouTube were collected and were treated as
the database in this study.
The use of viewer comments from this particular platform was also
supported by the findings of Prieto et al. (2015) in which they found that the
combination of both the visual and audio cues was more effective in affecting
viewer perception than the utilization of only one cue. YouTube, well-known
for its visual and audio properties, provided both of these important cues for
viewers to interact with the celebrities featured in the videos it kept.
As a form of user-generated materials, YouTube videos’ comments have
been analyzed by researchers to reveal the hidden themes and sentiments
(Madden et al., 2013; Yasmina et al., 2016). To some extent, these comments
can be considered as parts of a conversation or discourse among the contribu-
tors about certain common topics (Benson, 2015; Duncum, 2013; Lindgren,
2011). Therefore, the cognitive discourse analysis method (Tenbrink, 2020)
and the sentiment analysis method (Liu, 2015) were adopted to extract the
thoughts and feelings (sentiments) that YouTube viewers have of the virtual
figures. These thoughts and feelings represented the related impressions or
images (i.e., perceptions) held by YouTube viewers about the objects and the
related events. The frequency and typology of the feelings, in particular, show
certain levels of interaction between the viewers and the objects and events.
In this study, each set of comments (one about the Hatsune Miku
figure and the other about the Whitney Houston figure) was considered a
discourse. The languages of the discourses were diverse. Nonetheless, since
the researchers were only familiar with English and Japanese, the comments
382 B. NGHIÊM-PHÚ AND J. R. SUTER

written in other languages were overlooked (Hatsune Miku: n = 46; Whitney

Houston: n = 9). This left a sample of 260 comments for the Hatsune
Miku figure and another sample of 285 comments for the Whitney Houston
character.
Given the moderate sample sizes, a manual analysis method was adopted.
In the first stage of the analysis, each obvious and distinct feeling was noted if
it was present in one entry. Its appearances in the next entries, in the same or
similar ways of wording, were also noted and triangulated to ensure its validity
(Flick, 2018). In the second stage, the obvious and distinct thoughts that
attach with or lead to the feelings identified earlier were coded. The trian-
gulation was repeated in the other entries in the discourse to validate their
existences. The whole analysis process was mastered in a Microsoft Excel file.
Each entry was put in one horizontal line, and each feeling or thought was
treated in a vertical column. Both researchers of the research group partic-
ipated in the analysis, and the total agreement between them served as the
reliability criterion of the analysis outcome (Kassarjian, 1977).

2.3 Findings
2.3.1 The Perception of the Hatsune Miku Figure
The perception of YouTube viewers of the Hatsune Miku figure was mostly
positive (expecting and enjoying). This virtual artist was thought to be a
representative of an amazing Japan, who sang a unique genre of music (a
combination of tradition and modernity) and possessed a very cool image.

Opinion 1: “Don’t worry!! Miku EXPO is in the US and Canada this year!!”
Opinion 2: “I’m hoping that she’ll turn up at the Olympics.”
Opinion 3: “Ah yes, the mixture of modern holographic technology and electronic
music mixing with traditional drumming that’s been around for hundreds of
years. Sounds like the Japan I know and love!”
Opinion 4: “Ending speech is super cute, the new model is really growing
on me :)”
Opinion 5: “Cool as hell.”

However, there still were a few anti-fans who expressed a negative senti-
ment. The reasons might be the unauthenticity or inhumanness of the figure,
as well as some personal preferences.

Opinion 6: “Well, this is just my opinion based on my own observation so my

opinion will be biased… The idol industry is selling empty dreams (in my eyes
anyway). Dreams are just dreams, and whether you like it or not, you will have to
wake up one day or will die with your eyes still closed and your hard-earned money
is spent wastefully on something they (the fans) can NEVER touch or obtain; their
(Idols) genuine and unconditional love.”
 17 SENTIMENTAL INTERACTION WITH VIRTUAL CELEBRITIES … 383

Opinion 7: “個人的には可愛くない方向にいっている気がする.” [Personally, I

think that she is not cute at all.]
Opinion 8: “I hate Miku”

2.3.2 The Perception of the Whitney Houston Figure

Differently, YouTube viewers’ perception of the Whitney Houston figure was
a mixture of sentiments. On the one hand, many viewers expressed the wish
to “let her rest.” They said that they had bad feelings about the hologram
and the event, and they blamed the organizers for taking advantage of the
icon’s songs and images. The reasons behind the negative sentiments were the
unauthenticity of the look and the music.

Opinion 9: “They own you. This is the price of fame now. After you die, they prop
your image up like a twisted marionette. You’ll dance to their tune in life. You’ll
dance to their tune in death. Let the dead rest in peace.”
Opinion 10: “This is just disrespectful making money like that, just let the poor
lady Rest In Peace and the ones that got to see her in person [,] let them cherish
those happy lucky memories.”
Opinion 11: “This is really distasteful. Can you all let the woman RIP [?] I do
not care who, even if her family is behind it, it’s all about lining their pockets.
There are so many clips of WH [Whitney Houston] in concert when she was alive
that you can find if people need to see her.”
Opinion 12: “How can you say the hologram is performing? It’s doing nothing.
It’s not connecting with the audience, improvising, covering songs... This soulless
machine is further from Whitney than someone like Glennis Grace or Deborah
Cox.”

On the other hand, other viewers were sympathizing with and being excited
about the event and the figure. Again, the authenticity of the look and
the music were cited by several viewers as the reasons behind their positive
sentiments.

Opinion 13: “I take your point, but honestly I would much rather see a hologram
of the late great Whitney Houston than any of today’s ‘artists’ in person.”
Opinion 14: “Excuse me but that’s so ignorant of you since every single artist’s
family and estate release projects to preserve their legacies and of course they also
want to make money, that’s why it’s called show business.”
Opinion 15: “I LOVE THIS! I need to find a show ASAP [as soon as possible]
here in Vegas!”
Opinion 16: “It does look like her, even though for a hologram. Maybe you just
want to sabotage the thing they are organizing, but can’t deny is a well-done
hologram.”
Opinion 17: “At the 0:45 second mark you can see through it. ‘They’re here!’ I
love the live vocals used with a new Higher Love remix. I must have that!!!!!”
384 B. NGHIÊM-PHÚ AND J. R. SUTER

2.4 Discussion
Overall, viewers had different perceptions of the two figures. While the percep-
tion of the Hatsune Miku figure was almost positive, that of the Whitney
Houston figure was somewhat a combat of two opposite lines of thoughts
and feelings. These outcomes suggest that the interaction between the viewers
and the artificial figure of Hatsune Miku might have a more positive direc-
tion than that in the case of the deceased human figure of Whitney Houston.
The coolness and cuteness of the artificial artist are undoubtedly the reasons
behind the favorableness of the Hatsune Miku figure (Black, 2008, 2012).
Nonetheless, the ethical issue of commodifying the images and products of
a dead celebrity is undeniably the cause of many opposing voices (D’Rozario
et al., 2007).
In particular, a noticeable component of viewer perception was the virtual
figures’ authenticity. In both cases, the songs and music and the looks of
the figures were the important parts of their authenticity. Thus, as Al-Emadi
and Yahia (2020) and Moulard et al. (2015) have already noted, rarity and
stability or consistency were doubtlessly two significant properties of celebrity
authenticity. In the case of the virtual celebrities, the human-likeliness was
another important feature. Moreover, the status of the celebrity (artificial
or dead) might also affect both viewers’ perception of the virtual figures’
authenticity and their overall impression. Thus, to improve the interactions
between viewers and the virtual celebrities, certain levels of human-likeliness,
resemblance, rarity, and consistency must be achieved.

3 Study 2
The second study continued the examination of customers’ perception of
virtual celebrities by linking it with their satisfaction with the products that
the celebrities endorse. However, in order to identify the relative contribution
of this factor, evaluations of customers of other product attributes were taken
into account. In addition, to expand the understanding, opinions of users in
different markets were also considered. Hatsune Miku, again, was the focus of
this study.
The search of the Hatsune Miku-related products revealed that in addition
to the concerts, the image and name of Hatsune Miku have also been used in a
variety of things, such as plastic figures, clothes and accessories, notebooks and
cards, and video games, among others. With the former, Hatsune Miku can
be the products herself. With the video games, Hatsune Miku is only a part of
the product (her image and voice), and she really is an endorser. Consequently,
video games were specifically targeted. It should be noted that this product is
a series of rhythm games in which players can indulge themselves with songs
and modules performed by Hatsune Miku and other characters, as well as
modifying some elements such as the Hatsune Miku’s costume.
 17 SENTIMENTAL INTERACTION WITH VIRTUAL CELEBRITIES … 385

Amazon, one of the world’s largest retailers at the time of research (Statista,
2021b), was employed to search for the products and markets. The local
market, undoubtedly, was Japan. On Amazon Japan, Project DIVA MEGA39’s
of SEGA, Crypton Future Media and Nintendo was the latest of Hatsune
Miku’s video game (released on 12 February 2020). This product also was the
most popular one in terms of customer review number (n = 142) at the time
of the search (mid-April 2020) and was selected as the local object. Next, the
similar product title was searched for on the Amazon pages for other countries.
On Amazon US in particular, Project DIVA MEGA39’s still was a brand-new
product, and the number of customer reviews was very limited (n = 5). There-
fore, an older product, Project DIVA X (released on 30 August 2016) was
chosen instead, given the larger number of customer reviews (n = 111).
Japan and the US were selected as the two target markets, since Japan is the
country of origin of the product, while the US is the second largest video game
market in the world. In 2025, the video game industry is expected to become
a 300 billion USD entity (GlobalData, 2019), with China (approximately 41
billion USD in 2020), the US (approximately 37 billion USD in 2020), and
Japan (approximately 19 billion USD in 2020) as the three leading markets in
terms of revenue (Statista, 2021a). The geographical and cultural differences
(Hofstede et al., 2010) between the two countries were also considered.
The second research question (RQ) was developed to guide this study.
RQ2. Are there any significant correlations between customers’ percep-
tions of the attributes of the game and the virtual celebrity and their overall
satisfaction with the video game in (1) Japan and (2) the US?

3.1 Literature Review

The first video game, Spacewar!, was introduced in the early 1960s in the US
(Kent, 2001). From a social perspective, video games can be developed for an
entertainment or an educational purpose (Boyle et al., 2016). The playing of
video games can lead to both positive and negative impacts on the motivation,
cognition, emotion, and behavior of the players (Ferguson, 2007; Granic et al.,
2014; Kafai & Burke, 2015). From a commercial approach, video games can
be used as a promotional tool (Yoo & Eastin, 2017).
Compared to other studies on video games’ impacts, research on
consumers’ satisfaction with video games is less abundant. However, the results
of previous research have confirmed that some psychological aspects of the
games (the content element), such as the difficulty and fun levels and the
characters’ images could significantly affect players’ satisfaction (Klimmt et al.,
2009; Martins et al., 2009; Oliver et al., 2016). In addition, it is observed
that the functional component of the games (the hardware element) and
the service element of the purchase (e.g., price) might also influence the
overall satisfaction (Blaszczynski et al., 2005; Nair, 2007; Sepchat et al., 2008).
Moreover, research in other fields has shown that the perception of celebrity
endorsers could significantly affect customers’ satisfaction with the product
386 B. NGHIÊM-PHÚ AND J. R. SUTER

(Gilal et al., 2020). This may hold true with video games, especially celebrity
games (Chess & Maddox, 2018).
Regarding the research methods, customer satisfaction can be measured
directly through structured surveys or semi-structured interviews. Alterna-
tively, it can be assessed indirectly through an analysis of customers’ reviews
about a product, a service, or a celebrity (Liang et al., 2020). In this case,
both sentiment analysis and content analysis are applied to fulfill the research
purpose. The sentiments extracted show the level of satisfaction that customers
have with a particular attribute of a product, for example. Alternatively, they
demonstrate the intensity and direction of the parasocial interaction between
customers and celebrity endorsers, as discussed earlier in study 1.

3.2 Method
In this study, customers’ reviews of the related products posted on the
purchase platform of Amazon were used as the database. In recent years,
Amazon customer reviews have been adopted in many academic studies (Heng
et al., 2018; Skalicky, 2013). The use of this source of data had several merits
for this study. First, the data could be collected from customers in both
markets, Japan and the US, although the review languages were different
(Japanese and English respectively). Second, the textual reviews could be
analyzed to understand customers’ evaluations of product attributes (hard-
ware, content, service, and endorsed celebrity), while the numerical ratings
can be used to represent customers’ overall satisfaction with the product.
A total of 142 Amazon customer reviews about Project DIVA MEGA39’s
in Japan (posted between February and April 2020) and 111 reviews about
Project DIVA X in the US (posted between August 2016 and April 2020)
were collected in mid-April 2020. The data were put in a Microsoft Excel
file and were mastered there. A coding scheme was developed based on the
existing literature (Blaszczynski et al., 2005; Gilal et al., 2020; Klimmt et al.,
2009; Martins et al., 2009; Nair, 2007; Oliver et al., 2016; Sepchat et al.,
2008), including four product attributes: hardware, content, service, and the
virtual celebrity Hatsune Miku. The data were then deductively coded (Elo &
Kyngäs, 2008) using the sentiment analysis method (Liu, 2015). The coding
involved the search for the identification keywords, such as adjectives, that
reviewers used to express their sentiments about a product attribute. A four-
point scale was used to code the sentiments: 0 = no comment, 1 = negative,
2 = either mixed or neutral, and 4 = positive. With the Japanese dataset, one
researcher of the research group and an independent coder worked together.
With the English dataset, both researchers of the research group undertook
the coding. Total agreement between the researchers and the independent
coder, again, served as the reliability measure (Kassarjian, 1977). In addition,
a manual coding method was readopted given the small numbers of reviews.
After the data were coded, they were descriptively analyzed to reveal
customer satisfaction with the four products attributes. In the next step,
 17 SENTIMENTAL INTERACTION WITH VIRTUAL CELEBRITIES … 387

cross tabulation analysis was computed to identify the associations between

attribute satisfactions and overall satisfaction (product rating). This technique
was selected given the nominal nature of the coding (Morgan et al., 2004).
The Phi values were then evaluated to determine the relative contribution
of each product attribute to the overall satisfaction. All the analyses were
supported by IBM SPSS.

3.3 Findings
3.3.1 Japanese Customers’ Satisfaction with Project DIVA MEGA39’s
The majority of the customers from Japan did not reveal their sentiments
toward the three attributes of hardware, content, and the Hatsune Miku char-
acter. Among those who expressed their sentiments, the customers who had
a negative evaluation of the hardware and the service exceeded those who
had a positive evaluation. The situation of Hatsune Miku was the reverse.
On the other hand, the customers especially cared about the content, with
the majority having a negative evaluation. Among the four attributes, satis-
faction with content had the largest impact on overall satisfaction, followed
by satisfaction with service. The impacts of hardware and Hatsune Miku were
insignificant (Table 1).

3.3.2 American Customers’ Satisfaction with Project DIVA X

Similar to their counterparts in Japan, the majority of the American customers
did not express their sentiments toward the four attributes. With those who
did, the number of positive sentiments exceeded that of negative sentiments.
However, the numbers of neutral evaluations were large in the cases of two
attributes: content and Hatsune Miku. Regarding the association between
attribute satisfaction and overall satisfaction, it was observed that content and
Hatsune Miku might have some significant contributions, while hardware and
service did not (Table 1).

3.4 Discussion
Consistent with the findings of previous research, this study ascertained the
importance of game content (e.g., song list, features and costumes of char-
acters, visual display, difficulty and fun) with customers’ overall satisfaction
(Klimmt et al., 2009; Martins et al., 2009; Oliver et al., 2016). The observa-
tion was similar in both markets, Japan and the US. On the other hand, the
significance of the functional component of the game, such as handle buttons
and the compatibility with other devices (Blaszczynski et al., 2005), could not
be confirmed.
In addition, the contribution of the service factor to overall satisfaction
(Nair, 2007) was only seen in the original market, Japan. Perhaps, the local-
ness of the product has made the service factor another important determinant
of customers’ overall satisfaction. On the contrary, the imported nature of
 388

Table 1 Sentiments toward product and product attributes

Japan (n = 142) America (n = 111)

No comment Negative Neutral Positive Phi p No comment Negative Neutral Positive Phi p

Hardware 125 15 1 1 0.265 0.617 104 1 2 4 0.153 0.978

B. NGHIÊM-PHÚ AND J. R. SUTER

(connectability, play
buttons)
Content (song list, 31 54 32 25 0.759 0.000 43 10 38 20 0.684 0.000
characters, costume
modules, visual
display, difficulty,
fun, play method)
Service (shipping, 135 5 0 2 0.332 0.048 96 3 4 8 0.358 0.115
distribution, price)
Hatsune Miku 129 2 0 11 0.303 0.109 78 1 23 9 0.763 0.000
 17 SENTIMENTAL INTERACTION WITH VIRTUAL CELEBRITIES … 389

a foreign product might make this factor less important with customers in
the US. Instead, the perception of the virtual celebrity was the factor that
could influence their overall satisfaction (Gilal et al., 2020). This pattern,
interestingly, was only observed in the American market.
In both cases, customers’ sentimental interaction with the endorsed virtual
figure was displayed less frequently (in other words, less intense) than these
with the functional attributes of the games themselves. Customers in Japan
showed more positive sentiments toward Hatsune Miku, while their counter-
parts in the US expressed more neutral sentiments toward this figure. The
contribution of customer sentiments with the virtual figure to their overall
satisfaction was insignificant in Japan probably due to the advancement of this
particular game in this market, and thus, the overfamiliarity or boredom with
the figure (Holl, 2019; Hsu & McDonald, 2002). The time and duration of
the reviews (two months right after the release of the game) might also affect
this outcome. On the contrary, the similar association was significant in the US
since the game version under study was older. As Clements and Ohashi (2005)
noticed, the effect of a marketing tactic will differ across different stages of a
product’s life cycle. Perhaps the power of the Hatsune Miku figure was waning
in the original Japanese market, thus, the introduction and inclusion of the
new figures or themes should be taken into account. However, due to the
differences in product life cycles and probably in cultural backgrounds (Alsaleh
et al., 2019), the appeal of the Hatsune Miku figure was still noticeable in the
US, and the continuation of its use might be considered.

4 General Discussion
The celebrity-related marketing activities have employed a variety of public
figures, including both living and dead humans and animals. This practice
does not stop here but is expanding to include artificial figures as a new form
or generation of celebrities (Guga, 2015; Prior, 2018). In certain cases, the
artificial characters such as Hatsune Miku can effectively replace the more
traditional celebrity figures in marketing campaigns.
Despite their artificiality, many customers treat the virtual celebrity figures
as if they are real persons with distinct characteristics. However, since customer
preferences are personal issues, some figures may be preferred while others may
be disliked. A character, therefore, is only suitable with a certain segment of
customers or a certain category of products, not with the market as a whole.
Future use of virtual celebrities as endorsers or as products themselves
should carefully take into account this suitability element. In particular, the
employment of a virtual dead celebrity figure on a large commercial scale
should conscientiously consider the ethical aspect of this operation. While a
certain group of fans may welcome this type of comeback, a larger group of
the public may be against this idea. A societal marketing approach (Crane &
Desmond, 2002), where the expectations and benefits of the general public
and the society at large are recognized and respected, is appropriate in this
390 B. NGHIÊM-PHÚ AND J. R. SUTER

case. In addition, the use of a virtual artificial celebrity should take into account
the life cycle of the involved product and that of the celebrity themselves
(Erdogan et al., 2001). If the virtual celebrity lost their appeal through time, a
change of endorser might be necessary to maintain or boost the popularity of
the product, in general, and the parasocial interaction between the customers
and the celebrity, in particular.

5 Conclusion
The focus of this chapter was to explore the virtual celebrity phenomenon
in the entertainment industry in recent years. By analyzing YouTube view-
ers’ comments about two virtual celebrities and their music events, the first
study found that viewer perception was a combination of both the positive and
negative sentiments. The perceived authenticity of the virtual figures played an
important part in this impression. In addition, by assessing Amazon customers’
reviews about a video game endorsed by one of the virtual celebrities, the
second study found that the sentiments dedicated to the figure could have
some impact on customers’ overall satisfaction. However, this pattern was only
observed in a foreign market, where the video game was an imported product,
and an older version of the game was investigated. In summary, both studies
suggested that the sentiments toward, and thus, the parasocial interaction with
a virtual celebrity of the viewers and customers varied across the specific virtual
celebrity types (artificial figure and dead human figure), the markets where the
products are sold, and probably the life cycles of the products.
Nonetheless, due to its exploratory nature, this chapter could not avoid
some limitations. First, the comments about the virtual celebrities and their
events were mostly written by viewers of YouTube commercial videos. The
contribution of the actual audiences was largely missing. As a result, the
perception was only limited to a small number of unrepresentative partici-
pants. Second, the role of the perceived image of the virtual celebrity was only
verified in the case of customer satisfaction. Its importance with customers’
purchase intention and other variables (e.g., attachment and motivation) was
overlooked. Third, the impacts of the personal and environmental factors (e.g.,
biological sex, income, education, and religion), if there were any (Edwards &
La Ferle, 2009; Suki, 2014), could not be identified and confirmed. The
reason was attributed to the missing of such information on the review
platforms.
Considering these limitations and other observations, the following direc-
tions could be proposed for future research. First, direct interviews and surveys
with a larger audience of virtual celebrities could be undertaken to thoroughly
examine fans and anti-fans’ motivation, perception, attachment, and other
perceptual and behavioral phenomena. Second, a segmentation of the public’s
attitude toward virtual celebrities, especially these of dead figures, could be
done to identify the appropriate segment of potential customers for the prod-
ucts and services that they endorse. Third, the life cycle of a virtual celebrity,
 17 SENTIMENTAL INTERACTION WITH VIRTUAL CELEBRITIES … 391

as well as the strategies to rejuvenate and reemploy unpopular virtual figures,

could also be discussed. Findings of these studies will help expand the under-
standing about virtual celebrities, as well as to support the related businesses
in the future.

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 CHAPTER 18

The Conceptualization of “Presence”

in Interactive Marketing: A Systematic Review
of 30 Years of Literature

Chen Chen , Xiaohan Hu, and Jacob T. Fisher

1 Introduction
Contemporary interactive marketing has, in many ways, moved beyond
traditional one-way communication, evolving into approaches aimed at bi-
directional value creation and mutual-influence processes (Wang, 2021). This
evolution calls for active consumer engagement, participation, and connection,
often with the help of immersive and interactive media experiences (Flavián
et al., 2019; Wang, 2021). Technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI),
virtual reality (VR), and augmented reality (AR), have fueled consumers’ expe-
riences with embodied and immersive virtual components, producing a variety
of opportunities for brand-consumer connections (Flavian et al., 2019; Tsai
et al., 2020). The forms of immersive interactive media experiences available
to marketers and consumers have changed as technology has advanced, devel-
oping from interactive websites (Coyle & Thorson, 2001), to playable in-game
advertising (Besharat et al., 2013), to 360-degree videos (Feng, 2018), virtual
reality (Jang et al., 2019), and augmented reality (Tsai et al., 2020). As these

C. Chen · X. Hu · J. T. Fisher (B)

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Champaign, IL, USA
e-mail: jtfisher@illinois.edu
C. Chen
e-mail: chenc4@illinois.edu
X. Hu
e-mail: xhu33@illinois.edu

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 397

Switzerland AG 2023
C. L. Wang (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Interactive Marketing,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14961-0_18
398 C. CHEN ET AL.

experiences have become more central in the modern marketing mix, research
has brought attention to the novel processes involved (Bao & Wang, 2021;
Tsai et al., 2021). A particularly central process highlighted within this body of
literature is presence, the sense of “being there” in the mediated environment
(Heeter, 1992; Kim et al., 2021; Steuer, 1992).
As research on presence has developed over the last several decades, the
definition of presence has also evolved, incorporating a number of affective
and cognitive processes, motivational factors, and behavioral consequences
(Schubert et al., 2001). This expanding conceptual definition of presence is
paralleled in many ways by the expanding set of fields and contexts in which
presence has been investigated. These developments have produced a large and
fruitful body of literature but have also created growing ambiguity as to the
exact nature of presence as a theoretical construct and its role in interactive
marketing. Failing to thoroughly review the literature may prevent a compre-
hensive understanding of the presence and limit the utility of the theory within
the confines of interactive marketing (DeAndrea & Holbert, 2017; Flanagin,
2020).
To fill this gap, the authors herein report results from a systematic review of
research investigating presence in immersive experiences, with a focus on the
interactive marketing context. This review provides insights into the concep-
tual development of presence over the last several decades, identifies the
most common definitions of presence employed in the interactive marketing
literature, and summarizes its technological antecedents, associated processes,
and subdimensions, suggesting key components in a conceptual framework
of presence. In addition, the chapter highlights areas in which presence has
been relatively well investigated and points out domains in which presence is
comparatively understudied. In doing so, this chapter provides further clarity
as to how presence in the immersive experience fuels interactive marketing and
provides a roadmap for future research in this rapidly developing area.

2 Presence in Interactive Marketing

The earliest use of “presence” appears in 1980, describing the extent to which
a user feels “transported” via a virtual “teleporting system” (a general term for
remote control tools). Shortly thereafter, another popular definition of pres-
ence was developed by Steuer (1992), describing presence as a sense of “being
there” in a mediated environment (Klein, 2003; Li et al., 2002; Lim & Childs,
2020; Nelson et al., 2006; Shen et al., 2020; Song & Zinkhan, 2008; Wang &
Yao, 2020). Meanwhile, Sheridan (1992) proposed a similar conceptualization
of presence, denoting it as a subjective sensation influenced by technological
antecedents, such as the extent of sensory information provided by the system.
Following that, across the subsequent 30 years of development, researchers
have elaborated on the definition of presence along with its antecedents, asso-
ciated processes, and subcomponents (Cummings & Bailenson, 2016; Lee,
2004; Lessiter et al., 2001; Lombard & Ditton, 1997; Witmer & Singer,
 18 THE CONCEPTUALIZATION OF “PRESENCE” … 399

1998). For instance, Lee (2004) proposed three subcomponents of presence,

physical presence, social presence, and self-presence. Wirth et al. (2007) elabo-
rated on the processes of presence and proposed a two-step model, including
taking perceptual cues to form a mental model of the space and projecting
oneself into the virtual world.
However, the definitions of presence and its subcomponents have varied
across studies, creating ambiguities as researchers seek to understand pres-
ence in the interactive marketing (Cummings & Bailenson, 2016; Kim &
Biocca, 1997; Lombard & Ditton, 1997; Schubert et al., 2001; Wirth et al.,
2007; Witmer & Singer, 1998). For instance, some research has suggested
that presence is one dimension of immersion (Deng et al., 2020; Grinberg
et al., 2014; Naul & Liu, 2020) or an indication that immersion has been
experienced (Georgiou et al., 2019; Gromer et al., 2018). Cummings and
Bailenson’s (2016) meta-analysis further added evidence supporting this view.
On the other hand, other researchers have suggested that immersion is a sub-
component of presence (Bulu, 2012; Whitbred et al., 2010). These variations
happen partially due to inconsistent definitions of presence.
Research challenges have also come from the growing body of literature
investigating the consequences of presence. One of the most frequently exam-
ined consequences of presence is positive affective responses. For instance,
Cowan and Ketron (2019) proposed that presence potentially explains the
effect of imagination on consumers’ positive affective responses (i.e., satisfac-
tion) and behaviors (i.e., purchasing) when a person has higher involvement
with the product or brand. Kim et al. (2022) found that VR tourism increased
spatial presence. The experience of presence also mediated the effect of VR on
participants’ intention to travel and willingness to pay to do so.
In contrast, potentially negative consequences of presence, such as nega-
tive feelings coming from branded experience and side effects of the system
design, may receive less attention (Feng, 2018; Li et al., 2002). In the mean-
time, evidence has mounted from other fields suggesting that a stronger sense
of presence may also trigger and amplify negative emotions, such as anger
(Miyahira et al., 2010; van Gelder et al., 2019), anxiety (Renaud, 2002), and
fear (Gromer et al., 2018). There have also been concerns related to the role of
presence in system-induced nausea, sickness, and disorientation (Baños et al.,
2004; Chowdhury et al., 2017; Ling et al., 2013). Given that research has
shown that the positive effect of presence on consumers’ product attitude and
purchase intention can only be maximized when individuals experience little
cybersickness, more research is likely needed to investigate how these nega-
tive feelings may temper the role of presence in positive outcomes (Breves &
Dodel, 2021).
In addition to investigating affective outcomes of presence, more atten-
tion may be needed to resolve conflicting evidence as to the relationship
between the experience of presence and subsequent memory related to the
experience. In early research on presence, researchers found a positive correla-
tion between consumers’ sense of presence and product knowledge retention
400 C. CHEN ET AL.

(Daugherty et al., 2008; Keng & Lin, 2006). For example, in Keng and
Lin (2006), participants had better recognition results when they saw vivid
visual imagery and had a moderate sense of presence. However, recent studies
added more evidence of a negative correlation between the presence and
memory retention (Bailey et al., 2012; Chen & Yao, 2022; Rupp et al., 2016).
For instance, Barreda-Ángeles et al. (2021) found that viewing 360° videos
of news stories on immersive VR devices impaired users’ cognitive informa-
tion processing. Mixed findings and unclear reasons may result in inaccurate
hypothesis-generating.
Finally, while there have been review attempts made on other similar
concepts (e.g., social presence: Oh et al., 2018; online presence: Cioppi et al.,
2019), there is as yet no existing systematic review focused on the conceptual
development and empirical investigations of presence in the field of interactive
marketing. For instance, Cioppi et al. (2019) conducted a systematic litera-
ture review on online presence, focusing on the users’ sense of presence in an
online environment, such as websites. Oh et al. (2018) conducted a system-
atic review of social presence and summarized its conceptual definitions and
antecedents. In their review, social presence is defined as one sub-dimension of
presence. Their scope of the research includes areas that are afield from inter-
active marketing experiences, limiting its generalizability to presence research
specifically within the domain of interactive marketing.
Consequently, a more focused systematic review of presence within the
interactive marketing literature is necessary to reveal the complete theo-
retical framework and highlight inconsistent findings and overlooked areas
concerning the role of presence in interactive marketing. The output of which
facilitates the construction of a firmer foundation for research progress. This
systematic review centered around three primary research questions:

RQ1. How has presence been conceptualized within the interactive marketing
literature?
RQ2. What has interactive marketing research revealed about the nature of
presence, along with its antecedents, correlates, and outcomes?
RQ3. What are the areas in which there exists the most research potential for
future development of presence in interactive marketing?

3 Method
3.1 Journal and Search String
This systematic review is a component of a broader systematic review project,
which includes journal and conference papers published between the 1990s to
2020s in the following databases: EBSCO Communication Source, Scopus,
and IEEE. The search results from these databases include subjects like busi-
ness and management, communication, computer-mediated communication,
and social psychology. To determine which specific journals were considered,
 18 THE CONCEPTUALIZATION OF “PRESENCE” … 401

Table 1 Presence Search Strings

Logic Keywords Field

“immersion” OR “immersive” OR “immersing” OR In Title OR

“immerse” OR “immersed” Abstract OR Keywords
AND telepresence OR telepresence OR “Spatial Immersion” OR
“Spatial presence” OR presence
AND computer OR laptop OR “media” OR internet OR online
OR “social media” OR “social network” OR “social
networks” OR phone OR phones OR smartphone OR
smartphones OR mobile OR “mobile phone” OR “mobile
phones” OR “Mobile phones” OR game OR gaming OR
games OR “virtual reality” OR “VR” OR “augmented
reality” OR “AR” OR “artificial intelligence” OR “AI” OR
“360- degree video” OR “360-degree video” OR “CAVE”
OR “3D”

we consulted the Scopus Scientific Journal Rankings (SCImago), filtering the

list of candidate journals based on whether the journal was within the domain
of “marketing,” “interactive marketing,” “advertising,” or “interactive adver-
tising.” To ensure that no journals within the area of interactive marketing
were overlooked, we further supplemented the search results with a follow-
up search within a list of known flagship journals in the field of interactive
marketing, including Journal of Marketing, Journal of Consumer Research,
Journal of Interactive Marketing, Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing,
Journal of Marketing Communications, Journal of Advertising, and Journal
of Interactive Advertising. Upon finalizing the list of included journals, an
initial search was conducted using a query string designed to capture arti-
cles that consider the concept of presence while excluding articles that do not
specifically pertain to interactive marketing. Table 1 below shows a complete
description of the search string employed in this study.

3.2 Inclusion and Filtering Criteria

The initial search in the systematic review, combined with the follow-up search
in the seven journals mentioned above produced a total of 296 papers without
duplications. Filtering of resultant articles was conducted following PRISMA
guidelines (Moher et al., 2009; Page et al., 2021). Two coders were trained
based on a codebook developed for this study and completed three rounds
of coding practice. After reaching acceptable intercoder reliability (κ = 0.734,
p < 0.0001; see Peat et al., 2020, p. 228), the coders independently coded
the rest of the papers. Coders reviewed the title and abstract of each paper
to determine its relevance to both the concept of presence and the interactive
marketing context. This resulted in a list of 68 papers that were passed onto
the next stage of filtering.
402 C. CHEN ET AL.

Fig. 1 Document acquisition and selection process

Coders then reviewed the full text for each manuscript, taking notes on
the conceptual definition of presence proffered in the manuscript and the
empirical investigation(s) that were conducted, removing articles that did not
either: (a) discuss the conceptual definition of presence or, (b) empirically test
any variables related to presence. For instance, if the paper discussed relevant
concepts, such as social presence, immersion, engagement, or involvement,
without explicitly conceptually discussing or empirically testing “presence,”
the paper was removed from further analysis. This resulted in a final set of 32
journal articles included in the full systematic review (Fig. 1).

4 Results
4.1 Conceptual Definitions of Presence and Developments
in Interactive Marketing
Several popular definitions of presence were found within the interactive
marketing literature. The most commonly cited definition is Steuer’s (1992)
description of presence as simply “a sense of being there.” This definition has
been cited 15 times (e.g., Choi et al., 2001; Klein, 2003; Li et al., 2002;
Lim & Childs, 2020; Nelson et al., 2006; Shen et al., 2020; Song & Zinkhan,
 18 THE CONCEPTUALIZATION OF “PRESENCE” … 403

2008; Wang & Yao, 2020). Lombard and Ditton (1997) defined presence
as the “perceptual illusion of non-mediation.” This definition has been cited
by eight papers, making it the second most well-cited (e.g., Jeandrain, 2001;
Nicovich, 2005; Yung et al., 2020). Following that, Kim and Biocca (1997)
used the metaphorical term “being transported” to denote presence as an
unstable state. Their empirical findings suggested two dimensions of presence,
arrival, and departure. This definition has been cited six times (e.g., Besharat
et al., 2013; Nelson et al., 2006). Witmer and Singer (1998) defined presence
as the “subjective experience of being in one place when one is physically in
another.” This definition has been cited five times (Jang et al., 2019; Li et al.,
2002; Nelson et al., 2006; see Table 2 for a summary of all conceptual defini-
tions of presence that have been cited in the interactive marketing literature).
The conceptualization of presence falls within three themes, (1) technological
antecedents, (2) subdimensions, and (3) cognitive processes, jointly presenting
a comprehensive theoretical framework of presence.

4.1.1 Technological Antecedents

Early conceptualization of presence focused primarily on its technological
antecedents. The earliest definition of presence cited in interactive marketing
comes from Minsky (1980), describing feelings that a human operator might
experience when interacting through a teleoperator system. This definition has
been cited three times (Banerjee & Longstreet, 2016; Papagiannidis et al.,
2017; Shen et al., 2020). Other early definitions of presence also conceptu-
alize it as a psychological state but primarily describe presence in terms of the
features of technological systems that are theorized to relate to it (Sheridan,
1992; Steuer, 1992). For instance, Sheridan (1992) proposed that presence is
a subjective sensation, the determinants of which are: (a) the extent of sensory
information that is provided, (b) control in relation to sensors of the envi-
ronment, and (c) ability to modify the physical environment. These three
determinants are technological properties of the system rather than human
abilities or other cognitive/affective variables.
Likewise, Steuer (1992) also proposes that technological features drive the
experience of presence. Specifically, Steuer highlights two features of the digital
environment: vividness and interactivity. Vividness is determined by sensory
breadth (number of sensory inputs) and sensory depth (resolution of each
input). Interactivity is influenced by three factors: speed (response rate), range
(number of action options), and mapping (predictable control and changes).
These clear operationalizations have been widely cited and used in manip-
ulating presence (Coyle & Thorson, 2001; Jang et al., 2019; Papagiannidis
et al., 2017). This focus on the technological antecedents has contributed to
knowledge regarding how different technological and design features facili-
tate the experience of presence, but has also resulted in less discussion on the
influences of individual traits and cognitive processes in influencing a person’s
likelihood to experience presence, or the experience of presence itself.
Table 2 Definition table of presence that has been cited in interactive marketing
Author & Year Title
Steuer, 1992 Defining Virtual Reality:
Dimensions Determining
Telepresence
Lombard & Ditton, 1997 At the Heart of It All: The
Concept of Presence
Kim & Biocca, 1997 Telepresence via Television:
Two Dimensions of
Telepresence May Have
Different Connections to
Memory and Persuasion
404
Definition of Presence Components of Presence N of IM Papers Cited
Telepresence: the extent to Antecedents: 15
which one feels present in the • Vividness
mediated environment, rather • Interactivity
than in the immediate physical
C. CHEN ET AL.
environment
Presence: the perceptual Subdimensions 8
illusion of non-mediation • Social richness
• An “illusion of • Realism
non-mediation” occurs • Transportation
when a person fails to • Immersion
perceive or acknowledge an • The perception of social
experience being actors in the environment
“mediated” and responds as • The perception of the
he/she would if the medium as a social actor
medium were not there
Telepresence: equivalent to Cognitive Processes 6
Gerrig’s concept of “being • Arrival
transported”- a reader is • Departure
phenomenally transferred to a
mediated environment,
resulting from low accessibility
to the unmediated information
and high accessibility to the
mediated information
Author & Year Title
Witmer & Singer, 1998 Measuring Presence in Virtual
Environments: A Presence
Questionnaire
Sheridan, 1992 Musings on Telepresence and
Virtual Presence
Lee, 2004 Presence, Explicated
Definition of Presence
Presence: the subjective
experience of being in one
place when one is physically in
another
Telepresence: sense of being
physically present with virtual
object(s) at the remote
teleoperator site or “virtual
presence” (sense of being
physically present with visual,
auditory or force displays
generated by a computer)
Presence: a subjective
sensation, much like “mental
workload”, and mental model
Presence: a psychological state
in which virtual
(para-authentic or artificial)
objects are experienced as
actual objects in either sensory
or nonsensory ways
Components of Presence N of IM Papers Cited
Subdimensions 5
• Control responsiveness
• Sensory exploration
• Interface awareness
• Involvement
Antecedents: 4
• The extent of sensory
information that is provided
• Control in relation to
sensors of the environment
18
• Ability to modify the
physical environment
Subdimensions: 4
• Physical presence
• Social presence
• Self-presence
(continued)
THE CONCEPTUALIZATION OF “PRESENCE” …
405
Table 2 (continued)
Author & Year Title
Wirth et al., 2007 A Process Model of the
Formation of Spatial Presence
Experiences
Minsky, 1980 Telepresence
Biocca, 1997 The Cyborg’s Dilemma:
Progressive Embodiment in
Virtual Environments
Lessiter et al., 2001 A Cross-media Presence
Questionnaire: the ITC-Sense
of Presence Inventory
Definition of Presence
Spatial Presence: a binary
experience, during which
perceived self-location and
perceived action possibilities
are connected to a mediated
spatial environment
Telepresence: feelings that a
human operator might
experience when interacting
through a teleoperator system
Presence: the illusion of
“being there” whether or not
“there” exists in physical space
or not
Presence: an illusion is
generated whereby a user
senses that she/he is located
somewhere other than her/his
physical environment
406
Components of Presence N of IM Papers Cited
Cognitive Processes: 4
• Draw upon spatial cues to
perceive the mediated
environment as a plausible
C. CHEN ET AL.
space
• Experience his or herself as
being located within that
perceived space
3
3
Subdimensions 3
• Spatial presence
• Ecological validity
• Engagement
• Negative effects
Author & Year Title
Heeter, 1992 Being There: The Subjective
Experience of Presence
Slater et al., 1994 Depth of Presence in Virtual
Environments
Slater & Wilbur, 1997 A Framework for Immersive
Virtual Environments (FIVE):
Speculations on the Role of
Presence in Virtual
Environments
Slater, 1999 Measuring Presence: A
Response to the Witmer and
Singer Presence Questionnaire place or environment, even
Lombard et al., 2000 Measuring Presence: A
Literature-based Approach to illusion of non-mediation
the Development of a
Standardized Paper-and-pencil
Instrument
Definition of Presence
Presence: feeling like you exist
within but as a separate entity
from a virtual world that also
exists
Presence: the participant’s
sense of “being there” in the
virtual environment
Presence: a state of
consciousness, the
(psychological) sense of being
in the virtual environment
Presence: the subjective
experience of being in one
when one is physically situated
in another
Presence: the perceptual
Components of Presence N of IM Papers Cited
Subdimensions 2
• Subjective personal presence
• Social presence
• Environmental presence
1
1
18
Cognitive Processes 1
• The memories they form
about the environment will
be theorized to resemble
memories formed in real life
1
(continued)
THE CONCEPTUALIZATION OF “PRESENCE” …
407
Table 2 (continued)
Author & Year Title
Slater & Steed, 2000 A Virtual Presence Counter
Lombard & Snyder-Duch, Interactive Advertising and
2001 Presence
Li et al., 2002 Impact of 3D Advertising on
Product Knowledge, Brand
Attitude, and Purchase
Intention: The Mediating
Role of Presence
408
Definition of Presence Components of Presence N of IM Papers Cited
Presence: a mental state in 1
which a user feels physically
present within the
computer-mediated
C. CHEN ET AL.
environment
Presence: a psychological state 1
or subjective perception in
which … part or all of the
individual’s perception fails to
accurately acknowledge the
role of the technology in the
experience
Presence: an illusion of ‘’being 1
there” in a mediated
environment
Author & Year Title Definition of Presence Components of Presence N of IM Papers Cited

Sas & O’Hare, 2003 Presence Equation: An Presence: a psychological 1

Investigation into Cognitive
Factors underlying Presence
Suh & Chang, 2006 User Interfaces and Consumer Telepresence: the experience or
phenomenon, through which
one’s cognitive processes are
oriented toward another
world…together with an
imperceptible shifting of focus
of consciousness to the
proximal stimulus located in
that other world
1
18

Perceptions of Online Stores: impression of being present at

The Role of Telepresence a location remote from one’s
own immediate environment
Slater, 2009 Place Illusion and Plausibility Presence (place illusion; PI): 1
Can Lead to Realistic the sense of “being there,” the
Behavior in Immersive Virtual strong illusion of being in a
Environments place in spite of the sure
knowledge that you are not
there

(continued)
THE CONCEPTUALIZATION OF “PRESENCE” …
409
Table 2 (continued)
410

Author & Year Title Definition of Presence Components of Presence N of IM Papers Cited

Schubert, 2009 A new conception of spatial Spatial presence: a feedback 1

presence: once again, with from unconscious cognitive
feeling processes that informs
conscious thought about the
C. CHEN ET AL.

state of the spatial cognitive

system
Weibel & Wissmath, 2011 Immersion in computer Presence: a sense of spatial 1
games: the role of spatial immersion in a mediated
presence and flow environment; a state of
consciousness that gives the
impression of being physically
present in a mediated world
Shafer et al., 2011 Spatial presence and perceived Spatial presence (one 1
reality aspredictors of dimension of presence): the
motion-based video game sense of being there, actually
enjoyment being present in the virtual
environment
Cummings & Bailenson, How immersive is enough? A Presence: the psychological 1
2016 meta-analysis of the effect of experience of “being there”
immersive technology on user
presence
 18 THE CONCEPTUALIZATION OF “PRESENCE” … 411

4.1.2 Subdimensions of Presence

Further explicating the construct of presence, researchers have elaborated on
the subdimensions of presence in a digital environment that focused more
on user experiences (Lee, 2004; Lessiter et al., 2001; Lombard & Ditton,
1997; Witmer & Singer, 1998). For instance, Lombard and Ditton (1997)
propose six subdimensions of presence, including social richness (the extent to
which a medium is perceived as being sociable, warm, personal, and intimate
when used to interact with others); realism; transportation (“you are there,”
“it is here,” and “we are together”); immersion (perceptual, psychological);
the perception of social actors in the environment; and the perception of the
medium as a social actor (social responses to cues provided by the medium
itself).
Building on Lombard and Ditton (1997), Witmer and Singer (1998)
propose four subdimensions involved in the experience of presence: control
responsiveness, sensory exploration, interface awareness, and involvement.
These factors encompass both system features and user experiences, showing
a more inclusive operationalization of presence than was present in previous
explications of the construct. This work also proposes that individuals’ immer-
sive tendencies influence the extent to which one may feel immersed in a media
experience, measured by the tendency to lose track of time and level of involve-
ment when watching TV, reading books, and daydreaming. Furthermore,
Witmer and Singer (1998) provide an operationalization of these subdimen-
sions in the form of the Presence Questionnaire (PQ) and the Immersive
Tendency Questionnaire (ITQ).
Lessiter and colleagues (2001) propose a somewhat different set of subdi-
mensions: spatial presence, ecological validity, engagement, and negative
effects. Like Witmer and Singer (1998), Lessiter and colleagues also introduce
an operationalization of these subdimensions, in the form of the ITC-Sense
of Presence Inventory scale (ITC-SOPI). These subdimensions and their
associated measurement have been widely cited in the interactive marketing
literature (e.g., Feng, 2018; Li, 2002).
Finally, Lee (2004) proposed three dimensions involved in the experience of
presence: physical presence, social presence, and self-presence. These dimen-
sions denote the psychological states in which virtual physical objects, virtual
social actors, and virtual self/selves are experienced as actual objects, social
actors, and self/selves in either sensory or nonsensory ways. These dimensions
expand the construct of presence to more fully encompass social and cognitive
factors that may be involved in the immersive experience.

4.1.3 Cognitive Processes

Researchers have also elaborated on the various cognitive processes involved in
the experience of presence. For instance, Kim and Biocca (1997) draw from
the concept of “transportation,” which describes the psychological sense of
immersion experienced by the reader of a narrative story, to propose that pres-
ence is a “moment-by-moment” oscillation between senses of different spaces
412 C. CHEN ET AL.

(physical versus mediated). Building on this conceptualization, Kim and Biocca

(1997) also report findings from an exploratory and confirmatory factor anal-
ysis showing that self-report scales related to presence load on two factors, one
of which corresponds with a sense of “arrival” and one of which corresponds
with a sense of “departure.” The conceptualization of presence in terms of
the cognitive experience of arrival and departure has been influential within a
broad swath of the interactive marketing literature (Besharat, 2013; Nelson,
2006).
Slater (1999) suggests that a person’s sense of “being there” in a digital
environment corresponds to the memories that they form about the envi-
ronment. The more that the virtual environment becomes dominant in their
mind, the more their memories of the environment are theorized to resemble
those that would be formed in a physical environment. Building on Slater’s
(1999) framework, Wirth and colleagues (2007) propose a two-step process:
First, the user must draw upon spatial cues to perceive the mediated environ-
ment as a plausible space. Second, the user must also experience his or herself
as being located within that perceived space. More recently, Hartmann et al.,
(2016), build on this two-step model, proposing a spatial presence experience
scale (SPES) for empirical tests.

4.2 Investigations of Presence in Interactive Marketing

Investigations of the experience of presence in the interactive marketing liter-
ature have considered a number of factors, but other salient factors have
received comparatively less attention. Positive affective responses are the most
frequently investigated factor in the literature, having been examined in 13
papers. In contrast, negative affective responses (i.e., anxiety) and negative
feelings (i.e., nausea) related to presence, despite their importance within
the presence literature more broadly, have not received attention within the
interactive marketing context. Similarly, cognitive perceptions of content are
frequently an object of focus within the literature (9 papers), but the relation-
ship between feelings of presence and cognitive perceptions of the system or
the self has not been investigated. Likewise, although motivations and inten-
tions frequently feature in the interactive marketing literature, to date little
extant work has considered how presence relates to actual behavior, and the
work that exists has produced somewhat contradictory findings, especially in
relation to memory.

4.2.1 Affective Attitudinal Responses toward Content and System

Positive attitudinal responses to the experience of presence are one of the
most popular themes we observed in the reviewed literature. Researchers have
primarily examined the effect of presence on users’ positive attitudes toward
marketing content, such as brands, products, and advertising messages (Klein,
2003; Li et al., 2002; Shen et al., 2020). Across two studies, Klein (2003)
found that (tele)presence has a positive effect on both consumers’ attitudes
 18 THE CONCEPTUALIZATION OF “PRESENCE” … 413

toward the advertised product and their attitude strength. Building on Klein
(2003)’s study, Tsai et al. (2020) found that (tele)presence explains the posi-
tive effect of immersive devices on consumers’ brand liking when a product
is presented in a realistic ad context. These consistent positive correlations
between presence and attitudinal responses make the experience of presence a
popular persuasive mechanism during the immersive experience.
In contrast, the effect of presence on negative affective responses toward
content, such as anger, anxiety, and reactance, has received less attention in
the literature. This oversight is especially notable given the extent to which
presence has been found to amplify users’ negative emotions within the
broader research literature—especially when the content itself is negatively
valenced. In the field of cybertherapy, for instance, Miyahira et al. (2010)
suggested that presence moderates the effect of immersive technology on
negative emotions, as viewers with a higher level of presence also experience
greater emotional reactivity to anger-provoking stimuli. However, another
line of research proposed that the effect of presence is similar to the trans-
portation imagination model, in which users who experienced higher levels of
telepresence or transportation are unable and unwilling to form counterargu-
ments, resulting in reduced critical thoughts and enhanced persuasive effects.
This proposition, though, has received inconsistent evidence (Breves, 2021;
Chen & Yao, 2022; Oh & Jin, 2018; Oh et al., 2020). For instance, Breves
(2021) found that participants have less negative valenced thoughts but more
positive-valenced thoughts when they use more immersive technologies, and
presence explains this effect. Some other researchers found it to be a condi-
tional effect that presence only leads to less defensive responses among those
who have low or moderate self-efficacy to quit smoking (Oh & Jin, 2018).
A different piece of evidence comes from Chen and Yao (2022), in which
researchers compared the effect of presence and transportation and found that
transportation, but not presence, explains users’ persuasive outcomes. Given
the inconsistent findings, in the realm of interactive marketing, researchers
could further investigate if and when presence modulates consumers’ negative
emotions, such as reactance to the recommendations (Fitzsimons & Lehmann,
2004) and psychological avoidance toward media content (Kuo et al., 2016).
In addition, how presence influences system-induced negative effects, such
as nausea and disorientation, remains less unclear in interactive marketing.
Some research from different fields found a mixed relationship between pres-
ence and system-induced negative effects (Baños et al., 2004; Chowdhury
et al., 2017; Kim et al., 2020; Ling et al., 2013). For instance, Chowd-
hury et al. (2017) found a positive correlation and that participants who
reported a higher level of presence also reported a stronger sense of nausea
and disorientation. However, some other studies have suggested a negative
correlation between presence and sickness (Nichols, 2000; Rupp et al., 2016).
For instance, Nichols’ (2000) study showed that participants had a higher level
of presence and reported less sickness after using the device when they had a
favorable attitude toward using VR. Findings suggest researchers in interactive
414 C. CHEN ET AL.

marketing focus on both positive and negative sides of presence to generate

a comprehensive understanding of its affective consequences. Understanding
the role of presence also helps researchers and practitioners to identify and
circumvent the negative affective outcomes in interactive immersive media and
design the system and content strategically, especially when it comes to system
adoption (Peukert et al., 2019). For instance, previous studies have identi-
fied the mixed role of presence on intention to reuse the virtual shopping
environment: virtual environment increased users’ intention hedonically via
their sense of presence and enjoyment but decreased their reuse intention as
it fails to meet utilitarian purposes, such as low readability of product infor-
mation in the virtual environment and perceived low usefulness of the system
(Peukert et al., 2019). Designing a virtual shopping environment to high-
light the hedonic value of shopping and undermine the utilitarian value of the
product may diminish the negative outcomes of presence.

4.2.2 Cognitive Perceptions of the Content, System, and Self-perceptions

Investigations on the relationship between presence and consumers’ cognitive
perceptions have primarily concerned the relationship between the feeling of
presence and consumers’ perceptions of marketing content, such as perceived
advertising novelty (Feng, 2018), perceived informativeness of the marketing
content (Tsai et al., 2020), perceived instrumental and experiential shopping
value (Fiore et al., 2005; Jang et al., 2019), and perceived self-brand connec-
tion (Lim & Childs, 2020). In a website environment, Fiore (2005) found that
an increased sense of presence explained the positive effect of product image
interactivity on consumers’ perceived instrumental value and experiential value.
Similarly, in a virtual environment, Jang et al. (2019) found a positive corre-
lation between presence and perceived experiential shopping value. These two
factors further explained the indirect effect of interactivity and vividness on
consumers’ approach toward virtual reality stores.
Comparatively, there have been fewer investigations on the relationship
between the feeling of presence and consumers’ perceptions of the system
(Feng et al., 2019; Li et al., 2002; Wu & Lin, 2018). In the interac-
tive marketing literature, researchers have investigated consumers’ perceived
ecological validity of the system as one dimension of presence from the
ITC-SOPO scale, with no direct investigation into their relationships (Feng
et al., 2019; Li et al., 2002). However, as research in related fields indicates,
consumers’ perception of the system may turn out to be an important outcome
of presence that further influences their perceptions of the media content. For
example, in the field of journalism, Shin (2017) derived a path model that
showed a positive influence of presence on users’ perceived usability of the
system, which further influenced their feeling of empathy, embodiment, and
perceived learnability within this environment.
There has also been little discussion in the interactive marketing literature
on how presence changes consumers’ self-perceptions, such as perceived self-
efficacy, self-control, or embodiment. As one exception, Kuo et al.’s (2016)
 18 THE CONCEPTUALIZATION OF “PRESENCE” … 415

qualitative research suggested that presence in the mediated world affirms

consumers’ identity and empowers them with more controls, thus, reducing
the negative effect of an external stressor. Similarly, in a virtual environment,
Murray et al., (2007) found that users’ sense of presence is significantly associ-
ated with their perceived control in the VR environment. Another important
but less studied perspective related to consumers’ self-perception is sense of
embodiment (SoE). SoE is defined as “the ensemble of sensation that arises
in conjunction with being inside, having, and controlling a body especially
in relation to virtual reality applications” (Kilteni et al., 2012, pp. 374–375).
Studies investigated the presence and users’ SoE as parallel processes and these
senses often elevated together during the immersive experience. Together, the
review suggested focusing on the effect of presence on consumers’ cognitive
perceptions of all three aspects of interactive marketing: the marketing content,
the system, and their changing self-perceptions.

4.2.3 Behavioral Intention and Actual Behaviors

Studies from interactive marketing research have identified a positive rela-
tionship between presence and various behavioral intentions, including, but
not limited to, purchase intention, download intention, share intention, and
intention to pay, continue, and visit (Fiore et al., 2005; Li et al., 2002; Shen
et al., 2020; Wang & Yao, 2020; Wu & Lin, 2018; Wu & Stilwell, 2018). For
instance, Wu and Stilwell (2018) found that engagement in a game, perceived
mobility of the game (interaction without constraints of time and place), and
perceived contextual value increased consumers’ feeling of presence, which in
turn, led to a higher intention to visit the game sponsor. Wang and Yao (2020)
found a significant interaction between the level of presence and the level of
control on consumers’ purchase intention, such that players of a VR game
reported a higher intention to purchase the fictitious brand in the game. The
investigations of presence and behavioral consequences encompass a broad
variety of behavioral intentions, showing an advance in interactive marketing
literature.
However, to date, little extant work has considered examining the rela-
tionship between presence and actual behavior. This added ambiguity to the
behavioral consequences of presence and its duration (long-term versus short-
term). Some evidence for the effect of presence on users’ behavior comes from
social psychology. The findings of Reinhard et al.’s (2020) study, for instance,
suggested that presence may induce a short-term change but decays at a fast
rate. They found that participants with a higher level of presence were more
subject to the influence of the proteus effect in a short period- when they
embodied an older avatar, they walked slower at first but soon regressed to
their normal walking pace. More research is needed in interactive marketing
to examine the effect of presence on behavioral changes and their durations.
As suggested by (Rodgers & Thorson, 2000), some important types of behav-
ioral measures in interactive marketing include hits, click-throughs, time spent
on websites, exploration patterns, and online purchasing patterns.
416 C. CHEN ET AL.

4.2.4 Memory: Contradictory findings and Potential Explanations

The overall marketing research cares about consumers’ recall and recognition
of brands and products, reflecting consumer attention and marketing effec-
tiveness (Besharat et al., 2013). Herein, memory is different from consumers’
perceptions and cognitive responses. There have been some discussions about
the relationship between presence and memory retention within the interactive
marketing literature (Besharat et al., 2013; Li et al., 2002; Shen et al., 2020),
but the results have been mixed. For instance, Li et al. (2002) found that all
three dimensions of presence mediated the positive effect of 3D advertising
on consumers’ product knowledge (study 2). Yet, recently, more evidence was
found to support a negative association between presence and recall (i.e., Shen
et al., 2020). Participants are asked to take a VR campus tour using a VR
headset, watching on a desktop, or in a Google Cardboard. Researchers found
that more immersive devices are associated with a higher level of presence,
but presence is negatively associated with the recall of campus locations (Shen
et al., 2020). These findings are consistent with recent research on virtual
environments and presence (Bailey et al., 2012; Barreda-Ángeles et al., 2020;
Chen & Yao, 2022; Rupp et al., 2016). For instance, when participants expe-
rience a virtual apartment tour in a more immersive environment, they report
a higher sense of presence, while presence also accounts for reduced memory
retention of the environment (Chen & Yao, 2022; study 1).
Researchers point to two possible explanations for this phenomenon consis-
tent with the overall trend in other fields: (1) increased cognitive load due
to the complicated and vivid virtual environment, and (2) prioritized spatial
information processing in the spacious environment. Evidence supporting
the cognitive load hypothesis includes studies from Makransky et al. (2019)
and Schrader and Bastiaens (2012). For instance, Schrader and Bastiaens
(2012) performed a mediation analysis and found that increased cognitive load
partially explained the negative effect of presence on users’ reduced learning
outcomes. Evidence supporting the spatial processing priorities comes from
Mania and Chalmers (2001) and Parong et al. (2020). Mania and Chalmers
(2001) accessed students’ memory retention of the lecture content and their
spatial knowledge of the classroom. While participants using a head-mounted
display fell short on memory retention of the learning material, they outper-
formed in spatial recall of the classroom environment. Research in interactive
marketing can continue to probe into the correlation between presence and
memory retention to develop better brand placement strategies and maximize
campaign effectiveness.

5 Discussion
Various technologies have fueled the development of interactive marketing,
shifting from bi-directional online communications to an immersive
omnichannel virtual experience (Wang, 2021). These immersive technologies
 18 THE CONCEPTUALIZATION OF “PRESENCE” … 417

allow consumers to experience a sense of “being there” in the mediated envi-

ronment, which fuels the effectiveness of marketing content and makes the
concept of presence a central process of interest to researchers and practitioners
in interactive marketing (Biocca, 1997). This chapter conducted a systematic
review of presence in interactive marketing literature, focusing on reviewing
the conceptual development and empirical application of presence, identifying
areas that have been well investigated, and pointing out domains in which
presence is comparatively understudied.

5.1 Theoretical Implications

The review identified common citations and summarized the development
of presence in the interactive marketing literature in the following themes:
technological antecedents, subdimensions, and cognitive processes, presenting
the key components of the conceptual framework of presence. Technolog-
ical antecedents allow researchers in interactive marketing to operationalize
presence. Conceptualizing and measuring subdimensions further expanded
researchers’ understanding of different types of presence and their conse-
quences (Feng et al., 2019; Jang et al., 2019; Li et al., 2002). Understanding
cognitive processes involved in presence further encourages researchers to
investigate the affective, cognitive, and behavioral outcomes of different stages
of presence. These summarizations help researchers to understand the theoret-
ical development of presence in interactive marketing and present a theoretical
framework for the conceptualization of presence.
The chapter also identified several pathways for the advancement of pres-
ence investigations in interactive marketing. Positive affective responses toward
and cognitive perceptions of the media content are frequently an object of
focus within the literature. Researchers have consistently identified a positive
correlation between presence and affective responses toward media content,
making the experience of presence a popular persuasive mechanism theo-
rized to be at play during the immersive experience. Researchers have also
investigated the relationship between presence and users’ cognitive percep-
tion of media content, such as perceived advertising novelty (Feng, 2018),
perceived informativeness of the marketing content (Tsai et al., 2020), and
perceived instrumental and experiential shopping value (Fiore et al., 2005;
Jang et al., 2019). Finally, researchers in the interactive marketing litera-
ture have investigated the relationship between presence and users’ various
behavioral intentions, such as purchase intention, download intention, share
intention, and intention to pay, continue, and visit (Shen et al., 2020; Wang &
Yao, 2020; Wu & Lin, 2018; Wu & Stilwell, 2018).

5.2 Future Directions

The current chapter further contributes to the literature by identifying several
understudied areas in interactive marketing, suggesting several promising
418 C. CHEN ET AL.

directions for future research. In the following section, the authors elabo-
rate on a selection of especially promising research agendas for investigating:
(1) the influence of cognitive processes involved in presence, (2) affective
and cognitive outcomes of presence on perceptions of the system, media
content, and self, and (3) the influence of presence on memory and behavioral
consequences thereof.
Theoretically, more research could further decompose and elaborate on the
processes of presence to understand the contribution of different stages of
presence on various affective, cognitive, memory, and behavioral outcomes.
Kim and Biocca (1997), for instance, found that the “arrival” stage and
“departure” stage of experiencing presence have different associations with
participants’ recognition and confidence in brand choices. The departure stage
of presence is associated with increased memory of advertising and recognition
speed, while the arrival stage of presence is associated with increased confi-
dence in brand choice and buying intention. Wirth et al. (2007) proposed a
two-step model of presence, and Hartmann et al. (2016) further developed
a measurement scale with two factors: perceived self-location and possible
action. Chen et al. (2022) built on Wirth et al.’s (2007) two-step model and
worked from the perspective of embodied cognition, proposing that users have
a loose boundary around themselves and project “self” to the virtual world to
feel a sense of presence.
Consequently, users also perceive different action possibilities (affordance;
Gibson, 1979) from the perspective of the “self” in the virtual world, leading
to various behavioral changes. For instance, having a virtual body without a
hand may be perceived as losing abilities to grab objects in the virtual world.
Likewise, by projecting themselves into color-blind avatars, users also perceive
themselves to be losing the ability to differentiate red from green, leading
to more helping behaviors toward color-blind groups in real life (Ahn et al.,
2013). In the realm of interactive marketing, it will likely also be interesting
to investigate users’ shopping behavior when they are empowered with various
affordances in the virtual world. For example, further research could inves-
tigate if embodying a stronger virtual body will lead to more browsing or
shopping in athletic outfits.
In addition, the review suggested paying more attention to the content-
induced negative affective responses (Chowdhury et al., 2017). Research from
other fields found that presence amplifies negative emotions, such as anxiety
and fear (Gromer et al., 2018; Renaud et al., 2002). However, another line
of research proposed that the effect of presence followed the prediction of
the transportation imagination model and suggested that users who feel a
higher level of presence should produce less critical thoughts and counter-
arguments, resulting in better affective responses and persuasive outcomes
(Breves, 2021; Oh & Jin, 2018; Oh et al., 2020). In the realm of inter-
active marketing, researchers could further investigate if and when presence
modulates the potential negative feelings induced by media content, such
 18 THE CONCEPTUALIZATION OF “PRESENCE” … 419

as reactance to persuasive messages (Fitzsimons & Lehmann, 2004) and

psychological avoidance (Kuo et al., 2016).
Further, the affective and cognitive responses toward the system have also
received less attention (Feng et al., 2019; Li et al., 2002; Wu & Lin, 2018),
suggesting a promising area for future research. System usability and adop-
tion are important issues within interactive marketing because they mediate
interactions between consumers and marketers. Most immersive technologies,
such as VR, still bear system and content design limitations, leading to nausea,
sickness, and cybersickness (Chowdhury et al., 2017; Kim et al., 2020; Ling
et al., 2013). However, as presence is defined as a sense of “non-mediation”
(Lombard & Ditton, 1997), participants who feel presence may have reduced
awareness of these negative impacts (Nichols, 2000) and perceive the system as
more useful. Consistent findings from other fields showed that the experience
of presence increased users’ perceived usability of the system, which further
influenced their adoption of the technology (Shin, 2017). Although, the
relationship between presence and system-induced nausea and disorientation
remains debatable (Nichols, 2000; Rupp et al., 2016). Research in interactive
marketing could further investigate the interactions among consumers’ experi-
ences of presence, system-induced adverse effects, and cognitive perceptions of
the system, such as perceived usefulness and ease of use (Alshaer et al., 2020).
Likewise, consumers’ changing self-perception as a result of presence is a
promising yet understudied area for future investigation. Within the interac-
tive marketing literature, Kuo et al. (2016) suggested that presence empowers
consumers with more controls and affirms their self-identities. Similarly,
research from other fields found that presence influences users’ perceived
self-efficacy and perceived control in the immersive environment (Barbot &
Kaufman, 2020; Cheng & Tsai, 2019; Kilteni et al., 2013; Murray et al., 2007;
Shin & Biocca, 2018). Presence has also been found to be associated with a
sense of embodiment, which leads to a higher sense of satisfaction and contin-
uing intention (Shin & Biocca, 2018). Understanding how presence changes
consumers’ self-perceptions in interactive marketing may also provide valu-
able insights into improving marketing outcomes, such as consumers’ higher
confidence in their branded choice and purchasing behavior.
Last but not least, future research could further investigate the relationships
between presence and consumers’ memory retention. Early research identified
a positive association, while recent studies have found a negative correlation
(Bailey et al., 2012; Li et al., 2002). Drawing inferences from other fields,
the review proposed two possible explanations. One potential explanation is
increased cognitive load resulting from complicated and interactive virtual
environments and various presentation strategies (Makransky et al., 2019).
Another possible explanation is that users prioritized spatial information rather
than other factual information about the content (Parong et al., 2020). While
more expansive and vivid virtual environments challenge marketers to direct
420 C. CHEN ET AL.

consumers’ attention to the correct information, future research could inves-

tigate why and what consumers pay attention to, which will shed insights into
interface design and product placement strategies.
Finally, the review calls for more research on the presence and its behav-
ioral outcomes, including time spent on the page, number of interactions, and
the long versus short-term effect of presence. Technologies allow marketers
to access consumers’ mediated behavior via logged information, providing
pieces of behavioral evidence in addition to their self-reports. Considering
that users’ self-reported data is only moderately correlated with their actual
behavior (Parry et al., 2021), the authors encourage future research to
combine consumers’ self-report data with their actual media use data to
generate a comprehensive understanding of consumers’ marketing experience
in an immersive environment.

5.3 Practical Implications

While the findings of this review are primarily conceptual, they shed light on
practical designs, including system design, content design, and user experi-
ence design. Regarding system design, the current research suggests avoiding
designs that break the experience of presence and pursuing those that highlight
the hedonic value of the shopping experience and undermine the utilitarian
value of the system to increase the adoption of the virtual environment. For
instance, practitioners should be aware of system designs that break the pres-
ence and trigger motion sickness, such as sudden acceleration and stopping.
These system-induced negative feelings disrupt consumers’ immersive experi-
ence and reduce positive consequences of presence and negatively influence
consumers’ perceived usefulness of the system leading to higher negative atti-
tudes toward the VR system and a decreased adoption rate (Alshaer et al.,
2020; Nichols, 2000). In addition, previous research found that virtual envi-
ronments increased users’ system adoption when they generated feelings of
presence and enjoyment but not when the utilitarian value of the environ-
ment was low, such as when product information was not easily readable. This
suggests that practitioners should seek to design interactive marketing expe-
riences to highlight the hedonic value of the experience and maximize the
system’s utilitarian value (Peukert et al., 2019).
While existing research from interactive marketing has investigated the
amplifying effect of presence on positive affective outcomes (Klein, 2003;
Shen et al., 2020; Tsai et al., 2020), additional evidence from other research
fields has suggested practitioners consider the effect of presence on amplifying
negative affective responses, such as psychological avoidance and persua-
sive message reactance, especially when message content may be negatively
valenced (Kuo et al., 2016; Miyahira et al., 2010). Due to the experi-
ence of “presence,” the technology allows consumers to experience things
more as if they were real. Therefore, mediated content, such as violence
and aggression, when presented in more immersive contexts, may also seem
 18 THE CONCEPTUALIZATION OF “PRESENCE” … 421

to be something consumers “experienced” rather than “viewed,” potentially

leading to increased fear and aggression (Gromer et al., 2018). On the other
hand, researchers from the persuasion literature found an inconsistent influ-
ence of presence on negative affective responses, with some finding reduced
counterarguments, but others finding it only works among low involvement
participants (Breves, 2021; Chen & Yao, 2022; Oh & Jin, 2018). While
researchers continue investigating the role of presence on users’ negative
affective responses, practitioners should avoid the potential risk of providing
controversial media content and overly direct persuasive messages in the
interactive and immersive marketing experience.
Finally, user experience design could pay more attention to consumers’
avatars and subsequent influences on their self-perceptions. Feeling presence
may be associated with changing consumers’ self-perception, such as perceived
efficacy and perceived control. Empowering consumers with more control and
confirmation may turn immersive interactive marketing into a positive and
rewarding experience.

5.4 Limitations and Future Research

The current research also bears several limitations. For instance, the current
analysis of presence’s conceptual development and empirical investigations
only considers definitions cited and empirical tests conducted within the field
of interactive marketing. While the findings objectively presented the current
state of “presence” research in this field, future research could benefit from
a broadened scope to include more literature further afield from that which
traditionally considers interactive marketing experience. In addition, the scope
of the current review is limited to theoretical considerations within the domain
of presence. Future work would likely benefit from more empirical investiga-
tions, such as a meta-analysis reviewing the relationships between presence
and different affective, cognitive, memorial, and behavioral consequences, or
natural language processing-based analyses summarizing and analyzing the
literature itself.

6 Conclusion
Technologies such as VR and AR fuel the development of interactive
marketing by allowing consumers and marketers to exchange and create value
via immersive environments. It induces a sense of presence that provides
consumers with marketing experiences that transcend the constraints associ-
ated with more traditional media, making this concept a central process in
the immersive experience (Biocca, 1997; Steuer, 1992). This chapter system-
atically reviewed the literature on presence within the confines of interactive
marketing, focusing on its conceptual development and empirical conse-
quences. More specifically, the current review was guided by three central
research questions: (1) how presence has been conceptualized within the
422 C. CHEN ET AL.

interactive marketing literature; (2) what interactive marketing research has

revealed about the nature of presence, and its antecedents, correlates, and
outcomes; (3) which areas within the literature hold the most potential for
future research.
In view of the first research question, the authors identified 20 different
definitions of presence within the literature, suggesting that the conceptu-
alization of presence within interactive marketing has been quite varied and
heterogeneous and that many of the definitions for presence used in the liter-
ature are imported from other bodies of literature. For the second research
question, the authors identified the technological antecedents, subdimensions,
and cognitive processes of presence highlighted in the interactive marketing
literature. Vividness and interactivity were especially salient antecedents of
presence, whereas the subdimensions and cognitive processes involved in pres-
ence were shown to vary quite widely. In view of the third research question,
this review pointed out a number of currently understudied areas, including
the influence of cognitive processes, adverse affective and cognitive outcomes,
and conflicting evidence regarding memory and behavioral consequences of
presence. In doing so, this systematic review provides a comprehensive picture
of the state of current research investigating presence in interactive marketing
and provides both a firm foundation and direction for future research in this
critical area.

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0454
 PART IV

Platform Revolution and Customer

Participation
 CHAPTER 19

The Platform Revolution in Interactive

Marketing: Increasing Customer-Brand
Engagement on Social Media Platforms

Zheng Shen

1 Introduction
Interactive marketing can be seen as a marketing process of two-way value
creation and influence through active customer connection, engagement, and
interaction (Wang, 2021). In this regard, customer-brand engagement is
considered to be an important perspective in interactive marketing. Engage-
ment is a tangible process between customers and products or brands that
leads to behavioral affinity (Hollebeek et al., 2014; Vazquez, 2020). It involves
enhancing the interaction between customers and brands, and the pertinent
literature often links different concepts of engagement, such as customer
engagement, brand engagement, and digital engagement (Kim et al., 2021;
Wang et al., 2022; Zimand-Sheiner et al., 2021). Existing literature has
shown that customer-brand engagement has a significant impact on customer
perception of positive brand advertising, brand loyalty, purchase intention,
and willingness to share (France et al., 2016; Graham & Wilder, 2020;
Izogo & Mpinganjira, 2020). After the emergence of social media, brands
have gradually become more active in incorporating social media into their
interactive marketing strategy by creating brand pages, developing content,
and promoting it. Prior studies indicate that social media allows brands to
build network-based online communities that stimulate customer engage-
ment by enabling customers to develop their social identities and satisfy social

Z. Shen (B)
Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, Hangzhou, China
e-mail: janeshen@zstu.edu.cn

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 433

Switzerland AG 2023
C. L. Wang (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Interactive Marketing,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14961-0_19
434 Z. SHEN

needs (Christodoulides, 2009; Tajfel, 1979; Vernuccio et al., 2016). As such,

encouraging customer-brand engagement has become a focal point for brands
looking to succeed in interactive marketing on social media.
As social media evolves, different social media platforms make brands diffi-
cult to track and coordinate their efforts (Devereux et al., 2020). During
the golden age of social media, Facebook mostly dominated the market,
gaining the largest market share, followed by the popularity of microblogs
on Twitter, but in recent years, Instagram has surpassed Facebook as a
platform that continues to grow rapidly (Perrin & Anderson, 2019). The
platform revolution is shaping a new business ecosystem for customer connec-
tivity and interactivity (Parker et al., 2016; Wang, 2021). Scholars argue that
the pertinent literature is limited in the following aspects: (1) most of the
studies limited content types (e.g., informational or entertaining content),
and employed a singular social media platform to test social media engage-
ment (e.g., Facebook or Instagram); (2) few studies considered the role of
content format (e.g., picture, video, etc.), and the relationship with the choice
of social media platform on predicting users’ engagement behavior; and (3)
most studies used survey methods to collect primary data (Shahbaznezhad
et al., 2021). Unnava and Aravindakshan (2021) further posit that there has
been limited analysis of social media platforms as a determinant of customer-
brand engagement. Given the wide variety of social media platforms currently
in use, our understanding of customer-brand engagement would benefit from
further exploration of the different and new social media platforms.
With respect to the above, this chapter is motivated by prior studies calling
for the investigation of customer behaviors and interactions in social media
networks and different platforms in the context of future research directions
in interactive marketing (Hamzah et al., 2021; Wang, 2021), and posed the
following research questions: (1) What are the differences in customer-brand
engagement on social media platforms? (2) How can customer-brand engage-
ment be increased on multiple social media platforms? To clarify the answer,
this chapter examined the effectiveness of customer-brand engagement on
three popular social media platforms, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. Data
were collected from 10 brands in different sectors and analyzed by data mining
techniques. The findings reveal that social media platforms make a differ-
ence in customer-brand engagement on social media, and show that TikTok,
an emerging social media platform, has higher customer-brand engagement
than Twitter and Instagram, despite the latter being larger platforms and
widely used by brands. Surprisingly, the findings indicate that customer-brand
engagement on social media platforms can be increased by the choice of
social media platform and brand content format, rather than brand content
differentiation on social media platforms.
This chapter provides both theoretical and managerial implications. On a
theoretical level, it extends the literature on customer-brand engagement in
interactive marketing on social media. According to Pelletier et al. (2020),
understanding customer engagement in the social media context is high on
 19 THE PLATFORM REVOLUTION IN INTERACTIVE MARKETING … 435

the academic research agenda. For this reason, this chapter extends the limited
analysis of customer-brand engagement on social media platforms. Compared
with previous studies, this chapter further fills a gap in the relevant literature
on customer-brand engagement by employing multiple social media platforms.
In particular, it extends the current limited understanding of customer-brand
engagement on TikTok, an emerging social media platform. Also, the find-
ings indicate that customer-brand engagement on social media platforms can
be increased by the choice of social media platform and brand content format
rather than brand content differentiation, extending the limited analysis on the
role of brand content types and formats in the effectiveness of customer-brand
engagement. In practice, the findings provide managerial insights for brand
and marketing practitioners who have difficulty coordinating their efforts on
multiple social media platforms. They may consider using TikTok to increase
customer-brand engagement on social media, which is not widely used by
brands yet. Alternatively, they may consider using short videos in their interac-
tive marketing on Twitter and Instagram, which have higher customer-brand
engagement on social media.

2 Literature Review
2.1 Customer Engagement and Its Determinants
Strengthening customer engagement has increased theoretical and managerial
importance in the marketing literature (Garcia-de-Frutos & Estrella-Ramon,
2021; Gligor & Bozkurt, 2021; Ji et al., 2022). Customer engagement refers
to customers’ psychological process arising from the combination of intrinsic
motivations, psychological mind states, customer activities, and contributions
to firms (Santini et al., 2020). The existing literature considers the importance
of customer engagement in marketing because of its potential predictive power
regarding customer behavior and brand performance (Pansari & Kumar, 2017;
Santini et al., 2020). Pansari and Kumar (2017) posit customer engagement
forms relationships as it occurs when customers form satisfying relationships
based on trust, commitment, and emotional ties. According to Santini et al.
(2020), customer engagement contributes directly to brand performance and
indirectly as mediated by behavioral intention and WOM.
Based on the importance of the above, scholars are increasingly interested
in exploring the determinants that drive customer engagement. Determi-
nants found in the extant literature include product factors (Hu & Li, 2011;
Purnawirawan et al., 2012), brand factors (Anderson & Simester, 2014;
Borah & Tellis, 2016), customer factors (Azar et al., 2016; Shao & Ross,
2015), and content factors (Chahal & Rani, 2017; Swani et al., 2013).
Regarding product factors, scholars highlight that product quality can affect
customer engagement, which exists in reviews (Purnawirawan et al., 2012).
Hu and Li (2011) argue that more customer reviews of products are more
positive customer engagement behaviors. For brand factors, Borah and Tellis
436 Z. SHEN

(2016) explain that negative chatter about one brand increases negative chatter
for another brand. Related to customer factors, Shao and Ross (2015) empha-
size that the motivation dimensions of customers have differential effects on
customer interactions with a Facebook brand page community. Finally, in
terms of content factors, previous research supports that effective content can
drive customer traffic and help brands convert customers (Hanlon, 2019). For
instance, Chahal and Rani (2017) state that customer-brand engagement on
social media is a bidimensional structure comprising both informational and
personal interests.
The above studies reveal the following limitations of the existing litera-
ture. For one thing, previous studies focused on customer engagement, e.g.,
Hu and Li (2011), Purnawirawan et al. (2012), etc. These studies aimed
to increase customer engagement in online communities through electronic
word-of-mouth in product reviews. In contrast, analysis of customer engage-
ment with brands on social media platforms is limited. As evidenced in Santini
et al. (2020), previous studies discussed brand factors in customer engagement
studies from the perspective of customer engagement contributions rather
than from the perspective of customer-brand engagement. For another, the
analysis of social media itself as a determinant of customer-brand engagement
has been limited in previous studies. In particular, although previous studies
(e.g.,Chahal & Rani, 2017; Shao & Ross, 2015, etc.) explored customer-
brand engagement on social media, they focused on investigating engagement
on a singular social media platform and failed to consider the relationship
with the choice of social media platform on predicting customer engage-
ment behavior (Shahbaznezhad et al., 2021; Unnava & Aravindakshan, 2021).
Therefore, this chapter attempts to fill the limitations of the existing literature
by examining customer-brand engagement on multiple social media platforms.

2.2 Customer-Brand Engagement and Social Media Platforms

Early customer engagement research failed to address recent technological
innovations that continue to open up new possibilities for customer-brand
interactions (Paruthi & Kaur, 2017). As the technology evolved, customers
were increasingly exposed to social media platforms as a means of expressing
opinions and interacting with brands, which led to brands using social
media to identify and interact with highly engaged customers for specialized
marketing efforts (Baldus et al., 2015). As such, Hollebeek et al. (2014), in
their study of social media setting, defined customer-brand engagement as
brand-related cognitive, emotional, and behavioral activities that are positively
evaluated by customers during or in relation to customer or brand interac-
tions. Kircova et al. (2018) further explain that customer-brand engagement
on social media platforms includes how customers use, share, and talk about
the content related to brands.
Extant literature finds a strong relationship between brands’ portrayal on
social media and customer perceptions about brands (Liu et al., 2020). Hajli
 19 THE PLATFORM REVOLUTION IN INTERACTIVE MARKETING … 437

et al. (2017) state that brand strategies can be developed through social media
because social interactions between customers and brands in online commu-
nities improve relationship quality and brand loyalty. Kamboj et al. (2018)
support that social media significantly influences customer participation, which
in turn influences brand trust and loyalty, and ultimately leads to having a
positive brand image and purchase intention. Social media platforms are a
subfield of social media and are defined as a web-based communication plat-
form in which participants have uniquely identifiable profiles, publicly express
connections, and consume, produce, and interact with user-generated content
(Ellison & Boyd, 2014). Examples of social media platforms are Facebook,
Instagram, TikTok, and more (Parker et al., 2016).
The relevant studies have the following characteristics. First, most of the
studies focus on a singular social media platform, as mentioned earlier. In the
golden age of social media, Facebook mostly dominated the market, gaining
the largest market share, followed by the popularity of microblogs on Twitter.
Scholars were interested in understanding customer engagement on Face-
book (Carlson et al., 2018) or Twitter (Read et al., 2019). Later, scholars are
more interested in customer engagement on Instagram, which has surpassed
Facebook as a platform that continues to grow rapidly (Perrin & Anderson,
2019). Recently, scholars have paid attention to studying customer engage-
ment on TikTok (Vinerean & Opreana, 2021). However, these studies are
mainly from the perspective of social media marketing and content marketing,
and the relevant analysis of customer-brand engagement is still limited because
it is an emerging social media platform. Also, investigations of multiple social
media platforms are limited (Shahbaznezhad et al., 2021), and the existing
literature focuses on the comparisons on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Unnava and Aravindakshan (2021) indicate that recent studies (e.g., Shah-
baznezhad et al., 2021; Voorveld et al., 2018) discussed customer engagement
on multiple social media platforms in terms of social media engagement rather
than customer-brand engagement. Moreover, their study still investigated
customer-brand engagement on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Thus, this
chapter tries to fill the research gap by studying customer-brand engagement
on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok.

2.3 Customer-Brand Engagement Measurement in Social Media

Existing literature supports the use of likes and comments as key metrics for
measuring customer-brand engagement in social media (Godes & Mayzlin,
2009; Unnava & Aravindakshan, 2021). Likes are interpreted as customers
accepting the perception of posts and holding positive attitudes toward brand
images (Antonopoulos et al., 2016). Comments can be considered as a
communication tool that helps marketers to understand customers in advance,
as customers need to speed more energy expressing their thoughts, attitudes,
and feelings when commenting than simply clicking the liking button (Lev-
on & Steinfeld, 2015). Previous studies have shown that user engagement on
438 Z. SHEN

social media, in the form of likes and comments can influence offline customer
behavior positively (Lee et al., 2018; Mochon et al., 2017). For this reason,
gaining customer engagement, such as likes and comments, has become almost
an obsession for many brand and marketing practitioners. They are considered
important tools for customizing a brand’s online message to communicate
effectively with customers (Kim, 2016). Consistent with the existing liter-
ature mentioned above, this chapter identified them as key predictors of
customer-brand engagement on social media platforms.
Besides, the existing literature indicates that relevant studies used survey
methods to collect primary data (Shahbaznezhad et al., 2021). Please see
Table 1 for more details. Since emerging techniques such as data mining
and natural language process have opened up new dimensions for academic
research (Verma & Yadav, 2021), this chapter differentiates the prior studies
by analyzing customer-brand engagement on three social media platforms
through data mining.

3 Methods
To create sample data, this chapter first identified the most popular brands on
Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok based on the official lists of the most engaging
brands, named Best of Tweets, Instagram Trend Reports, and Year on TikTok.
As a criterion, all selected brands actively use all three social media platforms.
Consequently, 10 brands from different sectors were chosen (See Table 2). In
line with previous studies (Godes & Mayzlin, 2009; Unnava & Aravindakshan,
2021), this chapter collected the number of followers, likes, and comments for
these brands from January to June 2021 to calculate customer engagement
rates.
After collection, the data were analyzed by data mining techniques. Data
mining is the process of extracting high-quality information from a collection
of documents and identifying predictive patterns through a series of analyt-
ical tools (Feldman & Sanger, 2007). The existing literature highlights several
main reasons for using data mining in research: (1) unknown and valuable
information can be extracted from the data; (2) meaningful patterns can be
discovered through classification; (3) time and effort for data collection and
analysis can be reduced (Weiss et al., 2010). In addition, the Information
Resources Management Association (2018) endorses the use of various data
mining techniques to monitor social media content, which is an indispensable
tool for research on social media. Therefore, this chapter used data mining
techniques to analyze the collected data.
The coding process was carried out in the following manner. With the
support of Salloum et al.’s methodological framework for data mining on
social media (2017), data of these ten brands were extracted from Twitter,
Instagram, and TikTok, respectively. Based on customer engagement rates,
data from highly engaging posts by brand on each platform were further
analyzed in terms of brand content types and formats (Shahbaznezhad et al.,
 19 THE PLATFORM REVOLUTION IN INTERACTIVE MARKETING … 439

Table 1 Comparison with recent relevant studies

Study Social Media Platforms Methods Key Findings

Carlson et al. (2018) Facebook Survey A theoretical framework

showing how design
characteristics of online
service in social media
brand pages induce
customer value
perceptions
Voorveld et al. (2018) Facebook, YouTube, Survey Engagement is highly
LinkedIn, Twitter, context-specific; it
Google + , Instagram, comprises various types
Pinterest, Snapchat of experiences on each
social media platform
such that each is
experienced in a unique
way
Santini et al. (2020) Facebook, Twitter Meta-analysis Customer engagement
is driven by satisfaction,
positive emotions, and
trust, but not by
commitment
Shahbaznezhad et al. Facebook, Instagram Empirical The effectiveness of
(2021) social media content on
users’ engagement is
moderated by content
context
Unnava and Facebook, Twitter, Empirical Differential carryover,
Aravindakshan (2021) Instagram spillover, and direct
effects within and
across social media
Vinerean and Opreana Facebook Survey Customer engagement
(2021) is a multidimensional
construct that is
important for
predicting and fostering
customer loyalty

2021). The brand content data were separated into a representation of

each word named tokens, which is a process known as tokenization, and
then labeled with relative frequencies. Finally, these data were classified into
different content types and formats based on their relative frequencies for the
discussion of customer-brand engagement. The above steps were performed by
Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK). Due to the word limit here, how to install
and run NLTK is not described here, as the official documentation written by
Bird et al. (2009) can be consulted.
440 Z. SHEN

Table 2 Brand descriptions

No Brands Sectors Followers

Twitter Instagram TikTok

1 Starbucks Beverages 11,009,518 17,838,018 1,800,000

2 Nike Apparel, Sport 8,980,670 88,831,221 2,000,000
3 Disney Entertainment 8,407,817 32,757,118 2,500,000
4 Burberry Apparel, Luxury 8,190,906 18,848,413 86,400
5 H&M Apparel 8,039,379 38,010,068 130,300
6 Gucci Apparel, Luxury 6,666,503 46,847,070 1,600,000
7 GoPro Electronics 2,104,075 18,544,078 1,800,000
8 Ford Cars 1,382,867 5,047,560 41,900
9 Zara Apparel 1,364,815 48,448,195 1,100,000
10 Dove Beauty 186,450 687,362 19,200

4 Findings
4.1 Customer-Brand Engagement on Social Media Platforms
A total of 9,330 brand posts on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok were analyzed
for understanding the effectiveness of customer-brand engagement on social
media platforms. The findings show significant differences in customer-
brand engagement on three social media platforms (see Table 3). Although
Twitter and Instagram have larger follower bases than TikTok, brands’ posts
on TikTok have the highest engagement rates with customers on social
media, while brands’ posts on Twitter have the lowest engagement rates
with customers on social media. Respectively, customers’ liking engagement
with brands on TikTok is higher than that on Twitter and Instagram, and
customers’ commenting engagement with most brands on TikTok is highest
except for H&M. In addition, the difference in customer-brand engagement
for brands on Twitter and Instagram is smaller than the difference on TikTok.
Namely, the difference in customer-brand engagement rates on Twitter is
between 0.007 and 0.075%, and the difference in customer-brand engagement
rates on Instagram is between 0.078 and 1.294%, however, the difference in
customer-brand engagement rates on TikTok is between 2.151 and 174.427%.
The significant difference in customer-brand engagement rates on TikTok
indicates that brand and marketing practitioners have not developed unified
strategies for interactive marketing on TikTok over Twitter and Instagram.
Overall, the findings reveal that customer-brand engagement on social media
platforms can be increased by the choice of social media platform, and TikTok,
an emerging social media platform, has higher customer-brand engagement
than Twitter and Instagram, despite the latter being larger platforms and
widely used by brands.
 19 THE PLATFORM REVOLUTION IN INTERACTIVE MARKETING … 441

Table 3 Customer-brand engagement rates of brands

Brands Twitter

Avg Likes Like Rates (%) Avg Comments Comment Rates Engagement
(%) Rates (%)

Starbucks 1246 0.011 143 0.001 0.012

Nike 7212 0.066 483 0.004 0.070
Disney 3312 0.039 62 0.001 0.040
Burberry 2620 0.032 173 0.002 0.034
H&M 681 0.008 79 0.000 0.008
Gucci 3405 0.051 470 0.007 0.058
GoPro 153 0.007 2 0.000 0.007
Ford 439 0.032 58 0.004 0.036
Zara 146 0.011 38 0.003 0.014
Dove 133 0.071 7 0.004 0.075

Brands Instagram

Avg Likes Like Rates (%) Avg Comments Comment Rates Engagement
(%) Rates (%)

Starbucks 49,341 0.277 670 0.004 0.281

Nike 233,553 0.124 3265 0.002 0.126
Disney 115,918 0.354 467 0.001 0.355
Burberry 14,766 0.078 55 0.003 0.078
H&M 29,513 0.078 87 0.000 0.078
Gucci 163,716 0.349 552 0.001 0.350
GoPro 35,315 0.190 320 0.002 0.192
Ford 64,628 1.280 683 0.014 1.294
Zara 36,764 0.076 833 0.002 0.078
Dove 1425 0.207 49 0.007 0.214

Brands TikTok

Avg Likes Like Rates (%) Avg Comments Comment Rates Engagement
(%) Rates (%)

Starbucks 68,334 3.796 1078 0.060 3.856

Nike 79,335 3.970 393 0.020 3.990
Disney 53,370 2.135 411 0.016 2.151
Burberry 29,977 34.696 303 0.351 35.047
H&M 8341 6.401 0 0.000 6.401
Gucci 80,318 5.020 1298 0.081 5.101
GoPro 693,770 38.543 7933 0.441 38.984

(continued)
442 Z. SHEN

Table 3 (continued)

Brands TikTok

Avg Likes Like Rates (%) Avg Comments Comment Rates Engagement
(%) Rates (%)

Ford 6681 15.945 626 1.494 17.439

Zara 68,914 6.265 409 0.037 6.302
Dove 33,360 173.750 130 0.677 174.427

Regarding brands, there are no significant differences between brand sectors

and between luxury and non-luxury brands in terms of customer-brand
engagement. Moreover, the findings indicate that different brand content
on social media platforms makes no significant differences in customer-brand
engagement. Specifically, Nike and Burberry use different brand content on
three social media platforms. H&M and Gucci use the same brand content on
Twitter and Instagram, but they use different brand content on TikTok. Dove
uses different brand content on Twitter and Instagram, but it uses the same
brand content on Instagram and TikTok. The rest of the brands use the same
brand content on three social media platforms. In this context, the findings
show insignificant differences in their customer-brand engagement. Therefore,
the findings indicate that customer-brand engagement on social media plat-
forms can be increased by employing different social media platforms rather
than brand content differentiation on social media platforms.

4.2 Interactional Content of Brands on Social Media Platforms

Based on customer-brand engagement, high engaging brand posts on three
social media platforms were further analyzed. The findings show that the
informational content of brands is highly engaged with customers on TikTok,
however, they are low engaged on Twitter and Instagram. In the case of
TikTok, interactional content of brands was categorized into four types based
on frequencies of words and hashtags (See Fig. 1): (1) Informational content
of brands. This type of brand content includes announcing brand activi-
ties and introducing brand products (especially new releases) by tagging
brand names and using other keywords such as “campaign”, “collection”,
“#IcedCoffee”, and “#MagicBoots”. (2) Educational content. This type of
brand content comes to customers in the form of tips and advice. For example,
Nike posted a short video of a handstand in Nike shoes with the caption
words “Pro Tip: STRECH before following this @Sky Brown #BreakDown!
Let’s go!”. (3) Festival content. This type of brand content is related to
holiday and seasonal recommendations such as “#holidayTikTok”, “#Happy
Holidays”, “#GucciGift”, etc. (4) Entertaining content. This type of brand
content contains fun short videos and words of wisdom designed to promote
 19 THE PLATFORM REVOLUTION IN INTERACTIVE MARKETING … 443

customer-brand relationships, e.g., “Words to live by: #DovePartner @lizzo

#Dove #SelfLove #SelfCare”.
The findings reveal that the four types mentioned above also appear in
brand content on Twitter and Instagram. As such, regarding the interactional
content of brands, there are no significant differences in content types across
the three social media platforms. Moreover, the findings indicate that the infor-
mational content of brands on TikTok is highly interactive with customers
while interacting with customers on Twitter and Instagram is low. In other
words, from the perspective of customer-brand engagement, there are signifi-
cant differences in content types on three social media platforms. In addition,
it is shown that public events are highly interactive with customers on Twitter
and Instagram. For example, Dove launched a self-esteem project, and its
content related to “hair discrimination”, “black history month”, and “pass
the crown” is highly interactive with customers. However, this type of brand
content is limited on TikTok, where it mainly introduces brand products.
In terms of brand content format, the findings reveal that brands introduce
their products to customers in vivid detail through short videos on TikTok,
which is highly interactive with customers. For example, Gucci uploaded a
short video that demonstrates how to match Gucci outfits by showing how
to match different types and colors of Gucci clothes one by one in the video.
With 146,000 likes and 5300 comments, this short video is one of the most
engaging brand posts for customers. Similarly, Zara shows how to use their
different beauty products to match a beautiful makeup look in a short video,
which has high customer-brand engagement with 887,600 likes and 8100
comments. Also, brand content with short videos is highly interactive with
customers on Twitter and Instagram. For instance, a Nike post with a short
video can have 54,700 likes and 1077 comments, while its posts have an
average of 7212 likes and 483 comments, and its post with photos has 734
likes and 61 comments. Hence, brand content in different formats makes
significant differences in customer-brand engagement, and brand content with
short videos is highly interactive with customers on social media platforms.

(a) Hashtags most used (b) Caption words most used

Fig. 1 Hashtags and caption words most used

444 Z. SHEN

5 Discussion
5.1 Theoretical Implications
This chapter makes a three-fold contribution to the existing literature. First,
this chapter extends the literature on customer-brand engagement in Inter-
active marketing on social media. Previous studies focused on customer
engagement rather than customer-brand engagement on social media (Hu &
Li, 2011; Purnawirawan et al., 2012; Santini et al., 2020). For this reason,
there is limited analysis of customer-brand engagement on social media.
Moreover, the analysis of social media itself as a determinant of customer-
brand engagement has been limited in previous studies (Shahbaznezhad et al.,
2021). As such, this chapter extends the existing literature by examining
customer-brand engagement on different social media platforms. The findings
are consistent with previous results that customer-brand engagement is highly
context-specific and that it can be increased by the choice of social media plat-
form (Shahbaznezhad et al., 2021; Unnava & Aravindakshan, 2021; Voorveld
et al., 2018).
Second, this chapter fills a gap in the relevant literature on customer-brand
engagement on multiple social media platforms, particularly the limited under-
standing of customer-brand engagement on TikTok. The pertinent literature
is limited in its analysis of different social media platforms (Unnava & Aravin-
dakshan, 2021). Most relevant studies have focused on a singular social media
platform, especially Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram (Carlson et al., 2018;
Shao & Ross, 2015; Vinerean & Opreana, 2021). As such, this chapter extends
the above studies by examining customer-brand engagement on Twitter, Insta-
gram, and TikTok. In particular, it extends the current limited understanding
of customer-brand engagement on TikTok, an emerging social media plat-
form. The findings support previous research that TikTok can affect customer
engagement (Vinerean & Opreana, 2021). Based on Latane’s Social Impact
Theory (1981), as more users use TikTok, the platform becomes normal-
ized, and building more immersive and engaging content can become more
common (i.e., video sharing and music integration with content). Popular
users help this impact grow even more as new users are attracted. Thus,
this chapter shows that TikTok has higher customer-brand engagement than
Twitter and Instagram, but is not yet widely used by brands.
Finally, this chapter extends the current limited understanding of customer-
brand engagement on social media platforms in terms of brand content types
and formats. Regarding brand content types, previously scholars argued one
size does not fit all and emphasized the factors of social media content
factors on customer engagement (Chahal & Rani, 2017; Pelletier et al., 2020;
Swani et al., 2013). For this reason, brands adopt different content strate-
gies for different social media platforms. For instance, GoPro uses Twitter
primarily to post product information and communicate with customers, its
Instagram to showcase the quality of its cameras and promote user-generated
posts, and its TikTok to upload short videos showing tips and tutorials on
 19 THE PLATFORM REVOLUTION IN INTERACTIVE MARKETING … 445

how to use its products. The findings are inconsistent with previous studies
that customer-brand engagement can be increased by different brand content
across social media platforms. Instead, this chapter indicates that brand content
differentiation on multiple social media platforms cannot significantly affect
customer-brand engagement on social media platforms.
It is also evidenced by the findings in this chapter that informational
content of brands such as announcements of brand activities and products
have high levels of customer-brand engagement on TikTok. Earlier studies
have also shown that social networking advertisements which are rich in
terms of credible information content and thereby also entertaining in nature,
which positively impacts the quality of life, usually generates a positive atti-
tude toward the advertisement in the mind of the network user (Mukherjee &
Banerjee, 2017; Taylor et al., 2011). The findings of the present chapter are
in sync with earlier studies in this aspect, however, this chapter reveals that the
engagement of informational content on Twitter and Instagram is low. This
chapter argues that this is because of brand content formats. The findings show
that customer-brand engagement on social media platforms can be increased
by brand content formats, as evidenced by the high customer-brand engage-
ment of brand content in short videos on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok.
Therefore, this chapter fills a gap in the limited analysis on the role of content
formats in customer-brand engagement on social media (Shahbaznezhad et al.,
2021), and highlights that customer-brand engagement on social media plat-
forms can be increased by the choice of social media platforms and brand
content formats, rather than brand content differentiation on different social
media platforms.

5.2 Managerial Implications

From a practical perspective, this chapter also provides several insights for
brand and marketing practitioners. Since TikTok has been shown to have high
customer-brand engagement, brand and marketing practitioners are encour-
aged to use TikTok to increase customer-brand engagement on social media.
When selecting the brands investigated in this chapter, it was found that
TikTok is not widely used by brands yet. Many brands such as Sprout Social,
Marlboro, and Costco do not have official TikTok accounts. For those brands
already on TikTok, the number of followers is far less than on Twitter and
Instagram and the difference in customer-brand engagement rates on TikTok
is significant, suggesting that brands need to work on their TikTok brand pages
to attract more followers and increase customer-brand engagement. Specifi-
cally, based on the findings in this chapter, it is recommended that brand and
marketing practitioners use more informational content of brands to engage
with customers on TikTok, which is highly interactive with customers on
TikTok.
Furthermore, brand and marketing practitioners may consider using the
same informational content of brands to engage with customers on Twitter,
446 Z. SHEN

Instagram, and TikTok. Currently, brand and marketing practitioners focus

more on Twitter and Instagram than TikTok because they have larger follower
bases, which can be traced by the frequency of brand posts, the number of
brand posts and followers, and different brand content types. For this reason,
brand and marketing practitioners have difficulty coordinating their efforts
on three social media platforms. Considering customer-brand engagement on
social media platforms cannot be increased by brand content differentiation on
social media platforms, the use of the same informational content of brands
can help brand practitioners save time and effort. Additionally, brand and
marketing practitioners are advised to use the same informational content of
brands together with short videos on Twitter and Instagram, as short videos
are found to be highly interactive between brands and customers on both
social media platforms. Finally, brand and marketing practitioners may consider
using short videos together with other brand content types in their Interac-
tive marketing on Twitter and Instagram in order to increase customer-brand
engagement.

5.3 Limitations and Future Research

Naturally, this chapter has several limitations, which enlightens new directions
for future research. For one thing, this chapter exemplified customer-brand
engagement on social media platforms by brands of different sectors on
Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. Future research could consider exploring
more brands from more sectors, a specific sector and different social media
platforms (YouTube, Reddit, etc.) to test different effects of customer-brand
engagement on social media. For instance, it would be interesting to further
examine the effectiveness of social media platforms on customer-brand engage-
ment for personal and organizational brands, as evidenced by Devereux et al.
(2020) that small businesses with limited resources need to make important
overall decisions about which platforms are best for marketing their business.
For another, this chapter finds that customer-brand engagement on social
media is related to social media platforms and brand content formats, rather
than brand content differentiation on social media platforms. In addition
to these factors, other factors such as product factors (e.g., product types),
customer factors (e.g., demographic groups), and influencers’ effects (e.g.,
celebrities) have been proposed in the existing literature (Purnawirawan et al.,
2012; Shao & Ross, 2015). These factors are not considered in this chapter
because the focus of this chapter is on the brand factors of customer-
brand engagement, and influencers are not frequently used by brands on
TikTok. Therefore, future research could consider investigating these factors
of customer-brand engagement on social media platforms such as customer
motivation, perception, and trust.
 19 THE PLATFORM REVOLUTION IN INTERACTIVE MARKETING … 447

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 CHAPTER 20

When in Rome, Do as the Romans Do:

Differences of Interactive Behaviors Across
Social Media Networks

Qingjiang Yao

1 Introduction
Social media have grown into an instrumental marketing tool: in 2021, 42%
of the world population, 93% of internet users, and 85% of mobile users spend
a daily average of 2 h and 24 min on social media (40% of those users are
for business purpose. Dean, 2021; Khoros, 2021); in the U.S., 72% of the
population use social media (84% of 18–29, 81% of 30–49, 73% of 50–64;
66% of the males, 78% of the females; 69% of the Whites, 77% of the Blacks,
and 80% of the Hispanics), who are more likely to have higher income, better
education, and live in urban areas (Pelletier et al., 2020; Pew Research Center,
2021). More importantly, 51% of Americans and 40% of Canadians are now
consuming news from social media (Walker & Matsa, 2021; Yao, 2021a),
turning it into an indispensable source of information.
A survey of 4,300 marketers in the world (55% from the U.S.) shows
that most of them use social media in campaigns (41% with full-time staff)
to increase exposure (88%) or traffic to their websites (79%), generate leads
(69%), develop loyal fans (61%), improve sales (60%), provide marketplace
insights (56%), or grow business partnerships (50%. Stelzner, 2021). Social
media advertising created 41.5 billion in revenue in 2020, raising by 16.3%
from the previous year and accounting for 29.6% of all internet ad revenue

Q. Yao (B)
Lamar University, Beaumont, TX, USA
e-mail: qyao@lamar.edu

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 451

Switzerland AG 2023
C. L. Wang (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Interactive Marketing,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14961-0_20
452 Q. YAO

(IAB, 2021). Social media have transformed marketing into a two-way, multi-
sided value creation process (Wang, 2021) for marketers to connect, engage,
coordinate, and collaborate with consumers.
Globally popular social media, based on visitor traffics, include YouTube,
Tmall (a Chinese social shopping site), QQ (a Chinese social networking
service, or SNS, site), Facebook, Taobao (a Chinese social shopping site),
JD (a Chinese social shopping site), Amazon, Wikipedia, Weibo (a Chinese
microblogging site), Zoom, Reddit, and Instagram. The U.S. top list of social
media consists of YouTube, Amazon, Facebook, Zoom, Reddit, Wikipedia,
eBay, Instagram, LinkedIn, Esty, Walmart, Twitter, and Twitch (https://
www.alexa.com/topsites). Pew Research Center (2021) provides a similar U.S.
ranking of social media based on percentage of U.S. adults as users: YouTube
(81%), Facebook (69%), Instagram (40%), Pinterest (31%), LinkedIn (28%),
Snapchat (25%), Twitter (23%), WhatsApp (23%), TikTok (21%), Reddit
(18%), and Nextdoor (13%). Those different types of social media attract
different segments of consumers, facilitate different uses and co-creation activ-
ities (Pelletier et al., 2020), and feature different functions for marketers to
employ, who should “when in Rome, do as the Romans do” to build more
effective interactive campaigns. This chapter categorizes social media into
five types, provides category representatives, examines the demographics of
their users, identifies their five major functions in interactive marketing, and
discusses related measurement and ethical issues.

2 Categories, Representatives,
and User Demographics of Social Media
Social media are widely defined as a group of online applications that are
built on Web 2.0 and facilitate the creation and exchange of User Gener-
ated Content, which are usually categorized into six types: (1) collaborative
projects/forums, (2) blogs and microblogs, (3) content communities, (4)
social networking service (SNS) sites, (5) virtual game worlds, and (6) virtual
social worlds (Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010; Li & Stacks, 2015). Researchers have
also classified social media in other ways (e.g., Dewing, 2012; Moran, 2017;
Quesenberry, 2019), and some categories are not included in the catego-
rization above: ratings and reviews (Quesenberry, 2019) or consumer review
networks (Moran, 2017), social shopping networks, and sharing economy
networks (Moran, 2017). Meanwhile, some categories above (e.g., 2 and 3, 5
and 6) can be combined. This chapter regroups those classifications into five
categories for parsimony and comprehensiveness, whose representatives’ user
profiles (suggesting specific marketing focuses and strategies) and marketing
functions are discussed in the following section.
 20 WHEN IN ROME, DO AS THE ROMANS DO … 453

2.1 Social Networking

This is the most popular category of social media that enables users to connect
with people and build or maintain personal, social, or professional relation-
ships. SNS sites allow both parties in a relationship to see each other’s activities
equally. To ensure the quality of the relationships, limits of contacts or connec-
tions are usually installed. Representatives are Facebook (limited to 5,000
friends) and LinkedIn (limited to 30,000 connections); Snapchat also belongs
to this category (limited to 6,000 friends. See Table 1). Point-to-point SNS
media such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp are a special case in this
category.

2.1.1 Facebook
Founded in 2004, Facebook has over 2.7 billion monthly active users globally
(Rodriguez, 2021), with 86% of those aged 18–29, 77% 30–49, 54% females,
and more than 81% of each income group, who in average spend 35 min per
day, mostly from a mobile device (96%. Khoros, 2021). In the U.S., 70% of
the users visit it at least once a day, 17% at least once a week, who are more
likely to be women, those with a college degree or more, aged 18–29, or with
an annual family income of $30 k–$49,999 (Pew Research Center, 2021).
Because 47% of the U.S. adults get news from Facebook (64% of women vs.
men, 35%; Whites, 60% vs. Hispanics, 20% and Blacks, 11%. Walker & Matsa,
2021), it has an immense influence on users and their Facebook friends or
friends of friends (Bond et al., 2012). Most global marketers (93%) use Face-
book, 54% think of it as the most important social platform for marketers,
and 47% plan to increase their Facebook marketing in the next 12 months
(Stelzner, 2021). Facebook marketing is particularly effective when consumers
have low involvement or a stronger relationship with the brands, or physically
live closer to the marketers (Xue, 2019); it does not focus on a specific usage
intention or co-creation activity (Pelletier et al., 2020).

2.1.2 LinkedIn
Launched in 2003, LinkedIn is a professional SNS site and has almost 810
million members globally in more than 200 countries/territories (https://
about.linkedin.com), with 57% being men, 60% aged 25–34, and over 77%
outside of the U.S. (Newberry & Beveridge, 2022). In the U.S, it reaches
28% of the adults and is used more by men, the Whites or the Blacks,
and those aged 30–49, 50–64, having a family income of more than $75 k
(50%), with a college degree (50%), or living in suburban or urban areas
(Pew Researcher Center, 2021). 27% of the users regularly consume news
from it (Walker & Matsa, 2021). 61% of the global marketers (81% of the
B2B marketers) use it; although only 15% report it as the most important
social platform for marketers, more than half (54%) plan to increase LinkedIn
marketing (Stelzner, 2021).
Table 1 User Demographics of the Representative Social Media
454

SNS Content Sharing Social Knowledge

Facebook (%) LinkedIn Snapchat YouTube (%) Twitter Instagram TikTok Reddit Pinterest
Q. YAO

(%) (%) (%) (%) (%) (%) (%)

Gender Men 61 31 22 82 25 36 17 23 16
Women 77 26 28 80 22 44 24 12 46
Age 18–29 70 30 65 95 42 71 48 36 32
30–49 77 36 24 91 27 48 22 22 34
50–64 73 33 12 83 18 29 14 10 38
65 + 50 11 2 49 7 13 4 3 18
Ethnicity White 67 29 23 79 22 35 18 17 34
Black 74 27 26 84 29 49 30 17 35
Hispanic 72 19 31 85 23 52 31 14 18
Family < $30 K 70 12 25 75 12 35 22 10 21
Income $30 K–$49,999 76 21 27 83 29 45 29 17 33
$50 K–$74,999 61 21 29 79 22 39 20 20 29
≥ $75 K 70 50 28 90 34 47 20 26 40
Education ≤ high school 64 10 21 70 14 30 21 9 22
Some college 71 28 32 86 26 44 24 20 36
College graduate 73 51 23 89 33 49 19 26 37
Living Area Urban 70 30 28 84 27 45 24 18 30
Suburban 70 33 25 81 23 41 20 21 32
Rural 67 15 18 74 18 25 16 10 34
 SNS Content Sharing Social Knowledge

Facebook (%) LinkedIn Snapchat YouTube (%) Twitter Instagram TikTok Reddit Pinterest
(%) (%) (%) (%) (%) (%) (%)

Total 69 28 25 81 23 40 21 18 31

Note Statistics are from the Pew Research Center (2021), which has no user info for the representatives of social media for shopping, rating, and reviewing
media and virtual world. Entries are % of U.S. adults who say they ever use that social media
20
WHEN IN ROME, DO AS THE ROMANS DO …
455
456 Q. YAO

2.2 Content Sharing

This category of social media enables users to create and share textual, imagery,
or audiovisual content to an audience, whose members are sometimes regis-
tered users and sometimes not. Content sharing platforms mainly facilitate a
broadcasting model that allows the followers/subscribers to be updated by
the content sharer. Examples are YouTube and Twitter; Instagram, TikTok,
Twitch, and blogs or podcasts are also content-sharing social media.

2.2.1 YouTube
YouTube, a video-sharing platform launched in 2005 and acquired by Google
in 2006, has 1.7 billion unique monthly users globally. Those users largely
look for musical, gaming, and sports content, 54% male and 22% accessing
via mobile, spending almost 24 h each month watching and visiting twice
as many pages as desktop users; YouTube ads reach mostly males aged 25–
34 or users from India or the U.S. (McLachlan, 2022). In the U.S., 54% of
adults use YouTube daily and 29%, weekly, with 81% having used it. It is more
popular among the younger generations of Americans (95% of 18–29 and 85%
of 13–17), the Hispanics or Blacks, and those with a family income of more
than $75 K (90%), with a college degree or some college education, or living
in the urban or suburban areas (Pew Research Center, 2021). Americans use
YouTube mainly for five purposes: to figure out how to do things they haven’t
done before (51%); to pass time (28%); to acquire info and decide whether
to buy a product (19%); to understand things happening in the world (19%.
Smith et al., 2018). 26% of American adults get news from it (Stocking et al.,
2020) and 81% of the parents let children watch it (34% doing so regularly.
Newberry, 2021a). More than half (55%) of global marketers use YouTube,
although only 6% think of it as the most important social platform (Stelzner,
2021). A function of YouTube marketing is fulfilled by the YouTubers, influ-
encers whose channels have thousands or more subscribers and can influence
them in cognitive, affective, and behavioral aspects via self-connection, love,
and trust (Correa et al., 2020). Ford, for instance, selected a group of YouTu-
bers similar to their target consumers for Fiesta in the launching campaign and
sent the new car to let them do fun things and post videos. That “Ford Fiesta
Movement” campaign created 6.5 million views (Kodish, 2015).

2.2.2 Twitter
Launched in 2006, Twitter enables users to post messages up to 280 charac-
ters with photos or videos and has 211 million daily active users worldwide
(Hutchinson, 2021), who are more likely 25–34 (38.5%) or 35–49 years old
(20.7%. https://www.statista.com/statistics/283119/age-distribution-of-glo
bal-twitter-users/) and live outside of the U.S. (80%. Shel, 2020). Twitter
content and ads are mostly consumed in the U.S., Japan (where Twitter is
the most popular western social media), the UK, Saudi Arabia, and Brazil
(Shel, 2020). In the U.S., it is used by 46% of the adults daily (27%, weekly)
 20 WHEN IN ROME, DO AS THE ROMANS DO … 457

and preferred by men, Black people, and those aged 18–29 (42%), with some
college education or above, with a family income of $75 K + , or live in
urban or suburban areas (Pew Research Center, 2021). 55% of the users
consume news regularly from it (Walker & Matsa, 2021) and 48% of the global
marketers use it in 2021 (Stelzner, 2021). Twitter campaigns are more effec-
tive for informational and social purposes (Pelletier et al., 2020): for instance,
realizing that 80% of women encountered negative chatters on social media,
Dove countered back and created the #SpeakBeautiful Effect campaign on
Twitter in 2016, gaining 800 million impressions (Harmeling et al., 2017).

2.3 Social Knowledge, News, and Bookmarking

These social media enable users to collectively build, share, or save news
or knowledge. Examples are Wikipedia and Reddit; Pinterest is also in this
category.

2.3.1 Wikipedia
Wikipedia is a social collaboration knowledge site founded in 2001. Avail-
able in 315 languages for more than 50 million registered users and with a
daily average page view of 258 million, its top three languages are English,
Cebuano, and Swedish, and its top three countries of editor feeders are the
U.S., Germany, and Russia (Chang, 2022). Its most visited English pages
cover the topics of ISIS, Google, Facebook, Bollywood movies, etc.; Japanese
pages: world of comics, movies, etc.; Spanish pages: volleyball, WWI, etc.;
Russian pages: VK, classmates, etc. (Anderson et al., 2016). It is used more
by those aged 18–29, 62% v. 30–49, 52%; 50–64, 49%; 65 + , 33%. (https://
www.statista.com/statistics/271189/us-wikipedia-users-by-age-group/); the
Whites (55% v. Blacks, 43%; Hispanics, 40%), or people with some college
education (52%) or above (69% v. high-school diploma holders, 41%; or below,
30%. Heimlich, 2011). Most of its English editors are male (84%) or from the
U.S. (20%), who volunteer to edit to share knowledge (71%), make informa-
tion free (69%), fulfill the fun of contribution (63%), or fulfill professional
obligations (7%. Chang, 2022). Its content reliability has been recognized
(Jerusalem Post Staff, 2022).

2.3.2 Reddit
Reddit, launched in 2005, is a social news and bookmarking forum that allows
users to share and comment on news or issues and vote for their popularity. It
has more than 2.5 million communities (subreddits) on different topics (top
five: r/Askreddit, r/funny, r/todaylearned, r/Science, and r/pics) and 430
million monthly active users, mainly from the U.S. (46.8%), UK (6.4%), and
Canada (5.3%. WebsiteBuilder, 2021). Reddit reaches 18% of the U.S. adults,
used more by men, White or Black people, and those aged 18–29 (36%),
with an annual family income of $50 K or above, or living in suburban or
urban areas (Pew Research Center, 2021). Attractive posts should be under
458 Q. YAO

120 characters and posted on the weekends or Mondays (Lin, 2021). 39% of
its U.S. users regularly consume news from it (Walker & Matsa, 2021).

2.4 Social Shopping, Rating, and Reviewing

These social media allow users to find, shop, or review products/services on
their platforms, in a business-to-business (B2B), business-to-consumer (B2C),
or consumer-to-consumer (C2C) form. This category is often ignored by
social media researchers but plays a significant role in interactive marketing.
Representatives are Amazon and Yelp. Social media in other categories may
also maintain such a function, such as Facebook’s Marketplace.

2.4.1 Amazon
Created in 1994 as a small online bookstore, Amazon has evolved into a
giant social shopping site with 300 million active users (197 million monthly
active users), generating an annual revenue of more than $280 billion (Curry,
2022). Amazon enjoys about 50% of the U.S. e-commerce market and serves
customers in more than 100 countries, who tend to be younger, wealthier,
and more educated (Petrov, 2022). Amazon reviews, most extremely positive
or negative, are found civil and helpful to users and written with the strate-
gies of expressing disappointment or explicit complaints, expressing anger,
drawing one’s conclusion, or warning others; they improve customer percep-
tion of the usefulness and social presence of the social shopping site (Kilic &
Karatepe, 2021). Amazon also has over 200 million prime customers world-
wide, covering two-thirds of U.S. households (Petrov, 2022). It has 12.1% of
the connected TV market, 55 million music users, 175 million prime video
subscribers, and 67–85% of the e-book market (Curry, 2022).

2.4.2 Yelp
Yelp, founded in 2004, allows customers to evaluate and comment on local
businesses and has 244 million reviews, which were mainly generated by
customers with a college education or above (80%) or $100 K + annual house-
hold income (55%. https://www.yelp-press.com/company/fast-facts/default.
aspx). Yelp users are also more likely to be female (53%), living in urban areas
(50%), or relatively younger (25–34: 29%; 35–44: 28%), 78% of whom are
active on social media daily. 12% of U.S. consumers use yelp, mostly discussing
food and drinks (56%), movies and series (45%), vacation and travel (43%),
music (42%), and even politics (25%). Users recommend the brands/products
because they like the product (77%), brand (67%), customer service (54%),
or discounts or giveaways (46%). 79% of them trust yelp reviews as much as
recommendations from family or friends. 94% of the users are more likely to
purchase if the reviews are positive, and 92% are less likely to buy when seeing
negative reviews (Andre, 2022).
 20 WHEN IN ROME, DO AS THE ROMANS DO … 459

2.5 Virtual World

This category of social media enables users to enjoy social activities, inter-
actions, or games in a computer-simulated, 360º, 3-D environment, whose
essence is well caught in the concept “metaverse” (https://about.facebook.
com/meta/), a term appearing in the sci-fi literature since 1992 and popu-
larized lately by some tech giants such as Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg
(Ravenscraft, 2021). Virtual world also tends to be ignored by social media
researchers, but it represents the future of social media and interactive
marketing because it can encompass all other categories of social media in one
platform and is very promising with the quick development in big data, VR,
AR, and artificial intelligence (Edelman, 2022). Representatives are Second
Life or the Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs)
such as Roblox and World of Warcraft (WoW).

2.5.1 Second Life

Launched in 2003, Second Life, an immersive online social platform, enables
its one million users (in their digital avatars) to live in a virtual world and work,
build structures or communities, create arts, travel, involve in daily life or
professional interactions, and buy or sell digital goods with digital currencies
that can be converted into U.S. dollars (Edelman, 2022). Users tend to be in
their 40–50s and creative, imaginative, or unconventional, some with physical
or mental disabilities that hinder real-life interactions, some unsatisfied with
their real-world identity or relationships, and some seeking fantasies with the
magic powers of teleporting, flying, or changing the viewing angles (Buscemi,
2020; Jamison, 2017; Lee, 2017). Some users have integrated their virtual and
real worlds and extended significant relationships in the former into the latter
(Buscemi, 2020; Scarlette, 2022), creating a combination that is closer to the
meaning of the buzzword “metaverse” (Ravenscraft, 2021). Many organiza-
tions, even universities, have bought lands and buildings in Second Life for
branding or teaching (Rospiglios, 2022). The COVID-19 pandemic and the
emergence of the metaverse concept reenergize Second Life, which will be
further bolstered by its integration with VR and AR advancements (Edelman,
2022; Jamison, 2017).

2.5.2 MMORPGs
MMORPGs are video games played online with massive players simultane-
ously. Those virtual environments have pre-designed characters, settings, and
storylines (themes) for players to choose and interact or compete with fellow
players, trade digital commodities, and complete challenges to gain awards
(Danka, 2020). Players are driven to the game mainly by status-seeking,
flow, skills with the game, and social motivation (Dindar, 2018), or achieve-
ment, social interaction, and immersion (Kneer et al., 2019). Only about 41%
of players are female, who lean more toward cooperative or self-identifiable
games; males lean more toward competitive games, such as shooter or sports
460 Q. YAO

games, and are more likely to play obsessively (Kneer et al., 2019). The
most popular MMORPGs include Roblox and World of Warcraft. Roblox,
a free sandbox social gaming platform with over 150 million users, allows
users to create or play games (Rospigliosi, 2022), many of which help users
to learn real-life experiences in a virtual setting (Wardhana, 2021). WoW
features a fantasy world in which gamers (approximately 1.2 million daily;
https://mmostats.com) choose a character based on personalities, ideologies,
or other factors, customize their avatars, and fight with or against other players
(Morcos et al., 2021). VR and AR technologies are also popularizing the VR
MMORPGs, such as Ilysia, Orbus VR, and VRKfraft. In 2016 Roblox also
released its VR version (https://fictiontalk.com/2022/02/21/top-vr-mmo
rpgs-to-play-in-2022/).

3 Main Interactive Marketing

Functions of Social Media
Interactive marketing activities on social media can be very creative and mostly
are executed in one or more of the following five forms.

3.1 Organic Contents

These are the texts, images, and videos created and posted through social
media’s natural function and are the major form of social media marketing.
Fortune-500 companies are found heavy users of organic content. For them,
on average, a Facebook post generates 960 likes, 88 comments, and 81 shares;
a tweet generates 4 likes/favorites, 8 retweets, and less than 1 comment; a
YouTube channel has 385 videos, 14,238 subscribers, and 9,314,198 video
views, with each video about 3.5 min long and generating about 33,989
views, 87 likes, 9 dislikes, 13 comments, 40 shares (Li & Stacks, 2015).
Research has shown that, when creating organic content, a video doubles
the likes and shares, a photo increases the likes by 15% and shares by 11%,
and an exclamation mark increases both the likes and shares by more than
50%; although recommended by some industry experts (e.g., Luttrell, 2019),
a link/URL decreases the likes by 13%, comments by 16%, and shares by
20%, a tag/mention decreases the likes by 47%, and a hashtag decreases
the comments by 19%. Some copy strategies are also proposed to increase
audience interaction, such as writing snappy or short copies and asking ques-
tions (Yao, 2021a); using new titles, new images, quotes, and call to action;
building a unique and related profile page; keeping the contents attractive,
interactive, and fresh; adding badges, widgets, and apps; making the contents
sharable; and honoring trust, respect, values, fluidity, tolerance, plain writing,
sensibleness, friendliness, consistency, and clear consequences (Luttrell, 2019).
Organic posts can produce exciting results. For instance, Instagram is found
the most preferred social media platform for entertainment and brand-involved
co-creation activities (Pelletier et al., 2020), and in 2013, Mercedes Benz
 20 WHEN IN ROME, DO AS THE ROMANS DO … 461

posted 150 stunning photo ads to its Instagram account in the “Take the
Wheel” campaign, creating 87 million impressions and 2 million likes (Dua,
2014). The same year, when millions were watching the Super Bowl and a
power outage happened, Oreo tweeted “you can still dunk in the dark,” which
was immediately retweeted 15,000 times and created a warm brand association
(Nesamoney, 2015). Research by the Word-of-Mouth Marketing Association
(WOMMA) finds that 78% of consumers are influenced by a brand’s social
media posts (Quesenberry, 2019).

3.2 Influencer Marketing and Social World-of-Mouth (WoM)

Social media influencers can be celebrities, successful athletes, or business exec-
utives, or other highly visible persons in the real world, whose social media
usually have vast followers; but ordinary people effective in content creation on
social media can also attract a substantial number of followers (Luttrell, 2019).
For instance, with 192 K followers on TikTok, Viviane Audi is an “ordinary”
influencer often working with Walmart and DSW (Newberry, 2021b). On
Instagram, “ordinary” influencers Addison Rae (38.7 million followers), Huda
Kattan (49 million followers), Khaby Lame (35.7 million followers), Kayla
Itsines (13 million followers), and Zach King (24 million followers) can some-
times earn $1.6 million for each sponsored post (https://digitalmarketinginsti
tute.com/blog/9-of-the-biggest-social-media-influencers-on-instagram). The
most popular Twitch streamers, “ordinary” influencers who are also active on
Twitter and Instagram, can earn an hourly rate as high as $2398.62 (Miller,
2020). Compared to celebrity influencers, those “ordinary” influencers repre-
sent more of the future of interactive marketing with their closeness to
consumers’ lives and their active interaction with the consumers (Wang, 2021).
Influencer marketing is more suitable with social media in the content-sharing
and social news or knowledge categories, which have no follower limitation,
although accounts with a small amount of followers/contacts (allowed on
all social media) can still be useful in interactive B2B marketing (Harshita,
Shetty, & Sairam, 2021).
Based on the size of followers, influencers are mostly classified into four
types: mega, with followers of more than 1 million; macro, 100,000–1 million;
micro, 1,000–100,000; nano, less than 1,000 (Ariestya et al., 2020; Harshita,
Shetty, & Sairam, 2021). Some researchers also distinguish celebrity influ-
encers from mega-influencers, because “they are famous independent of their
social media activities” (Giuffredi et al., 2022, p. 20). Influencers need to
maintain five main characteristics to accumulate fame and leadership on their
platforms: (1) credibility, (2) storytelling and content quality, (3) actual and
aspired image homophily, (4) consistency, and (5) fit with the platform (Al-
Emadi & Yahia, 2020). To persuade, their posts should feature attractiveness,
likability, parasocial relationship, entertainment, informational value, fairness
of the social interaction, etc. (Rohde & Mau, 2021). While mega-influencers
may increase followers’ knowledge of the product/service, nano-influencers
462 Q. YAO

can ensure trustworthiness, and all influencers will be more effective if the
sponsorship is disclosed (Giuffredi et al., 2022).
Some 18–24 years old (14%) and millennials (11%) have bought some-
thing in the past six months upon influencer recommendation, and 68% of
U.S. marketers use influencers (93% on Instagram, 68% on Facebook and
TikTok each, and 48% on YouTube), whom marketers use to generate rele-
vance, reach, and resonance with their brand, in a way personalized to the
consumers, and find with software such as Hootsuite, Right Relevance Pro,
or Fourstarzz Influencer Recommendation Engine (Newberry, 2021b). When
Buick promoted its 2013 luxury model Encore, it launched the “Pinboard to
Dashboard” campaign, contracted 10 Pinterest influencers to demonstrate the
interior and exterior designs of the car in their posts, and eventually attracted
more than 17 million unique visitors from multiple social media platforms
(Luttrell, 2019).
Influencer marketing often produces positive WoM on social media.
WOMMA has officially announced its dedication to social media marketing,
and its research finds that a typical U.S. consumer mentions a brand name
about sixty times a week in online or offline conversations; Forrester Research
estimates that consumers create about 500 billion social media impressions
about products or services in a year; meanwhile, a Nielson study finds that
83% global consumers trust recommendations from people they know and
66% trusts consumer posts online (Quesenberry, 2019). Social media inter-
action and eWoM, together with trendiness, are key to enhancing consumer
brand engagement, awareness, and knowledge (Cheung et al., 2019).

3.3 Social Advertising

Most social media have advertising functions, which can generate three forms
of ads: search ads, display ads, and sponsored posts. Social advertising, a
part of computational advertising, is fulfilled through social media’s business
account or ad management software, such as Amazon Ads (https://advert
ising.amazon.com. Riserbato, 2021), Meta Ads Manager (for Facebook and
Instagram. https://www.facebook.com/business. Stec, 2021), and Google
Ads (for YouTube. https://ads.google.com. Yao, 2021b). Social ads can reach
users beyond followers of a brand or an influencer on the platforms or even
the entire internet public.
Among the three forms of social ads, social search ads (on Amazon and
Yelp. Riserbato, 2021) are created with keywords and triggered if consumers
search with them. Those ads will then compete with other ads with similar
keywords based on ad quality and bid price, and the winner will be deployed
to the consumers’ screens. Social display ads (on YouTube, Facebook, and
blogs) are deployed in the social media platform’s advertising areas based on
the demographic, geographic, or lifestyle (interest) criteria set by the marketers
and data collected from consumers’ digital traces (Stec, 2021; Yao, 2021b).
Those display ads are more effective in providing informative and engaging
 20 WHEN IN ROME, DO AS THE ROMANS DO … 463

content, particularly when they are related to brand-personality attributes

or user-generated content (UGC), geared toward more engaged consumers,
and focused on personal relevance (Xue, 2019). Sponsored posts, a type of
native advertising also called promoted or boosted posts, are embedded with
the organic posts, only with “sponsored” (on Facebook, Twitter, etc.) or
“promoted” (on LinkedIn, Reddit, etc.) marked. Sponsored posts congruent
with the organic posts generate clear psychological engagement and affective
responses, which indirectly stimulate behavioral engagement, but incon-
gruent sponsored posts directly lead to behavioral engagement (Sheiner et al.,
2021). All social ads can include texts, images, and videos, and marketers are
mostly charged only when ads are clicked by interested consumers for further
information or ordering (Riserbato, 2021; Stec, 2021; Yao, 2021b).
Social ads can also be deployed on one or more social media plat-
forms, or even as a component of a bigger digital campaign that includes
videos, websites, streaming, voice, TV, or digital outdoor platforms, through
programmatic advertising platforms (Rogers, 2017). Those platforms deploy
ads in multiple venues automatically based on preset audience criteria, budget,
goals, and other campaign settings (Samuel et al., 2021), and they consist of
demand-side platforms (DSP, such as Adobe Advertising Cloud and AdRoll),
supply-side platforms (SSP, such as PubMatic, Google Ads, and Criteo),
and ad-exchange/data-management platforms (DMP, such as Xandr and
SmartyAds). Data are the key to the efficiency of programmatic advertising
(Rogers, 2017).

3.4 Social Event Planning

Social media also allow marketers to organize events through some func-
tions, such as Twitter live/streaming or chats, Reddit Ask Me Anything
(AMA), and Snapchat filters and lenses. In a Reddit AMA, a person is inter-
viewed by a vast community of users and answers their questions on live.
Reddit AMAs can be used to generate brand exposure, enhance brand senti-
ment, collect consumer feedback, increase new users, interact with current
customers, and get media coverage, as did by Nissan, The Economist, Audi,
and SpaceX (https://www.semrush.com/blog/how-to-host-a-successful-red
dit-ama/). On Snapchat, functions such as filters and lenses can be used to
modify images or videos to make fun. In a 2016 campaign, Taco Bell invited
consumers to use a Cinco de Mayo lens to turn themselves into a giant taco,
which attracted more than 100 million users and generated 224 million views
(Luttrell, 2019). Social media also provide features to help marketers orga-
nize offline events, such as countdowns, event pages, hashtags, influencers,
scheduling, live streaming, giveaway contests, AR filters or lenses, social walls
(displaying on the site), etc.
Shoppable live advertising/promotion, a type of live streaming promo-
tional event on social media, has been bolstered by the COVID-19
464 Q. YAO

pandemic (Plangger et al., 2021), in which influencers promote prod-

ucts/services to provoke instant purchases for their own businesses or their
clients (e.g., https://advertising.amazon.com/solutions/products/amazon-
live). Such live streaming needs to construct a sociable and interactive
atmosphere to reduce purchasing friction (Plangger et al., 2021).

3.5 Social Listening and Social Care

Social media also provide a great channel to listen, understand, and audit
consumer responses to the brand as well as competitors’ activities and inter-
actions with the consumers, which marketers call social listening. In social
listening, marketers need to understand what the brand messages are, what
consumers are saying and feeling about their brands, how the competitors
communicate, and how consumers respond to competitor messages. Effec-
tive listening help brands to notice and solve crises early, find promotional
opportunities, and provide customers post-purchase feedback (i.e., social care).
For instance, when Barclays bank launched its person-to-person payment app,
Pingit, it skipped the traditional long app-developing process and launched
it quickly, and then used social listening and sentiment analysis to iden-
tify consumer thoughts and significantly improved the app immediately.
When Fiat was designing its Fiat Mio, it conducted social listening through
crowdsourcing, called on consumers for suggestions of improvement, and
received thousands via Facebook and Twitter from people in 160 countries
(Quesenberry, 2019).

4 Social Media Analytics,

Measurement, and Ethical Issues
When planning social media campaigns, social media analytics, measures, and
ethical issues are also points of consideration to keep the campaigns effective
and beneficial for both the businesses and the consumers in the long run.

4.1 Social Media Analytics and Measurement

Marketers always care about the effectiveness of their marketing activities,
normally with a vast budget, and desire an ideal return on investment (ROI).
Social media, albeit with their analytics, demand more effectiveness research
because, as they are still emerging, their measures have not matured, and
professionals disagree on what metrics measure the ROI more accurately: for
instance, advertising professionals are more interested in brand awareness, PR
professionals are more attracted to brand reputation, and management profes-
sionals are more attracted to financial outcomes such as sales or revenue (Chen,
2021; Li & Stacks, 2015).
 20 WHEN IN ROME, DO AS THE ROMANS DO … 465

Social media provide three types of analytics: descriptive analytics (insights

into the past), predictive analytics (insights into the future), and prescrip-
tive analytics (possible actions or outcomes). They answer questions such
as who the influencers are, what the overall sentiment of conversation is,
which platforms are driving the most engagement, and what keywords drive
that engagement. A group of researchers, in their “Complete Social Media
Measurement Standards,” suggest measuring content and sourcing, reach and
impressions, engagement and conversation, opinion and advocacy, influence,
and impact and value (Luttrell, 2019).
Beyond basic analytics such as exposures/views, the number of
followers/subscribers, or clicks, most social media are equipped with indi-
cators such as liking (affective, and indicating consumption and agreement),
commenting (cognitive, and indicating contribution), and sharing (conative,
and indicating the action of distribution). Researchers have commonly agreed
that liking signals the lightest version of audience participation, commenting
reveals some self-association with the message and demands more thinking,
and sharing constitutes more self-presentation or disclosure and requires even
more assessment of the message’s values, benefits, and risks (such as privacy
concerns, informational control, and sensitivity). So, industry experts have
roughly weighted the three forms of consumer engagement with seven likes
equaling one comment and two comments equaling one share, resembling
the traditional hierarchy of consumer responses but in an affection-conation-
cognition order (Yao, 2021a). In social advertising, cost-per-click (CPC) is
also considered a measure because the advertising budget is an important
factor in campaign planning (Yao, 2021b). Researchers have also suggested
using impressions and reach to measure awareness; using likes, comments,
and shares to measure engagement; using volume and sentiment of social
media conversations about the brand to measure share of voice (Chen, 2021).
For social media influencers, a useful measure is authenticity, which has five
dimensions: sincerity, truthful endorsement, visibility, expertise, and unique-
ness (Lee & Eastin, 2021). With social listening and social care, response
rate and time are useful metrics (Chen, 2021). Consumers’ interaction with
brands on social media is also found to directly and positively influence their
knowledge of, affection for, and loyalty to those brands, which follow a
cognition-affection-conation sequence (Zhang et al., 2021).
The ultimate measurement of effectiveness is ROI, which represents the
stakeholders’ expectations (ROE) and contains financial and non-financial
indicators. Social media analytics are closely related to the nonfinancial indica-
tors: the number of followers indicates the credibility of the company; the
number of likes indicates its reputation; comments show consumers’ rela-
tionship to it; shares reveal trust in the brand; the valence of comments
represents consumers’ confidence in the company. Those non-financial indi-
cators contribute to some financial indicators such as stock return, total
revenue, net income, or earnings per share (Li & Stacks, 2015). ROI can
also be measured with referrals and conversions from your social media
466 Q. YAO

followers (Chen, 2021). With improved analytics and measurements, social

media marketing can generate the most precise ROI (Nesamoney, 2015).
Social media analytics and measures, however, have room to improve,
and conceptual differences between the KPIs on different social media plat-
forms need further exploration. For example, only highly engaged consumers
provide feedback that demands more mental effort such as commenting.
Treating the commenting sample as the population of the consumers can bias
the inference about consumer responses (Li & Stacks, 2015). Also, relation-
ships between the basic metrics (such as the number of subscribers, posts,
social shares, audience growth, and inbound links clicked) and intermediate
metrics (such as impact and value, opinion and advocacy, influence, engage-
ment and conversation, and time spent) should be explicated (Luttrell, 2019).
Some new metrics (e.g., ad cost equivalency of viewing, cross-sharing) should
also be established for more specific measurement (Nesamoney, 2015).

4.2 Ethical Concerns About Social Media Interactive Marketing

As interactive marketing is transforming from series of campaigns to consis-
tent and seamless communication experiences (Wang, 2021), ethical decisions
are increasingly important to maintain quality brand–consumer relationships,
because unethical or inappropriate communications can reduce marketers’
credibility and damage the marketing process (Quesenberry, 2019).
Social media have posed special challenges to marketing ethics. In addi-
tion to traditional ethical issues in marketing, such as intrusive ads, scams,
spamming, misrepresentation, disclosing sensitive company or client informa-
tion, and consumer privacy breach or invasion, which can all be presented in
social media marketing (Facebook, for example, has been lately criticized for
breaching consumer privacy and profiting on user data. Isaak & Hanna, 2018;
Luttrell, 2019), social media have created their ethical issues. For instance,
some accounts may have bought fake followers (Yao, 2021a); other accounts
have been noticed for removing negative comments/reviews or paying for
unauthentic positive ones; customers have been turned away by the obsessive
use of social bots on brands’ accounts; social media platforms have been found
collecting and selling user data without permission (Quesenberry, 2019); some
social media (e.g., TikTok) are considered too addictive to the young users and
damaging to their brain, with an algorithm consistently recommending luring
contents (Pierce, 2021); some social shopping sites have also been denounced
for conducting obsessed marketing to stimulate impulsive buying (Hassan
et al., 2020). Even for the just emerging virtual world, unethical or illegal
conduct such as verbal/sexual harassment or virtual rapes has been reported
(Shen, 2022), which can still ruin the marketing processes.
The best practices of ethical social media marketing, as identified by
several trade organizations, are disclosing identify of the marketers and
purposes/compensations for the marketing activities, complying with laws,
regulations, and guides, and respecting the rules, contexts, and audiences of
 20 WHEN IN ROME, DO AS THE ROMANS DO … 467

the social media platforms (Quesenberry, 2019). Honest and transparent poli-
cies on data collection and user privacy can also reduce users’ privacy concerns
and enhance their engagement (Jozani et al., 2020). Data surveillance (also
called “dataveillance”), which amasses a huge volume of digital traces of indi-
viduals permanently without their self-knowledge to benefit target marketing,
limits people’s privacy and their possibility of self-invention (Schyff et al.,
2020); it needs to be reduced to meet the minimum necessary standard and
needs to be permission-based.
The ethics of social media marketing should always be checked and exalted
as social media marketing advances with complex digital technologies. Related
laws, ethics, and etiquettes need to continuously be a significant study topic
(Quesenberry, 2019) and marketers’ social media policies based on those
studies must be established and constantly updated and honored (Luttrell,
2019).

5 General Discussion
Social media have fundamentally revolutionized business operations, and no
business can survive now without using social media to generate instant and
positive interactions with customers (Li & Stacks, 2015; Pelletier et al., 2020).
This chapter, based on a review of the literature, proposes a comprehensive
and parsimonious categorization of social media: social networking (Facebook,
LinkedIn, etc.); content sharing (YouTube, Twitter, etc.); social knowledge,
news, and bookmarking (Wikipedia, Reddit, etc.); social shopping, rating, and
reviewing (Amazon, Yelp, etc.); and virtual world (Second Life, MMORPGs,
etc.). The chapter also identifies five main social media functions for inter-
active marketing: organic content; influencer marketing and social WoM;
social advertising; social event planning, and social listening and social care.
Social media analytics, measurement, and ethical issues related to interactive
marketing are also examined.
Interactive marketing on social media can be even more promising with
the maturing of VR, AR, big data, and artificial intelligence (Luttrell, 2019;
Nesamoney, 2015; Wang, 2021). Consumer data have increasingly determined
marketing success; so, more than 60% of marketers report collecting consumer
demographic data, about 40% collecting consumer behavior data, online trans-
action data, and sales leads respectively, and over 30% collecting social metrics
and campaign metrics respectively. Also, more than half of marketers report
already using AI in campaign planning and executions (Quesenberry, 2019).
The potential is tremendous, and ethical marketing needs to be exalted to
build long-lasting and mutually beneficial social media campaigns (Luttrell,
2019; Quesenberry, 2019).
The changing landscape of marketing requires marketers to adopt a
new consumer-driven mindset to build brands that will be personalized to
consumers through smartphones, social media, and apps. Such personal-
ization is highly based on consumer data and communication technology,
468 Q. YAO

and brand competitions will be “just an app or a tap away” (Nesamoney,

2015, p. 29). With the advancement of technology, platform revolution,
and culture changes, social media marketing is transforming from person-
to-person exchanges to multisided networks, from campaigns to consistent
and seamless communication experiences, from promotion to gamification
and synchronization of work, life, and entertainment; more consumer partic-
ipation, interaction, life proximation, and convenience are expected (Wang,
2021). Marketers should study and participate in that transformation.

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 CHAPTER 21

Enhancing Customer–Brand Interaction:

Customer Engagement on Brand Pages
of Social Networking Sites

Zalfa Laili Hamzah and Azean Johari

1 Introduction
The emergence of the digital era and social media, particularly social
networking sites (SNSs), helped practitioners and academicians better under-
stand how companies could enhance interactive customer experience on SNSs
with a brand page to remain competitive in interactive marketing (Qin, 2020;
Wang, 2021). Interactive marketing is featured as bi-directional value creation
and mutual-influence marketing process through active customer connec-
tion, engagement, participation, and interaction (Wang, 2021). Interactive
marketing has shifted beyond direct marketing as the market evolves into a
platform for conversations and interaction among networked actors or partici-
pants through digital and mobile activities in platform ecosystems (Shankar &
Malthouse, 2009; Lim et al., 2022). Therefore, understanding customer
interaction and engagement is essential for successful interactive marketing
(Shankar & Malthouse, 2009; Wang, 2021; Lim et al., 2022).
Previous research suggests that the interactive customer experience on SNSs
has driven the creation of customer–brand relationships through its brand post
characteristics, resulting in business profitability (Hamzah et al., 2021; Qin,
2020). Hamzah et al., (2021) found brand post characteristics that interac-
tivity and novelty have a significant impact on consumer engagement with
the brand post on social media. Interactivity in a brand post engages users

Z. L. Hamzah (B) · A. Johari

Universiti Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
e-mail: zalfa@um.edu.my

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 475

Switzerland AG 2023
C. L. Wang (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Interactive Marketing,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14961-0_21
476 Z. L. HAMZAH AND A. JOHARI

by giving them a fast response, enabling organisations to get feedback from

visitors, facilitating two-way connection, and most significantly, it is instanta-
neous. Even if the information on social media may be pleasant or harmful,
these qualities motivate users to participate. Hamzah et al. (2021) also show
that consumer interaction affects customer–brand relationship (i.e. brand love
and customer brand identification). This finding implies that social media
interactions and connections between customers and brands can result in deep
bonds. This can be explained by the fact that customers’ engagement with
brands on social media results in the establishment of a close relationship
with those brands. Because of the increasing importance of SNSs, managing
the service interaction experience in these settings has become essential to
marketers (Blasco-Arcas et al., 2016). Compared to traditional marketing, the
interactive experience environment encouraged customers in spending consid-
erable time online to perform various activities. Furthermore, in contrast to
standard e-commerce sites built on user–machine interaction, SNSs platforms
go beyond this type of interaction by encouraging social interactions between
peers.
While there is no widespread consensus on the distinguishing qualities
of SNSs, the platform focuses on developing customer–brand interactions
and providing customers with better interaction opportunities (Blasco-Arcas
et al., 2016). For example, customers can participate in the marketing, selling,
comparing, curating, buying, and sharing of products and services due to
these improved interaction opportunities. This encourages an active role of
the customers in digital media. As a result, marketers invest in providing
customers with seamless digital experiences and immediate customised solu-
tions to engage them with their respective brands. Given this paradigm shift
in the interactive environment, engaging customers on SNSs has become a
strategic imperative for marketers to enhance customer trust and purchase
intention (Islam & Rahman, 2016).
The popularity of SNSs has spurred an explosion of research into social
media usage, particularly emphasising people’s reasons for engaging SNSs
(Hoffman & Novak, 2012). Among SNSs, it is reported that Facebook was
the first social network to surpass one billion registered accounts and currently
sits at more than 2.895 billion monthly active users. The company also owns
four of the biggest social media platforms, with over one billion monthly
active users: Facebook (core platform), WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and
Instagram. In the third quarter of 2021, Facebook reported that over 3.58
billion people were using at least one of the company’s core products (Face-
book, WhatsApp, Instagram, or Messenger) each month, specifically YouTube
with 2.291 billion, Whatsapp with 2.0 billion, Instagram with 1.393 billion,
Wechat with 1.251 billion, and TikTok with 1.0 billion users (Statisca.com,
2022). Facebook brand pages have become a significant channel for consumers
to interact with brands directly by engaging in brands’ posts and messages
(Tsai & Men, 2013). They engaged through liking, sharing, and commenting
on the brand posts with other social media users. If one brand post receives
 21 ENHANCING CUSTOMER–BRAND INTERACTION … 477

various comments from Facebook users, users have high interaction with that
brand page and other commenters, showing that customers have engaged with
SNSs effectively.
Therefore, interactive experience and consumer engagement became a
critical research priority in interactive marketing (Wang, 2021), per the
Marketing Science Institute (MSI) for future research. However, Schratt-Bitter
and Grabner-Kräuter (2014) reported a paucity of practical information on
consumer engagement behaviour in SNSs. Thus, consumers’ interactions with
companies/brands on SNSs are the subject of this chapter, where the drivers
of customer engagement on SNSs brand page and their impact on customer
trust and purchase intention of fabric handicrafts are examined.
Previous studies have focussed more on the motivation of using social
networking sites; however, the importance of consumer involvement, social
benefits, and practical benefits to customer engagement and its impact on
customer trust and purchase intention has been ignored (Jamid et al., 2017;
Poorrezaei, 2016; Van Doorn et al., 2010; Vivek et al., 2012). Additionally,
there is inconsistency in the research findings in examining the determi-
nants of customer engagement: customer involvement (Alhidari et al., 2015;
Kam et al., 2016; Vivek et al., 2012), practical benefits, and social benefits
(Jahn & Kunz, 2012; Kang et al., 2014; Kujur & Singh, 2017). Under-
standing these relationships is essential as the knowledge will help marketers
enhance the customers’ interactive experience for customer engagement on
SNSs. Kanankula, Jung, and Watchravesringkan (2015) found that practical
and social benefits are essential to developing consumer trust in SNSs of
general fashion industry. They suggest that future research should further
investigate roles other than practical, social benefits, and customer engagement
in influencing consumer trust in the context of other settings.
This chapter examines the antecedents and consequences of customer
engagement with brand pages in fabric handicrafts through SNSs. SNSs
have surpassed all other channels for businesses to communicate with their
customers. An understanding of this customer engagement in the context of
fabric handicraft brand page remains unclear (Chauhan & Pillai, 2013; Hajli,
2014; Jahn & Kunz, 2012; Jamid et al., 2017; Kam et al., 2016; Kang et al.,
2014; Tafesse, 2016). This chapter elucidates the importance of understanding
the enhancement of the interactive experience between brand–consumer, high-
lights ways in which practitioners can capitalise on customers’ involvement,
practical benefits, and social benefits, and the development of complementary
strategies that will not only increase customers’ engagement but also improve
customers’ trust and purchase intention.
This chapter begins with a literature review of concepts involved, previous
studies on relationships between the concepts is discussed. Next, the method-
ology applied in this chapter is presented. Finally, the results, findings,
discussions, implications, limitations, future studies direction, and conclusion
are presented.
478 Z. L. HAMZAH AND A. JOHARI

1.1 Literature Review

1.1.1 Social Networking Sites
Social networking sites (SNSs) are online spaces where users can establish
profiles and form personal networks that link them to other users. It also refers
to web-based services that allow customers to create a public or semi-public
profile, communicate with others, and view and keep their list of connections
within the system (Chang, 2013). The SNS has established a platform for
interaction between marketers and customers, enhancing consumers’ brand
awareness and enabling them to obtain detailed information about a brand
(Mukherjee & Banerjee, 2019). Nowadays, socialising and sharing are essen-
tial for social media users, as they will acquire a higher sense of belonging and
engagement than they would by only browsing websites (Wang, 2021).
Therefore, the e-commerce sector has expanded to include SNSs where
users share their interests and experiences through social selling and user-
generated marketing. Hopkins (2012) stated that information shared on SNSs
includes users’ profiles, shared hobbies and interests, groups from previous
schools and employers, favourite music, books and movies, photographs, and
movie clips. This information is readily disclosed to as many people in the
network as possible. The increasing popularity of SNSs changed the social plat-
form for users and allowed them to interact and express their passion for their
favourite brands with their friends, personal connections, and other acquain-
tances to freely join their favourite brand by providing positive comments
on pictures and videos related to the brand or company, co-creation, social
sharing, and the likes.

1.1.2 Nature of Social Networking Sites

Since social networking sites allow users to obtain information and express
ideas, customers are no longer passive recipients of brand information. Instead,
they are active creators and distributors of such information through social
recommendations (Wang, 2021). As consumers, fans from brand communi-
ties function as catalysts for brand co-production, development, marketing,
and distribution. The interactions and dialogues fan cultural groups and brand
communities, draw new players and quicken market expansion (Humphrey
et al., 2017). Therefore, customer engagement is essential, reflecting the
customers’ investment in brand-related interactions. Consumers engaged with
SNSs brand pages and brand communities tend to exhibit higher trust,
commitment, satisfaction, emotional bonding, and loyalty to the brand
(Brodie et al., 2013). A highly involved consumer would be most likely
invest their ideas, emotions, and actions in their favourite brands (Bowden,
2009). Consequently, social media involvement with fabric handicraft brands
has become prevalent because social media enables easy-to-access possibili-
ties to communicate and participate with companies and brand communities
(Cabiddu et al., 2014).
 21 ENHANCING CUSTOMER–BRAND INTERACTION … 479

The concept of SNSs has developed at a fast pace around the globe.
Many internet users have created profiles on SNSs (e.g. Facebook, Twitter,
or MySpace). Facebook is the most popular platform that offers the option
to promote fan pages by encouraging the initial fans to follow pages, which,
once the fan base is established, will become a personal relationship. The brand
platforms enable customers to navigate their favourite shopping websites to
discover the latest trends and get real-time recommendations. Users contribute
to newsfeeds and share brand content by tagging friends on SNSs. Media
sharing platforms enable marketers and consumers to share brand informa-
tion through mobile marketing. Storytelling and ritualistic practice in virtual
brand communities increase interactions between net celebrities and followers
on Facebook and Baidu. Short video and live streaming services have resulted
in faster selling via hosting and audience engagement (Wang, 2021).
Instagram followed this trend. It differs from other SNSs in that the activity
is restricted by application use or the use of a downloaded application that
can only be accessed on a mobile device such as a smartphone or tablet. As a
result, Instagram has become an essential marketing component of brands and
retailers, as customers respond better to visuals because they can recall 80% of
what they see, 20% of what they read, and 10% of what they hear. Also, visual
content on Instagram is processed 60,000 times faster in the brain compared
to text, making Instagram an effective and robust platform for a business to
establish excellent customer perception based on branded content.
Through the SNSs, customers will be able to respond to branded content,
i.e. any pictures, videos, or any object posted by users and companies, by
clicking the icons of ‘like’, ‘follow’ subsequent to writing comments and
sharing information or experiences. These behaviours are called customer
engagement. Customer engagement is defined as the readiness of the customer
to participate and interact with a focal object actively, for instance, a brand,
organisation, or community (Jamid et al., 2017). This engagement can vary
positively or negatively, depending on the nature of the customers’ interac-
tion with various touch-points, physically or virtually. Customer engagement
metrics are identified as like, add, view, share, comment, and follow, all of
which influence online purchase behaviours.

1.1.3 Overview of Social Networking Sites Studies from the Interactive

Marketing Perspective
SNSs provide an excellent platform for digital marketers to advertise their
products and services in various formats, such as banner advertisements, brand
fan pages, and video commercials, using free and paid social media marketing
solutions. In addition, SNSs brand fan sites are technically versatile enough
to accept various forms of media such as images, videos, and animations
(Mukherjee & Banerjee, 2019).
Many social media academicians investigated several characteristics of these
SNSs’ marketing abilities and interactive marketing (Wang, 2021) and SNSs
users’ attitudes regarding advertisements placed on these sites (Akar & Topçu,
480 Z. L. HAMZAH AND A. JOHARI

2011; Taylor et al., 2011). Taylor et al. (2011) examined many positive and
negative advertisement qualities as predictors of SNSs attitude development,
including self-brand congruity, peer influence, entertainment, information,
quality of life, structure time, invasiveness, and privacy concern.
Mukherjee and Banerjee (2019) examined the impact of social media users’
positive attitude towards the SNSs on the generation of a positive attitude
towards social networking advertisements (SNA) of smartphone brands in
India. The findings show that the perceived ease of use (PEOU) of the SNSs
significantly and positively influenced the social networks’ perceived usefulness
(PU). Both PEOU and PU had a positive bearing on developing a positive
attitude towards SNS use. A positive attitude towards SNSs use translates into
a positive attitude towards the advertisements posted on the SNSs, while a
positive attitude towards SNA positively affects brand attitude and purchase
intention.
The influence of customer attitude towards the advertisement medium
on attitude towards the advertisements delivered via that media was also
explored. For example, attitude towards the website has previously been inves-
tigated in the context of web-based ads as a critical antecedent (Bruner &
Kumar, 2000). In addition, previous research on media context and its impact
on advertisement effectiveness of magazine advertisements indicated that a
person’s experience with a particular magazine might change their reaction
to advertisements printed in the same magazine (Malthouse et al., 2007).

1.1.4 Customer Engagement

Customer engagement refers to the number of likes, comments, shares, and
followers on SNSs (Zoha et al., 2017). A brand page is a dedicated and brand-
moderated platform for brand communication and customer interaction on
social media (Tafesse, 2015). The brand page affords greater interactive brand
awareness, resulting in a richer social experience, which may drive customer
engagement and build customer trust and purchase intention on SNSs. For
instance, if a customer ‘Likes’, ‘Comments,’ or ‘Shares’ a brand, the brand will
appear on their Facebook page and contribute to their profile. Thus, businesses
should seize this opportunity to let potential customers become aware of the
availability of their brands in the market.
Similarly, if a customer has bought a product and is tagged on SNSs, the
brand’s image may reflect their personality and support their self-expression.
This is particularly important as service firms such as retailers increasingly
incorporate customer engagement-related marketing activities such as main-
taining a Facebook page to provide consumers with a platform for customer-
brand and customer-to-customer interactions (Kam et al., 2016). Zoha et al.
(2017) classified customer engagement metrics as liking, sharing, following,
and commenting. ‘Liking’ on Facebook represents a form of a user to vote
or an expression of appreciation of the content, while a ‘dislike’ shows
their unwillingness to approve of some of the content. Therefore, liking the
posts and sharing brand content such as videos, images, or links on SNSs,
 21 ENHANCING CUSTOMER–BRAND INTERACTION … 481

will provide content awareness to others in their user profile. The engage-
ment activities could enhance communication and interactivity with a brand.
Therefore, sharing Facebook brand content helps users simplify the purchase
decision-making process.
Previous research found that positive SNSs interactions and involvement
with a brand will affect customers. Consumers are more willing to buy from
a brand, choose a brand over the competition, recommend a brand, increase
spending, and develop a stronger customer bond. When customers actively
interact on SNSs, they consider other customers’ opinions and feedback to
facilitate making purchase decisions. The higher the interaction experience
on SNSs, the more the interaction with a brand page. Explicitly, this interac-
tion could boost the customer engagement index rate, which increases overall
brand visibility and help businesses increase brand awareness among potential
customers.

1.2 Conceptual Framework Development

1.2.1 Stimulus–Organism–Response
The stimulus–organism–response (S-O-R) paradigm explains that atmospheric
cues of a particular context influence consumer response through interven-
tion effects of affective and cognitive states. Mehrabian and Russell (1974)
suggested that the environmental stimuli (S) lead to an emotional reaction
(O) that evokes behavioural responses (R) when the model has been applied
in various retail settings to explain the consumer decision-making process
(Chebat & Michon, 2003; Richard et al., 2009). As SNS emerged as the
most rapidly growing form of a communication channel (Jung et al., 2013),
researchers have begun focusing on various aspects of this new medium using
the S-O-R framework. This chapter positions customer involvement, practical
and social benefits as a stimulus, customer engagement as an organism, and
customer trust and purchase intention as a response.
Although previous studies provided a framework for determining the factors
that contribute to SNSs’ success, the roles of customer involvement (Kam
et al., 2016), practical benefits (Jahn & Kunz, 2012), social benefits (Kang
et al., 2014), customer trust, and purchase intention as outcomes remain
lacking. Customer trust is a significant belief that creates a positive atti-
tude towards transaction behaviours. Trust can help minimise customers’ risk
perceptions when dealing with online stores by encouraging them to engage
in trust-related behaviours such as sharing information and making purchases
(McKnight et al., 2002).

1.2.2 Social Exchange Theory

The social exchange theory states that people make rational decisions to
engage in a social exchange based on their evaluation of the costs and benefits
of the transaction (Thibaut & Kelley, 1959). The theory refers to the transac-
tion between two persons in a continuing relationship can be economic, social,
482 Z. L. HAMZAH AND A. JOHARI

or a combination of economic and social advantages and costs. For example,

consumers who are involved with a social media brand, having made cognitive
and/or affective effort in it, are more likely to continue engaging the brand to
accrue further benefits, which result in reinforced brand self-connection and
usage intent (Harrigan et al., 2018).
The social exchange theory is also a fundamental lens for understanding
the interaction of customer engagement on SNSs due to its use in three
crucial areas: interpersonal ties, relational exchange (brand-consumer relation-
ships), and information exchange (content and information sharing) (Hayes
et al., 2016). Interpersonal relationships are developed over a series of satis-
factory interactions between customers wherein reciprocal gift-giving occurs,
and participating parties equitably benefit (Hayes et al., 2016; Cook & Yamag-
ishi, 1992). Relational exchanges occur between companies and customers
(Morgan & Hunt, 1994). In these exchanges, trust is essential, which means
that one side is expected to perform acts that will result in positive conse-
quences. Finally, information exchange also occurs on SNSs where users may
offer personal information by giving feedback in the form of ‘Like’, ‘Com-
ment’, or ‘Share’ from shared posts or a feed of personal updates from others.
Consumers compare the personal information and the effort they provide
(inputs) with the outcomes they desire to determine their online informa-
tional responses (Mosteller & Poddar, 2017; Poddar et al., 2009). This chapter
discusses the exchange of cognitive, emotional, social, economic, and physical
resources between consumers and marketers in the context of SNSs of fabric
handicraft brands.

1.3 Drivers of Customer Engagement on SNSs

1.3.1 Customer Involvement
Customer involvement refers to a person’s perceived relevance to the object
based on inherent needs, values, and interests (Zaichkowsky, 1985). Customer
involvement is a cognitive, affective, or motivational construct indicating the
state of mind or perceived personal relevance, but it is not regarded as a
behaviour (Vivek et al., 2012). Alhidari et al. (2015) defined involvement
as the level of importance, time, and effort an individual gives to SNS.
Customer involvement is categorised into two: (1) High involvement refers
to customers who are engaged in a more elaborate, extensive thought about a
product/object, and (2) Low involvement states that customers are engaged
in superficial processing, influenced by basic positive or negative cues.
Customer involvement is essential in the purchase decision-making process.
When consumers are highly involved, they will engage SNSs by liking, sharing,
following, and commenting on branded content or brand pages with other
users. Researchers also highlighted involvement as one of the most crit-
ical subjects in determining customer engagement on SNSs (Kam et al.,
2016). Customers’ feelings, thoughts, and behaviours indicate greater involve-
ment in SNSs. Thus, involvement is essential, as it can be regarded as one
 21 ENHANCING CUSTOMER–BRAND INTERACTION … 483

of the antecedents of customer engagement. Vivek et al. (2012) indicated

that involvement and interaction were antecedents of customer engagement.
Customers who are highly involved in SNSs, for instance, tend to spend more
time, effort, and energy on the platforms. They are also more likely to engage
and be persuaded to post on SNS, enhancing customer trust and purchase
intention.
The level of involvement and interaction will influence customer engage-
ment on the SNSs brand page. Activities related to engagement of SNSs
include opinion-seeking and giving and sharing information, so it seems
reasonable to assume that engagement would increase as people spend more
time on SNSs. Additionally, users expose themselves to brand or marketing-
related information on SNS.

1.3.2 Practical Benefits

Practical benefits are ‘informational and instrumental benefits often achievable
through companies’ Facebook sites (Kananukul et al., 2015). The commu-
nity can become a channel for customer feedback and questions, which leads
to informational benefits’ (Gummerus et al., 2012). The practical benefits are
also called functional values (Jahn & Kunz, 2012). They found that func-
tional value is one of the most critical drivers for attracting users to fan pages.
This means fan pages must deliver exciting and innovative content to their
fans. Posts that contain information act as the key motivational factors to
create interaction and engagement with customers as they provide information
about a brand or product (Kujur & Singh, 2017). Kujur and Singh (2017)
found that information could influence consumers’ online participation and
engagement, while Kang et al. (2014) believed that functional benefits include
ease and/or efficiency of commercial transactions and information exchange
in online communities.

1.3.3 Social Benefits

Social benefits refer to the help and support members provide to each other
(Kang et al., 2014) and consumers’ opinions about the internet’s contri-
bution to society’s well-being. Social benefits derive from the interaction
between a company and the customer, referred to as recognition or friendship
(Gummerus et al., 2012). Kang et al. (2014) also discussed social–psycho-
logical benefits, which are a combined concept of social and psychological
benefits. Researchers suggested that social and psychological benefits can be
combined as a single benefit factor in the context of online communities. Thus,
it is suggested that the company actively interact with the customers to ensure
that their brand page will succeed.

1.3.4 Customer Trust

Customer trust refers to the risk and uncertainty in an online environment
(Hajli, 2014). Trust is conceptualised as the belief that a trusted party will
484 Z. L. HAMZAH AND A. JOHARI

fulfil the commitment despite the trusting party’s dependency and vulner-
ability (Wang et al., 2016). Trust has been defined as a psychological trait
formed from early childhood. A higher level of social presence, for instance,
images or videos, signals the trustworthiness of an online vendor (Brengman &
Karimov, 2012). Hence, it is essential to gain customer trust to mitigate nega-
tive perceptions and encourage online transactions. Brengman and Karimov
(2012) highlighted one crucial factor that significantly influences forming new
relationships: a person’s general tendency to trust and distrust others. Hajli
(2014) explained two main dimensions of trust; benevolence and credibility-
based trust. Benevolence refers to a repeated seller-buyer relationship, while
credibility-based trust believes that the other party in a transaction is reliable
and relies on reputable information. Therefore, Hajli (2014) believes that trust
has been shown in the context of online transactions through SNSs. In an
online environment, trust can facilitate communication between individuals
and encourage them to remain with the current network.

1.3.5 Purchase Intention

Purchase intention is an attitude that directly affects the intention (Tiruwa
et al., 2016). When customers review the comments, they can judge the
product’s quality and build trust, increasing the tendency to buy. Taking part
in online transactions requires buyers to deal with the opportunistic behaviours
of sellers. Brengman and Karimov (2012) found that trust beliefs signifi-
cantly impact customers’ purchase intention, thus confirming the importance
of trust in online environments’ success. It also demonstrates that doubts
regarding the integrity of the online seller can negatively affect purchase inten-
tions. Therefore, when dealing with a company or brand webpage to enhance
purchase intentions, it is crucial to portray a strong sense of justice, honesty,
and objectivity to the online community (Brengman & Karimov, 2012). Hajli
(2014) suggested that customer ratings and reviews on social networking
sites would be an excellent approach to eliminating barriers. Communication
between customers on social networking sites increases trust, and it is crucial
to consider customers’ intention to buy. They concluded that the higher the
customer trust of the online seller is, the more likely their intention to buy the
products will be.

1.3.6 Relationship Between Customer Involvement and Customer

Engagement
Involvement refers to the degree of information processing and the impor-
tance a customer attaches to a product while purchasing it. Kam et al.
(2016) studied enhancing customer relationships with retail service brands.
Researchers conducted two separate studies and found that the concept of
customer engagement plays a vital role in building customer–brand relation-
ship quality and customer loyalty to the retail brand. Kam et al. (2016)
tested the relationship between involvement and customer engagement. The
 21 ENHANCING CUSTOMER–BRAND INTERACTION … 485

study was conducted to extend the effectiveness of building such a rela-

tionship in retail services. The results indicated that involvement significantly
predicts customer engagement. Also, the link between customer involvement
and customer engagement has been described consistently in previous studies
(Vivek et al., 2012). Customer involvement is defined as an individual’s impor-
tance, time, and effort to SNS (Alhidari et al., 2015). Customers who are
highly involved in SNS tend to spend more time, effort, and energy and are
more likely to engage with the posts, enhancing customer trust and purchase
intention.

1.3.7 Relationship Between Practical Benefits and Customer

Engagement
Practical benefits involve customers’ recognition and relevant product or
service information. The characteristics, uniqueness, and innovativeness of
products or services are needed to guide customers to purchase. Therefore,
practical benefits will be one of the antecedents of customer engagement on
the fabric handicraft page. Customer engagement has been shaped based on
their attitude(s) towards the content and the act of resharing or reposting
the content (Kananukul et al., 2015). Thus, a positive attitude towards
the product will lead to customers recommending it to others and indi-
rectly persuading others to commit to the brand page. Therefore, businesses
should provide accurate information or content on their brand page. Jahn
and Kunz (2012) found that practical benefits significantly influence customer
engagement.

1.3.8 Relationship Between Social Benefits and Customer Engagement

Social benefits refer to customers’ participation in SNSs, such as brand
communities on a particular brand page. Online brand communities commu-
nicate with a large audience and can facilitate social benefits. The more
interactive information or content of products or services in SNSs, the richer
the social benefits, which could drive customer engagement. Simon and Tossan
(2018) and Kang et al. (2014) suggest that social benefits influenced customer
engagement on the fabric handicraft page.

1.3.9 Relationship Between Customer Engagement and Customer Trust

Kananukul et al. (2015) indicated that users who trust SNSs are likelier to
display trust in the brand. Customer trust is essential in building a relationship
between customers and retailers. On SNSs, customers are likely to interact with
a service provider who they trust. Thus, the customer must perceive trust in
the SNSs and brands to develop loyalty and customer equity (Kananukul et al.,
2015). In addition, Hajli (2014) reported that advancements on the internet
and the emergence of Web 2.0 and social media had empowered customers
to make a purchase decision efficiently Customer engagement has positively
influenced customer trust.
486 Z. L. HAMZAH AND A. JOHARI

1.3.10 Relationship Between Customer Engagement and Purchase

Intention
Jamid et al. (2017) studied the relationship between customer personality
traits and customer engagement (CE) in the online brand community (OBC)
context. Their findings also indicate a positive association between CE and
purchase intention.

2 Fabric Handicraft
This chapter focuses on handicrafts made of fabric. Handicrafts are an artistic
kind of commerce that are produced either entirely or partially by hand to
symbolise the historical and cultural attractiveness of the country or region in
which they were created. Malaysia is home to many different ethnic groups,
which has resulted in the creation of a wide variety of handicrafts, each symbol-
ising the cultural identity of a state in the country. The majority of handicrafts
make use of natural resources that are ecologically safe.
Fabric handicrafts with its uniqueness add support to tourism industry in
Malaysia. Most visitors seek handicrafts that can be exhibited and used as gifts.
These goods are handcrafted, indirectly making handicrafts a labour-intensive
business. It has been discovered that the handicrafts preferred by local visitors
and tourists from other countries are pretty similar, which allowed handicraft
manufacturers to standardise their handmade products. However, it should be
pointed out that traditional handicrafts are less visible in the market due to a
lack of significant support from the younger generation.
Although the fabric handicraft has high economic potential, few studies
address ways to strengthen Malaysia’s traditional handicraft industry, and
although many studies have been conducted on entrepreneurship in Malaysia,
few studies involved elucidating how entrepreneurs can help preserve and
enhance the traditional handicraft sector by leveraging the power of social
media to promote handicraft brands. Table 1 provides measurement items for
measuring the constructs.

3 Results, Findings, and Discussion

This chapter analyses data and tests the relationships between the constructs
using the partial least squares (PLS) structural equation model (SEM),
SmartPLS 3.3.3. PLS is a variance-based structural equation method, making
it the preferred method in studies where the primary objective is to predict
and explain target constructs (Hair et al., 2013).
Discriminant validity, which determines whether the constructs are distinct,
was confirmed when the Fornell-Larcker criterion was applied (see Tables 2
and 3) (Jarvis et al., 2003). With the Fornell-Larcker criterion being satis-
fied, each reflective construct’s ‘square root of the AVE’ has to be greater
than its correlation coefficients with other constructs. The shared variance
with other latent variables is confirmed as larger than the indications. As a
 21 ENHANCING CUSTOMER–BRAND INTERACTION … 487

Table 1 Measurement Items for All Constructs

Measurement Items

Customer involvement (CI)

This fabric handicraft is essential to me
This fabric handicraft means a lot to me
This fabric handicraft does matter to me
This fabric handicraft gives me a feeling of confidence
Practical Benefits (PB)
1.It is easy to find information about fabric handicraft
2.SNS usually make information about fabric handicraft immediately accessible
3.Most SNS provide timely information about fabric handicraft
4.Generally, SNSs are a good source of fabric handicraft
5.I visit SNSs just to look for information
Social benefits (SB)
I visit SNS because I want to provide information about fabric handicraft to other people
I visit SNS because I want to get help from other people
I visit SNS because I want to help other people
I visit SNS because I want to feel needed by other people
Customer engagement (CE)
1.I like posts that comprise photos
2.I like posts that comprise videos or links
3.I share posts that comprise photos which benefit others
4.I share posts that comprise videos or links which benefit others
5.I follow brand pages that I am interested in
6.I actively comment on posts that comprise photos
7.I actively comment on posts that comprise brand videos or links to brand videos
Customer Trust (CT)
1.I feel that SNS would act in the customer’s best interests
2.I believe that SNS continues to be a good source of information about fabric handicraft
over long term, thus enhancing my confidence
3.I feel confident that I can rely on SNS when I need information about fabric handicraft of
this nature
4.I trust SNS in providing accurate information about fabric handicraft
5.I am comfortable making comments and/or sharing ideas with others about fabric
handicraft on SNS
6.Based on my past and present experiences, I believe that this SNS deserves my trust
Purchase intention (PI)
In the near future, I would probably buy fabric handicraft
In the near future, I intend to buy fabric handicraft
In the near future, I would possibly buy fabric handicraft
In the near future, I would likely buy fabric handicraft
In the near future, I would definitely buy fabric handicraft
488 Z. L. HAMZAH AND A. JOHARI

result, the discriminant validity (of the first-order components) is confirmed.

Furthermore, the cross-loadings analysis confirmed the discriminant validity of
the measurement items since each measurement item loaded the most on its
assigned constructs in contrast to its cross-loadings on other constructs (Hair
et al., 2016).
This chapter also employed a more rigorous test of discriminant validity
suggested by Henseler et al. (2015). The heterotrait-monotrait ratio of corre-
lations (HTMT) criteria based on a multitrait-multimethod matrix recom-
mends proving discriminant validity, with the HTMT conservative threshold
being less than 0.90. Except for two correlations, Table 4 demonstrates that

Table 2 Internal Consistency Reliability and Convergent Validity Test

Construct Code Loadings Cronbach Alpha AVE CR

items

Customer Engagement CE1 0.766 0.856 0.887 0.529

CE2 0.759
CE3 0.702
CE4 0.718
CE5 0.687
CE6 0.778
CE7 0.672
Involvement IV1 0.88 0.897 0.927 0.761
IV2 0.909
IV3 0.858
IV4 0.841
Practical Benefits PB1 0.733 0.807 0.861 0.555
PB2 0.859
PB3 0.746
PB4 0.695
PB5 0.677
Purchase Intention PI1 0.843 0.907 0.929 0.724
PI2 0.862
PI3 0.873
PI4 0.819
PI5 0.858
Social Benefits SB1 0.668 0.762 0.846 0.58
SB2 0.773
SB3 0.794
SB4 0.804
Consumer Trust TT1 0.694 0.826 0.873 0.534
TT2 0.671
TT3 0.756
TT4 0.783
TT5 0.723
TT6 0.751
 21 ENHANCING CUSTOMER–BRAND INTERACTION … 489

Table 3 Discriminant Validity—Fornell and Larcker

1 2 3 4 5 6

1. Consumer Trust 0.731

2. Customer Engagement 0.538 0.727
3. Involvement 0.352 0.303 0.872
4. Practical Benefits 0.519 0.266 0.372 0.745
5. Purchase Intention 0.599 0.37 0.357 0.305 0.851
6. Social Benefits 0.529 0.435 0.435 0.467 0.384 0.762

Note Items in bold represent the Square Root of AVE

the correlation values corresponding to the relevant constructs did not violate
HTMT.
Results from the structural model indicate the size and significance of the
path coefficients and R2 values of customer trust and purchase intention CEB
(see Fig. 1 and Table 5) (Hair et al., 2016). All paths presented in Fig. 1 were
positive and significant (t > 1.96, p < 0.05) except for practical benefits and
customer engagement. Furthermore, the model explains 53.8% of the variance
in customer trust and 37% of the variance in purchase intentions.
Based on the analysis, the result displayed in Table 5 showed that customer
involvement has a significant positive relationship with customer engagement
(β = 0.129; t = 2.45; p = 0.007). This implies that consumers’ interac-
tion experience with the brand page through consumer involvement helps
influence customer engagement in the fabric handicraft brand page context.
Higher involvement with SNSs relates to higher levels of customer engage-
ment. This result is supported by previous research (Bowden, 2009; Harrigan
et al., 2018; Hollebeek, 2011), suggesting that highly involved consumers
will likely direct their preferred brand’s thoughts, emotions, and behaviours.
The results also highlighted that customers engage in the fabric handicraft
page when they actively comment on the page’s information. When the fabric
handicraft page is essential and is significant for them, they will engage them-
selves by leaving their comments and sharing information with other users.

Table 4 HTMT Discriminant Validity

1 2 3 4 5 6

1. Consumer Trust
2. Customer Engagement 0.605
3. Involvement 0.412 0.311
4. Practical Benefits 0.624 0.296 0.411
5. Purchase Intention 0.681 0.366 0.411 0.365
6. Social Benefits 0.665 0.484 0.533 0.613 0.447
490 Z. L. HAMZAH AND A. JOHARI

Fig. 1 Structural Model

Table 5 Results of Structural Model

β Standard T-values P Values LL UL

Loading Deviation 5.00% 95.00%
(STDEV)

Involvement > Customer 0.129 0.053 2.445 0.007 0.054 0.234

Engagement
Practical Benefits > 0.053 0.047 1.117 0.132 −0.041 0.117
Customer Engagement
Social Benefits > Customer 0.354 0.069 5.127 0.0001 0.215 0.448
Engagement
Customer Engagement > 0.538 0.035 15.157 0.0001 0.47 0.584
Consumer Trust
Customer Engagement > 0.37 0.047 7.926 0.0001 0.28 0.439
Purchase Intention

Moreover, when customers share their comments, the fabric handicraft brand
page attracts them.
Next, it was found practical benefits have no relationship with customer
engagement in fabric handicraft brand pages (β = 0.053; t = 1.17; p = 0.132).
This is inconsistent with previous studies reporting that practical benefits
did not influence customer engagement (Jahn & Kunz, 2012). The possible
reasons are that customers cannot easily find information, information is not
accessible immediately, or there is not much information available about fabric
 21 ENHANCING CUSTOMER–BRAND INTERACTION … 491

handicrafts. On the other hand, SNSs are usually immediately accessible when
searching for relevant information on fabric handicrafts.
Third, it was found that social benefits have significantly influenced
customer engagement with fabric handicrafts posted on SNSs (β = 0.354; t
= 5.127; p = 0.0001). The result is supported by Kang et al. (2014), stating
that customers visit SNSs because they want to provide information or get
help from others in the online community. In addition, the study also shows
that customers are engaged because they want to be needed by others in the
network.
Fourth, this chapter found that customer engagement has a significant
positive influence on customer trust (β = 0.538; t = 15.15; p = 0.0001).
This finding is supported by Hajli (2013) and shows that customers believe
SNSs are good sources of information for a long-term period. Customers also
rely on SNSs to find information about fabric handicrafts. It should also be
pointed out that customers trust SNSs because they provide accurate informa-
tion about fabric handicrafts. When customers engage with SNSs, they believe
it continues to be a good source of information about fabric handicrafts over
the long term, enhancing their confidence when the information provided is
also accurate. Also, when highly engaged, they are comfortable commenting
and/or sharing ideas with others about fabric handicrafts on SNS.
Finally, this chapter confirmed that customer engagement has a signifi-
cant favourable influence on purchase intention (β = 0.37; t = 7.926; p =
0.0001). This finding is consistent with previous studies reporting significance
in practical benefits (Hajli, 2013). Customer engagement with SNSs becomes
a predictor of purchase intention of fabric handicrafts. The more they are
engaged with the brand page, the higher the intention to purchase. However,
when engagement is low, consumers have less interaction experience with the
brand page, translating to a lowered intention to purchase.

4 Implications of the Study

This chapter theoretically contributes to SNSs by validating the role of
customer involvement and social and practical benefits in influencing inter-
action in the model customer engagement in fabric handicraft brands.

4.1 Theoretical Implications

First, the S–O-R theory explains the model, which states that customer
involvement, practical benefits, and social benefits serve as a stimulus that
creates positive responses in users to increase purchase intention (Koo &
Ju, 2010). In addition, customer involvement stimulates more attention to
advertisements and understanding of product information (Kam et al., 2016).
The significant relationship between customer involvement and customer
engagement is consistent with Harrigan et al. (2018). Customer involvement
influences the increasing interaction between customers and fabric handicraft
492 Z. L. HAMZAH AND A. JOHARI

brands by sharing content, video, and pictures, participating in community

activities and exchanging ideas were also confirmed.
Second, the social exchange theory acknowledges practical and social bene-
fits contributions to engaging with fabric handicraft brand pages. For example,
it can be suggested that customers who are provided with helpful information
tend to have a positive attitude towards informative advertisements on SNSs
(Kujur & Singh, 2017). Exclusive content, online events, and contests are ways
fan pages can use to achieve engagement (Jahn & Kunz, 2012). Perceived
social benefits significantly impacted members’ active participation on Face-
book fan pages (Kang et al., 2014). A brand page requires regularly updating
and delivery of value for the community members to ensure there is engage-
ment. This can be seen through statistics of ‘likes’ or ‘followers’ remaining
high (Jahn & Kunz, 2012).

4.2 Managerial Implications

Apart from the theoretical implications, the findings also provide manage-
rial implications. First, this chapter provides insights for practitioners when
utilising SNSs as a channel to enhance the interaction experience between
customers and brands with their existing customers or initiate relationships
with their potential customers. The chapter shows that customer engagement
influences customer trust and purchase intention. Notably, a marketer should
increase the feeling of the importance of a particular product and brand by
emphasising that it is meaningful, matters, and builds confidence in customers.
Marketers should quickly provide information about the fabric handicraft via
multiple sources that are immediately accessible, timely information such as the
product values, ingredients, and country of origin. They should also create
awareness of social benefits from joining SNSs, (e.g. Facebook). This can
be done by encouraging users to share and get help from others to find
more information and recommendations. With higher customer involvement,
consumers express their thoughts and feelings via liking or commenting on
posts and generating new content on the sites by creating and distributing
more information and materials about the targeted brand (e.g. sharing posts
and/or uploading brand-related images), impacting their engagement with a
brand page.
Second, managers could enhance the customer interaction experience by
keeping track of which posts receive the most ‘Likes’ and ‘Shares’. This will
help a company determine what consumers are most engaged in, assuming
postings about other brands have a consistently higher ‘Likes’ count than those
about fabric handicrafts. In that case, companies may utilise that knowledge to
develop a better and more socially responsible product messaging. Customers
can be encouraged towards active engagement on SNSs by providing helpful
information, promotions, and rapid responses. Practitioners must also create a
harmonious online atmosphere where members may freely communicate and
converse with other members using social media platforms.
 21 ENHANCING CUSTOMER–BRAND INTERACTION … 493

Third, greater customer service should be provided via private messaging or

direct communications to optimise speed. Customers who are highly involved
will interact in greater engagement, for example, by asking questions, seeking
assistance, or sharing their opinions. They can also help customers increase
their confidence and trust by providing information which is reliable, includes
its source, accurate and up-to-date.
Fourth, sharing tagged posts, tweets, or hashtags highlighting a product
or service benefits companies in two significant ways. The first is that, it
provides a chance to thank the consumer for their business and to acknowl-
edge their positive experience. It also generates significant social proof that
can be used to convert prospective consumers who are undecided making a
purchase. If, for example, someone is unsure about how to behave in a social
scenario that they have never experienced before, they might draw cues from
the individuals around them. In the case of an online purchasing scenario,
when individuals shop, they search for reviews, suggestions, and examples of
how others have utilised a product before making their selection. This demon-
strates the importance of obtaining customers’ reviews based on their pleasant
experiences.

5 Limitation and Future Studies

This chapter attempts to expand on previous research by developing a model
to better explain better enhancing interaction experience for customer engage-
ment on SNSs. However, this work had several limitations that affected the
generalisation of the findings. Firstly, this work selected and tested a limited
number of selected antecedents and consequences of customer engagement
having interaction experiences on SNSs. Secondly, this work used Facebook
and Instagram as the main platforms to distribute the questionnaires. Thirdly,
this work did not consider the actual purchase and word-of-mouth behaviour.
To increase the generalisability of the findings, we suggest that future
research test other antecedents such as brand personality, social self-expression,
customer participation, hedonic and utilitarian values, and consequences such
as brand loyalty, brand commitment, and perceived quality in the fabric hand-
icraft context. It would also be interesting to differentiate the meaning of
customer engagement by investigating its dimensions. Additionally, compared
to the millions of Facebook and Instagram users worldwide, this work is
limited to a valid sample of users mainly from one country. It would be inter-
esting to have samples from other countries and analyse users on other online
social networking platforms.

6 Conclusion
This chapter has presented a research topic of enhancing customer–brand
interaction of customer engagement on SNSs of fabric handicrafts. First, this
chapter contributes to the existing literature on customer engagement and
494 Z. L. HAMZAH AND A. JOHARI

SNSs. It explained the role of customer involvement and practical and social
benefits as drivers and their impact on customer trust and purchase intention.
Second, the relationship in the model can help practitioners understand the
antecedents and consequences of customer engagement in effectively strate-
gising and positioning their business. For example, suppose the relationships
are confirmed that customer involvement, practical benefits and social bene-
fits will lead to customer engagement. In that case, practitioners can focus on
growing the fabric handicraft page with appropriate content and encouraging
two-way communication and the pages’ importance to customers. Addition-
ally, if it is confirmed that customer engagement predicts customer trust and
purchase intention, creating and managing the fabric handicraft page can
achieve marketing objectives and contribute to its performance.
SNSs, through social media, became a new frontier for consumer brand
engagement. Therefore, companies, brands, or marketers should anticipate
and understand consumers’ preferences to provide better interactive expe-
riences to transform them into positive behaviour, particularly in fabric
handicrafts. Thus, using appropriate strategies to enhance interactivity, such
as increasing brand page content and visual content, improving consumer
service, building communities, sharing reviews, and using hashtags, is essential
in engaging customers, increasing customer trust and purchase intention.
The findings of this chaper enable the creation of practical insights for
enhancing the interactivity experience for customer engagement with SNSs
brand pages. Managers are continuously attempting to enhance customer
engagement while also evaluating key performance metrics that lead to
the generation of high engagement. Furthermore, given the importance of
consumer involvement in the engagement process, businesses should strive
to encourage active participation from current customers. User-generated
content is essential for building customer trust than solely firm-generated
content. Thus, the branded content on the SNSs, particularly on Facebook
and Instagram, should be tailored to the customers’ needs rather than the firm
promoting it. Customers may be more likely to engage with a brand if online
information and experiences excite their curiosity and are personally relevant.
 21 ENHANCING CUSTOMER–BRAND INTERACTION … 495

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 CHAPTER 22

Live Streaming as an Interactive Marketing

Media: Examining Douyin and Its Constructed
Value and Cultural Preference of Consumption
in E-commerce

Boris L. F. Pun and Anthony Y. H. Fung

“Please take a close look of this soup,” said the live streaming host, holding a
spoonful of soup in front of the camera, “the smell and taste are very similar
to the soup I made in the last video, but this time it actually come from this
instant soup pack.”

1 Introduction: Douyin
and Interactive Marketing
Having a sunny smile and blinking, Culinary Mr. Lee (the Douyin celebrity)
continues to encourage the reviewers to ask their friends to join his e-
commerce site and place an order, as they would receive a price discount if
more than 300,000 orders have been placed.
This is a brief description of e-commerce that occurs every day on the
Chinese online platform Douyin, which was never expected to be found on
social media ten years ago. As a result of technological advancement and social
media proliferation (Wang, 2021), social media no longer consists simply of
social networking platforms, but has now developed into a virtual medium

B. L. F. Pun (B) · A. Y. H. Fung

Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China
e-mail: borispun@cuhk.edu.hk
A. Y. H. Fung
e-mail: anthonyfung@cuhk.edu.hk

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 499

Switzerland AG 2023
C. L. Wang (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Interactive Marketing,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14961-0_22
500 B. L. F. PUN AND A. Y. H. FUNG

for hosting business and sales negotiations between buyers and sellers. Under-
stood as a significant outcome of interactive marketing due to its innovative
bidirectional customer-and-seller interaction, e-commerce has become one of
the most successful emergent global business models, and it has changed the
value, preference, and culture of consumption. It now has an immense influ-
ence on the attitudes and decisions of consumers regarding their purchases,
as shown in Graham and Wilder’s study (2020), and it has also expanded
the volume of purchases, particularly during the period of the COVID-19
pandemic, according to a study by Femenia-Serra et al. (2022). Such change
has always varied with the innovation of different interactive social media appli-
cations, which has been well addressed by Masciantonio et al.’s study (2021)
on the effect of social media during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many studies
have specifically focused on Western social media tools such as Twitter and
Instagram (i.e., Lee & Kim, 2020; Lee et al., 2022) due to its character-
istically specific interface and marketing function, which leads to increased
advertisement revenue and sponsorships as well as the emergence of online
celebrities.
Douyin is comparatively different from Instagram in terms of its setting,
function, and market, which also makes Douyin worth studying as one of the
most suitable tools for live streaming and e-commerce with respect to inter-
active marketing. In terms of its setting and function, since the rise of short
video uploading platforms (e.g., YouTube) and social networking platforms
(e.g., Facebook) in the 2000s, public interest in short self-shot videos for quick
social communication has grown rapidly. Unlike Instagram which was initially
launched as a photo-sharing social networking application, Douyin features a
short video sharing (around 15–60s) function, and it promotes the concept of
friendly competition among youth on a collective site where they can record
their actions in a video format and then share this with friends. Douyin was
launched with great success in the Chinese market in August 2018 (Wang et.
al., 2020). Douyin and its international version TikTok have captured almost
800 million active users worldwide and was ranked ninth in terms of social
networking sites in 2020, covering over 150 countries and 75 languages in
the world (Zeng et al., 2021). They also became the overall most popular app
downloaded, particularly among young kids and youth (Geyser, 2021).
With respect to Douyin’s role in the Chinese market, the high popularity of
Douyin among youth in China allows the Douyin celebrities to gather a large
audience pool, which can be converted into a commercial opportunity for
e-commerce and live streaming sales, both of which are now highly popular
in China. The study of Douyin in China also allows us to gain a compre-
hensive overview of the consumption and selling preferences in contemporary
China, which have been influenced by President Xi’s era of rapid modern-
ization, characterized by a higher level of censorship but also freedom from
control in the e-commerce consumption and selling activities hosted on social
media platforms. This specific political condition has led to a unique version
of e-commerce as conducted by Douyin in China compared with e-commerce
 22 LIVE STREAMING AS AN INTERACTIVE MARKETING MEDIA … 501

in other countries, including the United States (Unni & Weinstein, 2021),
India (Patel et al., 2020), Sri Lanka (Sachini & Mijetunga, 2019), Belgium
(Cauberge et al., 2021), and the UK (Suárez-Álvarez & García-Jiménez,
2021). At the same time, there have only been a few studies conducted
in China (Lee et al., 2020; Sha & Dong, 2021), and none of them have
engaged in the discussion of interactive marketing and value and preference
construction. Thus, a research gap exists in the study of e-commerce in China.
In this study of Douyin, Douyin celebrities, and their involvement in
e-commerce and interactive marketing in China, the authors conducted a
detailed literature review. The goal was to determine how Douyin exerts
its influential manipulating power in the creative labor market (the pool of
Douyin celebrities), information flow, and culture inside the community, and
how it generates a sustainable and solid mechanism of interactive marketing
under this specific format of Douyin. This chapter will provide examples of
Douyin celebrities and their online e-commerce activities, and it will discuss
the specific academic and economic implications of Douyin’s mechanism of
interactive marketing.

2 Literature Review
There has been extensive work published on the role of social media in inter-
active marketing, which has primarily highlighted the use of an interactive
device to establish branding and influence consumers’ attitudes and behaviors.
For instance, the study of He et al. (2021) addressed the strong moderating
effect of the brand content of brand-owned social media on consumers’ atti-
tudes toward brands. This finding has been supported by other studies, such
as the research of Qin (2020) on branding and its strong effect on social
media (Facebook) usage and the motives of consumers’ interaction, or even on
gambling behavior, as discussed in the study of Ji et al. (2022). The research of
Al-Emadi and Yahia (2020) focused on the performance difference of users of
various social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook, and the authors
argued that a greater influence of social media could be observed in users of
sites that offered a higher level of flexibility and participation. Synthesizing
these current research findings can shed light on the current research gap, and
to achieve this, a study of how influential Douyin is as a social media platform
for interactive marketing would provide essential insights.
Compared with other interactive platforms such as Instagram and Face-
book, the characteristics of the interactive function of Douyin have not been
well addressed in existing literature. Many scholars have investigated the use
of Douyin (or TikTok) in education (Escamilla-Fajardo et al., 2021; Khlaif &
Salha, 2021), business (Mhalla et al., 2020), geopolitics (Gray, 2021), social
502 B. L. F. PUN AND A. Y. H. FUNG

movement (Hautea et al., 2021), promoting gender equality (Sachini & Mije-
tunga, 2019),1 class struggle (Verma, 2020),2 and socialization and identity
construction (Wang & Omar, 2020). However, there has not been an effort
to examine Douyin adequately as a research subject of interactive marketing to
determine how it could achieve greater success in the Chinese market. Also,
the existing literature on interactive marketing has not provided an appropriate
lens through which this research gap can be viewed.
The goal of this chapter therefore is to propose a new perspective through
which the authors can gain a better understanding of Douyin and its mecha-
nisms that enhance the function of interactive marketing. In this section, the
authors attempt to explore the relationships involved among Douyin, Douyin
celebrities, and their involvement in e-commerce and interactive marketing
through three existing perspectives: (1) Douyin recruits and fosters imma-
terial creative labor, (2) Douyin exerts influential manipulating power on
both creators and users, and (3) Douyin and its function achieve a sense of
community (SOC).

2.1 Douyin Recruits and Fosters Immaterial Creative Labor

The discussion of creative labor is often linked to Marxist concepts about labor
being exploited by the production side. Fuchs (2014) interpreted the creativity
and user-generated content as a symbol of exploitation and a form of work
outsourcing to unpaid labor (the users). Hesmondhalgh and Baker (2013)
added to the discussion the concept of self-exploitation as users are willing
to obtain an emotional reward from their unpaid contribution (the so-called
“affective labor” coined by Hardt [1999]). These studies addressed how an
audience is influenced and blindly dedicates its time and effort in exchange
for an immaterial return, under the value system constructed by production
sectors (in this case, the social media platform Douyin).
The recent studies of Douyin also suggest a similar approach to under-
stand the outcome of the Douyin usage, which is users producing their own
value and reward through their creation. The active nature of users as labor in
China has been widely discussed over the last ten years, for example, Zhang
and Fung’s (2014) study about consumers as creative labor in China’s gaming
industry. A report Digital content & Creative Media center of BNU. (2019)
highlights the activeness of Douyin users, as they may not simply be victims
of exploitation but may also be enjoying the specific mechanism of Douyin’s
work that introduces a global leisure-work condition for Chinese youth. This
working condition may offer users what they really want, in terms of both

1 Their research revealed that TikTok is the publicization of the girls’ bedroom culture
and is foregrounded in the issue of gender inequalities.
2 The author explained how social media crosses over the social boundaries in the case
of the Indian class hierarchy conflict.
 22 LIVE STREAMING AS AN INTERACTIVE MARKETING MEDIA … 503

material (income and sponsored products) and immaterial (reputation, plea-

sure, self-expression, autonomy, etc.) rewards. Such benefits are more than
pure emotional rewards, and users most often originally aim for them. Duffy
and Wissinger’s study (2017) has also provided an insight into how some
Douyin users establish a set of mythologies to create the image of glamour
that helps them to “sublime” and transform themselves into Douyin celebri-
ties (wanghong in Chinese). In other words, Douyin is treated as the “path
of promotion,” leading the users to gain more monetary revenue rather than
being exploited by the merchants. In addition, Abidin (2018) explored the
celebrity behaviors of Douyin and argued how the so-called “parasociality” is
established intentionally by Douyin celebrities to highlight their “distinctive-
ness” from the masses, among whom they used to belong prior to the aid of
Douyin.
Douyin is also becoming a social media tool for self-identity construction,
to help an uploader to look more professional due to their video sharing on
Douyin. There are many examples of this, such as non-lawyers promoting legal
knowledge and rights on Douyin (Douvartzidis & Surman, 2020), or non-
frontline doctors and nurses sharing some clinically oriented content, which
they find on the internet, to engage “professionally” with the public (Lovett
et al., 2021), especially at the time when COVID-19 and the implementa-
tion of lockdowns caused negative impacts on human beings (Byrne et al.,
2021). In addition to these amateur undertakings, the authorities have also
become involved in Douyin to promote official information to the masses.
Health authorities in many countries have already integrated Douyin use with
the current public health system during the pandemic outbreak for better
health promotion and control (Eghtesadi & Florea, 2020). Following this
trend, more and more Douyin celebrities have also moved their professional
and occupational practices from other institutional domains to the platform
for developing their business (Chen & Zhang, 2021). Moreover, Douyin
celebrities sharing Douyin videos is about more than delivering professional
knowledge: it is a conscious attempt to achieve the social recognition as
distinctive “informative professionals” among the rest. It is an action purely
driven by the pursuit immaterial credit, reputation, and image reconstruction.
From these few studies, they capture the overview of Douyin users’ proac-
tiveness in creating their own video outputs, so as to become happier, more
distinctive, special, professional, and influential. Such positive outcomes allow
Douyin to recruit and foster a large number of potential video uploaders
(creative labor) and audience members (consumers and the labor-to-be).
This large pool of users directly contributes commercial value for marketing
purposes.
504 B. L. F. PUN AND A. Y. H. FUNG

2.2 Douyin Exerts Influential Manipulating Power on Both Creators

and Users
From a market perspective, it is not enough to know that a large number
of Douyin users (Douyin celebrities and regular users) are exposed to its
media content. It would be more important to know how the media content
influences the Douyin users in their consumption activities. People can argue
whether or not Douyin could exert such manipulating power on the consump-
tion behavior of audience, as there are not many studies specifically discussing
Douyin’s users and the platform’s marketing outcome. Thus, in this chapter,
the authors contribute to answering this question by demonstrating how
people have become much more susceptible to being easily influenced by social
media. One of the most prominent examples is the change in human behavior
caused by misinformation.
Misinformation from social media has been thoroughly addressed in
academic research in recent years, ranging from the work of Stahl (2006) to
the latest by Basch et al. (2021) and O’Brien and Alsmadi (2021). Regarding
the influence of misinformation and how it affects behavior, Baumel et al.
(2021) identified open access platforms such as Douyin as a major factor,
since everyone can now gain access to the process of opinion exchange and
information assimilation by means of social media tools, without causing
the administrators and to suspect them of posting misinformation. This is a
major issue for Douyin because of its high mobility of information interac-
tion. Mujika et al. (2020) explained the virality of the contents of Douyin
as being the result of greater audience interest in shorter, more immediate,
instant, and highly visual content. This quality, coupled with the fact that some
beliefs are easily reinforced within communities that already hold a certain
ideological bias, especially political ones, reaffirms a reality constructed with
unverified information that need not be based on factual evidence. The finding
of Chang et al.’s study (2019) provided a very similar interpretation of audi-
ence behavior. Based on the idea of continued influence effect (CIE), the
closer the receivers’ habitus is to the misinformation, the stronger CIE the
person will have. The consequence is that people might still rely on the misin-
formation and act upon it even after it is proven wrong and retracted. All such
research has suggested that manipulating the information content can affect
people’s behavior when that information is circulated via social media tools.
The influence is not limited to physical outcomes, but it can also include
mental ones. For example, Tasnim et al. (2020) found that during the global
pandemic, misinformation spread faster on social media than it did by means of
reliable sources, which led to a wider range of negative externalities, including
virus infections, disordered supply and demand relationships, and civil disobe-
dience to government policies. Such negative externalities, according to Abbas
et. al. (2021), have resulted in mental health crises as people have become
very alerted and sensitive to the influx of any kind of information, and have
often become more vulnerable to so-called fake news. Spain, Portugal, Brazil,
 22 LIVE STREAMING AS AN INTERACTIVE MARKETING MEDIA … 505

and the USA were reported to be some examples of countries being influ-
enced by such disinformation on TikTok (Alonso-López et al., 2021). These
examples reveal how an audience can blindly follow rumors and be directed
by the influential power of social media, especially people with “knowledge-
deficiency,” thus affecting their attitudes and actions concerning social issues
(Krishna, 2017).
The aforementioned research findings suggest that with respect to misinfor-
mation, recipients are highly vulnerable to being manipulated both physically
and mentally when they access information content on social media platforms
(Bautista et al., 2021; Kaye et al., 2021). It will be valid then to assume that
Douyin can exert a similar influence for the purpose of marketing.

2.3 Douyin and Its Function Achieve an SOC

Under the same cultural habitus, the production and consumption of Douyin
videos could connect the users and audience with visual and symbol inter-
action, especially between child’s play and teenage pop culture (Leyn et al.,
2021). This is specifically important during this period when social isolation
has become more common in society due to the pandemic (for example, this
has been found in the studies3 of social isolation in UK due to lockdown).
Unni and Weinstein (2021) surveyed Douyin content during the early stages
of the pandemic, and they found a large body of content representing shared
experiences that suggested that TikTok users may be in search for an SOC
with humanity through shared experience. Traditionally, scholars have used the
concept of an SOC to measure whether an environment satisfies an individual’s
social needs (Flaherty et al., 2014; Pretty et al., 1996; Sonn & Fisher, 1996).
There are a handful of studies (Figueroa & Aguilera, 2020; Harwood, 2021;
Udenze & Uzochukwu, 2021) that have observed how Douyin (TikTok) has
been used to counter isolation and offer positive mental benefits to the users
through connecting with each other via a virtual platform.
An understanding of the concept of SOC has been clearly established by
studies of popular culture which have addressed the identity and bonding
formation that occurs during in-group interaction and value exchange, for
example, Booth’s fandom study (2016) and Jenkins et al.’s study of participa-
tory culture (2015). Roberta (2010) had already foreseen the importance of
the SOC in fandom during the digital era, noting that more compatible plat-
forms would provide an all-round experience (including entertainment, social
networking, killing boredom, etc.) that individuals would come to heavily rely
on. The platformization studies of Lin (2020) and Wang and Wu (2021) drew
the same conclusion that Douyin can exert similar influence on the users in
China by encouraging them to look for social relationships and connections
on their platform.

3 See Sai et al. (2021), Canady (2021), Waite et al. (2021), and Banks & Xu (2020).
506 B. L. F. PUN AND A. Y. H. FUNG

This kind of connection allows the video creators to adopt and “inherit” a
value system that dictates or includes such factors as taste and identity. Given
that their gratification is directly linked to their use of social media (Whiting &
William, 2013; Winter & Vaterlaus, 2021) for pursing happiness, youth and
young adults are prone to bond their lives and socialization to this digital
application. At the same time, Douyin video may influence its audience to
think in the same way, so as to become a member of its community sharing a
similar communal sense. In other words, the authors can conclude that, to a
certain extent, Douyin cultivates its audience to adopt its constructed norms
and tastes and take up the career of being Douyin celebrities that play to an
audience.

2.4 Theoretical Suggestion: The Mechanism of Interactive Marketing

on Douyin
Considering these three aspects in terms of Douyin, the authors can see how it
operates and sustains itself as an interactive marketing mechanism. This mech-
anism indicates the importance of Douyin’s platform which centralizes all the
information, Douyin celebrities, and consumers (audience).
From the perspective of creative labor, Douyin provides a platform which
participants can freely access, and it offers creative output (the Douyin video)
that benefits the mutual parties (video creators and the platform organizer
Douyin). Such mutual benefit fosters the growth of Douyin celebrities. The
idea of creative labor also suggests that the video uploaders may not aim for
material rewards, and that has proven to be crucial in the beginning stages of
the platform’s development as a large amount of free labor has been and will
continue to be guaranteed.
From the perspective of the influential power of social media platforms, the
creation of video enriches the resource and directs the flow of information
inside the community, and at the same time, the Douyin platform provides
users a full immersion into the specific information based on the program algo-
rithm and the searching/browsing history of users. This practice allows the
users to have a comprehensive media exposure to the information of products.
Given the manipulating power of media, the authors believe that this setting
helps to enhance the efficiency in interactive marketing output, literally, the
sales of the products in live streaming e-commerce.
With respect to SOC, the Douyin celebrities can serve as the bridge
connecting the merchants (companies) and the customers (Douyin users),
facilitating the best opportunity for interactive marketing. Douyin users may
adopt the idea of e-commerce as the culture of Douyin and thus easily accept
the marketing activities presented on the social media platform.
As a result, this mechanism leads to an ultimate output of interactive
marketing, requiring less input of resources needed for marketing. Compared
with the original marketing approaches used in the past in which merchants
have always relied on expensive and the professional commercial marketing
 22 LIVE STREAMING AS AN INTERACTIVE MARKETING MEDIA … 507

sector, the mechanism of Douyin provides a more flexible and structured

platform with a large number of experienced and low-paid laborers (Douyin
celebrities). The cost for marketing spent by Douyin will be much less than
that of the original approaches since there will be many potential freelancing
laborers available in the labor market, and the heavy competition leads to lower
costs and demands from competitors. In addition, the efficiency of marketing
can be guaranteed based on the previous sales record of the Douyin celebri-
ties, providing quantified and measured data for the marketing sectors, and
observable and expectable outcomes they can foresee.

3 Main Body of the Chapter: Empirical

Data of the Chinese Douyin Example
to Support the Theoretical Framework
Having reviewed the mechanism, this chapter will move to the discussion of
empirical data to support the proposed mechanism. To extract the data, the
authors invited a large cohort of Douyin celebrities for in-depth interviews. On
the one hand, this method allowed us to explore how the Douyin celebrities
support interactive marketing and develop commercial selling/consumption
activities. On the other hand, it provided us with data to help us to understand
the value, preference, and culture revealed and constructed in these activities.
The finding may offer an inspiring and valuable understanding of contem-
porary China, which would be distinctive because of the specific Chinese
technique of coordinating online economic output with the promotion of
digital nationalism under the Chinese cultural policy.
For the interviews, the authors designed a filtering procedure to exclude
some of the non-job-related categories, and the authors arrived at five mean-
ingful occupational clusters: fashion, beauty, health, education, and travel.
Individual Douyin celebrities who had more than 10,000 followers were
selected. A qualitative research approach was adopted, and 20 interviewees
were chosen for face-to-face in-depth interviews. Their comments revealed
important insights about the mechanism of interactive marketing on Douyin
in the following aspects.

3.1 Findings Concerning the Douyin Celebrities Related

to “Immaterial Creative Labor,” “Sense of Community,”
and “Influence of Douyin”
Interviewees were asked to rank their agreement with the statements about
engaging in e-commerce on Douyin, on a scale of 1 (the lowest level) to 5
(the greatest level). As shown in Table 1, 13 statements have been extracted
from the complete set to illustrate the general comments of interviewees on
the topics of “the immaterial value” (e.g., “I get a feeling of accomplishment
from the job.”), “the sense of community” (e.g., “I really care about the fate
508 B. L. F. PUN AND A. Y. H. FUNG

Table 1 Users’ satisfaction ratings for the Douyin platform

Items Mean

I really care about the fate of the platform 4.56

I am extremely glad that I chose to create work here rather than on one of the other 4.45
platforms I was considering at the time I joined
I speak highly of the platform to my friends 4.44
I find that my values and the platform’s values are very similar 4.24
Morale on this platform is good 4.33
For me, Douyin is the best of all possible organizations for which to work 4.29
My platform inspires the best job performance from me 4.26
I get a feeling of accomplishment from the job 4.24
I would accept almost any type of production for promotion 3.11
I find benefit (like superiority) from “being somebody in the community Douyin” 4.49
I find benefit (like money) from creating work on Douyin 3.02

of the platform.”), and “influence of Douyin” (“I find that my values and the
platform’s values are very similar.”). All the items had a very high score of
agreement (above 4 in the mean score) except “I would accept almost any
type of production for promotion.” and “I find benefit (like money) from
creating work in Douyin,” which only had an average score of 3.11 and 3.02,
respectively.
Further elaboration was requested, and the interviewees shared their
reasons for their choices. Respondents reported that they had a high level of
engagement in their work with very high satisfaction with their “job.” Their
dream of being Douyin celebrities was encouraged after they watched thou-
sands of Douyin videos shared by famous Douyin celebrities. Knowing that
most of the Douyin celebrities were just simple Douyin users gave them confi-
dence to dream of working in this Douyin celebrities’ industry one day. They
were all keen on being a creative laborer on the platform and assimilating
the values of Douyin. Seldom did they raise complaints against their lifestyle
and career pursuit on Douyin, and the strong sense of community and being
highly influenced in Douyin appeared to be their primary reasons for wanting
to be Douyin celebrities (by ranking specifically high in the statement “I really
care about the fate of the platform.”). This revealed their belief in the special
advantage of the Douyin platform in terms of e-commerce.
The findings also suggest that the satisfaction derived is not purely about
monetary reward but instead cultural values. Monetary reward was generally
ranked as a relatively lower priority as only around 10% of Douyin celebrities
earned a few thousand RMB a month, a mediocre salary, which is close to the
median income in China (approximately 2,000 RMB as of 2018). The factor
that keeps the creative labor and audience loyal to the platform could be the
very strong SOC, and therefore they both share the desires for recognition as
active and distinctive individuals. They all showed a very strong interest in the
 22 LIVE STREAMING AS AN INTERACTIVE MARKETING MEDIA … 509

number of fans or followers on Douyin, stressing the value of cultural capital

(pride, reputation, achievement, etc.) more than that of the economic capital
(payment or the amount of commission and sponsorship). This was shown by
the additional statements given during the interview session, where 17 out of
20 interviewees ranked the cultural capital higher than economic capital.
This case study based on interviewees may help us to better understand
the thoughts of the Douyin celebrities about cultural capital. One anonymous
Douyin celebrity the authors interviewed was a big-size fashion model, who
uses the name X Size Charisma. Being bullied by the people surrounding
her because of her body shape, she wanted to present how a big size girl
could be confident. She took video of herself changing her dress to “self-
designed” fashion, and she soon gained fame due to her optimistic viewpoint
and sharing “positive energy.” Suffice it to say, the audience on this big-size
girl’s webpage told her that she empowered them to be brave and respect
themselves regardless of their appearance. The interviewee also explained that
the platform also provided an opportunity for her to rebuild her confidence
with many supporters. This cultural value may be even worth more than any
economic gain she could get from working as a Douyin celebrity.
Another example of a Douyin celebrity expressing his aspiration to achieve
altruistic values from doing work on Douyin is the man who goes by the
pseudonym, Culinary Mr. Lee. On Douyin, Mr. Lee is a professional chef
desiring to demonstrate his skill in cooking, so as to “help them [all online
followers] without charging a single penny.” With over 700,000 followers,
Mr. Lee seldom asks for a big commission from the e-commerce he generates
as he insists his Douyin work is for him building his reputation in the industry
as well as enjoying being seen and praised by the audience.

3.2 General Discussion: The Application of Mechanism of Interactive

Marketing in Douyin
The aforementioned data has provided us with insights into the mechanism of
interactive marketing on Douyin, as it shows how Douyin provides a platform
with which social media celebrities can construct an SOC, influence people’s
values, tastes, and preferences in social media, and support both video creators
and users in their quest to become immaterial creative laborers.
Simultaneously, interactive marketing value is constructed as this mech-
anism provides an environment with many business opportunities for the
merchants as Douyin celebrities have gathered an immense audience of
prospective customers and a massive pool of relatively cheaper labor (Douyin
celebrities). The potential benefits and growth of this e-commerce are signif-
icantly greater compared to that which is generated by the more traditional
one-way directional promotion and sales. It achieves the goal of interactive
marketing.
One interesting recurring point the authors noted in the 20 interview
discussions concerned the actual practice of e-commerce on Douyin, as well
510 B. L. F. PUN AND A. Y. H. FUNG

as how the commercial sector connects with the audience through social
media celebrities with the aid of platform. For example, according to X Size
Charisma, her followers can purchase the dresses she wears in Taobao (the
Chinese version of Amazon), to which the hyperlink is attached at the bottom
of the video she displays. She stressed that she loves the convenient function
of the platform as the number of views and link-clickings serve as proof of
her “commercial value” in promoting products. These numbers are the key
to finding potential merchants for future e-commerce, as they would also be
directly proportional to the number of sales that specific Douyin celebrities
can generate. This potential prosperity of Douyin live streaming e-commerce
and interactive marketing has attracted thousands of laborers and merchants
by means of millions of videos that have been constructed on the platform, and
the mechanism successfully and continuously creates more income for users,
merchants, and online celebrities (laborers).
There may have some questions about the sustainability of the mecha-
nism of interactive marketing on Douyin. For example, if the laborization
of Douyin users is as common as suggested in this chapter, the supply of
laborers for Douyin will be saturated and affected negatively by fierce compe-
tition, which may result in the further exploitation of labor by the marketing
commissioners. Indeed, some Douyin celebrities receive low incomes (with
two-thirds of respondents earning less than 1,000 RMB monthly) that may
not be attractive enough for them to remain in the industry. The reason why
many laborers are nevertheless engaged probably goes back to the mechanism
of the Douyin platform itself: people (laborers) are looking for non-monetary
rewards as they are highly influenced by the culture inside the community that
exists on Douyin.
The data demonstrate that the celebrities enjoy the working conditions
and the opportunity for self-empowerment and the expression of alternative
perspectives. The specific working conditions of creative labor have always
been considered an important factor from a creative worker-centric perspective
(Cunningham et al., 2019). In fact, the conclusion of David Lee’s literature
review (2013) stressed that precarity often pertains to creative labor’s exploita-
tion and self-exploitation in an unpaid or underpaid circumstance. The reason
for such precarity, according to a study by Digital content & Creative Media
center of BNU (2019), is that Douyin celebrities consider that the cultural
factors of this cultural-cum-economic activity carry much more weight than
wages.
This mechanism of interactive marketing has been addressed in different
previous studies which discussed the economic function of social media plat-
forms. Bucknell and Kottasz (2020) have explained how the youth who
are seeking gratification from their usage of TikTok generate huge poten-
tial consumption power in the market. Lin and de Kloet (2019) and Craig
and Cunningham (2021) investigated how Douyin celebrities create a system
of digital cultural production (literally, entertainment) that constructs and
then wastes the unexpected revenue. The consumption and production of a
 22 LIVE STREAMING AS AN INTERACTIVE MARKETING MEDIA … 511

cultural commodity, according to Nieborg and Poell (2018), is the reason for
digital creators to stay on the Douyin platform; it is also a typical attributor
connecting the users to internet and thus forming a strong bond between
them in their relationship formation (Mckenna et al., 2002).
Another interesting discussion point is the conversion of social capital of
Douyin celebrity into e-commerce profit. In order to “survive” in this e-
commerce industry, many Douyin celebrities are prone to listen closely to
their audience, and forward their plea (normally the price negotiation, or
even a half-price discount) to the merchants (who normally stay aside from
the live stage of e-commerce). From a marketing perspective, the merchant
is converting the Douyin celebrities’ social capital (their social network and
proximity to their followers) to money (the economic capital).
At the same time, Douyin celebrities who can reveal their followers’
comment to the merchant, and negotiate better terms and profit for the users,
would be more appreciated by their followers. Gifted by her followers with
love, another celebrity known as Flower Jewelry realized that her popularity
on Douyin may be attributed to her helping her followers to get a “good
price” from the merchant. “Followers told me that there is a product looking
good but the price is very high,” she stated. Flower Jewelry shared her inter-
action with the audience during the interview. She explained that “Later on,
I contact that merchant and seek for an opportunity of e-commerce.... I try
my very best to ‘fight’ for a good price for my followers and urge them to
‘boo’ the price... it forces the merchants to lower the price.” This story shows
an interesting relationship of bargaining that takes place among the audience,
merchants, and Douyin celebrities through Douyin’s interactive marketing.
These findings may justify the emergence of interactive marketing on other
online social platforms. With respect to the discussion of platformization,
Douyin illustrates, as the best example, that digital technology creates a proac-
tive engagement in capitalist activity. This is unlike in a consumerist society
wherein professionals earn from their contribution and pay back on commodi-
ties for their identification. Douyin simply accelerates the process and presents
the “illusion” to the user, thus skipping the concerns of economic capital
and directly jumping to the pursuit of social capital. Through platformiza-
tion, materializing cultural capital happens in a more compressed space and
timeframe. That could be the reason why among the 20 interviewees, hardly
anyone mentioned that they only needed money as a reward. The case of
Culinary Mr. Lee described in this chapter demonstrates a practical example,
showing how social recognition and reputation are more important to the
doers. In this sense, because of gaining cultural and social capital, creative
labors will remain in the market even if they are exploited for the gain of
economic capital, and the sufficiency of labor in the pool ensures the further
implementation of Douyin mechanism and interactive marketing.
512 B. L. F. PUN AND A. Y. H. FUNG

4 Conclusion
Like Instagram, the China-made Douyin (or TikTok) significantly occupies the
global market of social media, and by its nature, induces a social and cultural
impact on society. The rise of Douyin celebrities and their video sharing enrich
the labor and resource pool in the market, at the same time increasing infor-
mation flow, potential audience, social awareness, and, of course, economic
opportunity. With more and more merchants offering commissions to the
Douyin celebrities, the authors may see the emergence of interactive marketing
happening in new and even more dominant social media tools.
This chapter has examined the mechanism of the interactive marketing func-
tion in Douyin, and how the social media platform turns Douyin celebrities
into immaterial creative labor influenced by its value and sense of commu-
nity. The findings contribute a better understanding of emerging e-commerce
businesses in China, and at the same time, provide insights into how the
mechanism of interactive marketing can be constructed in order to ensure
the sustainability of e-commerce on a social media platform like Douyin. The
implications of this mechanism could apply to other Chinese social media
platforms for interactive marketing in China such as Kuaishou and the like.

Acknowledgements This research project is funded by a grant from the Research

Grant Council of HKSAR (Project no. GRF 14600618) and Key Fund of the National
Social Science Foundation of China: Arts category (18ZD12).

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 CHAPTER 23

Interactive Experience of Collaborative Online

Shopping: Real-Time Interaction
and Communication

Mohammad Rahim Esfidani and Behnam Izadi

1 Introduction
According to statistics, 90% of customers like to have a human connec-
tion during transactions (Gutzman, 2000), and 70% prefer to purchase with
shopping pals (Chebat et al., 2014). The significance of collaborative online
shopping (COS) has made it the subject of some studies (Cheng et al., 2013;
Goswami et al., n.d.; Huang et al., 2011; Kim et al., 2013; Seedorf et al.,
2014; Siau et al., 2013; Wei et al., 2017; Yue et al., 2014; Yue & Jiang, 2013;
Zhu et al., 2010). Most scholars referred to the COS definition proposed
by Zhu et al. (2010), a shopping activity in which an individual purchases
synchronously with one or more remotely placed shopping companions at an
online retailer. In COS, with an additional person joining in shopping, the
shopping process becomes dynamic due to social interactions between indi-
viduals (Izadi et al., 2021). What draws attention to COS is its interactivity.
Thus, different forms of interactions during the joint customer journey affect
the customer experience.
Customer interactions with a high degree of quality are the key to iden-
tifying novel competitive advantage sources that allow individuals to create
collaboratively different experiences. According to Prahalad and Ramaswamy

M. R. Esfidani (B) · B. Izadi

University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran
e-mail: esfidani@ut.ac.ir
B. Izadi
e-mail: behnam_izadi@ut.ac.ir

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 519

Switzerland AG 2023
C. L. Wang (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Interactive Marketing,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14961-0_23
520 M. R. ESFIDANI AND B. IZADI

(2002), customers define value as experiences in a market setting and force

businesses to view value similarly. Marketing literature has a long history of
discussing the creation of value jointly and the experience of value creation.
Ramirez (1999) reviewed jointly created value, and Prahalad and Ramaswamy
(2004) highlighted individuals’ roles in creating value and the interactive
aspect of value. Experience value of consumers, including emotional, utili-
tarian, and social value, is positively impacted by interactivity (Lucia-Palacios &
Pérez-López, 2021). A significant transition happened, as the creation of value
by the businesses changed to the co-creation of experiences via the interaction
of businesses and individuals, mostly guided by individuals’ competencies and
needs (Akaka et al., 2015). Co-creation of value is described as a collaborative
and concurrent peer-like activity that entails the development of new material
and symbolic value (Nangpiire et al., 2021). Creating value is quickly evolving
away from a product-orientation and corporation-orientation focus toward a
more customized and interactive experience for customers. Brand platforms
enable direct customer–brand connection by allowing customers to browse
their preferred shopping web pages in order to find the freshest trends and
get personalized recommendations in real time (Wang, 2021).
Customers try to understand the meaning of their experiences in a social
setting through interpersonal interactions. The customer experiences can be
communicated directly to other individuals or shared via social networking
sites. Not all evaluations of experiences are pleasant, and hence unfavor-
able experiences may result in negative value creation (Helkkula et al.,
2012). Interactive marketing, according to Wang (2021), is the process of
creating two-way value and reciprocal influence by connecting, involving,
and interacting with customers actively. This description highlights interac-
tive marketing in three ways: first, it is bidirectional communication with
reciprocal effects on social and corporate environments; second, it emphasizes
customer responsiveness and frequently proactive behavior in the generation
and exchange of value; and third, its interactivity entails individual involvement
in real-time environmental control and adjustment. This description highlights
the dialogue-oriented communication process with shared consequences in
social and commercial domains, as well as the individuals’ active involvement
in defining the character of interactions (Nangpiire et al., 2021).
This chapter sheds insights on understanding COS through the lens of
interactive marketing and discusses how individuals interact with each other
and with the collaborative online shopping platform (COSP). The joint
customer journey of shoppers during COS creates experiences for them
through specific touchpoints. COS is distinguished from solo online shopping
in two ways: first, the COSP acts as a brand-owned touchpoint (These touch-
points are consumer contacts that occur within the company’s experience,
which is developed and managed by the company and is under its control),
and second, the COS provides a social touchpoint (These touchpoints recog-
nize the essential roles of other individuals in the customer experience) by
enabling individuals to communicate in real time (Lemon & Verhoef, 2016).
 23 INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCE OF COLLABORATIVE ONLINE … 521

The customers’ experience in COS is rooted in the interaction between

shoppers and their companions and the interaction with COSP. The features of
a COSP affect how individuals interact since shopping is often a social activity
wherein relatives or friends join the shopper (Zhu et al., 2010). The interac-
tion between shoppers and their companions is regarded as a social context
(Helkkula et al., 2012). As a result, social context elements, such as social
standards, regulations, criteria, norms, or values, influence consumer experi-
ence assessments. In the same way, social norms related to specific groups of
individuals affect consumption decisions and interactions (Akaka et al., 2015).
COSP is an online social platform through which consumers co-navigate,
communicate, and interact jointly. COSPs come in many different forms,
which are completely considered in the following sections. Co-browsing,
which the Samesurf and the Surfly provide, can be considered an example
of COSP. Co-shoppers’ interaction on COSPs results in value creation.
According to Moon and Nass (1996), customers respond to computer-
mediated communication (including the COSP) similar to the manner they
react to human contact. While some argue that the brain interprets digital
interaction similarly to human interaction, others argue that distinctions
between how we perceive one another online and in person are rising
(Jimenez & Morreale, 2015). However, the interaction of shoppers and their
experience with COSPs is understudied. Researchers are trying to understand
better social platform interactions’ existing and future implications from both
good and negative perspectives.
While COS has grown in popularity as a result of the widespread use
of social media websites, not many researchers studied how to improve this
form of the shopping experience (Kim et al., 2013). Interpersonal interactions
during COS and individuals’ interactions with the COSPs create an interactive
experience. The main aim of this chapter is to provide a better comprehension
of shoppers’ interactive experience with shopping companions on COSP via a
review of related literature. Hence, interactions with various types of COSPs
(as the touchpoints) and the interaction of people with their companions (as
the other touchpoints) have been discussed.
The chapter is organized as follows. First, customer experience and touch-
points are reviewed, so that interactions with customers take place through
them. Then, the concept of interactivity is discussed. Afterward, interactivity
through touchpoints of COS is put forward. During the next part, a literature
review on consumers’ interactive experience with COSP and the interactive
experience of customers with shopping companions on the COSP is presented.
The following section considers the different forms of interactivity during
the interaction with COSP. Following that, various elements that can impact
the shopping companion’s interaction are proposed. Finally, the aforemen-
tioned content is reviewed and discussed, and conclusions are drawn from our
discussion.
522 M. R. ESFIDANI AND B. IZADI

2 Literature Review
This section is divided into four sections: (1) the customer experience and
touchpoints, (2) the definition of interactivity, (3) the literature on interac-
tivity through touchpoints of COS, and (4) the literature on the interactive
experience of customers with shopping companion on the COSP.

2.1 Customer Experience and Touchpoints

Prior research suggests that information about consumer experiences in online
shopping contexts is still in its early stages (Yang et al., 2019). Interactions
and touchpoints from the customer journey viewpoint have been examined
in marketing literature recently (Kuehnl et al., 2019). Customers’ subjective
and internal reaction to any interaction with a firm is generally described
as customer experience (Kuehnl et al., 2019; Stein & Ramaseshan, 2016).
Customer experience and a customer journey map are commonly used to
acquire a better understanding of how customers interact with a business
(Richardson, 2010). It is important to note what individuals truly are inter-
ested in are meaningful experiences rather than products (Lemon & Verhoef,
2016). Marketing studies demonstrate that, when people look for some items,
purchase these items, get service for them, and use these products in these situ-
ations, experiences happen. Customers gain experience whenever they interact
with any aspect of a good, service, brand, or corporation, across numerous
channels and at various times (Stein & Ramaseshan, 2016).
Experiences can also be generated through customers’ use and consumption
of products. Consumption-related experiences include hedonic aspects such as
enjoyment and feelings. When customers look for brands, purchase them, and
finally consume brands, brand experiences arise. Hence, brand experiences are
subjective responses of individuals elicited by certain associated experiential
elements in such a situation (Brakus et al., 2009). Leclerc and Schmitt (1999)
take a multidimensional approach, identifying five distinct kinds of experiences:
sensory (experiences via smell, taste, touch, sound, and sight), affective (how
to elicit emotion during the consumption experience), cognitive (rational eval-
uation of the company and products), physical (experiences gained through
engaging with other individuals), socio-identity (extends beyond a person’s
inner emotions, ideas, cognitions, and activities by connecting a person’s
self to a brand’s broader social and cultural setting) experiences (Leclerc &
Schmitt, 1999; Lemon & Verhoef, 2016).
There are numerous definitions of customer experience in the litera-
ture. A customer journey through sequential engagements/contacts between
a customer and a firm covers all service delivery actions. This definition
emphasizes the importance of touchpoints as the fundamental components
of customer journeys (Cambra-Fierro et al., 2021). Touchpoints are widely
thought of as encounters (i.e., print advertising, the website, and COSPs) with
 23 INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCE OF COLLABORATIVE ONLINE … 523

various components of a business. Every encounter results in a customer expe-

rience and explains what occurred from the individual’s viewpoint. The term
“encounter” refers to any type of interaction, communication, or customer
engagement and is used to describe the fundamental units of customer jour-
neys. The customer journey occurs in a context comprised of offline channels,
including physical retail stores and brokers, and online channels, including
search engines, e-commerce, and social media websites, all of which are perme-
ated by a ubiquitous connection (Kannan & Kulkarni, 2022). The term
“customer touchpoints” refers to “episodes of direct or indirect contact with
a brand or a firm” (Hallikainen et al., 2019, p. 1). Marketers may utilize
omnichannel touchpoints to provide a unified message and engage consumers
on their preferred channels (Swan et al., 2019).
Keyser et al. (2020) claim that touchpoints differ in terms of control,
nature, and stage of the consumer experience. Thus, (1) touchpoints can be
controlled by firms or not, (2) touchpoints can be physical, human, digital, and
a mix of these, and (3) touchpoints can be in the pre-purchase, purchase, and
post-purchase stages. Also, touchpoints can be interactive and non-interactive.
Digital touchpoints can be simplex (one-way communication) or complex
(two-way communication) in terms of interactivity. Since all social touchpoints
enable two-way communication, individuals can post comments and reply
to them in real time; these touchpoints have a great degree of interactivity
(Straker et al., 2015). In the following section, the experience of interactivity is
discussed.

2.2 What is Interactivity?

Before discussing the interactive aspect of COS, it is necessary to define the
concept of interactivity and its characteristics in this section. Interactivity is
described as the capability of a technology to allow people to engage with
and interact with material more readily. Interactivity in a virtual environment
refers to the degree to which individuals may alter the content and appear-
ance of an environment in real time (Kim et al., 2021). Interactivity is widely
accepted as a natural component of face-to-face communication. It has been
suggested, however, that it also occurs in contexts of mediated communi-
cation (Rafaeli, 1988). Interaction can be seen as a process of exchange in
which people communicate info and sentiments in order to enhance relation-
ship development (Wilson, 1976). Perceived interactivity is a psychological
trait that is determined by the efficacy and scope of the audience. The scope
of the audience is reflected in the communication’s content. For example, real
interpersonal communication is established on an individual’s understanding
of the source, whereas communication aimed at a larger audience is grounded
on sociological or cultural assumptions about the target group (Newhagen
et al., 1995).
Interpersonal customer interactions and interactions between the firm
employees and customers, according to Kuuru and Närvänen (2019), are key
524 M. R. ESFIDANI AND B. IZADI

drivers for experience in the retailing industry. The quality of interpersonal

customer interaction, which relates to how customers evaluate their interac-
tions, is a vital component of delivering a good customer experience (Kim &
Choi, 2016). With the introduction of interactive marketing, the effect of one-
way advertising and communication has decreased. Through digital/mobile
activities in platform ecosystems, the market is becoming a venue for dialogues
and interactions among linked individuals. Modern interactive marketing has
also expanded beyond the domain of direct marketing (Wang, 2021). Thus,
one of the components of interactive marketing is an interactive experience.
The interactive experience has a long history in the studies related to art,
teaching, and museum visits. Dierking and Falk (1992) describe the inter-
active experience as activities in which the visitor is engaged while visiting
the museum environment. Customers communicate a variety of different
forms of information in order to generate distinct values. Given the funda-
mental role of interactions in value creation, it is reasonable to conceive the
categories of interactive experience through the value paradigm: the most
common types of customers’ interpersonal interactions are (1) functional, (2)
affective, and (3) expressive/symbolic. Functional interactions include sharing
goods/services related-info to maximize practical advantages. The cognitive
customer experience stresses how effectively products and services may be
obtained (Lin et al., 2020). This part of the customer experience is connected
to functionality, including the price and quality of goods/services, that assists
individuals in evaluating goods/services and making purchasing decisions.
The affective customer experience is concerned with the pleasure and enter-
tainment that shopping provides (Gao et al., 2021). Affective interactions
emphasize exchanges that bring emotional benefits to individuals, such as plea-
sure and enjoyment. The exchange of data that demonstrates a customer’s
beliefs/values, as well as projecting their self-concept, is referred to expressive
/symbolic interaction (Lin et al., 2020).
In this chapter, the interactive experience is characterized as a customer’s
functional, affective, and expressive engagement with other people and objects.
Reciprocity, speed of response, personalization, and nonverbal communication
are all important aspects of interactivity of experience (Johnson et al., 2006;
Merrilees, 2016; Song & Zinkhan, 2008).

• Reciprocity: Describe how participants switch roles, alternating between

sending and receiving messages. This distinguishes interactive commu-
nication (in which senders alternate sending messages) from transactive
communication (where senders transmit messages concurrently).
• Personalization: It is the degree to which one party’s answer is contingent
upon the other party’s response. A response that is directly related to and
pertinent to the query is conditional on this.
• Speed of response: It describes whether exchanging messages takes place
in real time or not.
 23 INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCE OF COLLABORATIVE ONLINE … 525

• Nonverbal communication: Refers to the extent to which many commu-

nication channels are employed. In a situation where a greater number
of channels are used, the feedback becomes richer. Researchers have
questioned the conventional approach to communication research, which
neglects nonverbal components. Instead of that, they have recommended
a greater emphasis on nonverbal parts of communication to foster a more
extensive understanding of communication.

In the following section, the interactive touchpoints of COS are discussed,

which are digital non-firm-controlled touchpoints used at the pre-purchase
and purchase stage of COS.

2.3 Interactivity Through Touchpoints of COS

Supporting technologies for COS have gained quite a considerable interest.
Prior studies have found that a COSP can be developed with a variety of
supporting technological features. The supporting features make it easier for
co-shoppers or the shopper and salesperson to interact and communicate.
Zhu et al. (2010) examine different forms of technological support, navigation,
and communication support in COS. Yue et al. (2014) indicated that present
COSPs offer different co-navigation, communication, and information anno-
tation supports. Goswami et al. (n.d.) identify the communication and decision
support features as the website features for COS.
Businesses have also incorporated the different types of COS to enable
co-shoppers to co-navigate and shop together. The Plurchase sidebar for
Amazon.com and Zappos lets customers review the corresponding URLs to
the goods that their partner is now viewing, go to that website with a click
of a button, or engage in text chatting at a preferred moment. ShopTogether
also offers comparable features. This capability is the location cue feature that
enables shopping companions to navigate the internet independently using
their own web browsers while keeping track of their partner’s online activi-
ties or as navigation support, which enables shoppers to navigate to the same
website being surfed by their partner through clicking the location cue indi-
cator. BuddyShopping also incorporated split-screen navigation, which splits
the browser into two displays of equal size. A shopper can operate his or her
own screen and surf the website freely while remaining aware of how his or her
shopping companion navigates the shared screen’s web page. BevyUp created
a platform that enables simultaneous interaction between numerous shoppers
on the shared website via various tools. Since this function can connect shop-
pers on the same single browser, BevyUp’s navigation support feature is known
as the shared view. They are both surfing the internet at the same time at
the same pace. Additionally, they will share the same view of a website page
instantly (Yue et al., 2014). The shared co-navigation technology allows two
or more users to visit the same pages concurrently using their own personal
Web browsers (Twidale, 1995).
526 M. R. ESFIDANI AND B. IZADI

Navigation and communication, in general, are two types of supporting

features that have been extensively examined in COSP studies and are
presented in a variety of techniques in these studies. Text chat, voice chat,
and video calls are the communication support features for COS in several
studies (Goswami et al., n.d.; Siau et al., 2013; Yue et al., 2014; Zhu et al.,
2010). Navigation support features can influence how co-shoppers move to
the products of their interests collaboratively. Several techniques of navigation
support have been investigated, including (1) separate navigation with location
cue, (2) split-screen navigation, and (3) shared navigation (Cheng et al., 2013;
Yue & Jiang, 2013; Yue et al., 2014; Zhu et al., 2010) (see Figs. 1, 2, and
3). COS technology combines co-navigation and communication supporting
features to offer a platform for individuals’ interactions. Also, other auxiliary
features can support co-navigation, including live annotation1 and switching
control2 of mouse navigation between participants.
According to the following examples, the supporting features of COS
enhance the interactive experience of individuals during co-shopping:

• Switching control of the mouse navigation and two-way communication

between participants in COS demonstrate reciprocity.
• Personalization is evident in the one-on-one communication between
shoppers and their companions during the COS, as shoppers receive
tailored feedback, suggestions, and comments. Also, individuals can use
the live annotation feature of COSPs to give customized feedback and
notices to their companions.
• The real-time communication and instant switching control of navigation
between individuals highlight the speed of response in COS.
• Employing various medium bundles (including video calling, voice chat-
ting, and text chatting) for communication during COS enables indi-
viduals for nonverbal communication. The live annotation feature is the
other functional affordance that can facilitate nonverbal communication
between individuals.

Previously, scholars considered interactivity as interpersonal conversations

(Sundar et al., 2015). Rafaeli (1988) distinguished three aspects of interac-
tivity: non-interactive, quasi-interactive, and completely interactive. According
to this definition, when two individuals transmit messages without consid-
ering each other’s messages, the exchange is termed non-interactive. It is
reactive when one directly replies to the other’s input. The message exchange

1 Live annotation is a feature that enables users to write notes, draw, and highlight words
while co-shopping. The live annotation tool enables co-shoppers to draw or type on the
browser page for both users to see (Topaloglu, 2013).
2 The capability of the end-user to manage the co-shopping session and navigate the
mouse movement (Topaloglu, 2013).
 23 INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCE OF COLLABORATIVE ONLINE … 527

Fig. 1 Separate navigation with location cue (Yue et al., 2014)

is deemed fully interactive when the latter interactant reacts back, acknowl-
edging the latest and all previous messages. Due to all the aforementioned
supporting features of COSP, it is considered fully interactive.

2.4 Interactive Experience of COS Technology

The customer experience is shaped by the diversity of interactions between
individuals and objects (Hoffman & Novak, 2018). The consequence of a
series of interactions between a person and a corporation/product/service is
the customer experience. This definition, however, appears to overlook the
influence of other customers (Lin et al., 2020; Srivastava & Kaul, 2014) and
collaborative shopping platforms. The interactive experience of COS is rooted
in the interaction with COSPs and the shopping companion (see Fig. 4). As a
result, the COS interactive experience corresponds to the following:
Interactive experience of COS = Interaction with COSP * Interaction with
shopping companion
528 M. R. ESFIDANI AND B. IZADI

Fig. 2 Shared navigation (Wei et al., 2017)

Fig. 3 Split screen navigation (Yue, 2014)

 23 INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCE OF COLLABORATIVE ONLINE … 529

Fig. 4 Interactive experience of collaborative online shopping (Source Proposed by

the authors)

2.4.1 Interactive Experience with COSPs

According to a rising number of studies, the computer is considered a social
actor instead of just a medium by individuals in human–computer interactions.
This idea is based on social response theory, which claims that if computers
display features similar to humans or social cues, individuals will answer them
by using social rules. Even in situations, humans completely know that they
are dealing with devices, they regard computers as social agents (Wang et al.,
2007).
Since people engage and interact with computers the same way they interact
with humans, the interactivity effects model (Sundar et al., 2015) is used
to understand the interactivity of COSPs. According to this model, COSP
involves three distinct types of interaction: platform-level, message-level, and
source-level.

• COSP interactivity: The term “medium (or modality) interactivity” refers

to the numerous ways in which an interface can be interacted with,
including clicking, hovering, dragging, and scrolling. All the abovemen-
tioned options have unique action possibilities, regulating how individ-
uals can access, encode, and display the info given by the interface. It is,
for example, argued that modality interactivity serves as a highlighting
mechanism. Modality interactivity provides individuals the capability to
control visual items and imitate their motions in numerous manners.
These actions can help improve the speed, variety, and clarity with which
one mentally represents the information displayed on the interface. This
kind of interactivity is more related to the COSP interface’s functional
elements, and different tools are available for customers to access content
530 M. R. ESFIDANI AND B. IZADI

(Sundar et al., 2015). Thus, the live annotation feature of the COSP is
related to medium interactivity.
• Message interactivity: Message interactivity is concerned with the nature
of the user-system exchanges (or with other users) (Sundar et al.,
2015). Since people respond to each other contingently during COS,
real-time communication between individuals is an instance of message
interactivity.
• Source interactivity: The extent to which the interface enables the person
to act as the source of communication is known as source interactivity.
Previously, the term “source interactivity” was used synonymously with
the concept of customization—the higher the degree of customization,
the more source interaction an interface provides (Sundar et al., 2015).
Since the switching control of mouse navigation during COS between
individuals enables them to find and customize information based on
their companion needs and priorities, it can be an example of source inter-
activity. Thus, switching control can enhance individuals’ self-expression.
Enabling individuals to choose their desired media to communicate
during COS is another instance of source interactivity.

The COSP can improve the interactive experience by enhancing the expe-
rience’s interactivity and effective communication. Effective communication
has a number of benefits, one of which is boosting the brand experience
(Drennan et al., 2015) and assisting in the co-creation of value (Grissemann &
Stokburger-Sauer, 2012). Comfort and trustworthiness in interaction emerge
from effective communication (Kharouf et al., 2019).

2.4.2 Interactive Experience with Shopping Companion

Customers rarely journey alone from the point of need to the end of the
purchase and beyond. The concept of the social customer journey is devel-
oped by Hamilton et al. (2021), which expands previous viewpoints on the
path to purchase by highlighting the important role other individuals play
during the customer journey. During one or more phases of the journey, co-
shoppers interact with each other explicitly or implicitly. Shopping companions
may impact the decision-maker and the shopping journey. The joint journey
is a state of social journey wherein two or more consumers journey together.
Therefore, co-shoppers’ journey during COS is a joint journey. The influence
of shopping partners on the consumer journey has been substantially enhanced
by technology and other societal factors.
Customer experience is dependent on interaction with shopping compan-
ions. According to some studies, computer-mediated interaction, such as
COSPs, has a detrimental influence on interpersonal effect and group solidarity
(Walther, 1996). As a result, shopping may become task-oriented (rather than
socio-emotional) when the COSP is being used. Kim and Choi (2016) argue
that interaction with a friend (as opposed to audience interaction) improves
the quality of the customer experience. Also, interactions with those with
 23 INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCE OF COLLABORATIVE ONLINE … 531

whom they have a high degree of social intimacy are more social–emotional
in nature (Izadi et al., 2021). Thus, interaction with shopping companions on
COSPs is influenced by interpersonal elements such as group structure, rela-
tionship uncertainty, perceived competency of the shopping companion, and
co-presence.

Collaborative Shoppers Experience and Group Structure

One of the primary reasons for shopping is contacting individuals with similar
interests to share viewpoints related to the specific product, receive their
comments, and enjoy their shopping time together (Tauber, 1972). Yet, shop-
ping together might be challenging because of the physical separation, as when
two friends live in different areas. Fortunately, this constraint may be overcome
through COS, as individuals do not necessarily have to be physically together
(Zhu et al., 2010).
Several studies examined the influence of the shopping group structure (the
status composition on COS) (Cheng et al., 2013; Yue et al., 2014). Stewart
and Barrick (2000) described group structure as an indicator of how group
members’ roles are combined. Consumers’ decision-making responsibilities
and commitment levels with various statuses within a co-shopping group vary.
Generally, there are three types of group structure in COS:

(1) “co-buyers” structure, in which both shoppers are in charge of making deci-
sions (e.g., shoppers purchase a birthday present for a mutual buddy), the two
shoppers have equal commitment and hence equal decision-making authority
(Yue & Jiang, 2013; Yue et al., 2014).
(2) “buyer/advisor” structure, in which just one of the shoppers (the buyer)
is in charge of making purchase decisions, while other shoppers (advisors)
only make suggestions or comments on the buyer’s shopping activity (e.g., a
person wants to buy clothes and asks friends to accompany him/her and make
comments) (Yue & Jiang, 2013; Yue et al., 2014).
(3) “Buyer-Store Companion” structure, in this form of co-shoppers’ status,
a salesperson accompanied a customer during the shopping process. In this
scenario, the store companion serves as an advisor to the customer during
the shopping decision-making process (Izadi et al., 2021), but as Qiu and
Benbasat (2005) noted, the nature of friends’ relationship is distinct from the
one between shoppers and salespeople. Generally, shoppers communicate with
salespeople to seek advice. Shoppers are typically cautious and guarded with
their suggestions, as their comments may be inaccurate and biased toward a
commission or gain for the retailer (Zhu et al., 2010).

Yue et al. (2014) and Yue and Jiang (2013) discuss shopping decisions
and the responsibilities that follow them in COSPs. In a status-heterogeneous
group, higher status individuals can contribute more info for conversation, and
their opinions and comments are more persuasive in the final choice. Shopping
groups with varying status compositions interact differently in COS activities.
532 M. R. ESFIDANI AND B. IZADI

Shopping partners with varying levels of status share varying degrees of infor-
mation. Additionally, those with higher status are more likely to exert control
over shared space in a heterogeneous group. But there is a greater struggle for
navigation control in a status homogeneous shopping group, and navigation
control will be more handed and taken over compared to the shopping dyads
with different statuses (Yue et al., 2014).

Relational Uncertainty Effect

Uncertainty is a natural result of individuals’ efforts to establish interpersonal
understanding in various circumstances. In more formal terms, uncertainty
refers to the inability to predict and explain behavior. To put it another way,
uncertainty is the absence of assurance about the outcome of interpersonal
interactions. Accordingly, relational uncertainty in interpersonal relationships
is regarded as people’s level of confidence in their perceptions of engagement
(Knobloch & Solomon, 2005).
When shoppers interact with a buyer-store companion, their key interest
is reducing uncertainty or improving predictability regarding their own and
other participants’ behavior during the interaction (Berger & Calabrese,
1974). Thus, by lowering uncertainty, relational knowledge can contribute
to improving the relationship. Individuals employ related data to the relation-
ship between them and their communication partners to generate and analyze
messages exchanged; this data is called relational knowledge (Simon & Tossan,
2018).
Consumers acquire information about the shopping companion through
passive (passive strategies include no interaction between information seekers
and their objectives. These strategies focus on unobtrusive target observa-
tion), active (encompass actions that gather information indirectly but do not
involve direct interaction among information seekers and targets), and inter-
active strategies (are those that are used when people interact), most notably
during initial interactions with strangers (Berger, 2002).
Uncertainty about relationships can also complicate interactions. Individ-
uals with unclear relationship statuses are more prone to suffer from the lack
of well-defined behavioral expectations and, as a result, should find communi-
cation comparatively demanding, convoluted, and tedious. Thus, relationship
uncertainty will exacerbate the difficulty of interaction (Knobloch & Solomon,
2005). For instance, relational uncertainty may contribute to a sense of social
exclusion on COSP. Individuals dislike social exclusion (de Waal-Andrews &
Van Beest, 2012), resulting in a poor interaction experience.

Interactants’ Competency and Warmth

The stereotype content model is based on two distinct traits: competence
(intellectual, skillful, and practical) and warmth (reflects sociability, commu-
nion, and relationships) (Fiske et al., 1999; Zheng et al., 2021). According
to the stereotype content model, proposed by Fiske et al. (1999), when
customers contact a shopping companion for the first time on the COSPs
 23 INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCE OF COLLABORATIVE ONLINE … 533

(for example, in buyer-store companion status), they are primarily interested

in two things:

a. determining the intent of others, i.e., whether others have positive or

negative attitudes toward them (warmth);
b. determining the effectiveness with which others can carry out their plans
is determining the capability of others to benefit them (competence)
(Halkias & Diamantopoulos, 2020).

Warmth is associated with hedonic values and results in a distinct experience

of (exciting vs. boring) in products, brand personality (Stokburger-Sauer et al.,
2012), and interactions. A memorable experience is derived from the hedonic
value (of interaction) (Hwang et al., 2021) arising from Warmth. Competence
is described as an individual’s capacity or capability and is developed via perfor-
mance (Waseem et al., 2018). Operational and role competencies have been
studied by Sirdeshmukh et al. (2002).
Role competence is defined by Smith and Barclay (1997) as the extent to
which partners consider one another to possess the necessary skills, abilities,
and knowledge to complete a task effectively. On COSPs, the perceived role
competency of the shopping companion contributes to the trustworthiness
and enhances the quality of the interactive experience. Shopping companions’
product recommendations and product knowledge, for example, influence the
perceived role competency of them by shoppers. In a number of business
interaction scenarios, the expectancy of a constantly competent partner’s func-
tioning has been highlighted as a prelude to creating trust (Sirdeshmukh et al.,
2002). The relational dimension implies that an individual’s competency is
socially intersubjective, requiring knowledge of relational structures and their
flexibility in specific circumstances. As actors’ sense-making may be socially
related to their interactions, such experiences are dynamic (Waseem et al.,
2018). Operational competence is defined as the competent execution of visible
behaviors as an indicator of “service in action” (e.g., accuracy and fluency of
web moves and response speed of shopping companion) (Sirdeshmukh et al.,
2002). Collaborative web moves of co-shoppers can be measured in terms of
fluency and accuracy of web moves. The fluency of web moves is related to
the efficiency of web moves, which is measured through uncoupling occur-
rence/resolution (i.e., an absence of coordination with someone’s shopping
companion) (Zhu et al., 2010) or gaze-conversation alignment and distrac-
tion by action (Yue et al., 2014). Any uncoupling or distraction incidents could
impair the fluency of web moves. These are similar concepts that arise when co-
shoppers do not refer to a certain product despite being on the same website
or when one of the shoppers becomes confused by the other shopper’s unex-
pected or sudden act, resulting in a lack of coordination (Zhu et al., 2010).
The efficiency of web moves is determined by the accuracy of the web moves.
In other words, the web moves are more accurate when they are more aligned
534 M. R. ESFIDANI AND B. IZADI

with the shopping goal. If the web moves are precise, the number of unneces-
sary, redundant, and useless web moves is reduced. Additionally, the necessity
for corrective web moves to rectify errors and inaccuracies will be decreased.
To enhance operational competence, the web moves of co-shoppers must be
fluent and accurate.

Co-Presence
Historically, the concept that other actors’ presence impacts social interaction
has been focused on physical proximity, with co-presence assumed to be a
given, objective condition. Co-presence refers to the perception of actors’
mutual entrainment, defined as the joint synchronization of the following
factors: attention, emotion, and behavior (Campos-Castillo & Hitlin, 2013).
In other words, co-presence is the extent to which users are aware of one
another’s presence; social presence or co-presence encompasses psychological
and behavioral engagement (Kim et al., 2013).
According to Buttolo et al. (1997), shared interaction can be classified into
three forms. (1) Users cannot adjust the environment in a static virtual envi-
ronment. (2) In a collaborative virtual environment, only one person at a time
is able to modify the same virtual item at the same time. (3) Individuals are
able to edit the same virtual item simultaneously in a cooperative virtual envi-
ronment. Directly or indirectly, individuals can view and touch one another
via a shared object. By incorporating feedback and allowing participants to
interact, a new degree of fun and a sense of co-presence or social presence is
added (Nam et al., 2008).
According to Wang et al. (2007), socialness perception refers to the degree
to which customers identify social presence on a retail Web site as a result
of the usage of social cues. Consumers’ shopping experiences are influenced
by their social perceptions. The literature indicates that the shopping experi-
ence is influenced by the store’s social environment and interactions between
store personnel and customers at various points along the customer journey.
Interaction with a shopping companion is critical for developing an interactive
experience during COS. Interpersonal interactions that occur during COS can
also have an impact on the customer experience (Srivastava & Kaul, 2014).
On COSPs, for example, individuals viewing the same screen contents
concurrently creates a visible common ground. This experience, in which a
shopper can observe the partner’s mouse movement navigation process and
be aware of the product/web page that the shopping partner views, enhances
their awareness of their shared situation. This scenario is analogous to an in-
store shopping experience in which two consumers collaboratively evaluate an
item. Thus, both shoppers will have a sense of community, which will result in
a social presence. Additionally, prior research has discovered that the richness
of media has an impact on the amount of social presence perceived by commu-
nicators (Poole et al., 1999; Zmud et al., 1990). It is argued that face-to-face
conversation is optimal since it provides verbal and nonverbal info, including
 23 INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCE OF COLLABORATIVE ONLINE … 535

facial expression, tone, and gesture, all of which can be critical, if not neces-
sary, in establishing a communicative stance. Likewise, as voice can convey a
variety of nonverbal clues that cannot be conveyed through text, including
inflection, pitch, tone, and pauses, voice chat enables customers to maintain
their language style and behavior. Therefore, voice chatting is more natural
and brings co-shoppers closer socially than text chatting (Zhu et al., 2010).
During COS, utilizing a variety of media bundles such as video calling, voice
chatting, and text chatting can facilitate social presence.
Previous studies have focused on the concept of social presence in order
to examine the absence of human warmth online (Shen, 2012). Psychological
involvement is the customer’s comprehension of the shopping companion’s
intention or reasoning via the lens of the customer’s emotional state. Behav-
ioral engagement is the extent to which the co-shopper partner perceives their
interdependence, connection, and responsiveness to the customer’s behaviors.
When co-presence can be established during COS, the shopping experience
will be social and relational to some extent. Thus, when technology features
of COSP enable an individual to be completely aware of the shopping compan-
ion’s presence, the COSP may be successful at creating co-presence and
enhancing the relational and social aspects of the shopping experience (Kim
et al., 2013).

Flow
Flow experience is used to highlight important elements that impact the expe-
riences and activities of consumers in various circumstances (Cuevas et al.,
2020). The concept of flow is important for discussing human–computer inter-
actions. The flow theory, proposed by Csikszentmihalyi (1977), refers to a
state in which individuals are highly immersed in a particular task/activity
that looks as though nothing else matters. According to this theory, a flow
state occurs when a person feels that the environment includes sufficient
chances for action that are proportionate to the individual’s capacity for action
(Rodríguez-Torrico et al., 2021). While surfing the Net, an individual may
encounter the following distinct factors of flow: (1) control, (2) focused atten-
tion, and (3) a strong sense of enjoyment. The control element is related
to individuals’ feeling in control of their computer interactions. Computer
technologies provide this sense of control by adapting to individual feed-
back in ways that more static technologies cannot. Attention focus refers to a
person’s attention being focused on a limited stimulus field, thereby removing
irrelevant attitudes and perceptions (Nusair & Parsa, 2011; Webster et al.,
1993).
Co-shoppers may have difficulties if they are not viewing the same product,
piece of information, or subject throughout their COS activity. Live annota-
tion is used to take notes, draw, and highlight specific phrases during COS
(Topaloglu, 2013). Yet, this chapter emphasizes the ability to draw some-
thing (such as a line, circle, or arrow). Because live annotation and the
use of mouse pointing enable consumers to point to specific areas of the
536 M. R. ESFIDANI AND B. IZADI

screen, it can increase shoppers’ awareness of their environment and their

web moves on the screen, resulting in a more accurate gaze-conversation
alignment criterion established by Yue et al. (2014). As demonstrated by
Zhu et al. (2010) and Yue et al. (2014), live annotation can successfully
prevent/resolve possible uncoupling/distraction by action occurrences. Thus,
live annotation and mouse pointing use by collaborative shoppers can enhance
their control over the computer interactions to coordinate the product search
and navigation objectives.
Different levels of common ground between participants through different
forms of navigation, including separate navigation with location cue, split-
screen navigation, and shared navigation (Cheng et al., 2013; Yue & Jiang,
2013; Yue et al., 2014; Zhu et al., 2010), can lead to different levels of atten-
tion focus during COS. Also, communication between co-shoppers can assist
them in resolving the distractions, leading to increased attention focus.
Self-directed navigation via an interactive setting, according to Childers
et al. (2001), contributes to the enjoyment of the shopping experience. Thus,
co-navigation during COS can result in an enhanced sense of enjoyment. By
the use of interactive COSPs features, co-shoppers are exposed to a continuous
sequence of interactions, so a flow state is experienced in which their percep-
tions of time and the real world are becoming contorted, and self-control is
reduced. As a result, the ease of online shopping and decreasing the costs
related to search and transaction can develop the flow state (Nusair & Parsa,
2011).

3 General Discussions
Enhancing the interactive experiences of individuals during COS toward
creating customer value can be an objective of marketers that can be fulfilled
by improving both the interactive touchpoints of COSPs and the interpersonal
interactions between shoppers and their companions. Previously, academics
preferred to consider interactivity as the conversation between individuals.
Today’s media and communication technologies rely heavily on interactivity
as an affordance. Digital media has fundamentally transformed our under-
standing of media by enabling interaction. Rather than only being channels
through which people communicate, media are now seen as tools that allow
us to control our interactions. These interactions may take place both with the
media/other individuals. They cover a variety of activities, such as surfing an
online store, speaking with friends who are physically separated, switching up
the presentation style, etc. (Sundar et al., 2015).
Employing novel technologies into online shopping enables online shoppers
to feel the same as what they experience in a retail environment; shopping
online with friends or acquaintances. COS technologies allow individuals to
journey jointly through web moves. During COS, customers engage and
interact at certain touchpoints in the joint customer journey. Co-shoppers’
joint customer journey during COS involves their interactions with one
 23 INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCE OF COLLABORATIVE ONLINE … 537

another and with the COSPs. Thus, COS can create interactive experiences
for individuals through interpersonal interactions and interaction with the
shopping platform.
The interactivity effects model of Sundar et al. (2015) is used to understand
the interactivity of COSP. The interactivity of the COSP can be considered in
three aspects, including message, source, and medium. Individuals can respond
to each other contingently during COS, so real-time communication between
individuals is an instance of message interactivity in COSP. The live annota-
tion feature of the COSP is related to medium interactivity as it can improve
the speed, variety, and clarity with which one mentally represents the informa-
tion displayed on the COSP. The switching control of mouse navigation of
COSP between individuals enables them to find and customize information
based on their companion needs and priorities so that it can be an example of
source interactivity. Also, enabling individuals to choose their desired media
to communicate is another instance of source interactivity in COSP.
Businesses need to enhance the interactive experience of shoppers during
COS in two ways. First, by improving the interactive touchpoints of COSPs
via using the functional affordances, which are the features of COSPs,
including switching control of mouse navigation, live annotation, and commu-
nication. Thus, the reciprocity of the COS interactive experience can be
facilitated through switching control of mouse navigation between individ-
uals and two-way communication between participants. The personalization
of the COS interactive experience can be improved through one-on-one
communication and the use of live annotation. The speed of response in the
interactive experience of COS can be enhanced by real-time communication
and instant switching control of mouse navigation between individuals. The
nonverbal communication of interactive experience in COS can be improved
via employing various medium bundles and the live annotation feature. Also,
these features can be incorporated to facilitate common grounding and situ-
ational awareness in COS to make a situation for better interaction between
individuals during the joint customer journey, as these are essential elements
in group activities (Cheng et al., 2013; Zhu et al., 2010).
Second, businesses need to enhance the interactive experience during
COS by improving the interpersonal interactions between shoppers and their
companions by increasing the social presence and flow, decreasing the rela-
tional uncertainty, selecting a competent companion, and considering the
appropriate shopping group structure (e.g., co-buyer, buyer-advisor, and
buyer-store companion) for different shopping scenarios.
In a status homogeneous shopping group (i.e., co-buyer), there is a greater
struggle for control of mouse navigation. Thus, navigation control will be
more handed and taken over compared to the shopping group with different
statuses (i.e., buyer-advisor or buyer-store companion). To decrease the occur-
rence of distraction due to the switching control of navigation, shoppers with
a status homogeneous group structure need to use the live annotation more
than the shopping group with different statuses.
538 M. R. ESFIDANI AND B. IZADI

The more shoppers perceive their companion as competent and warm, the
more they will trust this shopping interaction, leading to a more positive inter-
active experience between online co-shoppers. Also, the familiarity of shopping
companions with how to use the features of the COSPs enhances the shop-
pers’ perception of the companions’ competence, increases shopper trust with
the companion, and consequently creates a positive interactive experience of
COS. Thus, choosing a competent companion for COS is recommended to
individuals, which can improve the fluency and accuracy of web moves and
improve the interactive experience of shoppers.
The shared feelings and attention that communicate between the shoppers
and their companions increase the feeling of social presence of individ-
uals in COS. Also, marketers can direct shoppers to select a suitable media
for communication during COS, which can be the best fit/option for the
certain shopping task, to enhance the social presence. The social presence of
other people in the COS process also improves the interactive experience of
customers and makes the shopping process more enjoyable and fun.
Businesses need to encourage shoppers to socialize before starting the
process of COS officially to decrease the relational uncertainty (i.e., by finding
common interests between buyer and store companion). Utilizing the shared
browser as the navigation technique for COS can create a common ground to
increase the flow for a better interactive experience. Also, live annotation use
can reduce distraction incidents and facilitates flow for an enhanced interactive
experience.
This chapter attempted to study the effect of two factors related to inter-
activity (interaction with COSPs and interaction with shopping companions)
from a technical (platform features) and social (interactant characteristics)
perspective. Given the novelty of COS and the unknown complex psycho-
logical and social dimensions of shopping on the COSPs, studying the various
social, psychological, and cultural aspects of this type of online shopping can
provide new avenues for future studies to understand the complexities of COS.
Scholars can focus future research on proposing and developing new navi-
gation features to improve the fluency and accuracy of collaborative web moves
in subsequent studies, similar to the suggestion presented by Zhu et al. (2010)
regarding the fluency issues. The shopping partner can influence numerous
parts of the COS experience. In this chapter, some of the companion’s charac-
teristics are studied. However, the shopping experience may vary according to
the kind of product that needs to be purchased (Chebat et al., 2014). Thus,
future research might examine the effect of product categories on COS expe-
riences. Additionally, given the variety of shopping motives, purchasing versus
socializing (Goswami et al., n.d.), the optimal shopping companion will vary,
and scholars should examine the shopping motives when determining who can
be a better shopping partner.
The social network structure of shoppers and their positions within this
network might provide insight into their co-shopping behavior (Gentina &
Fosse-Gomez, 2011). Individuals who are well linked to other members of
 23 INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCE OF COLLABORATIVE ONLINE … 539

their networks receive a greater amount and quality of relevant information

and ideas from those in their network, making them more receptive to peer
influence (Lee et al., 2010). Gentina and Bonsu (2013) argue that adolescents’
social statuses within a peer network affect the frequency of their shopping
behavior with friends. Scholars might approach the companion qualities from
a broader viewpoint than what is done in this chapter, the social network
perspective. They can perform social network analysis on both shoppers and
their companions to determine the centrality, proximity, and clustering coef-
ficient (Wasserman & Faust, 1994) of shoppers as nodes in a social network.
Stephen and Toubia (2010) conducted a similar study in social commerce,
examining the relationship between sellers. As a result, they can better study
the impact of a shopper’s social network position on COS activities, iden-
tify the optimal shopping partner based on a shopper’s social network, and
subsequently improve the interactive shopping experience.

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 PART V

E-WOM and Influencer Marketing

in the Interactive Era
 CHAPTER 24

Reconceptualizing eWOM Communication:

An Interactive Perspective

Hongfei Liu and Chanaka Jayawardhena

1 Introduction
Word of mouth (WOM) as a marketing concept was introduced in the
1950s (Brooks, 1957; McGarry, 1958) and reinvigorated with the increas-
ingly widespread use of the Internet and the arrival of Web 2.0 in the 2000s
(Dellarocas, 2003; O’Reilly, 2005). The escalation of the use of digital tech-
nology allows individual consumers to generate and exchange consumption-
related information through digital media platforms, thereby catalyzing the
emergence and penetration of electronic word of mouth (eWOM) in the
consumer market (Hennig-Thurau et al., 2004). eWOM communication
refers to any positive or negative statement made by potential, current, or
former customers about a product, service, or brand via the Internet (Hennig-
Thurau et al., 2004; Ryan & Jones, 2009). Traditionally, eWOM emphasized
consumers’ eWOM seeking, eWOM giving, and eWOM-transmitting behav-
iors (Liu et al., 2022). However, in an ever-changing marketplace, in which
digital technologies are updated daily and the way that consumers generate
and consume online information is more dynamic than ever, eWOM has been
evolving at a fast pace. More specifically, beyond one-directional behaviors,
more recent research increasingly recognizes the interactivity of eWOM and

H. Liu (B)
University of Southampton, Southampton, UK
e-mail: Hongfei.Liu@soton.ac.uk
C. Jayawardhena
University of Surrey, Surrey, UK

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 547

Switzerland AG 2023
C. L. Wang (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Interactive Marketing,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14961-0_24
548 H. LIU AND C. JAYAWARDHENA

its significance (Liu et al., 2019). Therefore, this chapter goes beyond the
static view of eWOM and highlights its interactivity. More precisely, this review
conceptualizes eWOM from a perspective of interactive marketing, categorizes
eWOM media, identifies eWOM-triggered interactions and effective eWOM
practices and strategies, and sets up an agenda for future research. This chapter
advances the theoretical understanding of eWOM and brings fresh managerial
insights to brands that embrace social media and information technologies.

2 Literature Review
2.1 Reconceptualizing eWOM: An Interactive Marketing View
eWOM originates from the concept of WOM. WOM was introduced into
marketing practices in the 1950s (Brooks, 1957; McGarry, 1958), and refers
to any “oral, person-to-person communication between a receiver and a
communicator whom the receiver perceives as non-commercial, concerning
a brand, a product, or a service” (Arndt, 1967, p. 3). In the early stage
of WOM research and practice, it was regarded as an informal advertising
and promotional tactic, facilitating the diffusion of new products (see Arndt,
1967; Brooks, 1957; Katz, 1957). The power of WOM started being acknowl-
edged by businesses and consumers, and WOM activities penetrated the entire
decision-making process in the following decades, from needs recognition
to post-purchase evaluation (for a more detailed historical review, see Liu
et al., 2022). Meanwhile, an increasing number of researchers and practi-
tioners had also highlighted the dark side of WOM, noting the potential
damage that negative WOM could cause to a product, service, or brand
(see Richins, 1983, 1984, 1987). The development and growth of WOM
marketing highlighted several important features of WOM activities. More
specifically, WOM could be seen as an informal exchange of positive or nega-
tive information that happens between two non-commercial parties, often in
a post-purchase stage (Richins, 1983; Silverman, 2001; Westbrook, 1987).
Among the conceptualizations of WOM, scholars agree that WOM involves
communication- and conversation-based activities and highlights the inter-
active nature of WOM communication between different parties (Anderson,
1998; Brown & Reingen, 1987; Lampert & Rosenberg, 1975).
In the late twentieth century, with the fast development and growing popu-
larity of Internet technology, WOM activities started transiting to the online
environment, and the birth of Web 2.0 revolutionized consumers’ WOM
activities. Hennig-Thurau et al. (2004) first conceptualized eWOM commu-
nication as “any positive or negative statement made by potential, actual, or
former customers about a product or company, which is made available to
a multitude of people and institutions via the Internet” (p. 39). Interest-
ingly, although Hennig-Thurau et al. refer to eWOM communication, the
conceptualization focuses more on the information (e.g., being positive or
negative) but neglects the interaction between the different parties. This
 24 RECONCEPTUALIZING EWOM COMMUNICATION … 549

tendency is also shared by other pioneering conceptualizations (see Thorson &

Rodgers, 2006). This shift of focus was probably because of two revolu-
tionary features of eWOM when compared to offline WOM. First, the volume
of online eWOM information is enormous and accumulated. In contrast,
offline WOM information is often from one source at one time (Liu et al.,
2020). Second, unlike the direct conversation between giver and receiver
in offline WOM, the means of information conveyance in eWOM is medi-
ated by Internet platforms (Liu et al., 2021a). These factors potentially
explain the shift of focus from “interaction” to “information” in the WOM–
eWOM transition. However, although the forms of marketing activities in the
offline and online environments have changed, the nature of communication
remains. In particular, the creation and conveyance of eWOM rely heavily on
social media, and the use of social media emphasizes interactivity. Against
the advancement of digital technology and the ever-growing use of social
media, interactive marketing is becoming increasingly important. Interactive
marketing refers to the “bi-directional value creation and mutual-influence
marketing process through active customer connection, engagement, partic-
ipation and interaction” (Wang, 2021, p. 1). This bidirectional value creation
and mutual-influence marketing process is a reflection of the interactive nature
of eWOM activities.
Drawing upon the essence of WOM communication and the interac-
tive nature of online eWOM media, this chapter reconceptualizes eWOM
communication through the lens of interactive marketing —eWOM communi-
cation refers to any online interactions between a consumer and a brand
or other consumers that are elicited by consumer-generated online infor-
mation regarding a product, service, or brand. In taking this approach,
eWOM communication in interactive marketing focuses on the interactions
and conversations that are triggered by eWOM information, such inter-
actions and conversations often being around the products, services, and
brands involved in the eWOM information. Here, eWOM communication
goes beyond one-directional behavior (i.e., eWOM seeking, transmitting,
and giving) and emphasizes the dynamics between the different parties. The
parties involved in the conversation largely depend on eWOM media, as
different media offer distinctive structures, interfaces, and user bases, thereby
supporting various types of eWOM-triggered interactions (Liu et al., 2021a,
2021b; Yen & Tang, 2015). Therefore, the remainder of this chapter first cate-
gorizes eWOM media and analyzes the eWOM information and interactions
supported in each type of medium. Next, this chapter takes a strategic angle,
discusses eWOM management strategies, and concludes by setting an agenda
for future research into eWOM from the perspective of interactive marketing.

2.2 Typology of Interactive eWOM Media

There is no denying that the significance of media in eWOM is unrivaled.
Pioneering research also identified that consumers’ eWOM sharing varies
550 H. LIU AND C. JAYAWARDHENA

across different media, depending on variations in dissociative anonymity,

invisibility, asynchronicity, minimization of status and authority, solipsistic
introjection, and dissociative imagination (Liu et al., 2021a; Suler, 2004).
EWOM media is also particularly important through the lens of interactive
marketing because the nature of the media affects the parties involved in the
potential online interactions (Foster et al., 2021; Izogo et al., 2021). In the
past, scholars conducted their studies on different media at different levels.
However, very little attention was paid to the typology of eWOM media. Most
studies tend to follow the typologies of social media, even though social media
was not invented for eWOM and some eWOM media cannot properly be cate-
gorized into any particular type (e.g., review sites). Additionally, the traditional
digital media typology (i.e., owned, paid, and earned) has limited implica-
tions on eWOM platforms as eWOM platforms usually employ earned media
to assure the independence and integrity of the communication (Liu et al.
2021a). Furthermore, earlier social media research employs media richness
to distinguish online media (Dennis & Kinney, 1998). However, due to the
ever-development of digital technologies, most eWOM media allows all types
of information (e.g., texts, photos, and videos). Therefore, the media richness
theory offers limited insights into the modern age (Chen et al., 2019). Overall,
employing existing media typologies to understand eWOM media might be
overgeneralized and offers limited insights into cross-media differences, which
poses challenges in understanding interactive eWOM for both researchers and
practitioners. Therefore, this chapter develops the typology of eWOM media
shown in Table 1 is categorized by the functionality of the media and the types
of information and interactions supported on those media.

2.3 Review-Based eWOM Media

Review-based media reflect the nature of online reviews in eWOM and
often support asynchronous one-to-many communication (i.e., an individual
consumer writes an online review about a brand that is available to the public).
According to the definition of eWOM, it is clear that eWOM covers a much
wider range than just online reviews. However, it is undoubtedly the case
that online reviews play a vital role in eWOM (Liu et al., 2022; Jia et al.,
2021). The information available on review-based media is usually consis-
tently formatted based on the requirement of the particular eWOM system
and often involves a rating that indicates the customer’s overall satisfaction
with the product or service and a text review that details the experience with
that product or service (Liu et al., 2020). Some eWOM reviews are accom-
panied by videos and/or images that enhance the persuasion of the eWOM
information (Chen et al., 2019). In addition, on review-based media, indi-
viduals’ information behaviors are purchase-related (e.g., former customers
acting as eWOM givers and potential customers as eWOM seekers) (Doh &
Hwang, 2009; Liu et al., 2020; 2021c). Therefore, communication does not
necessarily indicate a lot of symmetrical communication. In other words, the
 24 RECONCEPTUALIZING EWOM COMMUNICATION … 551

Table 1 Typology of eWOM media

EWOM media Types of eWOM Interactions supported Types of media

information

Review-based . Aggregated rating . Asynchronous . Online shopping

. Individual reviews one-to-many sites (e.g.,
communication Amazon, Apple
. Q&A between App Store, and
potential consumers IKEA)
and knowledgeable . Review sites
others (e.g.,
. Product/service- TripAdvisor,
related conversation Trustpilot, and
between consumers Google Review)
and businesses
Community-based . Know-how exchange . Asynchronous . Discussion
. Support-seeking one-to-few or forums (e.g.,
one-to-many Eopinion.com)
communication . Brand/product
. Exchange of communities in
product/service- owned media
related experiences and (e.g., Apple
knowledge Support
. Support cycle between Community) and
consumers who share earned media
common interests in a (e.g., Apple Inc.
product, service, or Facebook page)
brand
Personal . Informational . Synchronous and . Social
sharing-based sharing asynchronous networking sites
. Emotional sharing one-to-one, (e.g., individual
one-to-few, and Facebook,
one-to-many Twitter, and
communication TikTok profiles)
. Discussion between
consumers and their
online
friends/followers

level of social interactivity on these platforms is relatively low in general, since

eWOM givers and eWOM seekers are unlikely to have an ongoing conversa-
tion. For instance, an Amazon customer might have no idea of the identity
of a review writer and the review might also have been left on Amazon.com
a few months previously. Therefore, in this case, the accumulated eWOM
information provided by former consumers is crucial.
Although review sites often indicate low interactivity, from a technical
perspective, review systems often allow two types of exchanges—Q&A interac-
tions and review responses (Lee & Ma, 2021; Liu et al., 2019). More precisely,
first, to reduce the uncertainties in the pre-purchase stage, potential consumers
552 H. LIU AND C. JAYAWARDHENA

ask product/service-related questions on review-based media, and such ques-

tions are often answered by experienced consumers or the businesses that
provide the products/services (Liu et al., 2018). However, this approach is
asynchronous in most cases and is practiced less by consumers because it takes
time to collect others’ thoughts and replies are often not guaranteed (Liu
et al., 2019; Liu et al., 2022). Second, review sites are particularly popular in
the hospitality and tourism industries (Xiang & Gretzel, 2010). This passion
for review sites originates from the nature of hospitality and tourism in that
service industries provide experience goods, which means that consumers are
not able to ascertain the quality of the goods before consuming (Liang et al.,
2014; Viglia et al., 2014). What has been observed in eWOM practices in
recent years, particularly in the hospitality and tourism sector, is that service
providers increasingly engage in responding to consumers’ online reviews to
strengthen customer loyalty (when the review is positive) or to recover a failed
service (when the review is negative) (Liu et al., 2019; Nangpiire et al., 2021).

2.4 Community-Based eWOM Media

The essence of community-based eWOM media is that it emphasizes a
key feature: membership. In other words, in these media, individuals are
involved in intergroup behavior, which narrows the scope of communica-
tion (Chi, 2011; Hung & Li, 2007). Therefore, community-based eWOM
media often supports asynchronous one-to-few or one-to-many communica-
tion that is imitated by an individual consumer communicating with other
group members, while the scope of communication depends on the size of
the community. Notably, in the typology in Table 1, brand communities in
both owned (e.g., Apple Support Communities; https://discussions.apple.
com) and earned (e.g., Apple Facebook Page; https://www.facebook.com/
apple) media are placed in a single category. The support for doing this is
that, regardless of where a medium belongs, product/brand communities,
as eWOM media, emphasize individuals’ intergroup behaviors and member-
ship, which are theoretically different from individuals’ eWOM behavior on
their personal social networking service (SNS) pages (Hennig-Thurau et al.,
2004). The interactions often materialize through peer-to-peer support cycles
in community-based media (Yuan et al., 2020). More precisely, consumers
interact through support-seeking and support-providing behaviors (Zhu et al.,
2016).
Consumers’ support-seeking and -providing could be either knowledge-
oriented or emotion-oriented. More precisely, knowledge-oriented interac-
tions often happen through know-how exchange between members (Gruen
et al., 2006). Know-how refers to the accumulated practical skills or expertise
that enables someone to do something smoothly or efficiently (von Hippel,
1994). When consumers face problems in consuming/using certain prod-
ucts/services, they tend to seek answers on media that focus particularly
on those products/services and have members who are experts in helping
 24 RECONCEPTUALIZING EWOM COMMUNICATION … 553

consumers address their concerns. Know-how exchange is specifically popular

in respect of products/services that are technical or require a certain level of
special skills (Gruen et al., 2006). Consumers also seek emotional support
from communities (Kim & Gupta, 2012). Consumers may, for example, vent
negative emotions and feelings they developed through encountering prob-
lems in the use of a product or service in online communities and seek
emotional support from other members (Zhou et al., 2020). Consumers also
seek a sense of belonging and to confirm their identities through interactions
with other community members (Yang et al., 2015). In community-based
eWOM media, strong consumer identity is supported by a common interest
in a product, service, or brand (Luís Abrantes et al., 2013).

2.4.1 Personal Sharing-Based eWOM Media

Personal sharing-based eWOM provides platforms on which consumers can
give eWOM in their personal profiles on SNSs or personal blogs without
joining a particular community (Liu et al., 2021a; Marwick & Boyd, 2011).
However, different from the review-based and community-based eWOM
media, as SNSs include instant messaging and networking functions, the
communication on personal-sharing-based eWOM supports both synchronous
and asynchronous approaches and is flexible with one-to-one, one-to-few, and
one-to-many modes (Ismagilova et al., 2017). In most cases, eWOM giving
on SNSs is a sharing behavior enacted in the post-purchase phase and the
content could be informational and/or emotional (Tien et al., 2019). More
precisely, consumers may share informational eWOM by talking about details
or posting photographs of their consumption experience, whereas emotional
eWOM demonstrates how consumers feel about the consumption experi-
ence (Kim & Johnson, 2016). Both informational and emotional eWOM can
be either positive or negative, depending on the consumer’s consumption
experience (Wang & Rodgers, 2010).
EWOM-elicited interactions on personal sharing-based eWOM media are
restricted by the privacy setting, although consumers are given options to
make their content private or public (Lewis et al., 2008). In the private
sharing mode, eWOM-triggered communication is likely to be among the
“friends” or “followers” of the eWOM givers (Teutsch et al., 2018). However,
if consumers choose to make their SNS profiles public, the eWOM they share
on their profiles could be accessed by anyone and the interaction may be
from anyone who sees the eWOM information. In recent years, the boom
in social media influencers has also changed the nature of personal sharing-
based eWOM (Shen, 2021; Shukla & Dubey, 2021). Social media influencers’
eWOM sharing is often seen as the professionalization and commercialization
of eWOM activities that are supposed to be informal and non-commercial
(Zhou et al., 2021a, 2021b). Unlike general consumers’ eWOM sharing on
SNSs, which is usually spontaneous, a social media influencer’s eWOM on
SNSs is often professionally produced within a specific product/service cate-
gory and is shared regularly (Wang & Hu, 2021; Zhou et al., 2021a, 2021b).
554 H. LIU AND C. JAYAWARDHENA

More importantly, from the perspective of social media influencer marketing,

eWOM could be categorized as organic eWOM and paid eWOM (Evans et al.,
2017). Organic eWOM, similar to the traditional eWOM on personal sharing-
based media, is drawn from a genuine experience that a social media influencer
had with a product, service, or brand, and can be either positive or nega-
tive. This type of eWOM sharing could offer utilitarian value (e.g., supporting
potential consumers’ decision-making) and/or hedonic value (e.g., providing
entertaining content to audiences) (Pang, 2021). In contrast, paid eWOM
refers to eWOM shared by social media influencers or consumers who are
sponsored or hired by a brand and is usually positive. In this case, social media
influencers’ eWOM is positive and could be seen as soft advertising (Evans
et al., 2017).

3 Discussion
3.1 Interactive eWOM Strategies
EWOM has traditionally been seen as a form of customer-to-customer (C2C)
communication (Gruen et al., 2006). As stated earlier, the open system and
accessible information of eWOM allow increased involvement of all parties in
eWOM communication, including businesses (Gruen et al., 2006). Here, the
interactions triggered by eWOM go beyond C2C communication and allow
business-to-customer (B2C) conversations (Weisfeld-Spolter et al., 2014).
Businesses have, therefore, been making efforts to develop and implement
strategies to maximize the benefits of eWOM. EWOM can be classified into
the use of proactive strategies and reactive strategies (Kim et al., 2016).

3.1.1 Proactive eWOM Strategies

Proactive eWOM strategies refer to actions taken by companies to stimulate
consumers’ positive eWOM. Proactive eWOM strategies focus on awareness-
raising and are particularly effective in the diffusion of new products (Chu &
Kim, 2018). The interaction between a company and a customer happens in
the pre-eWOM stage—a company initiates an interaction with a customer and
the customer’s eWOM giving can be seen as the outcome of this interac-
tion (Daugherty & Hoffman, 2014). Popular practice strategies include online
referral schemes, incentivized eWOM giving, and eWOM invites (Haen-
lein & Libai, 2017). First, in the implementation of online referral schemes,
consumers are often expected to recommend a product, service, or brand to
their known contacts (e.g., friends or family) in exchange for a monetary
reward (e.g., 10% off for the next order) (Jung et al., 2021). However, the
reward is often subject to the success of the referral (e.g., to purchases made
by consumers who received the recommendation) to avoid bargain hunters
(Lee, 2016). Therefore, the main objective of online referral schemes is to
acquire new customers while “locking in” existing ones (Jin & Huang, 2014).
 24 RECONCEPTUALIZING EWOM COMMUNICATION … 555

Second, an incentivized eWOM strategy is different from an online referral

scheme and often relies on social media influencers instead of general
consumers. In the early development of eWOM, brands sent free trials of
products/services o potential consumers with opinion leadership among the
target consumer groups and invited them to share their (positive) experi-
ences (Lee, 2014). This approach is also known as companies’ eWOM seeding
programs (Chae et al., 2016). Stephen et al. (2017) suggest that consumers
are motivated by the rewards or benefits they could potentially receive to
transmit positive eWOM or propagate content on social media, particularly
when there is a time limit on acquiring the rewards. However, the fast devel-
opment of social media influencers industrialized such practices, and the social
media influencer plays an irreplaceable role in incentivized eWOM strategies
(Babić Rosario et al., 2020). The collaborating mechanisms between brands
and social media influencers can differ. For sales-focused campaigns, influ-
encers are often paid based on a proportional commission of the total sales
that influencers attract (e.g., 10% commission of sales made by an influencer’s
recommendations) (Hua et al., 2021). For awareness-focused campaigns,
companies may provide free trials or a fixed amount of fees for social media
influencers to act as informal endorsers and recommend a product or service
to a wider range of audiences (e.g., free beauty products for a cosmetic
influencer) (Khamis et al., 2017).
Third, eWOM invites are another proactive eWOM strategy that compa-
nies implement. eWOM invites are often sent to existing consumers in the
post-purchase phase to motivate them to share their purchase experiences.
Such invites are often sent via email and can either be initiated by the seller
(e.g., the seller on Amazon) or the media owner (e.g., Amazon). eWOM is
not only crucial to the seller but also plays an important role in the sustain-
able development of eWOM media (Liu et al., 2019). However, unlike online
referral schemes and incentivized eWOM giving, companies have less control
over whether consumers will share eWOM about the product or service and
what the consumers will say about that product or service (Wu et al., 2016).
In other words, consumers could choose to respond to eWOM invites or
not and they may also share positive or negative eWOM (Littlechild, 2021).
The essence of a proactive eWOM strategy is only to stimulate positive
reviews. Therefore, when sending eWOM invites, companies need to try to
avoid stimulating consumers’ negative eWOM. Of course, companies cannot
forbid consumers from expressing negative voices but can propose different
approaches for positive and negative views when communicating with them
(Zhang & Yang, 2019). For example, in the eWOM invite emails, compa-
nies can propose different solutions for the various consumption experiences
that consumers may have with a product or service; for example, “enjoy the
product? Share your experience with others online”; “have problems with the
product? contact us via email for fast responses.” In this way, companies can
maximize the positive exposure of the product in the public domain but deal
with problems more privately (Liu et al., 2021a). This activity encourages
556 H. LIU AND C. JAYAWARDHENA

consumers to spread positive eWOM regarding companies’ products/services

through the online environment.
In addition, and from a critical perspective, since eWOM is not usually
identified as B2C communication by consumers, consumers are more sensi-
tive regarding companies’ involvement than before. More specifically, some
companies’ unethical tactics, such as fake or paid reviews, are intensively
disliked by consumers. Munzel (2016) asserts that consumers make a judg-
ment regarding whether a review is fake based on identity disclosure, the
consistency of the information, and persuasion knowledge activation. Based on
these three factors, consumers assess the perceived trustworthiness of a review,
which positively influences purchase intention and negatively influences avoid-
ance intention. More importantly, avoidance intention has a spillover effect,
extending not only to the eWOM giver but also to the company and eWOM
media (Liu et al., 2020). In other words, once consumers detect fake reviews
regarding a particular product or under a particular brand on a particular
eWOM media, they will negatively evaluate the eWOM giver, the product,
the brand, and the eWOM platform. This also explains why this chain reac-
tion is a reminder to companies to behave ethically and raises the significance
of monitoring eWOM media (Munzel, 2016). Therefore, companies have to
make sure that they follow ethical practices in developing proactive strategies.

3.1.2 Reactive eWOM Strategies

Reactive eWOM strategies refer to the actions taken by companies to cope
with eWOM information given by consumers. Compared to the active role
that companies play in proactive strategies, reactive eWOM strategies focus
on responding to the eWOM shared by consumers (Van Noort & Willemsen,
2012). Reactive eWOM strategies are often practiced on review-based eWOM
media. However, many studies report that the response rate to consumers’
online reviews has remained low in the past decade (Kim et al., 2015; Liu et al.,
2019; Proserpio & Zervas, 2017). In practice, reactive eWOM strategies are
dynamic and their objectives and approaches differ according to the valence of
consumers’ eWOM (i.e., eWOM being positive or negative; Liu et al., 2019).
When consumers’ eWOM is positive, a reactive eWOM strategy is to
enhance customer loyalty and the possibility of repurchases. In this case,
responding to consumers’ positive eWOM is done to highlight the profes-
sionalism of the company and acknowledge that consumers’ voices have been
heard (Olson & Ro, 2020). When responding to positive eWOM, compa-
nies often express their gratitude for the consumer’s purchase and positive
eWOM (e.g., “thank you for purchasing with us and your positive feed-
back”) and show their hospitality to consumers (e.g., “we look forward to
welcoming you again in the near future”) (Li et al., 2017; Min et al., 2015).
Such actions reflect companies’ efforts to consolidate satisfactory consumers’
loyalty and enhance the likelihood of repurchasing. In addition, to lock in
happy customers, companies may provide vouchers, coupons, or discounts for
those customers’ future purchases (Wu et al., 2020). However, such rewards
 24 RECONCEPTUALIZING EWOM COMMUNICATION … 557

are often provided privately (Fu, Cheng, Bao, Bilgihan, & Okumus, 2020)
because offering rewards to consumers who share positive eWOM is unfair to
consumers who share negative eWOM. Positive eWOM may also be viewed
as incentivized eWOM, which reduces its persuasive power (Zhuang et al.,
2018). Responding to consumers’ positive eWOM signals, a company’s efforts
to hear and engage with consumers, which builds potential consumers’ confi-
dence in the company and improves their purchase intention with the company
(Olson & Ro, 2020).
When consumers’ eWOM is negative, negative eWOM strategies focus on
recovering the failed product or service and restoring the unsatisfactory expe-
rience the customer had (Sparks et al., 2016; Tran et al., 2021). In this case,
negative eWOM could be regarded as online complaints in the public domain,
which puts pressure on the company to make restorative efforts to recover
the failed products or services (Liu et al., 2019). As to how to respond to
negative eWOM, pioneering researchers have presented certain recommen-
dations. For example, Min et al. (2015) assert that paraphrasing statements,
empathy statements, and quick responses positively influence consumers’ satis-
faction with strategic response from companies. Reactive strategies not only
focus on recovering dissatisfied eWOM givers, but also seek to make a positive
impression on eWOM seekers. For instance, Lee and Cranage (2014) maintain
that, compared to blaming and pushing responsibility onto consumers, taking
responsibility and apologizing to consumers give eWOM seekers a more posi-
tive perception of the company concerned. In general, when responding to
negative eWOM, companies are expected to respond promptly, especially in
respect of service failures. This is because the appeal to consumers of writing
negative eWOM about service failures is that it tends to be emotion oriented
(Liu et al., 2019). Timely responses can calm dissatisfied consumers to avoid
further negative eWOM sharing. Companies should also express their grati-
tude for consumers’ efforts in writing a review (e.g., “thank you for your time
in writing this review and for letting us know”) and apologize for product
and service failure (e.g., “we are sorry to hear about your unsatisfactory expe-
rience with our product/service) (Yan & Wang, 2018). Furthermore, unlike
positive reviews, negative reviews often report problems that need solutions
(Min et al., 2015). Therefore, when responding to negative reviews, compa-
nies should, if possible, propose solutions to the problems reported. Here,
although monetary compensation has been seen to be an effective solution
in recovering dissatisfied consumers, it needs to be incorporated within reac-
tive eWOM strategies very carefully. This is because, providing monetary
compensation through management responses to consumers’ negative eWOM
may lead more consumers to share negative experiences and attract bargain
hunters (Cachon & Swinney, 2009). Some research asserts that responding
to consumers’ negative eWOM may not be necessary, particularly when
the failure reported is severe (Liu et al., 2019). This is because dissatisfied
customers are unlikely to purchase from the company again, regardless of the
558 H. LIU AND C. JAYAWARDHENA

organization’s recovery efforts. However, eWOM media, particularly review-

based media, are publicly accessible, and potential consumers also rely on the
information on such media to make their purchase decisions (Chakraborty,
2019). Therefore, although responding to negative eWOM might restore
eWOM givers’ unfavorable attitude toward the company, from the perspective
of potential consumers, it could be seen as a good image-building activity that
showcases the company’s commitment and effort in delivering a satisfactory
experience to its customers. This may also reduce the damage that a negative
review causes for the company (Sparks et al., 2016).

4 Future Research Agenda

in Respect of Interactive eWOM
This chapter reconceptualizes eWOM through the theoretical lens of interac-
tive marketing, categorizes interactive eWOM media, and identifies interactive
eWOM strategies. The interactive nature of eWOM has been receiving
increasing academic and practical attention. However, as the concept of inter-
activity is relatively new in the field of studying eWOM, this section reflects
on the academic literature and practical observation and sets a research agenda
for future investigations that focuses on the interactivity of eWOM communi-
cation. In line with the themes in this chapter, the research agenda focuses on
two aspects: eWOM media and eWOM strategies.

4.1 EWOM Media-Informed Future Research Directions

4.1.1 Interpersonal Interactions on Personal Sharing-Based Media
According to our categorization of eWOM media and the academic literature,
when considering all eWOM media (i.e., review-based, community-based, and
personal sharing-based), consumers’ eWOM behaviors on personal sharing-
based media are relatively underresearched (Liu et al., 2021a). Although
a great number of studies focusing on eWOM-triggered interactions place
particular emphasis on SNSs, most of them explore consumers’ eWOM
communication in online communities and on brand fan pages on SNSs
(Izogo et al., 2021). Existing eWOM research tends to focus on online review-
based and community-based eWOM media and the possible interactions
between consumers and the brand and peer consumers on such platforms,
while the understanding of consumers’ eWOM on personal sharing-based
media (e.g., personal profiles on SNSs) is very limited (Izogo et al., 2021;
Liu et al., 2021a). As mentioned above, in most cases, eWOM givers actively
share information and/or emotion related to their consumption experiences
on SNSs and the receivers of the eWOM are their online contacts. Therefore,
eWOM communication on personal profiles is supposed to be more dynamic
and demonstrate interaction among people who have stronger tie strength
 24 RECONCEPTUALIZING EWOM COMMUNICATION … 559

(e.g., friends and followers) (Jovanović et al., 2019). Here, how social interac-
tion with online friends influences consumers’ evaluation of their consumption
experience also remains an open question.

4.2 Cross-Media Research

Most existing eWOM research focuses on a single eWOM medium/platform.
However, consumers’ eWOM behaviors and interactions vary significantly
across different media (Bartschat et al., 2021; Liu et al., 2021a). Pioneering
research points out that eWOM interactions depend on the disinhibition
effects of eWOM media (e.g., anonymity, invisibility, asynchronicity, mini-
mization of status and authority, solipsistic introjection, and dissociative
imagination). Future research could examine how online disinhibition effects
shape consumers’ eWOM communication across different eWOM media.
Consumers’ motivation for eWOM giving has been well understood (e.g.,
altruism, economic incentives, and enjoyment). However, consumers’ moti-
vations for getting involved in eWOM-elicited interactions are unclear (Chen
et al., 2021). In other words, why consumers choose to respond to other
consumers’ eWOM remains unclear. Therefore, future research could further
explore the potential motives behind consumers’ eWOM interactions. Further-
more, eWOM-elicited interactions with companies and peer consumers may
affect eWOM givers’ initial evaluation of their consumption experience (Izogo
et al., 2021). The psychological mechanisms behind the social interactions
remain underexplored. As consumers may interact with a range of parties
in various circumstances across different eWOM media, the examination of
consumers’ psychological mechanisms also requires further contextualization
to advance the theoretical understanding of eWOM (Tran et al., 2021). Addi-
tionally, alternative video-based eWOM media, such as TikTok and Snapchat,
and consumer behaviors on such platforms need to be further investigated
and understood in order to capture the evolution in eWOM practice (Donthu
et al., 2021).

4.3 The Rise of Social Media Influencers

Influencer marketing as a new form of eWOM has been attracting increasing
academic and practical attention and presents an urgent call for eWOM
researchers. From the consumers’ perspective, social media influencers’ eWOM
contains informative product or service cues that shape consumers’ purchase
decisions (Kay et al., 2020). However, the effectiveness of social media influ-
encers’ eWOM in comparison with the eWOM from peer consumers would
be worth exploring further, especially when opinions conflict (López-López
et al., 2021). Unlike other forms of eWOM in which consumers evaluate infor-
mation credibility based on a larger amount of informational cues (e.g., the
volume of online reviews), social media influencers’ eWOM relies on limited
information cues and information credibility often relies on consumers’ trust
560 H. LIU AND C. JAYAWARDHENA

in the influencer (Kim & Kim, 2021). Future research could adopt an inte-
grated view to explain what kinds of information and what types of personal
characteristics are appreciated by consumers in evaluating eWOM credibility.
Furthermore, from a social media influencers’ perspective, as most social media
influencers disclose both sponsored and non-sponsored content on personal
sharing-based eWOM media, the extent to which the level of commercial-
ization affects influencers’ growth and their engagement with followers is an
urgent research inquiry in an era in which social media influencer is becoming
a new profession (Tafesse & Wood, 2021; Yuan & Lou, 2020).

4.4 EWOM Beyond a Marketing Concept

Consumers are the key players in eWOM communication and conversations
are usually around the products or services of a particular brand. However,
moving even further from the consumers’ perspective, the latest observa-
tions suggest that eWOM communication involves various parties and has an
impact on multiple stakeholders, such as current and prospective employees
(Cartwright et al., 2021; Stamolampros et al., 2019), suppliers (Banerjee
et al., 2020), competitors (Cao, 2019), investors (Bi et al., 2017), and local
communities (Uchinaka et al., 2019) across different media. In addition to
the ubiquity of digital marketing, digitalization has accelerated the transfor-
mation of various disciplines. Moreover, the power of eWOM has also been
recognized across different disciplines, such as “digital finance” (Cai et al.,
2016), “digital human resource management” (Osburg et al., 2020), and
“digital politics” (Grover et al., 2019). Even in the COVID-19 pandemic,
eWOM played an irreplaceable role in pandemic management (Liu et al.,
2021b). Future research could take alternative stakeholders’ perspectives
and/or investigate interdisciplinary phenomena led by eWOM and examine
how interactions go beyond C2C and B2C on context-specific media.

4.5 EWOM Strategies-Informed Research Directions

4.5.1 Managerial Guidelines for eWOM Management
Although studies acknowledge the importance of developing strategic guide-
lines for eWOM, there is no one-size-fits-all strategy due to the complexity
of eWOM interactions (East et al., 2007). To contribute to the development
of proactive eWOM strategies, future research needs to develop managerial
guidelines regarding how to maximize consumers’ positive eWOM sharing
and how to minimize consumers’ negative eWOM sharing when stimulating
consumers’ eWOM giving. After all, from the companies’ perspective, “not
all eWOM is good eWOM” (Liu et al., 2021a). Meanwhile, future research
on proactive strategies also needs to examine the effectiveness of using non-
financial incentives to encourage the consumers’ eWOM sharing, such as
points, scores, badges, medals, and other gamified designs (López et al., 2021;
Wong et al., 2021). Future research also needs to develop valence-specific
 24 RECONCEPTUALIZING EWOM COMMUNICATION … 561

reactive eWOM strategies to address both positive and negative eWOM from
consumers more effectively (Liu et al., 2019; Wu et al., 2020). Even for same-
valenced eWOM, researchers need to examine the nuances in eWOM that
demonstrate different levels of satisfaction (e.g., dissatisfied and highly dissat-
isfied). Although customers might share positive eWOM about a product or
service, given the differences in dissatisfaction levels, their expectations of the
company may be very different. Therefore, future research needs to develop
more specific managerial guidelines for businesses. Although interacting with
consumers through eWOM communication helps companies to deliver better
customer support and develop a positive image, there might be potential draw-
backs to being active in eWOM communication (Beckers et al., 2018). For
example, actively responding to consumers’ negative reviews may attract more
complaints and bargain hunters (Lee, 2016) or raise customers’ expectations
unsustainably (Harmeling et al., 2018). Thus, future research could further
explore the dark side of companies’ eWOM interactions and corresponding
solutions.

4.6 EWOM Strategies and Resource Management

There are several urgent inquiries into the implications of eWOM strategies
that are worth making from the resourcing perspective. First, as most eWOM
research takes the consumers’ angle, companies’ motives for and barriers
to incorporate eWOM strategies in marketing practices and get involved in
eWOM interactions need to be examined (Litvin et al., 2018). Researchers
should also explore how eWOM integrates with other marketing strategies
and tactics (Mathews et al., 2021). For example, eWOM could be seen as a
component of electronic customer relationship management through building
customer loyalty and providing customer support. EWOM is an important
strategy and should serve the overall marketing objective and contribute to
marketing performance (Litvin et al., 2018). Once a business decides to incor-
porate eWOM as part of its marketing strategy, eWOM strategies require a
large amount of resource input (Donthu, et al., 2021). For example, compa-
nies might not always have an eWOM manager to handle consumers’ eWOM
and interact with them (Liu et al., 2019). Therefore, how to respond to
consumers’ eWOM in a way that involves the lowest possible human and
economic cost is a central concern for companies and presents an urgent
research call. In other words, it is worth future research examining how to
acquire, mobilize, and utilize resources efficiently to achieve cost-effective
eWOM strategies. Furthermore, it is critical to explore how the effectiveness
of proactive and reactive eWOM strategies can be measured and evaluated.

4.7 EWOM Media Providers’ Strategies

From the business perspective, in addition to companies utilizing eWOM
media to interact with consumers, the interactivity of eWOM communication
562 H. LIU AND C. JAYAWARDHENA

has a major impact on the providers of eWOM media (Liu et al., 2019, 2020).
As the “invisible participators,” eWOM media providers are often neglected
by researchers in studying eWOM communication. EWOM media providers
mediate the communication between companies and consumers, and the forms
of the interactions between companies and consumers are subject to the
interface and system support that are provided by the eWOM media (Krish-
namurthy & Dou, 2008). The sustainable development of eWOM media,
particularly review sites that are specifically designed for eWOM communi-
cation (e.g., TripAdvisor, Yelp, and Trustpilot), relies on users’ active use of
those media (Kim et al., 2021). Media providers need to develop effective
strategies for maintaining the interactivity of both consumers and compa-
nies. Consumers often engage in information searching on eWOM media to
reduce the uncertainties in their purchase decisions and the credibility of the
information is a key driver of consumers’ engagement with the media (Filieri
et al., 2020. To engage consumers continuously, future research could take
a media provider’s perspective to explore the features that could be included
in eWOM systems to improve the informative value of eWOM, enhance the
credibility of eWOM information, and filter out fake eWOM information on
such media. Future research could also investigate how to stimulate and moti-
vate consumers’ eWOM sharing through system design and reward schemes
(Xu, 2021). After all, eWOM giving is the step that initiates the eWOM cycle.
From the business perspective, as most companies’ engagement in eWOM
remains low, particularly in terms of responding to consumers’ eWOM, future
research could first understand the root causes of the disengagement and low
engagement of companies on eWOM media (Wang & Chaudhry, 2018). More
importantly, researchers could also investigate what eWOM media owners
might do to facilitate the participation of companies in terms of system design,
coordination, and support (Liu et al., 2019). Two-way interactions are essen-
tial in eWOM communication because consumers would be more willing to
engage with eWOM media if companies were more responsive to such media.

5 Conclusion
Although the essence of eWOM indicates that consumers have a desire
for social interaction in eWOM, and eWOM communication could be seen
as a form of social interaction between consumers and businesses, only a
very limited number of studies focus on the interactive nature of eWOM.
Drawing upon the academic research and industry observation of interactive
marketing and eWOM, this chapter reconceptualized eWOM communication
through the theoretical lens of interactive marketing. Given the emphasis on
the interactive nature of eWOM, this chapter developed a new typology of
eWOM media based on their functionality, information types, and interactivity.
Moreover, beyond the C2C communication in eWOM, this chapter took a
managerial perspective to analyze and evaluate proactive and reactive eWOM
 24 RECONCEPTUALIZING EWOM COMMUNICATION … 563

strategies. The chapter concluded by developing a research agenda that has

implications for future research and practice in respect of interactive eWOM.

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 CHAPTER 25

Complaint Handling and Channel Selection

in the Interactive Marketing Era

Mariola Palazón and Inés López-López

1 Introduction
The relevance of complaint behavior in the interactive era is indisputable. The
2020 Customer Rage Survey revealed that, compared to 2017, consumers
were turning to digital media to voice their complaints. Specifically, while
telephone complaints decreased from 70 to 42%, as a proportion of total
complaints digital complaints increased from 12 to 43%; that is, the propor-
tion of individuals who preferred to use digital channels (i.e., email, live chat,
company websites, social media, and review sites) tripled during the inter-
vening years. Many customers regard these interactive channels as the perfect
place in which to vent their frustrations, voice their complaints, and seek
compensation for brands’ failures (Grégoire et al., 2015).
Among the different interactive channels, social media (i.e., social network
sites—SNSs, review platforms) plays a predominant role due to its public
nature (Sun et al., 2021). A total of 14% of complainants used social media
to post their product- and service-related problems and woes, with Face-
book and Twitter being the most popular sites (Customer Rage Survey,
2020). Customers have also turned to social media to publicly post negative
comments that may damage the company, with these types of posts potentially

M. Palazón (B) · I. López-López

University of Murcia, Murcia, Spain
e-mail: mariolap@um.es
I. López-López
e-mail: ineslop@um.es

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 571

Switzerland AG 2023
C. L. Wang (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Interactive Marketing,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14961-0_25
572 M. PALAZÓN AND I. LÓPEZ-LÓPEZ

outnumbering positive ones (Yang et al., 2019). In addition, online comments

can now go viral, quickly reaching millions of individuals (Trip & Grégoire,
2011). This phenomenon is known as “social media call-out culture” (Sprout
Social, 2019), which refers to the practice of publicly criticizing brands when
they fail to meet behavioral standards and involves a shift from private to public
interactions (Ward & Ostrom, 2006).
In this context, the handling of consumer complaints via social media sites is
a delicate business. This is because their public and connected nature amplifies
the impact of each individual complaint and renders brand responses vulner-
able to open scrutiny in a way never seen before (Sun et al., 2021), with the
subsequent impact on the company image (Sahin et al., 2017). In this vein,
brand messages may not only be blurred but also substantively modified by
brand opinions and complaints generated by outsiders (Swaminathan et al.,
2020). As a result, companies are investing in “webcare” teams to monitor and
respond to online customer feedback in an effort to manage their reputation
(Van Herck et al., 2020).
Additionally, since not all customers feel comfortable initiating a public and
open interaction with the brand, various instruments have recently appeared
in the private sphere. Chatbots, WhatsApp, email, instant messages on SNSs,
and website forms are readily available for interactive communication between
brands and consumers. The aim of this chapter is therefore to analyze
complaint handling in interactive channels by adopting a wide focus that
encompasses both public and private media. As such, the chapter seeks to
address the following research question: How can brands and companies effec-
tively handle customers’ complaints in interactive channels? To answer this
question, the chapter offers an integrative view of complaint handling by
bringing together the consumer perspective and the company’s role.
Specifically, private (WhatsApp, instant messages on SNSs, chatbots, email,
and telephone) and public (review platforms, SNSs, virtual brand communi-
ties, company websites, and blogs) interactive channels are identified. Then,
silent, internal, and external complainants are distinguished, as well as their
goals in complaining, such as redress-seeking, revenge, catharsis, altruism, and
self-presentation. In addition, this chapter identifies the features that make
the interactive channels especially appealing: convenience, real-time inter-
action, the shareability of complaints, rapid redress, and technology-based
communication.
The chapter also examines the critical role of observers in complaints voiced
through the interactive media. A set of firm strategies is proposed covering
not only the decision on the type of response to use but also the prevention
and brand-building strategies that can be implemented. Regarding the type of
response, key aspects to bear in mind are those related to the level of personal-
ization—i.e., automatic vs. personalized response, the quality of the response,
the response time, the use of humorous vs. non-humorous responses, how
much to keep in the public eye, and the response orientation—i.e., warmth
vs. competence. Furthermore, the use of a content moderation policy and
 25 COMPLAINT HANDLING AND CHANNEL SELECTION … 573

constant monitoring are identified as prevention strategies, while transforming

the complaint into a suggestion, applying a brand rebuilding strategy, and
disseminating counter-information are specified as brand-building strategies.
The optimal strategy for each company and situation will be contingent on
consumer goals and channel type.

2 Interactive Channels for Complaint Behavior

Complaint behavior has been defined as “an action taken by an individual
that involves communicating something negative regarding a product or
service” (Jacoby & Jaccard, 1981, p. 6). Prior to the blossoming of interac-
tive channels, consumer complaints entailed sharing the episode with friends,
relatives, or acquaintances, usually in face-to-face interactions. In most cases,
the negative information stopped there and never reached the brand or other
customers. In the unlikely event that a complaint was taken further, wronged
consumers addressed the company directly via telephone, letter, or even email.
However, with the advent of new interactive channels, complaining
behavior has become much more common. Based on flexible, interactive,
and direct interfaces, these methods are highly effective in channeling and
managing negative information (Cattani et al., 2006; Sugathan et al., 2018).
Online complaining refers to consumers using the Internet to complain
publicly (Grégoire et al., 2009). These interactive platforms provide them with
a direct, convenient, and effective path to brands (Mei et al., 2019). Although
different authors have highlighted the public nature of online complaining as
a key distinction (Grégoire et al., 2009; Sun et al., 2021; Ward & Ostrom,
2006), the wide array of tools available nowadays also includes private plat-
forms such as WhatsApp, which may prove useful for customers who do not
wish to vent their frustrations with others. Therefore, interactive channels for
complaining can be classified into private and public channels (see Fig. 1).
Building on that duality, the following section briefly discusses the features of
each channel.

2.1 Private Complaint Channels

Private channels are those where the interaction involves the brand and the
complainant only and remains unobservable to other customers. In this case,
the relationship is similar to those found in traditional channels, although
new channels are more direct, convenient, and effective. WhatsApp, instant
messages on SNSs, chatbots, emails, or even traditional telephone call centers
belong to this group. The challenge that public channels pose to companies
leads them to offer interactive private channels in order to remove the debate
from the public eye. The different options for private channels are briefly
described next.
WhatsApp. This app is nowadays one of the preferred channels to commu-
nicate, as indicated by Statista (2022), which ranks it as the third social
574 M. PALAZÓN AND I. LÓPEZ-LÓPEZ

Fig. 1 Interactive channels for complaining

network worldwide, just behind Facebook and YouTube, with two billion
active users monthly. Millennials have been called “the dumb generation”
as instead of talking by phone, they prefer to communicate over instant
messaging applications. WhatsApp has enabled brands to initiate private chat
conversations with users through its direct messaging platform. This develop-
ment provides consumers with quick responses and the ability to send photos,
videos, or voice messages to facilitate understanding of the problem while also
providing companies with the opportunity to tap into new audiences as well as
interact with consumers in a conversational way (Araujo et al., 2019; Zarouali
et al., 2021).
Instant messages on SNSs. A complaint can also be private on SNSs. The
exchange of messages is similar to WhatsApp but takes place on social media
platforms. For example, private complaints on Facebook are channeled via
the Facebook Messenger facility and are visible to the firm but not to other
consumers (Armstrong et al., 2021). In this regard, Zarouali et al. (2021)
found that consumers have less favorable perceptions of Facebook Messenger,
as well as lower trust in and intention to disclose information to brands using
this facility (compared with WhatsApp). The platform’s negative reputation
and privacy and security concerns are behind this perception. Twitter also
allows customers to send private and direct messages to the brand.
Chatbot. Artificial intelligence has brought chatbot functions to corpo-
rate websites. A chatbot, also known as a conversational agent, is a machine
conversation system that interacts with human users through natural conver-
sational language (Hill et al., 2015). Chatbots “converse” with customers,
through voice or text, to address a variety of customer needs across industries
(Crolic et al., 2022). Recent research has demonstrated that, when designing
an operational chatbot, attention should be paid to interaction, information,
accessibility, entertainment, and customization (Cheng & Jiang, 2021). For
example, a chatbot may be endowed with humanlike qualities such as a name
or avatar—i.e., chatbot anthropomorphism (Crolic et al., 2022). In addition,
 25 COMPLAINT HANDLING AND CHANNEL SELECTION … 575

from a managerial perspective, a chatbot may contribute to savings in human

resources as well as to an increase in customer service efficiency and satis-
faction, productivity, positive corporate image, and organizational knowledge
management (Ngai et al., 2021).
Email and telephone. Despite the popularity of new channels, companies
also tend to maintain more traditional media such as telephone or email. Tele-
phone calls enable a direct human interaction that may result in a personal
connection and also higher satisfaction with the recovery as the company’s staff
can explain the procedure to follow directly and clearly (Jeanpert et al., 2021).
Email allows direct and asynchronous communication between the customer
and brand, which can prove helpful and convenient for customers who do not
require an instant reply. In addition to offering more personal communication
with the company, these traditional media serve as the tools to which brands
attempt to divert public complaints (Van Herck et al., 2020).

2.2 Public Complaint Channels

Public channels are those where the opinions or complaints can reach a
broad number of individuals unrelated to the failure (Grégorie et al., 2015,
Instabulluoglu, 2017; Sun et al., 2021). These channels have emerged as
important forums for consumers’ voices, and they make it easier for people
to express their opinions about goods, services, and sellers (Huppertz, 2003).
Managing these channels to handle complaints renders them an effective
marketing tool for both brand-image objectives and building long-term rela-
tionships with consumers (Zimand et al., 2021). Extra effort may be required
to handle complaints via public channels, since consumers raise their expecta-
tions to compensate for the distance between them and the brand in a context
devoid of face-to-face interaction and non-verbal communication (Lii et al.,
2013). Public channels include review platforms, SNSs, and virtual brand
communities.
Review platforms. Review platforms are on the rise and gaining popu-
larity (Sahin et al., 2017). To some extent, they act as third parties to which
consumers turn to enhance their power over firms (Huppertz, 2003). They
enable consumers to provide qualitative and quantitative feedback about their
experiences and share it with others (Kozinets et al., 2021). For example,
Amazon, Facebook, and Google offer specialized sites and functions such
as Amazon Reviews, Facebook Rating and Reviews, and Google My Busi-
ness to comment on and rate companies, locations, products, and services.
This channel also includes specialized platforms in different industries such as
TripAdvisor, Expedia, or Booking.com. Here, anonymity may prompt indi-
viduals to leave negative online reviews without the fear of being judged or
feeling ashamed (Verhagen et al., 2013).
Social network sites. SNSs have contributed to the spread of consumer
opinions and complaints. They act as information-exchange outlets that enable
576 M. PALAZÓN AND I. LÓPEZ-LÓPEZ

dissatisfied customers to share their negative experiences with others (Sánchez-

Franco et al., 2012). On these platforms, complaints as well as (a lack of)
recovery efforts on the part of the company are visible not only to its coun-
terparts but also to other consumers (via posts on Facebook or tweets citing
the company account), who are also referred to as observers (Hogreve et al.,
2019). Therefore, if an individual details a failure in the form of a post on
an SNS, the scope of the damage becomes more extensive than in traditional
channels as the complaint is immediately visible to thousands of users (Mei
et al., 2019). Individuals can launch an attack against the company via SNSs
when the issue first arises or otherwise after an attempt to resolve it via other
(i.e., private) channels has failed, thereby aggravating the situation (Pozza,
2014). Thus, the tone of complaints made on SNSs can sometimes be more
aggressive if the consumer has already received an unsatisfactory response.
Virtual brand communities. A virtual brand community has been concep-
tualized as a group of individuals with common interests in a brand who
communicate with each other electronically (Sicilia & Palazón, 2008). Brand
pages are a new form of virtual brand community embedded in SNSs (Habibi
et al., 2014). Therefore, these types of communities can currently be found on
Facebook or Twitter. When a customer posts a complaint on the firm’s Face-
book wall, they are actually venting their discontent to the brand community
(Javornik et al., 2020), that is, to individuals who have developed emotional
bonds and have better relationships with the brand. Consequently, these indi-
viduals might foster consumer forgiveness and repurchase intention in the
event of a product-harm crisis (Yuan et al., 2020). That is, brand crises will
have less echo when the brand has a strong community around it.
Company websites and blogs. Some companies allow and encourage
consumers to rate their products publicly on their own websites, which then
act as review platforms. Corporate blogs can serve a similar purpose, as they
invite consumers to relate their experiences, which can be positive or negative,
i.e., complaints (Colton, 2018).
Once the different channels have been identified, companies should select
the instruments they are going to offer to customers from the wide array of
private and public tools available for complaining. In that decision, they should
also bear in mind that customers prefer accessible, easy-to-use, and reliable
channels with the potential to yield a desirable outcome (Matilla & Wirtz,
2004).

3 Consumer Complaint
Behavior in Interactive Channels
The growing interest in the use of interactive channels to manage complaints
is inextricably linked to consumers’ tendency to adopt them as channels for
expressing their voices (Customer Rage Survey, 2020; Grégoire et al., 2015).
Indeed, selecting the most appropriate channel to complain is a key consumer
decision as it is associated with the likelihood of success, that is, the chances of
 25 COMPLAINT HANDLING AND CHANNEL SELECTION … 577

obtaining a satisfactory resolution (Patwary & Omar, 2016). Additionally, the

availability of new channels has resulted in wide-ranging complaints, prompted
by different triggers, when compared to traditional interactions (Rosenmayer
et al., 2018). In this context, this chapter analyzes the type of complainants
found in interactive channels: silent, internal, and external. The goals that
guide complainants are redress-seeking, revenge, catharsis, altruism, and
self-presentation. At the same time, interactive channels offer complainants
benefits in the form of convenience, real-time interaction, the shareability of
complaints, rapid redress, and technology-based communication.

3.1 Typologies of Complainants

According to Bijmolt et al. (2014), complainants in the new digital era may
be classified into three main categories:
Silent complainants. This refers to consumers who experience a problem
but choose not to complain, resulting in the so-called non-behavioral
response, which involves no action at all. Why do some consumers decide not
to complain? Frequently, they are individuals who avoid making suggestions
as a behavioral norm in their lives, meaning that they do not want to be rude
or bother others. On the contrary, they prefer to excuse or forgive firms (and
employees) for their failures rather than criticize them by suggesting improve-
ments (Burnham, 2020). While these types of consumers do not cause any
problems for the company, their behavior also precludes the company from
learning about its failures and improving its offering.
Internal complainants. Some consumers prefer to complain directly to the
company instead of going public. They can use any of the private channels
described in the previous section to contact them and can therefore be consid-
ered private complainants. In this case, while there is no element of public
exposure, it is still possible for the company to demonstrate to observers the
brand’s care and diligence in resolving bad experiences.
External complainants. Nowadays, this is probably the path that
consumers take most often when they have an unsatisfactory brand experi-
ence since complaining to an external online source is now quicker and easier
than ever (Sprout Social, 2019). Having become part of consumer culture,
if something goes wrong, posting a negative comment about their experi-
ence now falls within the consumer’s daily routine (Huppertz, 2003). This
option instantly puts the company in the public eye, but it is also a double-
edged weapon. If the complaint is handled appropriately, it can result in a
positive outcome. However, the outcome can also be negative, for both the
complainant, if the response is insufficient, but also for those who witness the
interaction as it can be easily transmitted and endlessly shared (Pfeffer et al.,
2014).
578 M. PALAZÓN AND I. LÓPEZ-LÓPEZ

3.2 Complainants’ Goals in Interactive Channels

When a consumer decides to complain, there is usually an underlying goal
that spurs them into action. The interactive channels provide a unique combi-
nation of characteristics that enable the attainment of some, if not all, goals.
Next, this chapter will briefly discuss the most common aims when it comes
to complaints in interactive channels:
Redress-seeking. Consumers facing a product or service failure will often
initiate a complaint in a bid to remedy the situation; that is, the aggrieved
consumer will address the company seeking a replacement, a full or partial
refund, or a repair for the wrong. In this context, the consumer wants the
company to rectify the problem and offer a solution (Mattila & Wirtz, 2004).
Revenge. Consumers’ actions against a company may be intended to
damage the brand or exact revenge for its wrongdoing (Grégoire et al.,
2018). Past the point of any potential compensation or repair, some consumers
become committed to damaging the company through public scorn. As part
of their attempt, they may also call for a boycott (Delgado-Ballester et al.,
2020; Makarem & Jae, 2016).
Catharsis. When a consumer is affected by a failure, a myriad of nega-
tive emotions may be elicited (López-López et al., 2014). Specifically, almost
two-thirds of consumers experiencing a problem with a brand will encounter
customer rage (Customer Rage Survey, 2020). These emotions create stress
in consumers’ minds to the point where they feel compelled to let off steam
and alleviate their distress by venting them (Ward & Ostrom, 2006). The
consumer will then enter a cathartic process and share how they feel with
other consumers, from whom they may receive comfort and understanding,
potentially contributing to their relief.
Altruism. Consumers are aware of the impact their complaints may have on
other users who happen to see the negative information they post (Sundaram
et al., 1998). Indeed, some of these other users will be prospective consumers,
so the complaints may be helpful and serve as guidance to prevent erroneous
decisions. In this case, the complainants are not as concerned with the firm’s
response as they are with providing other consumers with insights to support
their future purchase decisions. In this vein, the Customer Rage Survey (2020)
highlighted that 17% of consumers will seek to raise public awareness of their
situation.
Self-presentation. Interactive complaint channels, especially public ones,
provide the consumer with an opportunity to build their self-image, that is,
to project an idealized version of themselves (Schlosser, 2020). Building on
that premise, raising a complaint may help them appear knowledgeable and
authoritative in front of others, which could help to build their reputation as
well as inspire respect. This also relates to individuals’ need to be seen and
admired by similar others.
 25 COMPLAINT HANDLING AND CHANNEL SELECTION … 579

3.3 Why Are Complainants Turning to Interactive Channels?

The act of complaining via public or private interactive channels, most of
which are built in the online environment, offers various distinctive features
to consumers that make them especially appealing, with the following being
the most salient:
Convenience. The ability to complain online makes the act of complaining
more convenient. The wronged consumer can easily access interactive chan-
nels such as SNSs, websites, or apps from any electronic device such as a
smartphone, computer, or tablet. Therefore, with just one click, consumers
can raise a complaint and do so effortlessly by simply, for example, writing a
post on the brand’s social media page (Sun et al., 2021).
Real-time interaction. Online complaint behavior may occur in real-time,
thus facilitating synchronous communication; that is, the information can be
shared at the very moment the failure happens and the company may respond
(Zaugg, 2008). As Fan and Niu (2016) stated, the ways in which customers
complain and firms deal with their complaints have changed dramatically
because of the unprecedented speed of SNSs. In addition, private channels
such as WhatsApp allow a real-time conversation between the customer and
the brand.
Shareability of complaints. The public nature of some interactive
complaint channels makes them visible and accessible to a huge number of
users, who may silently, or not so silently, view the negative comment. As will
be discussed later in this chapter, complaints posted online have enormous
reach as the complainants can be naturally followed on their feed (Javornik
et al., 2020).
Rapid redress. Complaining in interactive channels increases consumers’
expectations regarding the responsiveness of the firm. While complainants
using traditional channels have been found to be motivated mainly by a desire
for redress from the firm, complainants using online methods are said to seek
“rapid redress” (Istanbulluoglu, 2017, p. 79), indicating a desire for both
responsiveness and redress. Therefore, anytime a consumer posts a complaint,
they are eager to obtain a response and expect the company to act almost
immediately. Consistent with this, according to Edison Research (2019),
consumers demand a reply within 60 min on average, with 32% expecting
to receive one in the first 30 min.
Technology-based communication. Increasing numbers of individuals feel
comfortable communicating and using technology-based tools to interact with
other agents. In this vein, technology enthusiasm refers to people’s tendency
to accept and adopt new technologies to attain their goals (Mattila & Mount,
2003). SNSs offer these consumers an easy-to-use platform from which they
can address the brand they consider accountable for the negative situation in a
fluent manner. It must be acknowledged, however, that technology does not
always operate in the company’s best interest as it can pose a challenge for
managers who are unable to provide the expected quick reply as well as for
580 M. PALAZÓN AND I. LÓPEZ-LÓPEZ

consumers who feel more comfortable in face-to-face or voice-to-voice inter-

actions. In other words, the adoption of technology in the complaint handling
process may have positive outcomes (i.e., higher customer satisfaction) but also
negative ones to the extent that customers live in the “click and switch” envi-
ronment, showing zero tolerance for a delayed response to their electronic
complaints (Mattila & Mount, 2003).

4 Brands’ Response Strategy for Complaint

Handling in Interactive Channels
The way in which complaints are handled can greatly impact consumers’
reactions. Such reactions can be favorable, when a complaint is managed
appropriately, or unfavorable, when a complaint is managed poorly (Armstrong
et al., 2021; Einwiller & Steilen, 2015). Thus, positive outcomes in terms
of repurchase intentions, satisfaction, forgiveness, word of mouth (WOM)
intentions, and corporate image (Bijmolt et al., 2014; Mostafa et al., 2015;
Tsarenko et al., 2019), along with negative outcomes related to firm value,
perceived quality, and future complaints (Golmohammadi et al., 2021), may
be identified in both interactive and non-interactive channels.
To date, there has been little discussion as to whether companies should
handle complaints raised through interactive channels. Instead, the critical
point relates to how to do so appropriately, especially via public channels (i.e.,
SNSs, review sites). Social media complaint behavior engenders such active and
dynamic scenarios that it has given rise to an entirely new industry devoted to
dealing with social media crisis management (Abney et al., 2017). Compa-
nies must be aware of the impact that complaint management exerts on those
exposed to it, both the wronged customer as well as the silent observers,
which will be discussed in the next section (Fan & Niu, 2016). The public
nature of many channels, combined with their wide scope and reach, exposes
companies to open scrutiny far beyond the limits known (Sun et al., 2021).
In this context, the different complaint handling strategies should be analyzed
to understand the pros and cons of specific actions. As such, while complaint
handling poses a tremendous challenge for companies and compels marketers
to act to reduce its detrimental effects, it also offers an opportunity to win
back the wronged consumers and make it clear that they really care for them.

4.1 Observers, a Motive of Concern for Companies

One of the key elements that differentiate public interactive channels from
private channels and traditional ones is the possibility of being observed by
other consumers or users (Armstrong et al., 2021; López-López et al., 2021).
Thus, in public interactive channels, the effect of complaint handling becomes
apparent not only in the wronged consumer’s response but also in the reac-
tions of third parties following their exposure to the interaction. Managers
should bear this distinctive feature in mind to acquire a better understanding
 25 COMPLAINT HANDLING AND CHANNEL SELECTION … 581

of complaint handling in this context. As Huang and Ha (2020) highlighted,

observers should not be regarded simply as witnesses to the exchange between
a company and a dissatisfied consumer in interactive channels; on the contrary,
they should be considered as prospective customers whose future behavior
depends greatly on the complaint resolution.
The observability of complaints in interactive channels can lead to both
positive and negative outcomes. If the complaint process evolves smoothly,
public exposure can act as a form of public relations enabling the brand to
demonstrate how much it cares and how effective its management strate-
gies are, resulting in positive WOM and a better brand reputation for the
complainant and observers alike (Einwiller & Steilen, 2015; Hogreve et al.,
2019). However, if the company fails to manage the complaint well, and
thus handles it poorly, witnesses will become aware of this failure almost
immediately. They then have the opportunity to repeat the story, increase the
number of people who know about it, and publicize the brand’s ineffectiveness
(Hogreve et al., 2019).
Recent research has dealt with the consequences of complaint handling in
observers, also called virtually present others, in terms of responses toward
the brand (Amstrong et al., 2021; Golmohammadi et al., 2021). First, the
mere act of responding to the complaint may influence observers’ attitudes and
reactions (Golmohammadi et al., 2021). When the brand response increases
the potential public exposure of the complaint, in a process the authors
term “complaint publicization,” the intended positive signaling strategy actu-
ally makes the complaint more noticeable and reduces the positive impact.
Second, the complaints of others may act as cues in social networks that impact
observers’ behavior (Armstrong et al., 2021). Thus, when complaints of others
are present, observers have been found to report a less positive attitude toward
the firm and a greater likelihood of raising a complaint themselves. Finally,
while some companies attempt to shift the complaint handling away from the
public sphere into a more private setting such as email or customer service,
observers continue to await a resolution (Hogreve et al., 2019). In other
words, not addressing the complaint publicly when others are already aware of
the failure may result in negative WOM or intention, as the observers remain
uncertain as to how the complaint has been handled.

4.2 Complaint Handling Strategies in Interactive Channels

The potentially harmful consequences of inappropriate complaint handling
have led brands to formulate effective strategies to deal with the situation.
The type of response the company should offer when they receive a complaint
through interactive channels is especially relevant. Next, this chapter identifies
some recommendations based on empirical evidence.
Automatic vs. personalized responses. Previous literature has confirmed
that highly adaptive responses yield more positive reactions from consumers
in terms of purchase intention, satisfaction, and eWOM than less adaptive
582 M. PALAZÓN AND I. LÓPEZ-LÓPEZ

responses (Abney et al., 2017). The superior performance of personalized

responses over non-personalized ones may lie in the two-way nature of the
interaction, in line with the core definition of interactive marketing (Wang,
2021). In the same vein, Mattila et al. (2013) pointed out that providing
an automatic, non-personalized response to a complainant is as negative as
providing no answer at all since it reflects indolence and carelessness on the
part of the company (cyberostracism). In line with those findings, López-
López et al. (2021) demonstrated that when the complainant is an ordinary
customer, personalized responses exert a more favorable effect on observers
exposed to the online complaint than no response or automatic responses.
However, when the complainant is an influencer, the effect is reversed since
the observer attributes the good behavior to the nature of the complainant and
not to any true intention to repair the wrong. The presence of human inter-
action during complaint handling may underlie these results (Javornik et al.,
2020; Jeanpert et al., 2021).
Quality of the response: attending emotions. Sun et al. (2021) showed
that although future complaints can increase as a result of the so-called aware-
ness effect (other customers become aware of the possibility of raising a
complaint and the number of complaints posted by other users), quality inter-
ventions on the part of the company actually lead to fewer complaints. In other
words, brands should be less concerned about persistent complainers, who
might complain over time as their expectations of success increase, and more
committed to designing strategies that meet the expectations of the wronged
consumer. In this regard, they should consider that emotions are commonly
elicited during disappointing consumer experiences (Schoefer & Diaman-
topoulos, 2008). Indeed, complaining may be interpreted as an act of venting
emotions (Yen, 2016). Therefore, companies should respond authentically and
avoid being strictly rational as that would mean ignoring the emotions present
and not properly attending to them. Building on that premise, Fan and Niu
(2016) confirmed that the company’s intervention can alleviate emotions.
Response time. Brand teams may help facilitate timely and suitable
responses in the event of complaints (Swaminathan et al., 2020). The speed
with which businesses respond to complaints on social media can greatly affect
the level of damage (Grégoire et al., 2015). In this vein, consumers expect
a quick response when using interactive channels to communicate with the
company, which is especially true for technology enthusiasts as they have a
low tolerance level for delayed responses (Mattila & Mount, 2003). Brands
should react promptly and dutifully, but also strategically since an inadequate
response could be even worse than no response and result in an online reputa-
tional crisis or ignite an online firestorm; that is, a massive discharge of negative
comments after an initial unfavorable post against the brand was not handled
properly from the outset (Delgado-Ballester et al., 2021; Pfeffer et al., 2014).
Humorous vs. non-humorous responses. The benefits of humor have
been demonstrated in highly diverse areas such as stressful situations (Scott,
2007), conflict resolution, and advertising (Eisend, 2009). Humor might
 25 COMPLAINT HANDLING AND CHANNEL SELECTION … 583

provide an avenue to pacify the complainant, partly repair their emotions, and
proceed with the interaction more calmly. Shin and Larson (2020) compared
humorous and non-humorous responses in a complaint situation and consis-
tently found that humor yielded more favorable consumer responses when it
matched a humorous complaint. Therefore, humor should be used cautiously.
How much to keep in the public eye. Transparency is effective in terms of
obtaining positive reactions from observers (Hogreve et al., 2019). However,
brands should act carefully so as not to reveal confidential information. If
the company is unable to publicly disclose all the details of the interaction,
then marketers should, at least, offer information about either the process
or the result (Christodoulides et al., 2021). Trying to take the complainant
out of the public eye without a strong reason can damage the perceptions of
witnesses, as they would discern that the company either cannot be trusted
or is not really aiming to repair the wrong or even acknowledge that things
could have evolved differently. Consistent with this, a study revealed that 89%
of consumers said a business could regain their trust if it admitted the mistake
and acted transparently (Sprout Social, 2019).
Warmth-oriented vs. competence-oriented responses. Huang and Ha
(2020) found that, for consumers with a communal relationship orientation,
warmth-oriented responses work better in terms of perceived diagnosticity and
sincerity, whereas for consumers with an exchange orientation, competence-
oriented responses are more appropriate. In other words, the former are
more concerned with the company being friendly and showing true care
for customers while the latter focus more on whether the response effec-
tively conveys information. These results call for the response to be adapted
depending on the orientation of the audience.
Beyond the different responses that companies can provide, the interac-
tive channels enable marketers to act in other directions, both before the
complaint, in the form of prevention strategies, as well as after it, in the form
of brand-building strategies. It is important to note that these actions are not
mutually exclusive and can be used simultaneously as they involve a common
goal, which is to deal with complaints effectively.
Concerning prevention strategies, the following are highlighted:
Use a content moderation policy. Nowadays, customers are well aware
of their right to voice concerns about anything they perceive as unfair, unac-
ceptable, or wrong. Additionally, they seek to do this wherever listeners are
present, thus making public interactive channels the ideal space in which to
pursue their goal, regardless of whether the message itself is inspiring or
reprehensive (Gillespie, 2018). Since for some individuals the line between
regular complaints and very aggressive communication may be blurred,
attempts have been made to silence consumers by imposing restrictions on
free speech (Pantano & Corvello, 2013). In this vein, Christodoulides et al.
(2021) recently identified content moderation policies as a means of placating
complainants while still providing them with the opportunity to express them-
selves. If consumers are asked to use appropriate language and avoid aggressive
584 M. PALAZÓN AND I. LÓPEZ-LÓPEZ

or offensive terms, their negative emotions will subside and their forgiveness
will increase.
Monitor constantly. The nature of interactive channels makes them very
dynamic, meaning that they evolve and change rapidly. As a result, and
given the potentially damaging effect, marketers should regularly monitor the
different points of contact with their customers. This way, they prevent a
massive attack against them and contain the situation before it spirals out of
control. With this in mind, Huppertz (2003) noted that brands could appoint
representatives to constantly monitor activity on social media platforms, corpo-
rate websites, and any other medium that enables people to raise a complaint
or talk negatively about the company. This would help managers to respond
to complaints in a timely and appropriate way.
In relation to the brand-building strategies, companies could:
Transform the complaint into a suggestion. Traditionally, a strong nega-
tive association has been linked to complaints; that is, they have usually been
perceived as arising from consumers’ dissatisfaction and led by redress-seeking
behavior, an intention to get the wrong repaired, or even exact revenge on
the company (López-López et al., 2014). While that assumption may be accu-
rate in a majority of cases, brands can also derive some positive learning from
the interaction with the complainant by transforming the complaint into a
suggestion. Indeed, both complaints and suggestions emerge as a result of
suboptimal episodes wherein the customer was not served in the way they
expected, with suggestion sharing involving “communicating an idea with
the primary goal of improving in an ongoing manner what the firm offers”
(Burnham, 2020, p. 443). In situations where the complaint is not too aggres-
sive or the failure very severe, managers could do their best to, in addition
to solving the problem, thank the customer for helping them and promise
to incorporate it into their offering, with the subsequent benefit for other
customers. This could lead to higher customer engagement and reputational
gains (Akman et al., 2018; Hollebeek et al., 2014; Jaakkola & Alexander,
2014). Ultimately, this strategy creates a positive impression of the company.
Apply a brand rebuilding strategy. A company can use complaints to
publicly show its commitment to customers and announce the intention to
improve its products and services in the future. In this regard, Halima et al.
(2021) examined two alternative strategies, a brand rebuilding strategy and a
diminishing strategy. The former aims to inspire customers to remain with the
brand instead of switching providers and put the brand in an even better posi-
tion than its pre-crisis status—also referred to as the service recovery paradox
(Ray et al., 2019), while the latter relates to claiming that the situation is
not that negative and the brand will not actually be damaged. The brand
rebuilding strategy, linked to a proactive attitude, works better than the dimin-
ishing strategy, where the brand presents itself as careless and shows no regrets
about its wrongdoing.
Disseminate counter-information. It may be possible to reduce the
flow of negative information by disseminating positive communication as a
 25 COMPLAINT HANDLING AND CHANNEL SELECTION … 585

Fig. 2 Theoretical framework for complaint handling

“damage control” strategy; that is, the company could encourage positive
WOM as counter-information to minimize the impact of the initial comment
(Einwiller & Steilen, 2015; Pfeffer et al., 2014). In pursuing this goal, compa-
nies can use their more loyal consumers, also known as prosumers, as well as
social media influencers with a high number of followers and followers in their
brand communities to act as defenders in a brand crisis.
Finally, Fig. 2 offers an integrative view of complaint handling in interactive
media, from the motivations for complaining in private and public channels to
the strategies the company can develop.

5 Conclusions
This chapter has approached the challenges that digitalization poses for
complaint handling. First, complaints have moved from traditional to digital
channels, which constitute the perfect place to establish interactive communi-
cation between consumers and brands (see Lim et al., 2022 for a retrospective
review of interactive marketing). Second, the interactive marketing era has
shifted complaint handling from a private to a public setting, resulting in the
so-called “social media call-out culture,” which implies that consumers’ opin-
ions and complaints can now reach millions of individuals in a short period of
time (Grégoire et al., 2018; Trip & Gregoire, 2011).
New private and public complaint channels are direct, convenient, and
effective for the customer (Mei et al., 2019), while public ones also make
it possible for observers to read the information (Huppertz, 2003). The
chapter proposes a classification of private and public interactive channels
586 M. PALAZÓN AND I. LÓPEZ-LÓPEZ

for complaining and analyzes their main features. Thus, WhatsApp, instant
messaging on SNSs, chatbots, email, and telephone are identified as private
channels while review platforms, SNSs, virtual brand communities, company
websites, and blogs are considered public channels. Companies must decide
which tools to use from this wide array of options while also considering that
the new private interactive channels enable complaints to be handled out of
the public eye. This is why some brands have recently turned to, for example,
WhatsApp to manage complaints.
The duality in channels also becomes apparent in terms of consumers; as
such, internal and external complainants can be distinguished based on their
interest in publicly venting their complaints about the company’s wrongdoing.
Closely related to this, the chapter also identifies the most common goals
underlying complaint behavior: redress-seeking, revenge, catharsis, altruism,
and self-presentation. Managers are sometimes afraid that the public resolu-
tion of complaints may have a “call effect” on other consumers. In this regard,
it is important to highlight that the growth of interactive channels is built on
their convenience (Stříteský & Stránská, 2015), real-time interaction (Fan &
Niu, 2016), the shareability of complaints with others (Javornik et al., 2020),
rapid redress (Stříteský & Stránská, 2015), and individuals’ interest in using
technology-based tools to interact (Mattila & Mount, 2003).
Finally, this chapter highlights the role of observers in complaint handling
resolutions and the challenges that companies face in public channels. “Com-
plaint publicization” is a fact in the interactive marketing era and managers
should consider all strategies for dealing with this new phenomenon. Thus,
although the type of response the company offers in terms of personal-
ization (Abney et al., 2017), quality of the response (Sun et al., 2021),
or response time (Mattila & Mount, 2003) remains crucial, companies can
also implement other initiatives to deal with complaints in a more inte-
gral way. These can range from preventing or attenuating the advent of
complaints through a content moderation policy (Christodoulides et al., 2021)
or the constant monitoring of social media (Huppertz, 2003) to brand-
building strategies intended to derive a positive element from a negative
situation by transforming the complaint into a suggestion (Burnham, 2020),
applying a brand rebuilding strategy (Halima et al., 2021), or disseminating
counter-information (Einwiller & Steilen, 2015).
In sum, this chapter contributes to the literature by offering an integra-
tive view of complaint handling in interactive media. To the best of our
knowledge, no research has approached the phenomenon globally; that is,
previous studies have focused on specific dimensions instead of trying to paint
a complete picture. Here, both the consumer perspective and the company
role are included to better understand the factors that underlie complaint
behavior and handling. Specifically, a set of firm strategies is proposed that
goes beyond the type of response and includes the identification of preven-
tion and brand-building strategies, which can be applied prior to and after the
complaint, respectively. Therefore, the complaint management covers not only
 25 COMPLAINT HANDLING AND CHANNEL SELECTION … 587

the complaint itself but also the containment measures adopted previously and
the restoration measures used afterward.
From a managerial perspective, complaint handling in the interactive envi-
ronment is a key issue nowadays. Therefore, firms are expected to act and
operate within a very dynamic system where interactions with consumers
change over time. This means that the design of their care programs is vital to
generate engagement from customers, gain their trust, build long-term rela-
tionships, and exert a positive impact on observers. The optimal strategy for
each company and situation will be contingent on the consumer goals and
channel type. For example, prevention strategies could be more suitable for
public channels whereas rebuilding strategies might prove useful in both public
and private channels. Fast responses could be valued in both types of chan-
nels while personalized responses could be more distinctive in public settings
as the private scenario likely entails tailored communication from the outset
if the consumer interacts with a person. Similarly, for consumers looking for
revenge in a public channel, warmth-oriented strategies may work better, while
consumers looking for redress would welcome competence-oriented strategies.

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 CHAPTER 26

What Do We Know About Influencers on Social

Media? Toward a New Conceptualization
and Classification of Influencers

María Sicilia and Manuela López

1 Introduction
Influencers have become increasingly important in recent years (Boerman &
Müller, 2021). Nowadays, influencers represent an essential actor of the new
interactive marketing era, characterized by the bi-directional value creation
and active customer connection, engagement, participation, and interaction
(Wang, 2021). Afforded by the unprecedented interactivity of social media
(Fazli-Salehi et al., 2022; Yuan & Lou, 2020), influencers can generate high
levels of engagement, since more targeted audiences can be reached in a
more organic and authentic way compared to traditional marketing strategies
(Balaban & Szambolics, 2022; Bu et al., 2022). Influencers act as a route
to brand engagement for their followers and hold the potential to promote
customer-brand relationships across different product categories (Delbaere
et al., 2021).
Influencer phenomenon started at the beginning of 2010s with the devel-
opment of social network sites, especially Instagram (Leung et al., 2022). At
that time, “ordinary” individuals started to create content on these platforms
while many people started to gain interest in this content, following their
profiles on social media (Schouten et al., 2020). Since then, influencers have

M. Sicilia (B) · M. López

University of Murcia, Murcia, Spain
e-mail: sicilia@um.es
M. López
e-mail: manuela.lopez@um.es

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 593

Switzerland AG 2023
C. L. Wang (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Interactive Marketing,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14961-0_26
594 M. SICILIA AND M. LÓPEZ

been used more and more often as a new marketing tool, modifying marketing
budgets all over the world. The global influencer marketing market value has
more than doubled since 2019, standing at around 13.8 billion U.S. dollars
as of 2021 (Statista, 2021), with more than 75% of brand marketers planning
to dedicate a budget to influencer marketing in 2022 (Influencer Marketing
Hub, 2022).
Given the importance of the influencer phenomenon, many studies have
been published about this topic recently. However, there are still several areas
that need further research. One of them is the conceptualization of influencers
(Leung et al., 2022). The influencer phenomenon is dynamic (Hudders et al.,
2021), so what was understood as an influencer a few years ago may have
changed. Therefore, it is necessary to compile and organize previous research
about influencers and provide a better conceptualization of the influencer
concept as well as an improved categorization of influencers. Additionally,
empirical evidence seems to corroborate the acclaimed impact influencers
have on consumers (see, for instance, Schouten et al., 2020). Nevertheless,
the numerous factors that may determine their influence are still not well
accounted for. Finally, most studies have analyzed the success of influencers
as a marketing tool (Hudders et al., 2021). However, influencers do not work
as paid media. They are considered as a hybrid option between paid and earn
media (Hughes et al., 2019). Influencers decide who they are going to collab-
orate with and have a great deal of control over the content they publish, even
deciding whether to disclose or not disclose the collaboration.
In order to answer these unresolved questions, this chapter is structured
as follows. The first section deals with the conceptualization of influencers
by reviewing their origin and evolution on the marketing field. The identi-
fication of the key features of an influencer nowadays leads the authors to
propose a new definition and categorization of influencers more consistent
with the evolution of the influencer phenomenon. The numerous factors that
may determine the impact of influencers on consumers are then identified and
organized. Next, the differences between collaborating with an influencer and
developing a campaign in paid media are discussed. Main conclusions and a
research agenda are presented at the end of the chapter.

2 Conceptualizing Influencers:
Origin, Definition, and Classification
The influencer phenomenon has evolved in the previous years, which has been
reflected in the different definitions of influencer that have been proposed in
the literature. It is important to understand that the concept of influencer is
constantly evolving to meet the changing context and circumstances (Hudders
et al., 2021). Therefore, in order to better understand what an influencer is
nowadays and what characteristics are the most important for defining it, the
origin of influencers needs to be accounted for.
 26 WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT INFLUENCERS ON SOCIAL MEDIA … 595

2.1 Origin and Evolution of the Influencer Phenomenon

The concept of influencer has its roots in opinion leadership. In fact, early
studies about influencers referred to these individuals as online opinion leaders
(De Veirman et al., 2017; Uzunoglu & Kip, 2014). In the marketing litera-
ture, opinion leaders have traditionally been referred to as “individuals who
exert an unequal amount of influence on the decisions of others” (Rogers &
Cartano, 1962). Their influence is usually attributed to their great experience,
expertise, and knowledge about a product category (Lin et al., 2018). With
the advent of the Internet, some opinion leaders started expressing their opin-
ions on this medium via blogs. For that reason, bloggers could be considered
the precursors of influencers (Leung et al., 2022). First bloggers were born
at the beginning of 2000s and they were mainly mothers who wrote about
maternity. They were the so-called “mommy-bloggers” (Safko, 2014).
The development of social network sites (SNSs) was a milestone for the
influencer phenomenon. It all started in 2006, with the birth of Twitter,
Facebook becoming public and Google buying Youtube (Burns, 2021). The
creation of Instagram in 2010 further reinforced the development of influ-
encers and increased their popularity (Boerman & Müller, 2021; Leung et al.,
2022). In fact, it was not until then that the term influencer was spread (Olsen-
metrix, 2020). At the beginning, bloggers used SNSs to lead traffic to their
blogs, and finally to spread the word on their own profiles on these plat-
forms (Burns, 2021). At the same time, other “ordinary” individuals, started
to give and share their opinions on these platforms reaching certain popularity
(Schouten et al., 2020). Many people started to be interested in the content
these “ordinary people” had created following them on social media. Given
social media’s scalability and speed of diffusion, some contributors attracted
a mass audience, built a fan base, and become a source of advice for their
followers (Vrontis et al., 2021).
Most influencers did not pretend to become “famous”; they just wanted
to share their passion and experience with others (Ouvrein et al., 2021).
Influencers usually start their activity sharing content on social media and
progressively accumulate followers (Leung et al., 2022). Their content is
initially created in a very simple rudimentary way. Then, the growth of their
followers is accompanied by the development of new posting practices and
the use of more professional equipment (Van Driel & Dumitrica, 2021). At
that point, brand-collaborations opportunities start to appear (in the form of
gifts or money) and finally, some influencers may decide to be represented by
agencies (Hughes et al., 2019). For that reason, many influencers have evolved
from ordinary people to professionals (Campbell & Farrell, 2020).

2.2 Proposal of a New Definition of Influencer

Given the evolution of the influencer phenomenon, it is not surprising that
some characteristics mentioned before have been used to define influencers.
596 M. SICILIA AND M. LÓPEZ

Hudders et al. (2021) identified two central characteristics needed to be

considered an influencer, reach and impact. Impact refers to the influence they
exert while reach is related to the number of individuals that will be exposed
to the content created by the influencer.
Most definitions take into account the impact influencers have. Due to its
roots in opinion leadership, some of them express their impact by identifying
influencers as opinion leaders. For instance, Uzunoglu and Kip (2014) defined
influencers as “innovative opinion leaders who have wide reach through social
media platforms among their online contacts.” Other definitions do not show
explicitly the opinion leadership of influencers but rather reflect their power of
influence. The reference to their power of influence is clear in the definition by
Influencer Marketing Hub (2019): “an individual who has the power to affect
the purchase decisions of others because of his/her authority, knowledge,
position, or relationship with his/her audience.” Although some influencers
could be opinion leaders as they are experts in a specific topic, the level of
influence they exert could be explained by other factors such as their authen-
ticity (Hudders et al., 2021), or their strong relationship with followers (Lou,
2021). Therefore, given the evolution of the influencer phenomenon, power
of influence may be a better indicator to identify influencers than opinion
leadership.
Other definitions include both characteristics, impact and reach. For
example, De Veirman et al. (2017) defined influencers as “opinion leaders
who communicate with a sizeable social network of people following them.”
However, most definitions only take into account the primary reach, consid-
ering only the number of followers the influencer has (Hudders et al., 2021).
It will be interesting to also consider the quality of these followers. Word of
mouth literature has identified some individuals that are key to obtain a great
reach (Araujo et al., 2017; Hinz et al., 2011). Some followers may be hubs,
who are defined as “well-connected people with a high number of connec-
tions to others” (Hinz et al., 2011). Some others may be bridges, who are
“individuals who connect two otherwise unconnected parts of the network”
(Araujo et al., 2017). Therefore, if influencers have hubs or bridges among
their followers, their potential of influence will increase. Secondary reach can
be defined as reach obtained through followers (Hudders et al., 2021).
Another differential aspect of influencers is their role as content creators.
Influencers create and disseminate content that allegedly portrays their
everyday lives, experiences, and opinions (Leung et al., 2022). In fact, influ-
encers have earned their titles due to their interesting and valuable content
(Vrontis et al., 2021). This characteristic is useful to distinguish influencers
from other individuals who may have many contacts but do not create
content, only share the content created by others. Lou and Kim (2019) made
clear this important feature of influencers by defining them as “those who
constantly create useful content to attract a following via interactive social
media platforms.”
 26 WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT INFLUENCERS ON SOCIAL MEDIA … 597

As a consequence of their power of influence and the reach they could

achieve, brands are interested in collaborating with influencers. Influencers
have become an important marketing tool to promote products (Hudders
et al., 2021) and to enhance customer engagement (Delbaere et al., 2021).
Although some influencers could refuse to collaborate with brands, the
majority of them publish sponsored content, leading them to a progressive
professionalization (Van Driel & Dumitrica, 2021). In fact, two out of three
publications of influencers on Instagram are sponsored (Monge-Benito et al.,
2021). Therefore, even though this aspect may not be essential to define
what an influencer is, it has become a clear consequence of the influencer
phenomenon, and we consider it important to include their potential as a new
marketing tool in the definition of influencers. Indeed, this aspect is starting to
appear in more recent definitions. For instance, Campbell and Farrell (2020)
defined an influencer as “someone who posts to social media in exchange for
compensation.”
In sum, there are four aspects that characterize what an influencer is nowa-
days, three of them are essential to their core nature: power of influence,
content creation, and reach. There is another one that comes as a conse-
quence of the previous three, their potential as a marketing tool for brands
and managers. Table 1 presents some of the most relevant definitions of influ-
encer in the marketing literature, including the source of the definition, and
the differential aspect or aspects that are included in the definition. In order
to account for all four aspects of the influencer phenomenon, a new definition
has been proposed by the authors that better expresses what an influencer is
taking into account for the evolution of the influencer phenomenon:

New definition of influencer: “An individual who creates content on social media
and has a significant power of influence and reach that may be of interest for
brands.”

2.3 Differences Between Influencers and Celebrities

Many types of influencers have been identified in the last years. One of the
most popular classifications identifies two main groups of influencers: celebrity
influencers and ordinary influencers (Al-Emadi & Yahia, 2020; Campbell &
Farrell, 2020). This classification implicitly assumes considering celebrities as
influencers. However, there are different reasons why celebrities should not be
considered as influencers: their origin, their source of influence, the way they
relate with followers, their role as content creators, and their relationships with
brands are all different.
Although many celebrities have also found their way to social media, ordi-
nary influencers have built their careers online and were unknown to a general
public before (Schouten et al., 2020). That is the reason why influencers are
 598

Table 1 Previous definitions of influencers

Definition Differential aspect mentioned Term used Source

A new type of independent third-party endorser who shapes - Power of influence Social media influencer Freberg et al. (2011)
audiences ’ attitudes through blogs, tweets, and the use of
other social media
Innovative opinion leaders who have wide reach through - Power of influence Social media influencer Uzunoglu and Kip (2014)
social media platforms among their ‘online contacts’ - Reach
An individual who has the power to affect the purchase - Power of influence Influencer Influencer Marketing Hub (2019)
decisions of others because of his/her authority, knowledge, - Reach
M. SICILIA AND M. LÓPEZ

position or relationship with his/her audience

Content generators with celebrity status on social media - Content creation Influencer Lou and Yuan (2019)
Digital influencers who have built sizable social networks of - Power of influence Social media influencer Torres et al. (2019)
followers and who are online opinion leaders across multiple - Reach
roles
Those who constantly create useful content to attract a - Reach Influencer Lou and Kim (2019)
following via interactive social media platforms - Content creation
Someone who posts to social media in exchange for - Marketing tool Influencer Campbell and Farrell (2020)
compensation - Content creation
Social media personas exhibiting opinion leadership by - Power of influence Influencer Zhou et al. (2021)
producing and distributing eWOM concerning brands and - Content creation
products to influence consumers’ attitudes and buying
behaviours
People who influence others through social media - Power of influence Influencer Gerrath and Usrey (2021)
Third-party users of social media who have achieved - Power of influence Social media influencer Delbaere et al. (2021)
micro-celebrity status in the form of large followings on - Reach
social media platforms and who have a position of influence
on their audience
 26 WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT INFLUENCERS ON SOCIAL MEDIA … 599

also known as social media influencers (Zhou et al., 2021) or online influ-
encers (Leung et al., 2022). As for their influence, consumers are influenced
by celebrities because they admire them and aspire to be like them (Escalas &
Bettman, 2009). It is not their role as content creators that makes individuals
follow celebrities on social media. There is neither a moment when celebrities
achieved a significant reach or power of influence that attracted the attention
of brands, they were already of interest for brands. In addition, celebrities are
less likely to interact with their followers and are seen as some more distant
individuals than influencers (Yuan & Lou, 2020). So, they do not represent the
new interactive marketing era proposed by Wang (2021) as well as influencers
do.
These differences are not only true for celebrities that were born before
social media even existed. They also hold for new celebrities born after 2000.
For instance, the young tennis player Carlos Alcaraz (birth date: May, 5th,
2003) has already attracted the attention of many brands. He has signed
contracts with Nike, Babolat, IMG, Isdin or Rolex, and is talking with many
other brands for potential collaborations. He interests brands because of the
activity he does best (playing tennis), not because of any valuable content he
may have shared on social media. As Al-Emadi and Yahia (2020) state, unlike
ordinary influencers, celebrities got their fame (e.g. actors, athletes, presenters)
outside social media. So, according to our previous definition, Carlos Alcaraz
should not be considered an influencer “per se,” but instead a celebrity, since
he has not created valuable content on social media nor achieved a signif-
icant influence or reach online that may be of interest for companies. In
fact, he joined Twitter in January 2020, after he signed with Nike (contract
dates from the end of 2019). This timing supports the idea that celebrities
use their social media presence to support their careers and propagate brand
partnerships (Campbell & Farrell, 2020) rather than to create their careers as
influencers do (Leung et al., 2022).

2.4 Typology of Influencers: Proposal of a New Classification Based

on Potential Reach
Once celebrities have been excluded from the conceptualization of influencers,
we can focus on the different criteria that have been used to classify influ-
encers. Influencers have been classified depending on the main platform used
by the influencer. Following this classification, for instance, we can identify
bloggers, youtubers, instafamous, or tiktokers (Gómez, 2019). Influencers can
be also classified depending on the product category they are expert in. For
example, we can classify influences into travel influencers, fashion influencers,
tech influencers, gaming influencers, food influencers, and so on (Girgin,
2021).
More specific criteria have been also used to classify influencers. For
instance, Oliveira et al. (2021) have distinguished between business-oriented
influencers, who adapt their content to their followers’ expectations, and
600 M. SICILIA AND M. LÓPEZ

idea-oriented influencers, who express their own ideas regardless of their

followers’ expectations. Additionally, given the increasing importance of arti-
ficial intelligence and robotics, Riboldazzi and Capriello (2020) have recently
distinguished between human influencers and virtual influencers.
Despite the numerous criteria that may be used to classify influencers,
undoubtedly, the most used criterion for classifying influencers has been audi-
ence size (number of followers). This criterion is both easy to understand
and useful for companies when approaching and selecting influencers. De
Veirman et al. (2017) distinguished between micro-influencers and macro-
influencers (see Table 2). Boerman (2020) extended this classification by
including a smaller audience group (up to 10,000 followers) and a bigger audi-
ence group (more than 1 million followers). Additionally, Campbell and Farrell
(2020) provided one of the most used classifications by distinguishing four
types of influencers: mega-influencers, macro-influencers, micro-influencers,
and nano-influencers.

Table 2 Classifications
of influencers based on Source Typology Number of
followers
their number of followers
De Veirman et al. Macro-influencers 100,000 to
(2017) 1,000,000
followers
Micro-influencers 10,000 to
100,000
followers
Boerman (2020) Macro-influencers More than
1,000,000
followers
Meso-influencers 10,000 to
1,000,000
followers
Micro-influencers up to
10,000
followers
Campbell and Farrell Mega-influencers More than
(2020) 1,000,000
followers
Macro-influencers 100,000 to
1,000,000
followers
Micro-influencers 10,000 to
100,000
followers
Nano-influencers up to
10,000
followers
 26 WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT INFLUENCERS ON SOCIAL MEDIA … 601

Although the number of followers may be important to determine the

impact of influencers, audience size can be easily manipulated (Cresci et al.,
2015). A very common although unethical tactic among influencers consists
of buying fake followers in order to attract collaborations with brands (Taylor,
2020) or to artificially inflate their status (De Veirman et al., 2019). In
addition to that problem, classifications based on number of followers only
take into account direct audience, but not the secondary audience, in which
this may either underestimate or overestimate their power of influence. For
instance, an influencer with a relatively low number of followers but with a
very qualified audience or with very significant followers (hubs or bridges) may
still achieve a high reach (Hudders et al., 2021). For that reason, some authors
state that the number of followers is merely an indication for popularity rather
than influence (De Veirman et al., 2017).
In order to improve this classification, a new classification can be established
based on the potential reach an influencer could achieve. Potential reach can
be defined as the number of individuals who may be exposed to the influ-
encer content, considering both primary and secondary reach. Following the
size of the four groups established by Campbell and Farrell (2020), as well as
considering that each individual usually has a mean of 150 followers on SNSs
(Hashtagsforlikes, 2020), a new classification of influencers is proposed by the
authors based on their potential reach. In this case, the potential reach of an
influencer with 10,000 followers will be 1,500,000 individuals. Table 3 shows
the new classification based on potential reach.

Table 3 New classification of influencers based on potential reach

Typology Potential reach

Mega-reach influencers Influencers with a potential audience of more than 150 million
individuals
Macro-reach influencers Influencers with a potential audience between 15 to 150
million individuals
Medium-reach influencers Influencers with a potential audience between 1,5 million to 15
million individuals
Mini-reach influencers Influencers with a potential audience up to 1,5 million
individuals

The interesting part of this new classification is that managers can use
potential reach to identify and select influencers for their campaigns. Poten-
tial reach can be measured as the number of followers each influencer has plus
the number of unique followers his/her own followers have. This classification
highlights the importance that followers acting as bridges or hubs may have in
the influencer phenomenon. Given the importance potential reach may have
for managers, more efforts should be devoted to the development tools that
allow them to easily estimate influencers’ potential reach.
602 M. SICILIA AND M. LÓPEZ

3 Factors that Explain

Influencers’ Impact on Followers
Marketers have myriad different options in implementing interactive
marketing, although they often turn to influencers to build customer engage-
ment (Delbaere et al., 2021; Ki & Kim, 2019). Influencers have also shown
a strong impact on their followers’ decision-making (Hudders et al., 2021),
however, there is still a tremendous amount of uncertainty about how
consumers are affected by influencers (Boerman & Müller, 2021; Vrontis
et al., 2021). Thus, it is important to identify what factors determine the
impact that influencers may have on their followers (Campbell & Farrel, 2020;
Yuan & Lou, 2020).
Traditional advertising models have established that messages can be sent
from a sender (source) to a receiver (audience) through a media channel.
These models are useful to organize the factors that may determine the effect
influencers have on their followers. Thus, we could organize these factors
of influence as source-related, message-related, audience-related, or media-
related. However, they do not account for the interactions that occur between
the source and the audience, that is, the interactions between the influencer
and his/her followers (Hudders et al., 2021). These interactions are one of the
main reasons why managers select influencers as a new marketing tool (Shen,
2021). Therefore, we have included relationship-related factors to account
for the factors of influence that may be attributed to the established rela-
tionship between the influencer and his/her followers. Figure 1 illustrates
the main factors that determine influencers’ impact on their followers. Based
on previous studies, an explanation of how each of these factors may affect
followers is offered in the following lines.

3.1 Influencer-Related Factors

The first and most common type of factors examined in the influencer liter-
ature deals with the characteristics of the influencers and their potential
impact on consumer outcomes (Vrontis et al., 2021). The most researched
influencer-related factors are the following:

• Expertise. Expertise reflects the extent to which a consumer is quali-

fied to discuss a particular subject (Alba & Hutchinson, 1987). It has
been traditionally linked to concepts such as competence and informa-
tional power (Hughes et al., 2019). Expertise leads to higher levels of
persuasion (Petty & Wegener, 1998). Influencers often have a special-
ized profile focusing on a specific product category, such as fashion or
food (Hudders et al., 2021). In this context, expertise has demonstrated
to increase purchase intention of followers (Uribe et al., 2016), their
attitudes toward the influencer (Ki & Kim, 2019), and their level of
engagement (Hughes et al., 2019).
 26
WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT INFLUENCERS ON SOCIAL MEDIA …

Fig. 1 Main factors that determine influencers’ impact on their followers

603
604 M. SICILIA AND M. LÓPEZ

• Trustworthiness. It refers the degree to which the audience perceives

the influencer to be as honest, sincere, or truthful (Lou & Yuan,
2019). Literature about information sources has shown that the main
outcome of perceived source trustworthiness is communication effective-
ness (López & Sicilia, 2014b). In an influencer context, trustworthiness
is mainly attributed to the fact that influencers personally try the product
(Uzunoglu & Kip, 2014) and has been shown to positively affect
purchase intentions of followers (Lou & Yuan, 2019).
• Credibility. It refers to the judgments made by the perceiver concerning
the believability of a communicator (Xiao et al., 2018). The two previous
factors (expertise and trustworthiness) have been traditionally considered
as the main determinants of source credibility (Schouten et al., 2020).
Credibility has been directly related to the level of influence of a message
source (López & Sicilia, 2014a) and its persuasiveness (Lou & Yuan,
2019; Yuan & Lou, 2020). Similarly, most researchers consider credi-
bility of the influencer as a key factor to explain their potential impact
(Vrontis et al., 2021). Influencers are perceived to be as more cred-
ible than celebrities (Lou, 2021; Schouten et al., 2020). This factor has
been shown to be an important determinant of followers’ behavior (Sakib
et al., 2020). Additionally, Fink et al. (2020) showed that the influencer’s
perceived credibility determines purchase intention of followers in the
long run.
• Attractiveness. It refers to the physical and social attractiveness of the
influencer (Delbaere et al., 2021). Most previous research has focused
exclusively on physical attractiveness. In this sense, physical attractiveness
has been shown to reinforce a specific behavior as suggested by the influ-
encer (Sakib et al., 2020), to be an important factor in forming brand
perceptions (Lee & Watkins, 2016) and to affect purchase intention of
followers (Taillon et al., 2020). Despite of these results, in the influencer
context physical attractiveness seems to be less relevant than in celebrity
endorsements, with some authors even suggesting a negative relation-
ship between physical attractiveness of influencers and their degree of
influence (see for instance, Sokolova & Kefi, 2020).
• Opinion leadership. It refers to the extent to which an individual is
perceived to be a model and exerts an unequal amount of influence on
others’ decisions. Using De Veirman et al. (2019)’s words, influencers are
perceived as relatable role models. Many influencers have some kind of
“charismatic authority” that keep followers coming back daily to consume
the influencers’ shared experiences and opinions (Delbaere et al., 2021).
A high level of opinion leadership has been related to a higher level of
engagement (Casaló et al., 2020) and to a higher influence on followers’
purchase intentions (Farivar et al., 2021).
• Authenticity. It means an influencer being true to himself or herself.
It results from a perception that a person behaves according to his
or her true self (Leung et al., 2022). The essence of authenticity is
 26 WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT INFLUENCERS ON SOCIAL MEDIA … 605

realness (Balaban & Szambolics, 2022). The creation of an authentic

identity is essential to influencers (Lee & Eastin, 2021; Hudders et al.,
2021). In order to increase perceptions of authenticity, influencers must
demonstrate a genuine passion for a specific topic (López et al., 2022).
Authenticity is important for developing trust among followers (Leung
et al., 2022) and has been shown to affect their purchase intentions
(Pöyry et al., 2019). Interestingly, previous literature has observed that
there is a difficult balance between authenticity and the commercializa-
tion of the influencer (Balaban & Szambolics, 2022; Hudders et al.,
2021).

3.2 Relationship-Related Factors

• Several relational characteristics can determine an influential process.
Similarity and tie strength are two of the most studied variables in
the social influence literature (Sicilia et al., 2020). These two relational
concepts have been used to embrace the factors of influence that may be
attributed to the relationship between the influencers and their followers.
• Similarity. It refers to the perceived likeness (e.g., demographic or
ideological factors) of the influencer to the follower (Lou & Yuan,
2019). It has been also referred to as homophily, both being terms used
interchangeably by most scholars (Bu et al., 2022). Similarity between
followers and influencers increases the probability of interactions between
them (Ladhari et al., 2020), WOM behavior (Taillon et al., 2020),
followers’ engagement (Ladhari et al., 2020) and favors co-creation
behavior (Bu et al., 2022). In sum, influencers who are perceived as
similar to them by their followers tend to be more effective (Kim & Kim,
2022; Schouten et al., 2020).
• Tie strength. It refers to the degree to which one is more or less
involved in a given social relationship (Sicilia et al., 2020). Influencers
constantly engage in two-way interactions with their followers, which
contribute to the strong relationship between the two (Dhanesh &
Duthler, 2019; Leite & de Paula Baptista, 2021; Wang & Hu, 2022).
This relational marketing concept has adopted different forms in influ-
encer marketing: parasocial relationship (Bu et al., 2022; Yuan &
Lou, 2020), trans-parasocial relation (Lou, 2021), intimacy (Hudders
et al., 2021), closeness (Taillon et al., 2020), involvement (Corrêa
et al., 2020), and identification with the influencer (Jin & Phua, 2014;
Schouten et al., 2020). Probably the most studied one has been paraso-
cial relationship (Fazli-Salehi et al., 2022), which refers to an illusory
friendship (Lou, 2021; Yuan & Lou, 2020), which could later evolve
toward trans-parasocial relation as the level of reciprocity increases (Lou,
2021). Parasocial relationship exhibits significant and positive relation-
ships to brand identification (Fazli-Salehi et al., 2022), purchase intention
(Sokolova & Kefi, 2020), impulse purchase behavior (Chen et al., 2021),
606 M. SICILIA AND M. LÓPEZ

and willingness to pay a premium price (Fazli-Salehi et al., 2022). In

general, the stronger the influencer-follower relationship, the higher the
impact of the influencer (Sokolova & Kefi, 2020; Lou, 2021), and the
higher the level of engagement among followers (Jin & Phua, 2014).

3.3 Media-Related Factors

• Platform. Consumer behavior and influencers’ actions may vary
depending on the nature of each platform (Vrontis et al., 2021). Plat-
forms vary in their level of attention and involvement, implying differ-
ences in the opportunity to process the information presented. There
are platforms focused on relation maintenance, such as Facebook, others
more focused on self-image, such as Instagram, and others more inter-
ested in content, such as blogs. Due to those differences, the impact
of influencers may depend on the platform used. For instance, Hughes
et al. (2019) suggested that blogs are usually associated to a higher level
of involvement compared to other platforms used by influencers such as
Facebook. Instagram has been positioned as the best social media plat-
form for influencers (Boerman, 2020; Boerman & Müller, 2021; Casaló
et al., 2020), followed by Youtube (Vrontis et al., 2021), but the impact
of other platforms such as TikTok or Twitch is relatively less known
(Hudders et al., 2021). The influencer literature would benefit from
cross-platform comparisons. For instance, the relationships between influ-
encers and followers could be different depending on the platform used
(Vrontis et al., 2021).

3.4 Message-Related Factors

Message-related factors are all message characteristics that may have
an impact on followers. There are many characteristics that have been
analyzed in the influencer literature.
Type of content. Messages can be classified as either informative or
hedonic. Hedonic messages have been positively related to higher levels
of engagement (Hughes et al., 2019) and virality (Herhausen et al.,
2019). Lou and Kim (2019) showed that the high entertainment value
of influencer content positively affected purchase intention. Storytelling
posts have been shown to be more effective than other types of posts in
changing followers’ behavior (Farivar et al., 2021). However, informative
content also seems to work, as it has shown to increase brand attitudes
and purchase intentions among followers (Ki & Kim, 2019; Lou & Yuan,
2019).
Quality of content. It refers to the strength of persuasion of the argu-
ments within a message (Djafarova & Rushworth, 2017). Influencers’
messages tend to be considered as high-quality content because they
 26 WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT INFLUENCERS ON SOCIAL MEDIA … 607

are original, novel, divergent, and unexpected (Rosengren et al., 2020).

Argument quality has been confirmed as a strong predictor of perceived
information credibility (Xiao et al., 2018). Other indicators of quality,
such as originality and uniqueness of the content, have been shown to
increase followers’ intention to interact (Casaló et al., 2020).
Interactivity. It is the facility for individuals to communicate directly
with one another regardless of distance or time (Berthon et al., 1996).
Interactivity nowadays has dramatically expanded its scale and scope
because of the more sophisticated technologies (Wang, 2021). These
advances in technology have been embraced by many influencers. In
fact, the communications between influencers and followers are much
more interactive than before (Fazli-Salehi et al., 2022; Lou, 2021). For
instance, some of them arrange live-streaming sessions to facilitate more
interactive communications (Wang, 2021). Interestingly, interactivity has
been related to more favorable attitudes toward the influencer (Ki & Kim,
2019), so that this feature is providing new opportunities for increasing
their impact.
Format: Main formats are text, image, audio, and videos. A visually
appealing post (Ki & Kim, 2019), a post including product photos (Jin
et al., 2019), a post using emojis (Ge & Gretzel, 2018), a video (Xiao
et al., 2018) or a live-streaming video (Wang, 2021) may be more influ-
ential formats than plain texts formats. Video and audio formats are
among the least researched formats.
Permanence: It refers to whether the message published by the influ-
encer remains in the platform used or disappears after a certain time.
Many of the messages published by influencers are permanent, but there
is an increasing use of non-permanent content (Leung et al., 2022;
Sokolova & Kefi, 2020), as it occurs in Instagram or TikTok. Stories in
these platforms may be visible for only 24 h. Another trend among influ-
encers is the use of live streaming videos in which the influencer streams
a live video to his/her followers (Wang, 2021). The platform Twitch is
becoming very popular for this type of live and non-permanent content
(Hudders et al., 2021).

3.5 Audience-Related Factors

The audience of influencers, that being, their followers, may have different
characteristics that may determine to what extent they are affected by
influencers. We can organize these characteristics into two groups, socio-
demographic variables and individual traits.

• Socio-demographics. Main socio-demographic variables include: age,

sex, education, ethnicity, religious affiliation, marital status, household,
employment, and income. In an influencer context, sex and age have
608 M. SICILIA AND M. LÓPEZ

been the two variables most studied from the followers’ perspective.
There may be differences on how women respond or react to influencers
with respect to men. For instance, the study developed by Tiggemann
and Anderberg (2020) concluded that the effect of influencers differs
between women and men. In particular, they observed that males were
very affected by influencers’ images depicting bare chests and muscles,
whereas women tend to be more affected by influencers showing face
images. Additionally, Lokithasan et al. (2019) observed that females are
influenced by influencers who promote beauty products while males are
drawn to technology and gaming products. As for age, Johnstone and
Lindh (2018) concluded that influencers had more impact on behavior
among millennials than among older age groups.
• Individual traits. A personality trait is defined as something about a
person that impacts how they behave on an ongoing basis. Different
personality traits have been studied in the marketing literature, from the
Big Five (openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agree-
ableness, and neuroticism) to many others such as need to belong, need
for cognition, need for uniqueness or self-disclosure. In an influencer
context, a low self-esteem (Chae, 2017) or neuroticism (Mete, 2021)
have been shown to increase envy toward the influencer. This relation-
ship is important, as envy toward influencers may negatively affect the
impact of sponsored posts (Lin et al., 2018). Additionally, the individual
trait fear to missing out (FOMO) increases followers’ intention to buy
products recommended by the influencer (Dinh & Lee, 2021). Other
individual traits could be also worth of inspection. For instance, need
to belong, an individual trait that increases the probability of engaging
in favorable WOM (Sicilia et al., 2016), could be an interesting trait to
consider. The tendency to engage in and enjoy thinking (need for cogni-
tion), related to how individuals process information (Sicilia et al., 2005)
may be another important factor for assessing the impact of influencers on
followers. However, there are very few studies analyzing individual traits
in an influencer context. Focusing further on individual traits to assess the
impact of influencers may be therefore claimed as an interesting avenue
for further research.

All these identified factors may determine the impact of influencers, and it is
important to mention that they may be related and reinforce one another. For
instance, expertise and trustworthiness have been traditionally related to cred-
ibility. In addition, authenticity of the influencer is related to their credibility
(Lou & Yuan, 2019) and to opinion leadership (Casaló et al., 2020). Credi-
bility may be also related to tie strength (Yuan & Lou, 2020) and to similarity
(Sokolova & Kefi, 2020). Moreover, as it occurs in a non-influencer context
(Sicilia et al., 2020), similarity is correlated with tie strength (Sakib et al.,
2020), so that similarity leads to stronger relations between the influencer and
the follower (Lee & Watkins, 2016). Beyond these expected relationships,
 26 WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT INFLUENCERS ON SOCIAL MEDIA … 609

there are other interactions not so straightforward. For instance, Xiao et al.
(2018) found that interactivity leads to higher credibility of the influencer
(Xiao et al., 2018), De Veirman et al. (2017) found a relationship between
the number of followers and opinion leadership, and Bi and Zhang (2022)
observed an effect of self-esteem on the influencer-followers’ relationship.
More research on how these factors interact is thus needed to understand this
complex phenomenon. In addition, when considered at the same time, some
of these factors may have more influence than others. For example, Farivar
et al. (2021) demonstrated the more prominent role of tie strength (in the
form of parasocial relationship) over opinion leadership in affecting followers’
behavior.

4 Influencer Marketing. Brand-Influencer

Collaborations in the New Interactive Marketing Era
The established relationships between influencers and their followers carry a
great marketing potential, very interesting to brands and companies (Hudders
et al., 2021; Vrontis et al., 2021). The use of influencers in marketing
campaigns is called influencer marketing, which is defined as “a strategy
in which a firm selects and incentivizes online influencers to engage their
followers on social media in an attempt to leverage these influencers’ unique
resources to promote the firm’s offerings, with the ultimate goal of enhancing
firm performance” (Leung et al., 2022). Brand-influencers collaborations are
different from a purely paid media strategy because influencers still have
control over the message (Hughes et al., 2019). In addition, some influencers
do not have standardized remunerations nor a clear disclosure position since
this issue is not clearly regulated in all countries.

4.1 Flexibility in the Creation of Sponsored Content

Unlike what occurs with paid media, influencers may reject to collaborate with
some brands. In fact, the fit between the brand and the influencer has been
shown as a key determinant of influencer endorsements (Torres et al., 2019).
Additionally, promoting brands that do not fit with influencers could damage
influencers’ credibility and image. For that reason, influencers may request
some degree of flexibility in content creation, so that the endorsement fits
better with the influencer (Wellman et al., 2020).
Paid media is considered more as a campaign-based communication tool,
whereas influencer marketing is more related to organic marketing. As Wang
(2021) states, content created by influencers tends to be more “organic.” This
thought is consistent with the idea that influencers do not simply function as
spokespersons for the brand but are given creative freedom to develop their
own messages (Hudders et al., 2021).
Marketers generally exert control over the ad design and choose the exact
placement and dates for their campaigns. In contrast, when working with
610 M. SICILIA AND M. LÓPEZ

Fig. 2 Sponsored content (permanent post) created by the influencer Justin Tse
about a new product on Instagram

influencers, managers are mainly leveraging influencer resources to enhance

communication effectiveness (Leung et al., 2022). The influencer knows best
what resonates with their audience and what kinds of posts their followers will
respond to through social media engagement, such as likes and comments (Lin
et al., 2018; Uzunoǧlu & Kip, 2014). Therefore, influencer marketing should
be treated differently from advertising (Campbell & Farrell, 2020; Haenlein
et al., 2020).
Additionally, influencers know how to communicate with more effective-
ness on their chosen platform (i.e. TikTok), as they usually have a deep
understanding of the sort of content that translates well on that social media
platform in a way that many marketing managers may not (Haenlein et al.,
2020). For instance, Sony collaborated with two Canadian tech and gaming
influencers to promote the new Sony PlayStation Virtual Reality Headset.
Content created for this collaboration depended on the influencer, demon-
strating their creative freedom. The influencer Justin Tse created a post on
Instagram and a video on Youtube, highlighting the compatibility of the new
product (see Fig. 2), while the influencer Canoopsy highlighted the immersive
experience of the product (see Fig. 3).

4.2 Remuneration
When companies plan advertising campaigns using paid media, fees of the
different media options are usually available and standardized. However, the
type of remuneration and the rates are not standardized and usually vary
per influencer. Not only money can be offered as an incentive in exchange
for brand collaborations, but also other types of incentives are suitable for
influencers. Using a sales promotions terminology, brands can use either a
 26 WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT INFLUENCERS ON SOCIAL MEDIA … 611

Fig. 3 Sponsored content (permanent post) created by the influencer Canoopsy

about a new product on Instagram

monetary or a non-monetary incentive (López et al., 2022). Only mega-reach

influencers tend to have their own fees to collaborate with brands. However,
non-monetary incentives can be also very attractive for influencers. Brands
can stimulate influencers by offering them free products (Leung et al., 2022).
Free products are very common in tech industry because it is important that
the influencer tries the product before writing about it. This incentive is also
popular among fashion influencers, since they usually create visual content
wearing the product. Finally, it is also typical in the hospitality industry where
influencers are compensated with free visits to destinations or with free meals
at restaurants. Invitations to events could be also an incentive. For example, in
order to promote Nissan’s Titan, a four-days event inviting some influencers
was organized. The event consisted of outdoor activities and workshops related
with the new car such as how to use the Titan to excavate vehicles stuck in
snow. Influencers did not receive any previous instruction regarding how many
publications they had to publish.

4.3 The Debate About Disclosure

Influencers have to make decisions about the positioning they want to adopt
regarding their collaboration with brands while ensuring that they will not
damage their relationship with followers (López et al., 2022). One of the
most important decisions is whether and how to disclose that the content
612 M. SICILIA AND M. LÓPEZ

is sponsored. Disclosure refers to the action of revealing that a company has

approached an influencer.
The main effect of disclosure is advertising recognition (Vrontis et al.,
2021). Advertising recognition may lead to lower recommendation of the
content (Boerman et al., 2017), lower engagement (Boerman, 2020), and
lower attitude toward the brand and purchase intention (Evans et al., 2017).
Additionally, disclosure could have negative consequences toward the influ-
encer. For instance, Van Reijmersdal et al. (2020) found that disclosure
resulted in less favorable attitudes toward the influencer. Similarly, De Veirman
and Hudders (2020) argued that disclosure induced ad skepticism, which, in
turn, reduced influencer’s credibility. However, there are also recent results in
favor of disclosure, as it signals honesty and transparency (Dhanesh & Duthler,
2019) and may increase brand recall (Boerman, 2020). This positioning in
favor of disclosure may be explained by the strength of the influencer-follower
relationship (Boerman & Van Reijmersdal, 2020). Followers may see brand
collaborations as a success of the influencer, and may see brand endorsements
as part of such a success (Lou, 2021). It seems that followers’ overall toler-
ance toward sponsored posts has increased (Lou, 2021), and recent research
shows that sponsored content has the same effect on purchase intention as
non-sponsored content (López-Barceló & López, 2022).
Disclosure also has both legal and ethical implications. The Federal Trade
Commission (FTC) in the US and the European Advertising Standards
Alliance (EASA) have both created guidelines that aim to increase transparency
by requiring influencers and brands to clearly disclose any commercial rela-
tionship (EASA, 2018; FTC, 2022). For example, some words such as “ad,”
“advertisement,” and “sponsored” in the text of the publication or included as
a hashtag are appropriate for disclosing a collaboration with a brand. Figure 4
shows a sponsored post on Instagram by Amanda Holtzer using the hashtag
#sponsored.
The relationship between influencers and brands brings to mind ethical
concerns about conflicts of interest. Audiences desire genuine influencer’s
opinions about products and services but influencers are paid by brands
to spread these opinions (Wellman et al., 2020). The inconsistency found
in previous results, along with the increasing relevance of the topic reveals
a notable research gap, thus calling for additional studies about different
disclosure-related decisions such as whether to disclose or not and how to
do it.
 26 WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT INFLUENCERS ON SOCIAL MEDIA … 613

Fig. 4 Sponsored content on Instagram by Amanda Holtzer about tosh snacks

5 Conclusions and Research Agenda

There has been an increasing interest in influencer marketing in the last
few years (Bu et al., 2022; Campbell & Farrell, 2020; Zhou et al., 2021).
However, the influencer phenomenon is still developing and we still lack
academic insight on several areas. This chapter has contributed to identify the
main characteristics an influencer has nowadays: power of influence, reach,
content creation, marketing potential, and consequently, to propose a new
definition of influencers that includes all these aspects. The potential of influ-
encers as a marketing tool has been introduced in a renewed definition of
influencers in order to reflect their progressive level of professionalization
and the increasing interest among managers to use influencers as a way to
promote brands (Hudders et al., 2021) and to improve customer engagement
(Delbaere et al., 2021).
As for the new categorization, the authors have proposed to classify influ-
encers as mega-reach, macro-reach, medium-reach, and mini-reach influencers
based on potential reach. Audience size (number of followers) has been
replaced by potential reach, avoiding most of the limitations associated to
audience size such as the manipulation of the number of followers (buying
fake followers), considering only direct audience but not secondary audience,
614 M. SICILIA AND M. LÓPEZ

or ignoring the relevance of having hubs and bridges among the audience.
Using potential reach to categorize influencers may help managers to identify
and select better influencers for their campaigns. Therefore, future research
should develop tools that allow managers to estimate influencers’ potential
reach.
Additionally, the determinants of influencers’ impact on followers’ deci-
sions and on their level of engagement have been identified and organized
in this chapter in order to guide future research. Factors of influence
have been organized as source-related (opinion, leadership, expertise, attrac-
tiveness, credibility, trustworthiness, authenticity), message-related (type of
content, quality of content, interactivity, format, permanence), audience-
related (socio-demographics, individual traits), media-related (type of plat-
form) and relationship-related factors (similarity/homophily, tie strength).
Some of these factors have been profusely studied in previous literature (for
instance, parasocial relationship) whereas others (individual traits, more inter-
active formats, or new platforms) have been relatively less researched and
represent an avenue for future research.
Finally, influencer marketing and the singularity of brand-influencer collab-
orations have been also explained in this chapter. Influencers have a great deal
of control over the content they publish but despite their increasing profes-
sionalization, most of them still lack standardized remunerations and a clear
positioning regarding disclosure, which implies that there is still room for
further developments in influencer marketing as a new marketing tool. In
order to guide future research, Table 4 presents a research agenda collecting
some of the gaps identified along this chapter related to the conceptualization
and classification of influencers, the factors that determine their impact, and
their collaborations with brands.
 26 WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT INFLUENCERS ON SOCIAL MEDIA … 615

Table 4 Research agenda

Topic Sub-topic Gap

Conceptualization and Conceptualization Should non-professional

classification of influencers
Factors of influence
influencers be treated as a
different marketing tool
compared to professional
ones?
Typology of influencers How could potential reach
of an influencer be
measured? Could artificial
intelligence (AI) help with
its estimation?
Should managers identify
and select influencers based
on their potential reach?
What are the main
differences in the impact of
low vs. high-reach
influencers?
Media-related factors Is higher the impact of
influencers on new SNSs
such as Twitch or TikTok
than in more traditional
SNSs?

(continued)
616 M. SICILIA AND M. LÓPEZ

Table 4 (continued)

Topic Sub-topic Gap

Message-related factors What is the effect of new

Brand-influencer collaborations
formats such as live
streaming videos, podcasts
or stories compared to
more traditional formats?
Audience-related factors Does the impact of
influencers depend on
followers’
socio-demographics such as
education, ethnicity,
religious affiliation, marital
status, household,
employment, and income?
Does the impact of
influencers depend on
individual traits such as
need to belong or need for
uniqueness?
Total impact How do factors that explain
influencers’ impact on
followers interact? Which
ones have the greatest
impact?
Flexibility in the creation of Does the extent to which
sponsored content the sponsored content fits
with the influencers’
editorial line determines its
impact?
Remuneration Is remuneration of
influencers associated more
to potential reach or to
number of followers?
Disclosure How and when should
influencers disclose
collaborations to avoid
negative consequences?
Should they always disclose
nowadays? Is potential reach
a factor that determines
disclosure?
 26 WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT INFLUENCERS ON SOCIAL MEDIA … 617

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 CHAPTER 27

Influencer Marketing: A Triadically Interactive

Relationship Between Influencers, Followers,
and Brands

Delphine Caruelle

1 Introduction
The growth of social media (e.g., Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, and
Tik Tok) has made it possible for ordinary people to become influencers,
that is, individuals who have large followings on social media platforms and
influence, through the content they create and share on these platforms, the
purchasing decisions of others.
Influencers differ from traditional celebrities (e.g., actors, athletes, and
singers) in that influencers are ordinary individuals who have become popular
on social media through the content they create on these platforms (Belanche
et al., 2021). Conversely, traditional celebrities initially become famous outside
of social media. Because they are visible in mass media, traditional celebrities
are famous to a mass audience. Influencers, by contrast, are typically known
by a smaller group of individuals—their followers (i.e., social media users who
have subscribed to the social media account of an influencer). For this reason,
influencers are considered microcelebrities.
Such differences result in influencers being viewed as more relatable than
traditional celebrities (Schouten et al., 2020). Influencers are perceived to be
authentic, genuine individuals (Lee & Eastin, 2021). Importantly, they are
considered to be experts in the domain(s) in which they create content. Exam-
ples of such domains include fashion, travel, beauty, lifestyle, fitness, cooking,

D. Caruelle (B)
Kristiania University College, Oslo, Norway
e-mail: Delphine.Caruelle@kristiania.no

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 623

Switzerland AG 2023
C. L. Wang (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Interactive Marketing,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14961-0_27
624 D. CARUELLE

politics, and gaming. The expertise of influencers stems from their experience
and interest in the domain in question, not necessarily from formal training or
education (Al-Emadi & Ben Yahia, 2020).
The emergence of the influencer phenomenon has been made possible
by the interactive nature of social media platforms. Influencers are social
media users who have gained popularity through repeated interactions with
other social media users (Jun & Yi, 2020). They manage to engage their
followers in an unprecedented way. While traditional celebrities do not
communicate directly with those who admire them, influencers engage in a
digitally mediated dialogue with their followers, thus instilling a sense of inti-
macy and community. Furthermore, by creating interactive content in which
they promote brands, influencers facilitate followers’ engagement with these
brands.
Because they influence the attitudes and behaviors of others, influencers can
be considered key opinion leaders. However, influencers differ from traditional
forms of opinion leadership. The two-step model of the flow of communica-
tion (Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1955) posits that the mass media influences opinion
leaders, who in turn influence a wider audience. As such, in traditional forms
of opinion leadership, the flow of information is unidirectional (from the
mass media to opinion leaders to a wider audience). However, the influencer
phenomenon does not fit well into this two-step model of the flow of commu-
nication. Firstly, the mass media plays a relatively minor role in the influencer
phenomenon, which is largely driven by social media. Secondly, influencers
are not simply influenced by (social) media; rather, they contribute to the
development of new ideas and trends on social media through the content
they create and share on these platforms. Thirdly, the two-step model of the
flow of communication does not account for the role of brands, which is of
high importance in the influencer phenomenon because most of the content
created by influencers features brands. Fourthly, influencers engage in two-
way communication with their followers, instead of merely influencing them.
In sum, influencers are opinion leaders, but the influencer phenomenon has
specificities that imply that it must be studied in its own right.
The present chapter conceptualizes the influencer phenomenon as a triadic
relationship between influencers, followers, and brands (see Fig. 1). Firstly, this
chapter will discuss the relationship between influencers and their followers,
notably how they interact with one another. Secondly, this chapter will
discuss the relationship between influencers and brands, notably how influ-
encers endorse brands in the content they create and how brands respond to
such endorsements. Finally, this chapter will discuss the interactions between
followers and the brands endorsed by influencers, focusing notably on how
such interactions are facilitated by the influencer-follower relationship.
 27 INFLUENCER MARKETING: A TRIADICALLY INTERACTIVE … 625

Fig. 1 The influencer phenomenon as a triadic relationship

2 The Influencer-Follower Relationship

One of the key pillars of the influencer phenomenon is the relationship
between influencers and their followers. These followers play a fundamental
role because a social media user is granted the status of influencer only after
reaching enough followers. In fact, the number of followers that an influencer
has acts as a cue signaling his or her status: the more followers an influencer
has, the more he or she is perceived to be an opinion leader (De Veirman et al.,
2017). Followers thus play a fundamental role in helping influencers achieve
and maintain their influencer status.

2.1 How and Why Followers Interact with Influencers

The influencer phenomenon is characterized by followers’ willingness to
interact with influencers’ social media accounts (Belanche et al., 2020; Casaló
et al., 2020). The interactive responses to an influencer’s content are referred
to as follower engagement (Arora et al., 2019; Shen, 2021; Tafesse &
Wood, 2021). Follower engagement can take several forms, each enabled by
one of the functionalities offered by social media platforms: following (i.e.,
subscribing to the influencer’s social media account in order to see all his/her
content in one’s newsfeed), liking (or using any other emojis to respond to the
content), sharing/reposting (e.g., retweeting for content posted on Twitter),
commenting, tagging (i.e., mentioning the influencer in a post), responding
to polls in Instagram Stories, etc.
From a social exchange theory perspective, followers’ interactive responses
to an influencer’s content can be viewed as a matter of reciprocity (Rohde &
Mau, 2021). Followers feel indebted to influencers who have used their time,
energy, and other resources to create valuable content. As a result, followers
feel the need to give influencers something in return, such as likes on the
626 D. CARUELLE

influencers’ posts. This desire to reciprocate may be particularly strong because

followers have developed a parasocial relationship with the influencer (Aw &
Labrecque, 2020; Chen et al., 2021; Jin & Ryu, 2020; Sokolova & Perez,
2021; Ye et al., 2021; Yuksel & Labrecque, 2016). Parasocial relationships are
relationships that individuals form with media celebrities that are characterized
by a false sense of intimacy (Horton & Wohl, 1956). That is, those individuals
who have developed parasocial relationships with celebrities feel close with
them, as if they were friends, even though they do not know them in person.
Such feelings of intimacy and closeness emerge through repeated exposure to
these celebrities through media platforms.
Individuals who follow influencers are likely to develop parasocial rela-
tionships with them because they are repeatedly exposed to the influencers
through the content they share on social media (Aw & Labrecque, 2020;
Sokolova & Perez, 2021). Given the frequency with which influencers share
content and the amount of time that followers spend consuming this content,
such parasocial relationships may form relatively easily and quickly. Further-
more, influencers provide personal information, share their everyday lives,
and express their personal values and beliefs (Wang & Hu, 2022; Yuksel &
Labrecque, 2016). Their content is communicated from a first-person perspec-
tive (Feng et al., 2020): Influencers share their own personal stories and points
of view. Followers thus gain intimate knowledge about influencers, which facil-
itates the formation of parasocial relationships (Leite & de Paula Baptista,
2021; Yuksel & Labrecque, 2016; Wang & Hu, 2022). Because influencers
share moments of their everyday lives frequently and in real time, followers
develop the impression of being with them (Kim, 2022). It is also important
to note that, often, influencers face the camera and address their followers
directly in their videos, as if they were talking to them in person (Xu et al.,
2021). By doing so, influencers cultivate a feeling of intimacy. As a result,
followers become emotionally attached to the influencers they follow (Corrêa
et al., 2020; Ki et al., 2020; Kim, 2022).
Logically enough, followers are willing to interact with the influencers’
social media accounts to enact such parasocial relationships (Yuksel &
Labrecque, 2016). Because influencers feel like friends to them and because
they cannot meet them in person, as they would with actual friends, followers
use the opportunity provided by social media to manifest their affection for
and interest in influencers. The familiarity with which followers address influ-
encers in their comments, such as when they reveal personal details or ask for
advice (Pilgrim & Bohnet-Joschko, 2019), exemplifies how interacting with
influencers on social media enables followers to enact parasocial relationships:
followers behave as if they were actually friends with the influencers.
 27 INFLUENCER MARKETING: A TRIADICALLY INTERACTIVE … 627

2.2 How and Why Influencers Interact with Their Followers

How do influencers respond to the parasocial relationships that followers form
with them? Research on the influencer phenomenon reveals that relation-
ships between influencers and followers are characterized by a certain degree
of reciprocity (Abidin, 2015). For example, influencers may retweet a tweet
posted by a follower, notably when the tweet mentions the influencer him
or herself (Yuksel & Labrecque, 2016). Similarly, influencers may respond to
their followers’ comments or messages (Jun & Yi, 2020). Two-way communi-
cation is then taking place. Campbell and Farrell (2020) argue that influencers
interact with their followers to such an extent that it is legitimate to consider
them community managers. New features offered by social media platforms
enable influencers to develop new ways to interact with their followers. For
example, the feature enabling the launching of polls on Instagram Stories
has led influencers to survey their followers about anything and everything.
Another example on Instagram is the question sticker, which allows influ-
encers to easily implement a Q&A session with their followers. Followers
write their questions to the influencer on the question sticker, and the influ-
encer posts the answers to these questions in Instagram Stories a few minutes
or hours later. This feature thus gives rise to a conversation between influ-
encers and their followers. The epitome of such two-way communication is
live videos, in which followers can write to the influencer live while the influ-
encer is streaming the video, ensuring synchronicity in the communication
(Huertas, 2018). Such live videos enable a real-time, two-way communication
between influencers and followers because followers can ask questions or send
comments to the influencer, who sees them and responds to them in real time,
thus ensuring a dialogue.
It is not surprising that influencers are willing to interact with their followers
given how much they depend on them. The number of followers and engage-
ment rate (i.e., the percentage of followers who interact with the influencer’s
content by liking, commenting, etc.) are metrics commonly used to deter-
mine how successful an influencer is. Influencers, aware of the importance
of their followers in building their careers, interact with their followers as a
sign of acknowledgment and appreciation (Abidin, 2015). In this vein, Cotter
(2019) notes the existence of “relational influencers” (p. 905), who are char-
acterized by the willingness to build authentic reciprocal relationships with
their followers. Such influencers perceive social media as a way to connect
with individuals who share the same interests and want to ensure that their
followers feel seen. Replying to their followers’ comments is an example of
how they manifest their willingness to build connections (Cotter, 2019). Such
a tactic is actually an effective way for influencers to strengthen their opinion
leadership: a study by Ki and Kim (2019) revealed that influencers’ willing-
ness to interact with their followers on a one-to-one level (e.g., answering the
comment or private message of an individual follower) increases their opinion
628 D. CARUELLE

leadership. Furthermore, followers are more likely to keep following an influ-

encer when they perceive this influencer as willing to communicate directly and
individually with their followers (Jun & Yi, 2020). Interacting with followers
thus creates a positive feedback loop. It should be noted that interacting with
followers may be more challenging for influencers with extremely large follow-
ings (Campbell & Farrell, 2020). Past a certain follower threshold, it would be
virtually impossible for an influencer to reply to all the comments they receive,
for example. Influencers with large numbers of followers thus favor interactive
tools that are more scalable, such as using Instagram’s polling stickers to ask
followers short questions.

3 The Influencer-Brand Relationship

The influencer phenomenon is characterized by influencers’ willingness to
document their consumption (McQuarrie et al., 2013). As a result, influ-
encers create content that shows or mentions the brands they consume. As
Campbell and Farrell (2020) note, influencers embrace multiple roles in their
jobs, including the role of endorser and the role of content producer. The
combination of these two roles is visible in the content they share, which
largely consists of endorsing brands. A study of the content shared by German
fitness influencers illustrates the prevalence of brand-related content in the
influencer phenomenon: seventy-one percent of the Instagram posts shared
by these influencers contained at least one brand (Pilgrim & Bohnet-Joschko,
2019).
The content that influencers create and share on their social media accounts
can take multiple forms: text, photo/picture, video, or any combination of
these. Which content type prevails depends on the influencer, as well as on the
social media platform on which the content is shared. For instance, Youtube is
intended for sharing video content, whereas Instagram is designed for posting
pictures. The content can be permanent (i.e., always visible on the influencer’s
social media account unless she or he decides to remove it) or ephemeral
(e.g., Instagram Stories, which automatically disappear 24 h after they have
been added to Instagram). The degree of simultaneity between the moment
when the content is created and the moment when it is shared on social media
varies a great deal. In some instances, such as live videos (Godefroy, 2020), the
content is created and shared simultaneously. In other instances, influencers
first create content (e.g., take a selfie) and share it immediately after. Finally,
sometimes, influencers create content, edit it, and post it hours, days, or weeks
later.
In addition to showing or talking about brands in their content, influ-
encers largely use the interactive features built into social media platforms to
connect with those brands. For example, influencers typically tag the brands
that they show in their content. Social media platforms, seeing the potential
sales that may be elicited by brand-related content, have developed features
that facilitate the purchasing of items promoted by influencers. One such
 27 INFLUENCER MARKETING: A TRIADICALLY INTERACTIVE … 629

feature is Instagram’s Shoppable posts (Caliandro & Graham, 2020), which

enable influencers to tag a product and link it to the seller’s website. That is,
followers can simply click on the product shown in the post of an influencer
and buy this product without leaving Instagram. Such a feature makes the
content shared by influencers considerably more interactive because followers
are not merely passively exposed to content but can immediately act on it.

3.1 The Influencer Perspective

To further understand why influencers feature brands in the content they
create, a distinction needs to be drawn between organic and sponsored
content. Organic content is content that influencers create and share on their
social media accounts without being compensated (Tafesse & Wood, 2021). In
organic content, influencers may feature a brand without having been solicited
by the brand in question to do so. The content produced by influencers
contributes to establishing their expertise within a domain (Ki et al., 2020);
featuring a brand in organic content serves influencers by further demon-
strating their expertise in the form of their ability to identify the “right”
products/brands (McQuarrie et al., 2013).
Sponsored content is content that features a brand or product for which the
influencer is compensated by the brand in question (Campbell & Farrell, 2020;
Hughes et al., 2019). The compensation can be financial or in kind (e.g., free
products). In such instances, influencers disclose the sponsorship through a
text, a hashtag (e.g., #ad or #sponsored), or dedicated functionalities built
into the social media platform. Often, the disclosure of the sponsorship is
the only element that enables followers to distinguish sponsored content from
organic content. Typically, influencers produce sponsored content using the
same narrative style and visual identity as are used for organic content. As a
result, sponsored content blends in with organic content.
For influencers, sponsored content is a way to earn income and potentially
make a living. In addition, sponsored content enhances influencers’ legiti-
macy because it shows that brands acknowledge their expertise and influencer
status (McQuarrie et al., 2013; Nascimento et al., 2020). The importance of
sponsored content for influencers thus goes beyond financial considerations.
The ratio of organic to sponsored content varies widely from influencer to
influencer. Nevertheless, at an early stage of their influencer careers, it can
be expected that most, if not all, content featuring brands will be organic
as influencers may not yet have managed to attract brands that would be
willing to sponsor them. At a later stage, when influencers obtain sponsor-
ship deals, it is important to continue creating organic content, in addition
to sponsored content: an influencer who only produced sponsored content
would be perceived as inauthentic.
Whether they create sponsored content or not, multiple influencers state
that they choose which brands to feature based on their personal preferences
(Pilgrim & Bohnet-Joschko, 2019). This statement shows that influencers
630 D. CARUELLE

have primarily intrinsic motivations for endorsing a brand, which contributes

to their authenticity. Furthermore, research has revealed that, when influencers
receive a product from a brand, their intention to post about the product on
their social media is the same regardless of whether they are offered a finan-
cial incentive (López et al., 2021). This suggests that influencers largely rely
on their own personal judgments when choosing to mention a brand in their
content, sponsored or not.
That said, a relatively common practice among influencers has consisted
in not disclosing sponsorships (i.e., presenting sponsored content as organic
content) (Stubb & Colliander, 2019; Woodroof et al., 2020). This practice has
been so common that legal authorities in multiple countries had to reinstate
the obligation that influencers disclose such sponsorships. One plausible reason
why influencers have been reluctant to disclose their sponsorships is that influ-
encers believe that such disclosure may negatively impact followers. Followers
perceive influencers as authentic individuals, and the commercial orientation
of sponsored content could threaten this perception of authenticity (Audrezet
et al., 2020).

3.2 The Brand Perspective

When influencers tag a brand to feature it in their content (sponsored or
organic), brands are notified. The brands can thus respond by pressing the
like button or posting a comment under the post in which they are tagged. By
interacting with the influencer’s content in such a manner, brands demonstrate
their support of the influencer and engagement with his or her content.
Interactions between brands and influencers also manifest through brands
promoting influencers on the social media accounts owned by the brands.
One example of this is when a brand reposts (e.g., regrams on Instagram or
retweets on Twitter) the post in which an influencer features the brand. From
a managerial perspective, there are two advantages of doing so. First, this is an
opportunity for brands to have content to show to their fans, without having
to create that content themselves. Second, it brings credibility to the brand
because it shows that the brand is endorsed by influencers, who are opinion
leaders on social media.
A second example of brands featuring influencers on their social media
accounts is an “Instagram takeover” (Thelander & Cassinger, 2017): the influ-
encer becomes temporarily in charge of the content posted on the brand’s
Instagram account. For one day or a few days, the influencer will create
content to be shared on the social media pages of the brand that he or she
endorses. Furthermore, the influencer may tag him or herself in this content,
giving rise to cross-promotion.
A third example is livestream shopping, a new type of digital activity in
which brands and influencers interact directly in real time (Luo et al., 2021;
Ma, 2021; Park & Lin, 2020; Zhu et al., 2021). Brands typically ask an influ-
encer to host the shopping session, which results in the influencer interacting
 27 INFLUENCER MARKETING: A TRIADICALLY INTERACTIVE … 631

with the brand in real time on digital platforms. On such livestreams, the influ-
encer discusses the brand and its products and may even demonstrate how to
use them.
Finally, one may wonder why brands are willing to sponsor influencers for
creating content, a practice known as influencer marketing. First, companies
value the opportunity to have their products promoted in a more authentic
way than traditional forms of advertising allow (Carpenter Childers et al.,
2019). Often, influencers use their own words to promote a product and
feature that product in their daily lives, making the sponsored content more
credible and trustworthy than advertising produced by the brands them-
selves. Second, it can be argued that the interactive features offered by social
media platforms largely contribute to brands’ willingness to invest in influencer
marketing. Sponsored content is designed in such a way as to give followers
the opportunity to interact with the brand because sponsored content contains
tags or links to the brand’s social media account or website. Furthermore,
products endorsed by influencers can be purchased by merely clicking on shop-
pable content. Thus, in contrast to traditional forms of celebrity endorsement,
influencer marketing provides followers with the opportunity to interact with
the endorsed brand directly. This is discussed further in the next section.

4 The Follower-Brand Relationship

Followers are exposed to various brands through the content that influencers
produce. However, this exposure is not passive. Rather, it triggers interac-
tions with the brand-related content and endorsed brands. Different forms
of engagement exist. Basic forms of engagement include pressing the like
button under the brand-related post, sharing it with one’s own network (e.g.,
retweeting and regramming), or commenting on it. Forms of engagement
that require mobilizing more resources include visiting the website of the
brand featured in the post, purchasing products from the brand, or producing
content featuring the brand. Followers can engage in such behaviors sponta-
neously or may be encouraged to do so by the influencer (Rohde & Mau,
2021).
Furthermore, brands can respond to such engagement and interact with
these followers. For instance, a brand can reply to the comments that followers
write under the influencer’s brand-related post, notably if the comments refer
directly to the brand in question. When followers create their own content
featuring the brand endorsed by influencers, brands may decide to press
the like button, comment, or even repost the content on their social media
accounts. Thus, the communication between brands and followers can be two
way.
It is worth noting that livestream shopping is a type of content that is partic-
ularly well suited to facilitating real-time interactions between followers, the
influencer hosting the shopping session, and the brand behind the livestream
(Luo et al., 2021; Ma, 2021; Park & Lin, 2020; Zhu et al., 2021). During
632 D. CARUELLE

such livestreams, real-time brand-related conversations can easily take place.

Firstly, influencers address their followers and may ask them to react, by
writing comments in the dedicated chat, to the products of the brand they
endorse. Secondly, followers can take the initiative to write instant comments
(i.e., comments that appear live on the screen) addressed to the influencer
and/or the brand, which may immediately reply. Also, the social networks
(e.g., Taobao) on which such sessions occur have built-in features that allow
the audience to click and purchase, in real time, the products promoted by
the influencer. Interactions between followers and the brand promoted by the
influencer are thus easily triggered.
Research has shown that what drives followers’ willingness to interact
with brand-related content is the strength of the parasocial relationship that
followers have formed with influencers. Shan et al. (2020) conducted a
study in which they measured five forms of engagement with brand-related
content: (1) reading the influencer’s brand-related content, (2) sharing it, (3)
commenting on it, (4) liking it, and (5) creating brand-related content. The
results of their study indicated that the stronger the parasocial relationship
between the follower and the influencer, the more likely the follower is to
engage with the brand-related content. However, this effect was reduced when
followers perceived that influencers shared brand-related content to enhance
their image or make profits, not to provide useful recommendations to their
followers. This study demonstrates the interdependencies between influencers,
brands, and followers: the bond between an influencer and his or her followers
determines how followers respond to the brand promoted by the influencer.
This bond between an influencer and his or her followers can be so strong
that followers are willing to imitate the influencer on social media. In a study
of Singaporean fashion influencers and their followers, Abidin (2016) docu-
mented how followers imitate influencers (who produce sponsored content)
by creating content featuring the brands endorsed by the influencers. The
influencers themselves encourage this practice, which Abidin calls “adverto-
rial instigation” (p. 89). As the study revealed, a certain number of followers
produce content that resembles the sponsored posts of the influencers they
follow, with the only difference being that followers are not compensated
for producing such brand-related content. Specifically, those followers create
and share social media posts in which they show themselves wearing clothes
from the brand that the influencer endorses in her sponsored posts. Also,
they use the same hashtags as the influencer, including the brand-related and
campaign hashtags, when posting such content on social media. Followers thus
contribute to increasing the visibility of the brand endorsed by the influencer
on social media. In sum, influencers, by encouraging their followers to imitate
them in the production of brand-related content, give rise to a large amount
of electronic word-of-mouth.
Electronic word-of-mouth also takes place when followers comment on the
influencers’ content and, thereby, engage in a brand conversation. This is what
the study of Delbaere et al. (2021) showed. In this study, the authors focused
 27 INFLUENCER MARKETING: A TRIADICALLY INTERACTIVE … 633

on four American beauty influencers and analyzed the comments that their
followers posted when viewing their videos mentioning one or several brands.
In total, 59,613 comments were analyzed. The analysis revealed that up to 35%
of the comments mentioned a brand that the influencer had featured in her
video. This result shows that the content shared by influencers does not simply
expose followers to brands; rather, it engages followers to have a conversation
about the brand and thus spread word-of-mouth. What is more, 1811 of these
59,613 comments (3%) contained the word “purchase,” “buy,” “buying,”
or “bought.” This number, together with a qualitative assessment of the
comments, suggested that followers would purchase or consider purchasing
the brand mentioned by the influencer. This demonstrates that influencers
have the power to convert their followers into buyers.
In fact, there is a general agreement in the scholarly literature that influ-
encers, through their brand-related content, influence followers’ purchasing
decisions. Consequently, extant research has investigated how this effect
occurs. The basic premise is that influencers are opinion leaders and, thus, their
followers are willing to follow their advice (Akdevelioglu & Kara, 2020; Casaló
et al., 2020) and mimic their consumption behaviors (Dinh & Lee, 2021; Ki &
Kim, 2019). Also, influencers, by featuring new products in their content,
can trigger the curiosity of their followers (Shin & Lee, 2021). Browsing the
brand-related content produced by influencers is similar to idea shopping (Kim
et al., 2021): followers view it as an opportunity to be inspired regarding what
to purchase next.
Furthermore, brand-related content can trigger envy: viewing the influ-
encers’ possessions can make followers envious (Jin & Ryu, 2020). This
phenomenon can be explained by social comparison theory (Festinger, 1954),
according to which individuals evaluate their own abilities by comparing them-
selves to others. This comparison can be upward or downward in nature. In
the case of upward comparison, individuals compare themselves with others
who have superior abilities, which can trigger envy. When followers become
exposed to the possessions of influencers on social media, they may engage
in such a social comparison and realize that influencers possess products that
they do not, which can then trigger envy (Chae, 2018). To rid themselves of
this envious feeling, followers may want to purchase the same products as the
influencer.
Given that influencers are opinion leaders and their content triggers
curiosity and envy, one can easily understand how effective brand-related
content is in terms of influencing followers’ purchases. With built-in social
media features that enable users to simply tap to purchase (e.g., Instagram’s
Shoppable Posts), the content produced by influencers has great potential
to trigger followers and immediately convert them into buyers. In sum,
influencers can be considered intermediaries that facilitate and accelerate
interactions between their followers and the brands they endorse.
634 D. CARUELLE

5 General Discussion
5.1 Conceptual Contribution
The present chapter contributes to the literature on interactive marketing
(Wang, 2021) by explaining the influencer phenomenon as a triadic relation-
ship in which influencers, followers, and brands interact with one another. To
the best of our knowledge, this chapter is the first piece of research to concep-
tualize the influencer phenomenon as a triadic relationship. In particular, this
chapter has shown how all three actors actively participate and co-create value
for one another. Influencers and followers communicate with one another
through likes, comments, and direct messages on social media platforms.
Influencers feature brands in the content they create. Followers engage in
brand-related conversations. Brands respond to influencers and their followers
through the interactive features built into social media platforms.
Livestream shopping sessions hosted by influencers represent the epitome
of such a triadic relationship. All three actors co-create the experience. The
brand, which aims to showcase its products, sets up the session. The influencer
hosts it, thereby creating live content and promoting the brand. Followers, as
they attend the shopping session, can comment on the products/brand or
ask questions to the influencer in real time. The influencer may even answer
them live during the shopping session. Finally, followers may decide to follow
the influencer’s recommendations and purchase the products at the same time
as these products appear on their screens thanks to the real-time shopping
features built into the social media platform.
By conceptualizing the influencer phenomenon as a triadic relationship (as
depicted in Fig. 1), this chapter adds to the literature on influencer marketing
and contributes to a more nuanced understanding of the phenomenon. While
past research (e.g., Casaló et al., 2020) has defined influencers as opinion
leaders, the present chapter shows how the influencer phenomenon differs
from a traditional form of opinion leadership. As posited in the two-step model
of the flow of communication (Katz & Lazarsfeld, 1955), opinion leader-
ship is traditionally characterized by a unidirectional flow of information from
opinion leaders to a wider audience (Lazarsfeld et al., 1968). This traditional
form of opinion leadership is based on one-way communication, and the audi-
ence is passive. By contrast, the influencer phenomenon is characterized by a
multi-directional flow of information, in which followers actively participate.
In sum, while a traditional form of opinion leadership consists of passing on
opinions, the influencer phenomenon goes beyond that. Influencers activate
their followers to converse and engage with the brands they endorse. This has
important implications for companies, as discussed below.

5.2 Managerial Implications

This chapter encourages managers to view and use influencer marketing as a
remedy to the increasing difficulty of getting consumers’ attention to and trust
 27 INFLUENCER MARKETING: A TRIADICALLY INTERACTIVE … 635

in commercial messages. Influencer marketing enables brands to gain visibility

on social media through the content created and shared by influencers. It is
important to note that followers deliberately choose to follow an influencer,
which facilitates the followers’ acceptance of the commercial message in spon-
sored content, as opposed to traditional forms of advertising that consumers
do not choose to be exposed to. Also, because followers view influencers as
both experts and authentic individuals, they perceive the sponsored content to
be trustworthy and credible. Sponsored content can thus be a very effective
way of advertising a brand.
For managers to make the most out of influencer marketing, four tactics
are proposed below.
First, marketing managers should consider using influencer marketing as
a tool for consumer insights. Followers engage with the sponsored content
through pressing the like button (or using any other emojis) and posting
comments. These interactions enable companies to gauge how consumers feel
about their brands: by reading the comments posted under a sponsored post,
brand managers can determine what consumers think about the brand and
whether they are considering purchasing the brand’s products.
Second, marketing managers should consider conversing with an influ-
encer’s followers, who represent potential customers, by replying to the
comments written under a sponsored post. Influencers serve as intermediaries
connecting brands and followers, and brands should seize this opportunity
to have a dialogue with potential customers. Such a dialogue can largely
contribute to create customer engagement with the brand.
Third, marketing managers should consider publishing (e.g., regramming
or retweeting) the brand-related content created by influencers and/or by
their followers on the brand’s social media accounts. Influencer marketing
enables brands to obtain content to publish without producing this content
themselves. Not only do influencers create brand-related content, but their
followers may also do so in an effort to imitate them (Abidin, 2016). Such
practices benefit brands because they contribute to spreading electronic word-
of-mouth and provide them with content to share on their social media
accounts.
Fourth, marketing managers who seek to increase instant sales should
consider incentivizing influencers to make Shoppable Posts or host livestream
shopping sessions. Influencer marketing has the potential to rapidly convert
followers into customers, especially because built-in social media functions,
such as Instagram’s Shoppable Posts, enable followers to purchase from
the brand without leaving the social media platform. Similarly, livestream
shopping sessions facilitate instant selling through their real-time shopping
features. Marketing managers who focus on increasing instant sales should thus
instruct the influencers they sponsor to create Shoppable Posts or, alternatively,
sponsor them to host a livestream shopping session.
In sum, this chapter recommends that marketing managers invest in influ-
encer marketing to increase the visibility of their brands on social media,
636 D. CARUELLE

create brand engagement, and potentially trigger sales. The interactive nature
of the influencer phenomenon makes influencer marketing particularly useful
in generating brand-related conversations and in encouraging followers to
interact with the brand directly and to even buy from it.

6 Directions for Future Research

Influencers vary greatly from one another, with different following sizes and
domains of expertise. Consequently, it is likely that influencers also differ
in terms of engagement tactics. An avenue for future research is to further
explore the different tactics used by influencers to engage their followers. It
would be interesting to compare how these tactics vary over time (as the
influencer becomes more experienced) and as a function of the size of the
following.
Furthermore, social media platforms rapidly change, removing and adding
functions (e.g., Instagram’s Swipe-up removed in August 2021). Therefore,
future research could study the impact of new built-in social media functions
as they are released. Do these features facilitate interactions between influ-
encers, followers, and brands? How can influencers make the best use of them
to create value for their followers and the brands they endorse? These are
examples of questions that future research should address in order to provide
actionable insights for influencers and marketing managers.
Another avenue for future research is to study how brand-related content
created by influencers impacts the followers’ identification with the brand.
Prior research (Graham & Wilder, 2020; Hamzah et al., 2021; Qin, 2020) has
focused on consumer-brand identification in the context of content produced
by the brand itself and shown that the content shared by a brand on social
media strengthens consumer-brand identification. Therefore, it would be
interesting to investigate if consumer-brand identification is also strength-
ened when it is an influencer who creates brand-related content (organic or
sponsored), not the brand itself.

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 CHAPTER 28

Optimising the Effect of Influencer Marketing:

Exploring Consumers’ Interaction
with Different Influencer Types on Instagram

Daniella Ryding, Rosy Boardman, and Rafaella Konstantinou

1 Introduction
Interactive marketing has evolved over the last three decades as the quickest
developing business field (Wang, 2021). As such, it is important that marketers
fully appreciate and understand the role and scope of interactive marketing for
building deeper consumer relationships with the intention to improve profits
and brand equity. interactive marketing is not just one type of marketing,
such as digital marketing or direct marketing, but a concept that needs to be
embedded into all aspects of marketing conducted by the brand holistically
(Moe & Ratchford, 2018). Wang (2021) explains that the term interac-
tive marketing has diverse definitions, but one key feature is that it adds
value to consumer experiences through a process of active consumer connec-
tion, engagement, participation and interaction within online environments.
According to Wang (2021), the technological revolution has enabled busi-
nesses to embed innovative and interactive technologies within social media
platforms, such as augmented reality simulations, voice-activated content,

D. Ryding (B) · R. Boardman · R. Konstantinou

University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
e-mail: daniella.ryding@manchester.ac.uk
R. Boardman
e-mail: rosy.boardman@manchester.ac.uk
R. Konstantinou
e-mail: rafaella.konstantinou-2@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 641

Switzerland AG 2023
C. L. Wang (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Interactive Marketing,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14961-0_28
642 D. RYDING ET AL.

chatbots, live streaming, to name but a few. This combination of social media
and interactive marketing, provides a powerful conduit to engage deeper levels
of consumer attention and emotion, which ultimately impacts positively on
the overall consumer experience. A combined Electroencephalography (EEG),
survey study for example, found that browsing a website does not necessarily
require high levels of attention, whilst in comparison, participation on social
media elicits high levels of emotion: within them, in particular, interaction
with videos has stimulated high levels of engagement (Dulabh et al., 2018). It
is the participatory culture, enabled by web technology, which, according to
Wang (2021), provides individuals new forms of expression and engagement
in public discourse, acting as contributors or producers rather than as passive
consumers.The citation ‘Dulabh et al. (2018)’ has been changed to ‘Dulabh
et al. (2018)’ so that this citation matches the reference list. Please confirm
that this is correct.correct
By using a combination of social media and interactive marketing, brands
can, thus, actively engage in a dialogue with their consumers, sharing videos
and product information, or even pose questions and polls to encourage
consumer participation, reaching a global audience (Bürklin et al., 2019).
Social media enables brands to gain increased visibility, providing them
with the opportunity to reach and engage more frequently with poten-
tial consumers (Amed et al., 2018; Godey et al., 2016). In this respect,
social media campaigns provide consumers with the opportunity to like
and comment on campaigns, and even share them with others within
Omni-channel environments, expanding brands’ target market as a result
(Raudeliūnienė et al., 2018). Moreover, social media platforms can be used
by retailers to identify and target consumers at an expedient rate, which in
turn, speeds up the marketing process, attracts more consumers, establishes a
brand relationship and increases brand awareness.
Social media platforms are thus contributing towards business growth and
are now more important than ever in consumer’s everyday lives. Ryding et al.
(2022), found that these sites connect consumers to communities, enabling
them to interact within an eco-network of individuals, and build relationships
with retail fashion brands. According to Statista (2020), in 2025, people using
social media worldwide are projected to increase to almost 4.41 billion, high-
lighting its exponential growth from 3.6 billion users in 2020 (Statista, 2020).
It is this ubiquitous nature of social media that makes it so powerful in terms of
marketing and sales for brands worldwide (Boardman, 2019). Indeed, Chrimes
and Boardman (2022) found that consumers are now purchasing directly
through social media platforms such as Instagram, and that consumers who
search for fashion items on Instagram are likely to share those products with
their friends and comment on brand’s social media product posts. Therefore,
interactive marketing used on social media platforms such as Instagram, Face-
book and TikTok have a significant influence on fashion shoppers (Drapers,
2021).
 28 OPTIMISING THE EFFECT OF INFLUENCER MARKETING: EXPLORING … 643

1.1 Theoretical Gaps and Contribution

Social media is quite evidently an accessible way for both brands and opinion
leaders to publicise their impression of an event, product, subject, service, or
even topic of debate (Oliveira et al., 2020). Consequently, identifying those
with influence has become increasingly significant as they play an important
role in social media campaigns pertaining to brands (Schivinski & Dabrowski,
2016). There are numerous studies within the extant literature which examine
a range of topics related to influencer marketing and the subsequent impacts
on consumer brand relationships and engagement. Kim and Kim (2022),
explore influencers as human brands and their attributes for creating influ-
ence and the impact for businesses. Corrêa et al. (2020) have explored further
the influence of YouTubers on followers’ use intention. In addition, López
et al. (2022), have studied how to motivate opinion leaders to spread e-WoM
on social media. To support and compliment this work, Zimand-Sheiner et al.
(2021), have explored the impact of social and personal message appeals on
consumer engagement with sponsored posts. This highlights the increasing
academic focus on influencers in the field of interactive marketing as well as
the powerful nature of influencer marketing for practitioners.
Several studies have provided further insights into individual influencers
and consumer engagement. For example, Al-Emadi and Yahia (2020), and
Akdevelioglu and Kara (2020) have further explored opinion leadership, and
why consumers engage with one social media influencer rather than another
by identifying the influential criteria related to ordinary celebrities that have
engaged followers and have led to opinion leadership, on social media plat-
forms such as Instagram and Facebook. Furthermore, some studies have
examined the mediation role of influencer credibility and the moderating
role of self-esteem in the effects of individual parasocial relationships with
YouTube influencers on their product attitudes and purchase intentions (Bi &
Zhang, 2022). This highlights the power that Instagram influencers have and
the evolving nature of influencer endorsement in marketing. All these advan-
tages have resulted in expenditure on influencer marketing by brands growing
exponentially over the past few years (Lou & Yuan, 2019).
Yet, limited research has been conducted on specific influencer types, and
in particular, the literature provides little insights into different sources of
influence and its impact within the fashion industry. There are many different
influencer types on social media with various levels of followers, meaning that
the term ‘fashion influencer’ is quite generic and does not reflect the complex
influencer types that exist within this field. Therefore, the literature suggests
that there is a need for further examination regarding influencer types in order
to understand the relationships between influencer marketing and consumer
perceptions (Boerman, 2020; Djafarova & Trofimenko, 2019). One of the
very limited number of existing studies that have segregated different influ-
encers by type is undertaken by Shen (2021) and highlights that there are
644 D. RYDING ET AL.

four types of micro influencers which create persuasive impact, in compar-

ison to celebrities in their eWOM messages. This is an interesting finding and
warrants further exploration and discussion into why this may be the case and
whether there are further differences between consumers’ interactions with
different types of influencers. This chapter aims to explore these novel insights
and expand the literature further, by discussing five different types of influ-
encers and their impact on consumer brand engagement within the fashion
industry.
It is important to understand the nature of different influencer types
and which type to select for each brand in order to make campaigns more
effective in terms of consumer reach and engagement. For example, some
academics have explained that micro influencers are more influential than
celebrity-endorsed opinion leaders in some fashion contexts, subsequently
having a significant affirmative impact on fashion consumer attitudes, especially
on brand awareness and engagement (Chetioui et al., 2020; Launchmetrics,
2019). Indeed, the challenge for social media marketers, and highlighted as a
chief concern for over 65% of fashion companies, is selecting the most suit-
able type of influencer for their campaigns (Mediakix, 2019). Two of the
most critical factors in choosing the right influencer are the quality of context
and the target audience (Mediakix, 2019). Any mismatch between influencer
communications on social media can threaten brand identity, particularly in
the context of luxury fashion brands (Mazzoli et al., 2019).
Given that no research to date has explored which influencer types create
more influence and impact (otherwise referred to as consumer brand engage-
ment) for fashion brands, this chapter will bridge this gap in knowledge by
exploring how and why consumers engage with different types of social media
influencers and the implications for consumer brand engagement; this being
defined as the emotional interaction between the brand and the consumer.
The Source Credibility Theory (Ohanian, 1991) which combines a number of
antecedents to engagement, including commitment, trust, emotional attach-
ment, loyalty, empowerment and consumer value, is adopted to underpin this
chapter. The introductory engagement rates formula on Instagram can be used
to measure the engagement of different companies’ posts with the formula
derived through Instagram user interactions, in two types of engagement
elements; comments + likes (Azmi & Budi, 2018).
To calculate the percentage of Instagram users’ Engagement Rate (ER), the
number of likes (λ) and comments (κ) need to be added together then divided
by the number of followers (ϕ) and multiplied by one hundred (Azmi & Budi,
2018). The engagement rate is vital to identifying the effectiveness of influ-
encer types (Boerman, 2020) as the higher the value of the engagement rate
the better the quality and performance of the Instagram account (Azmi &
Budi, 2018).
λ+K
ER = × 100
Φ
ER = Engagement rate
λ = total Likes
 28 OPTIMISING THE EFFECT OF INFLUENCER MARKETING: EXPLORING … 645

K = total Comments
Φ = total Followers
This information is useful as a starting point to quantify the number of likes,
comments and followers of any given post, but more so when combined with
in-depth exploratory research, to better understand how consumers interact
with different types of social media campaigns and the impact of influencer
types on consumer brand engagement. The next section defines social media
influencers and contextualises in more depth the theoretical term consumer
brand engagement on social media platforms.

2 Definitions of Social Media Influencers

There have always been people who influence other peoples’ behaviour, long
before social media was invented, those known as opinion leaders. Opinion
leaders are individuals with an extensive social network who play an influen-
tial role in information dissemination, acting as both a source and a guide
(McQuail & Windahl, 1993; Weimann, 1994). However, the invention of
social media has changed the nature of the traditional opinion leader and how
they influence people, facilitating the creation of ‘social media influencers’ and
‘influencer marketing’. The term influencer term dates back to 1944; Paul
Lazarsfeld introduced the ‘two-step flow of communication model’, which
depicts the opinion flow from mass media to individuals (Weimann, 2015).
Recently, Gladwell classified influencers as people who transfer information
as ‘mavens’, ‘salesmen’ and ‘connectors’ (Oliveira et al., 2020). In essence,
the definition of social media influencers are people who create a context
for a service/product and share it with their social media followers (Harvard
Business Review, 2018). Thus, social media influencers are individuals with
the ability to influence others by promoting and recommending brands and
market offerings on social media platforms (Dwivedi et al., 2020).
Influencers foster interaction by their very nature and can drive consumer
brand engagement, set trends and collaborate with brands, by sharing organic
or sponsored content (Harvard Business Review, 2018). As a result, influ-
encers who have large followings are being increasingly used by fashion brands
to effectively diffuse brand-related information, new products and popularise
new trends (Esteban-Santos et al., 2018; Jin & Ryu, 2019; Jin et al., 2019).
This process of using social media influencers to promote brands’ products and
services has been coined ‘influencer marketing’. Within the Fashion industry,
consumers, particularly, millennials (born approx. 1980–1995) and Genera-
tion Z (born approx. 1995–2010), engage actively with social media platforms
and thus, influencer marketing has expanded at a phenomenal rate; with over 2
million global influencers recorded in recent years (Campbell & Farrell, 2020).
This current growth in influencer marketing provides practical benefits for
both consumers and businesses alike, with consumer experience and stronger
brands, respectively, emerging as direct outcomes (Campbell & Farrell, 2020).
646 D. RYDING ET AL.

Indeed, Jin et al. (2019) found that consumers exposed to Instagram celebri-
ties’ brand posts perceived the source to be more trustworthy, showed a more
positive attitude towards the endorsed brand, felt stronger social presence as
well as more envious of the source than those consumers who were exposed
to traditional celebrities’ brand posts.
However, despite the many benefits, influencer marketing presents chal-
lenges, and thus, must be managed effectively by not only fully appreciating
the needs and aspirations of the target audiences, but in addition, fashion
brands must work with these opinion leaders, to create authentic approaches
to sponsor initiatives, which exuberate believability. Furthermore, research
suggests that the influencer type selected in itself is a consideration that should
not be omitted (Campbell & Grimm, 2019). This chapter critically discusses
both of these aspects providing novel insights into which influencer types
fashion brands should work with for particular types of campaigns or to elicit
specific responses in consumers.

2.1 Influencer Types—An Under Examined Context

Campbell and Farrell (2020) created a framework in order to classify influ-
encer types, to provide an understanding of the appeal and impact of different
influencer types and their campaigns. The first classification is celebrity influ-
encers. Celebrity influencers, also referred to as A-listers, such as Emma
Watson, Jennifer Aniston or Sofia Vergara, have a vast number of followers
[celebrity influencers = <1 million followers] (Campbell & Farrell, 2020).
The second tier consists of mega influencers. Mega influencers have a similar
following to celebrities, with a numerical following of over 1 million followers
[mega influencers = <1 million followers] (Campbell & Farrell, 2020).
However, the difference is that mega influencers have risen to fame through
social media platforms, rather than become celebrities due to their behaviour
or vocation outside of the social media realm. The third tier is macro influ-
encers. Macro influencers have around 100 k–1 million followers but are not
considered celebrities yet [Macro = 100,000 > 1 million followers]. Amadea
Dashurie is an example of a macro influencer with 580 k followers on Insta-
gram in September 2019 (Bigcommerce, 2020). The fourth type is micro
influencers. Micro influencers have follower counts of approximately 10,000–
100,000, and the followers are geographically focused (Boerman, 2020;
Campbell & Farrell, 2020; Hatton, 2018) [micro influencers = <10,000
followers geographically focused]. Micro influencers are ‘normal’ people
who have become popular on Instagram, and so are often labelled as ‘instafa-
mous’ (Boerman, 2020). The final tier consists of nano influencers. Nano
influencers have a limited number of followers, less than 10 thousand (Camp-
bell & Farrell, 2020) [nano influencers = >10,000 followers]. Thus, nano
influencers are in the early stages of the influencer tier, and their followers
usually consist of friends and people acquainted with them (Campbell &
 28 OPTIMISING THE EFFECT OF INFLUENCER MARKETING: EXPLORING … 647

Fig. 1 Social media influencer types based on Campbell and Farrell (2020)

Farrell, 2020; Launchmetrics, 2019). Figure 1 depicts the different influencer

types in a model.

3 Consumer Brand Engagement

in a Social Media Context
Growing in importance for social media marketers is their ability to assess
the impact of interactive consumer responses for both firm-generated, and
user-generated campaigns, to raise brand awareness and consumer brand
engagement with the ultimate goal of improving sales performance (Dessart &
Pitardi, 2019). In realising such strategies, brands are able to better connect
with consumers through a process of empowerment, satisfaction, bonding,
connection, commitment and trust (Van Doorn et al., 2010).
According to the Cambridge Dictionary, engagement ‘is being involved
with something’. Within a marketing context, the concept of consumer brand
engagement. Patterson et al. (2006) explain that consumer brand engagement
is about the level of a consumer’s physical, cognitive and emotional pres-
ence in their relationship with a service organisation. This definition, extended
further within an online context, is defined as ‘the cognitive and affective
commitment to an active relationship with the brand as personified by the
website or other computer-mediated entities designed to communicate brand
value’ (Mollen & Wilson, 2010). The selective concept has been described as
involving sustained cognitive processing, experiential value and instrumental
value (Mollen & Wilson, 2010). Several researchers have examined the conse-
quences of consumer brand engagement, as a concept of commitment (Brodie
et al., 2013), trust (Hollebeek et al., 2014), emotional attachment (Whan
648 D. RYDING ET AL.

et al., 2010), loyalty, empowerment and consumer value (Hsieh et al., 2022),
highlighting its importance in providing an effective interactive marketing
strategy. Yet, to date, there is a paucity of research that has examined consumer
brand engagement with different types of fashion influencers and whether
smaller macro influencers produce different types of engagement than larger
celebrity influencers. This chapter aims to fill this gap in the literature by
exploring this concept in more depth.

4 Social Media Campaigns

Social media campaigns are visual marketing campaigns that are published on
social networking sites. Based on global research, marketers’ most preferred
platforms in January 2020 are Facebook with 94%, Instagram with 76% and
third LinkedIn with 59% (Statista, 2020). Furthermore, Instagram advertising
annual revenue in 2020 accumulated to around 13 billion dollars worldwide
and it is expected to increase in 2021 to approximately 18 billion dollars
(Statista, 2020), which shows that marketers will continue to invest in Insta-
gram advertising campaigns. The fashion industry focuses on Instagram for
promotional campaigns because it has the highest engagement rate, with
0.94%, which is higher than Facebook, whose consumer brand engagement
rate is 0.4%. Thus, Instagram is in high demand for fashion brands. Seeing
fashion items on social media creates an urgency to ‘buy now’ in consumers
(Boardman et al., 2020), making fashion influencers particularly important
to research. As noted previously in this chapter, fashion brands’ social media
campaigns usually include influencers to promote products because there is
evidence to suggest these are more trustworthy than firm-generated content,
due to third-party involvement thus raising credibility and attractiveness
amongst the target groups.

4.1 Influencers and Social Media Campaigns

Widespread internet adoption globally has allowed companies such as Insta-
gram, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to improve the relationships between
businesses and consumers by adding a new dynamic ion and enabling user-
generated content. User-generated content (UCG) is characterised by a degree
of personal contribution, and is any form of content, such as text, audio,
images or videos posted by users on platforms. Most companies have a primary
advertising channel on the web (like social media campaigns), to increase their
consumer reach (Koch & Benlian, 2015). However, in recent times, because
of the power of third-party influence, both UGC and FGC campaigns are
the preferred forms of communication efforts, because the projected brand
attributes promoted in such campaigns, are regarded by the end-user to be
more believable and credible (Koch & Benlian, 2015). Furthermore, social
media disclosure can force the campaigns to go viral faster and easier (Koch &
Benlian, 2015).
 28 OPTIMISING THE EFFECT OF INFLUENCER MARKETING: EXPLORING … 649

4.2 Examples of a Successful Social Media Campaign

A successful and memorable FGC social media campaign was created by Nike
in 2017; the ‘Breaking 2’ which involved influencers and content marketing.
Nike streamed a full marathon in less than 2 h with the Nike (Zoom Vaporfly
Elite) shoes on Twitter and Facebook and the posted backstage picture on
Instagram. The hashtag #Breaking2 encourages the viewers to follow the
campaign more efficiently and design a custom Nike Vaporfly Elite shoe
emoji. The live marathon enlisted three runners Lelisa Desisa, Zersenay Tadese
and Eliud Kipchoge, as niche influencers. The Nike campaign collected over
584,000 mentions on social media platforms, including the hashtag; 87% of
them were positive comments with 2 trillion impressions. This campaign is
an example of the effectiveness of successful marketing by collaborating with
niche influencers and uplifting a massage with creative content production.

5 The Source Credibility Theory

In order to better understand how consumers interact with different types
of social media campaigns and the impact of different influencer types on
consumer brand engagement, this section presents the Source Credibility
Theory. The Source Credibility Theory advocates that the effectiveness of a
message is controlled by the perceived level of attractiveness, expertise and
trustworthiness of the endorser (Ohanian, 1991). Ohanian (1991) argues that
there are different independent sub-variables for each factor (see Fig. 2).
The three independent constructs and their sub-variables that control the
effectiveness of a message according to Ohanian (1991) will now be discussed
in greater detail.

Fig. 2 Independent constructs—Ohanian (1991) model of source credibility

650 D. RYDING ET AL.

5.1 Attractiveness
Attractiveness involves the initial judgement of the communicator. Attrac-
tiveness is conveyed by scholars to mean chicness, sexuality, likability and
familiarity. Several research studies have documented that attractiveness ampli-
fies positive attitudes. Loggerenberg et al. (2009) found that endorsers who
are perceived to be attractive are more likely to lead to purchase aspiration.

5.2 Expertise
Expertise relates to the level of source knowledge about a topic direction
(Hovland et al., 1953). Furthermore, the level of source qualifications is
also important. O’Reilly (2005) explained that credibility of social media
campaigns decreases if the source expertise is at a low level (O’Reilly, 2005).
Research shows that the more credible a person is, the more behaviourally
compliant the receiver of that message will be. This theory proposes that
endorsers are perceived as experts who have sufficient knowledge in a specific
area of interest (Berne-Manero & Marzo-Navarro, 2020).

5.3 Trustworthiness
Trustworthiness is the degree of consumer confidence in a brand conveyed
within a particular campaign (Ohanian, 1990). Multiple studies have ascer-
tained that trustworthiness is correlated directly to message effectiveness and
persuasion (Seiler & Kucza, 2017). Miller and Baseheart (1969) discovered
that if the communicator is trustworthy, the more effective their opinion
would be to the acceptor of that message. Transparency and trustworthiness
usually come together and integrity, honesty and believability are core good
qualities of endorser. Trustworthiness in the context of credibility relates to the
truthful perception of a source or content (O’Reilly, 2005). Based on research,
if the content source is perceived as reliable and honest then it is considered
trustworthy, and consumers are more likely to believe the content source.
O’Reilly (2005) notes that for media providers, trustworthiness is the second
most important factor after expertise. Some interesting research reinforces that
trustworthiness diminishes in commercial contexts such as web pages adver-
tisements, and similarly, consumers also become more sceptical of the brand
attributes, when social media campaigns are firm-generated (De Veirman et al.,
2017).
The Source Credibility Theory can be used to analyse fashion brands’
approaches to influencer appeal and selection. The Source Credibility Theory
states that the effectiveness of social media campaigns relies on the perceived
level of attractiveness, expertise and trustworthiness of an endorser (Hovland
et al., 1953; Ohanian, 1990, 1991). Some recent studies have examined the
perceived authenticity of social media influencers and subsequent influence and
impact on consumer engagement and brand attachment (Lee & Eastin, 2021;
 28 OPTIMISING THE EFFECT OF INFLUENCER MARKETING: EXPLORING … 651

Leite & de Paula Baptista, 2021). However, no research to date has explored
the Source Credibility Theory in relation to fashion brands’ social media influ-
encers appeal or impact across the different influencer types. By combining the
fashion Instagram campaigns with the influencer types and the Source Cred-
ibility Theory, this chapter brings together important findings with the core
aim to examine how female millennials engage and interact with Instagram
and influencers’ fashion campaigns amongst the various influencer types.

6 Engagement Rates with the Different

Influencer Types---Empirical Evidence
The engagement rate formula was first applied to assess the engagement rates
with the different influencer types, and to highlight the effectiveness of influ-
encer types (Boerman, 2020). This was based on the notion that the higher
the value of the engagement rate, the better the quality and performance
of the Instagram account (Azmi & Budi, 2018). A qualitative approach was
then used, to obtain a deeper understanding of the more socially constructed
and subjective meanings in regard to the research phenomenon (Saunders
et al., 2016). 10 semi-structured interviews were commissioned with millen-
nial female consumers to support this chapter, as they are the most active
users of Instagram (Statista, 2019). Thematic analysis was adopted by deriving
key themes from the extant literature to develop appropriate interview ques-
tions to explore amongst the sample, overall interaction and engagement and
the attractiveness, expertise and trustworthiness of different influencer types.
In thematic analysis, the researcher develops codes from the literature, to
design appropriate interview questions to allow for a comprehensive inves-
tigation of the data; and as a result, to formulate suitable conclusions by
identifying common themes—topics, ideas and patterns of meaning that come
up repeatedly.

6.1 Consumer Engagement Rates Formula with Different Influencer

Types
The information in Fig. 3 highlights that the most popular type of influencer
followed by the female millennial participants is the macro influencer (110 k–1
million followers), followed by the mega influencers and the celebrity influ-
encers. Macro influencers are not Instagram celebrities, but have significant
success as influencers because of their large following (Campbell & Farrell,
2020). The mega influencer is favourable as well, but not as much as the macro
influencers. Mega influencers have a large following and are deemed more
influential through Instagram, and thus, defined as ‘instafamous’ influencers
(Campbell & Farrell, 2020). This shows that the larger influencer tiers were
more likely to be followed, with micro and nano influencers being considerably
less popular.
652 D. RYDING ET AL.

Fig. 3 The influencer types that the participants followed on Instagram

Participants distinguished between Macro/Mega influencers and celebrities,

as evidenced by participant 10:

Because to me, the people who are celebrities to start with, in my head are like
in a different category… I don’t know why but I just divide them in my mind.
(P10)

Yet, interestingly, consumers did not distinguish between any other influ-
encer types, such as macro and mega, just those that are ‘celebrities’ and
‘influencers’, evidenced by Participant 3:

They are not celebrities, only Miley Cyrus is, and rest of them are just Instagram
influencers (P3)

Indeed, participants viewed influencers that had 800,000 followers the same
as those that had 240,000 followers and even the same as those that had 9900
followers. This indicates that consumers do not distinguish between the influ-
encer types depicted in Fig. 1—Campbell and Farrell (2020) model—they just
separate ‘influencers’ from celebrities in general. To support this argument
further, the consumer engagement rate formula utilises the most up-to-date
influencer campaign posts to calculate the influencer’s engagement rate.

6.2 Celebrity, Mega and Macro Influencers

Participant 2 selected Chiara Ferrangi, a celebrity influencer (24 million
followers), with a Post engagement rate of 1.7%; and the Chiara Biasi a mega
influencer (instafamous, 2.8 million followers) with a post engagement rate
 28 OPTIMISING THE EFFECT OF INFLUENCER MARKETING: EXPLORING … 653

of 0.6%. These results indicate that both the celebrity influencers and mega
influencers have a low engagement rate level which supports research by Chen
(2017) and Campbell and Farrell (2020) that those particular influencer types
have low engagement rates. On the contrary, macro influencer Rowi Singh
(322 k followers) achieved a high engagement rate of 9.3%, considerably
higher than the 7.2% needed to achieve a ‘high’ engagement rate according to
influencer marketing Hub (2020), whilst the result for the highest influencer
type, celebrity influencer Ariana Grande, has a much lower engagement rate
of 3.7%.
In fact, when applying the engagement rates formula to all the macro influ-
encers selected by participants, all had high engagement rates. The only excep-
tion was the macro influencer from interview 2, NoFace noface.instagram
(225 k followers), who had a post engagement rate of 0.7%. This can happen
when the influencer has fake followers, which is an ongoing problem in the
influencer industry (Launchmetrics, 2019). The engagement rate formula may
help practitioners identify this type of influencers. Thus, this formula is vital
to establish the performance and quality of the Instagram influencers accounts
(Azmi & Budi, 2018).
Smaller influencers were considered to be a bit different to the more
popular influencers. For instance, Participant 1 liked a micro influencer bird-
songlondon.instagram and nano influencer mariannachmia.instagram because
of their uniqueness, stating “…I really like the way that she styles it. And every-
thing’s really limited….”. The nano influencer category has a limited number
of followers, less than 10 thousand, and they are an early stage of the influ-
encer career (Campbell & Farrell, 2020; Launchmetrics, 2019), making them
less ‘mainstream’ and well-known and therefore considered ‘cooler’ to follow.

6.3 Engagement with Different Influencer Types Based on the Source

Credibility Model
6.3.1 Attractiveness
The interviews revealed that attractiveness was the most important criterion
for selecting which influencers to follow for female millennials, for example:

I think that does play a part like people tend to gravitate towards people that
they find physically attractive or appealing. (P. 9)

Thus, attractive influencers were seen as aspirational by female millennials.

Attractiveness was important in terms of the aesthetics of the images and
content produced, as highlighted by the following quotes:

So I think it’s overall the picture, how they present themselves and their images.
(P.7)
I’ll say the things that perhaps is more attractive, or the maybe the person’s
posture, or maybe the kind of outfit they are wearing, and how that frames their
654 D. RYDING ET AL.

body shape. And they are personally again, I like to see people personally and
first Yeah. (P.8)

Likeability and relatability (components of ‘attractiveness’ according to the

Source Credibility Theory) were important determinants for whether partici-
pants followed and engaged with influencers, summarised by Participant 7:

I think the most two most important things would be that they are like likeable,
like their personality, as well as honesty when they’re posting advertisement
posts. You know, if their caption is likeable, if they are likeable person, so they’re
doing like a real or something. (P.7)

Participants preferred to follow influencers because they were ‘similar’ to

them, as illustrated by the following quote:

I’ve been really liking, like smaller influencers, because I feel like the content is
more personal. And, like, I think I like I’ve been trying to follow influencers
that like, are more similar to me… and smaller creators, and it’s more personal,
and you can actually like, message them, and they’ll message you back and have
a conversation. And I think I trust their opinion on products more because
you know… like 9900 followers, okay. And she, she’s promoted some good
products. And she’s just starting to get brand deals. So I like that…. (P.7)

This was because participants could relate to them more, finding them more
accessible. Indeed, participants liked that the content produced by smaller
influencers was more “personal ” (P7).
In particular, relatability and similarity in terms of their ethnicity, body
shape and hair colour were important reasons why participants followed
certain influencers. For example, Participant 7 stated:

…it’s more for example, with like skin tone, because how something looks on
them, I’m like it will probably be similar on me. So it’s easier to visualise. Like
if they’re more similar to me then it’s easier to visualize me wearing something
they’re wearing

This suggests that the participants picked influencers with similar body
shapes, skin/hair colour and sometimes style. Familiarity and similarity are
components of attractiveness that have been established by scholars previously
yet no studies to date have applied this to an influencer marketing context.
It was also important to participants that the influencers demonstrated a
genuine passion for what they were doing, as opposed to doing it just to be
famous, for example:

It’s more that someone’s really doing this because they love doing this. Like
they have a passion for it, and they show you that they have a passion for it
instead of just doing it because they want to be famous. (P.5)
 28 OPTIMISING THE EFFECT OF INFLUENCER MARKETING: EXPLORING … 655

This highlights that influencer types need to have a ‘personality’ (P.3) and
not simply be attractive in order to promote engagement.

6.3.2 Expertise
The knowledge of the influencer was also an important consideration when
consumers were selecting which influencer to follow. The Source Credi-
bility Theory recommends that endorsers are perceived as experts who have
sufficient knowledge in a specific field of the subject (Berne-Manero & Marzo-
Navarro, 2020) which is supported by the interviewers, as articulated by
Participant 9:

I think knowledge comes first and then trust and like how transparent they
are. There’s no way I’m gonna buy someone’s product or support someone if
they’re like, you know, if they’re not honest with their audience, or they’re not
transparent. (P.9)

Expertise was considered important as consumers wanted to learn from

influencers. People wanted to learn what the latest fashion trends were and
how to style outfits from reliably informed sources so that they could translate
this into their own lives with confidence.
The fact that influencers share opinions openly, which are based on their
accessibility of products, makes them a reliable source. Copeland et al. (2011)
found that if the consumer perceives a legitimate and reliable source, they will
recognise it as more trustworthy. This is summarised by participant 4 when
talking about influencers’ sponsored posts:

I think whether they are reliable makes the biggest difference… because if it’s
not reliable, then the influencer is not honest. And everything else about this
person does not matter to me at all if I don’t know whether I can trust it. So
yeah, like being reliable and being honest, it’s kind of like the base. (P.4)

This shows that influencers need to prove to their followers that they are
reliable, otherwise their followers will not engage with them.

6.3.3 Trustworthiness
Trustworthiness was also an essential criterion in fashion influencer selec-
tion for female millennials. The insights into their personal lives provided by
influencers were considered to be a building block for a parasocial relation-
ship and trust. If influencers can demonstrate that they are honest, female
millennials would be more likely to trust their product recommendations, as
demonstrated by participant 6:

If they’re honest, I feel like I can trust their recommendations, whether

something is good or something is bad. (P.6)
656 D. RYDING ET AL.

Therefore, influencers are able to drive consumer brand engagement and

emotional interaction if they are open and honest with their online commu-
nity. This works with sponsored posts, as influencers will often endorse brands,
where similar values are shared. However, one point to also note, is that posts
which are not sponsored/firm-generated, are much more powerful in securing
consumer attention and trust than the sponsored posts (Oliveira et al., 2020).
This is summarised by participant 8:

…whenever I see something saying sponsored I hate it because it’s like, okay,
you just did it because of payment, not because you actually like that product
by choice. (P.8)

Therefore, trust is best achieved by the influencers’ ability to share opin-

ions about products honestly and openly within the online community, both
in firm-generated and user-generated contexts. However, the power of trust
resides in the campaigns which have not been sponsored, and where the
influencer has not been paid to provide recommendations.

7 Discussion
7.1 Knowledge Advancement to Influencer Marketing
Interactive marketing adds value to consumer experiences through a process of
active consumer connection, engagement, participation and interaction within
online environments (Wang, 2021). This chapter provides novel insights to
the interactive marketing literature through its exploration of the different
engagement rate of different types of influencers and why particular aspects of
attractiveness, expertise and trustworthiness are so important for consumers
when selecting influencers to follow.
The literature suggests that there is a need for further examination
regarding influencer types in order to understand the relationships between
influencer marketing and consumer perceptions (Boerman, 2020; Djafarova &
Trofimenko, 2019). Furthermore, no research to date has explored the Source
Credibility Theory in relation to fashion brands’ social media influencers
appeal or impact across the different influencer types. Thus, by combining the
fashion Instagram campaigns with the influencer types and the Source Cred-
ibility Theory, this chapter brings together important findings with the core
aim of examining how female millennials engage and interact with Instagram
and influencers’ fashion campaigns amongst the various influencer types.
This chapter has demonstrated that millennial women prefer to follow
macro influencers due to perceived similarities to themselves and relata-
bility, aspects that fall under the ‘attractiveness’ construct of Ohanian’s
(1991) Source Credibility Theory. This was preceded by mega influencers
and celebrity influencers, with smaller micro and nano influencers much less
popular. Nevertheless, an innovative insight provided in this chapter is that
 28 OPTIMISING THE EFFECT OF INFLUENCER MARKETING: EXPLORING … 657

micro and nano influencers were considered to be more unique, meaning that,
by following them, consumers themselves were less ‘mainstream’, enhancing
their own credibility.
This chapter concurs with existing literature that celebrity influencers have
lower engagement rates than influencers with lower numbers of followers
(Campbell & Farrell, 2020). Yet, a novel insight uncovered in this chapter
is that consumers do not distinguish between the influencer types depicted in
Fig. 1—Campbell and Farrell (2020) model—they just separate ‘influencers’
from celebrities in general. This has important considerations for brands when
they are selecting between smaller influencer tiers and the fact that macro influ-
encers are not necessarily considered to be ‘better’ than micro influencers, as
both are just perceived to be ‘influencers’.
Attractiveness was the most important criterion for selecting which influ-
encers to follow for female millennials. This encompassed the overall aesthetic
of the post, not just the influencer themselves, as it was perceived to represent
an aspirational lifestyle. Likeability and relatability (components of attractive-
ness according to the Source Credibility Model) were also important reasons
for selecting influencers. This was because participants could relate to them
more, finding them more accessible, supporting previous literature (Boerman,
2020; Campbell & Farrell, 2020; Chen, 2017). This also supports recent
survey research by Kim and Kim (2022) who found that homophily, social
presence and attractiveness created a greater attachment to the influencer and
that attachment enhanced followers’ loyalty to the influencer and their adver-
tising credibility. Yet this chapter further builds on this by uncovering that
relatability and similarity in terms of their ethnicity, body shape and hair colour
were also very important to people and affected who they selected to follow. A
further novel insight discussed is that influencers needed to have passion and
personality as well as be attractive in order for consumers to follow and engage
with them.
The knowledge of the influencer was also an important consideration when
selecting who to follow. People wanted to learn what the latest fashion trends
were and how to style outfits from reliably informed sources so that they could
translate this into their own lives with confidence. The findings from this
overall chapter, assumes that if the individual has suffcient knowledge, they
interpret that information as more credibile. Industry reports which show that
fashion influencers’ content on Instagram and TikTok is now featuring more of
an emphasis on education, techniques and styling ideas (Dirvanauskas, 2022).
Trustworthiness, particularly in terms of honesty and transparency in rela-
tion to sponsored content, was also essential. If influencers can demonstrate
that they are honest, female millennials would be more likely to trust their
product recommendations. Influencers’ own organic posts were considered
to be much more trustworthy than sponsored posts, which made consumers
wary of their honesty. This supports research by Shen (2021) who found
that eWOM messages containing brand names from micro influencers had the
lowest level of interaction amongst consumers.
658 D. RYDING ET AL.

7.2 Practical Implications

It is important to understand the nature of different influencer types and
which type to select for each brand in order to make campaigns more effec-
tive in terms of consumer reach and engagement. In influencer marketing,
the primary challenge for brands is selecting the most suitable type of influ-
encer for their campaigns (Mediakix, 2019). Any mismatch between influencer
communications on social media can threaten brand identity, particularly in
the context of luxury fashion brands (Mazzoli et al., 2019). Thus, the prac-
tical implications of this chapter are significant, as it allows brands to make
more informed decisions on influencer marketing spend, and where to place
emphasis in relationship-building within online, interactive social media plat-
forms. Macro influencers achieved higher engagement rates than celebrity
influencers suggesting that they would be a better option for brands to work
with. The added win–win benefit of this for fashion companies is that macro
influencers demand a lower price for a post-campaign than celebrity influ-
encers and mega influencers do, whilst obtaining higher engagement rates
(Campbell & Farrell, 2020). Thus, although celebrity influencers have high
follower counts, their lack of interaction with followers means that engage-
ment amongst consumers is lower—whilst macro influencers, those with
100 k–1 million followers, cost less to commission in firm-generated content
contexts, and are much more impactful within the industry due to their higher
engagement rates.
When choosing a specific influencer to work with, fashion brands should
ensure that they are prepared to be honest and transparent with their followers
in order to build up trust, as well as able to produce aesthetically pleasing
images showcasing aspirational lifestyles but also passion, a unique personality
and a level of expertise about the content. However, ultimately, the power
of trust resides in the campaigns which have not been sponsored, and where
the influencer has not been paid to provide recommendations. In order to
minimise this aspect, brands should ensure that the influencer has as much
autonomy over the content as possible in order to promote authenticity, and
for them to also express their honest opinions. This may appear risky as brands’
lack of control of user-generated social media content is extremely challenging
in terms of their reputation, but building and upholding consumer trust on
social media is essential (Chrimes et al., 2019) and so the benefits should
outweigh the drawbacks in this regard.

7.3 Insight into Future Research Directions

Future research could be conducted to investigate whether there are differ-
ences between consumer responses to different influencer types in different
cultures and countries using the Source Credibility Model constructs. This
would be interesting as influencer marketing is a global phenomenon with
particular influencers being very popular in different countries, such as Yang
 28 OPTIMISING THE EFFECT OF INFLUENCER MARKETING: EXPLORING … 659

Ge in China and Lana Rose in Saudi Arabia Ar. Future research could also
focus on different contexts to the fashion industry, such as food influencers,
to see if the importance of attractiveness, expertise and trustworthiness differ
in different contexts. Finally, it would be interesting to undertake studies
conducted on virtual or avatar influencers, as well as pet influencers, in order
to explore interaction and engagement levels and whether they differ to the
different ‘human’ influencer types discussed in this chapter.

8 Conclusion
The primary purpose of this chapter was to examine how consumers interact
and engage with Instagram and influencers’ fashion campaigns amongst the
various influencer types. This is a relevant and topical remit for interactive
marketers in the fashion industry, given the exponential growth in social media
campaigns in recent years, and their positive impacts on brand interaction and
consumer brand engagement. This chapter overall, has provided insights into
better understanding the overall impact/influence of different influencer types
in reaching millennial female fashion consumers.
Consumers do not distinguish between the Nano, Micro, Macro and Meso
influencer types but just between ‘celebrities’ and ‘influencers’. However, they
are more likely to follow macro influencers over smaller nano and micro
influencers. Overall, although celebrity influencers have high follower counts,
their lack of interaction with their followers means that engagement rates
amongst consumers are lower—whilst in comparison, macro influencers, those
with 100 k–1 million followers, cost less to commission, and are much more
impactful within the industry due to their higher engagement rates and overall
credibility. This chapter has demonstrated that millennial women prefer to
follow macro influencers due to perceived similarities to themselves and relata-
bility aspects that fall under the ‘attractiveness’ construct of Ohanian’s (1991)
Source Credibility Theory. This suggests that attractiveness, in terms of like-
ability and relatability, is the most important aspect for consumers when
choosing which influencer types to follow, and which affects their engage-
ment rates the most. This is closely followed by trustworthiness, particularly
in relation to honesty and transparency with sponsored content. The theo-
retical positioning which makes use of the Source Credibility Theory within
this phenomena is novel and provides strong foundations for researchers to
undertake a more representative analysis of influencer types’ effectiveness for
the millennial population and in a range of country-level settings.

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 PART VI

Predictive Analytics and Personalized Targeting

 CHAPTER 29

Applying Predictive Analytics in Interactive

Marketing: How It Influences Customer
Perception and Reaction?

Maggie Wenjing Liu, Qichao Zhu, Yige Yuan, and Sihan Wu

1 Introduction
Interactive marketing is characterized by a two-way interaction between
customers and marketers (Blattberg & Deighton, 1991; Deighton, 1996).
The rapid growth of new technologies such as mobile Internet, big
data, and artificial intelligence has revolutionized the practice of interactive
marketing (Johnson et al., 2019; Wang, 2021). Therefore, predictive analytics
has become increasingly prevalent and prominent in interactive marketing
(Artun & Levin, 2015; Liu et al., 2022; Persson, 2018). Predictive analytics
is the process of using current and/or historical data with a combination of
statistical techniques—including, but not limited to, data mining, predictive
modeling, and machine learning—to assess the likelihood of a certain event
happening in the future (Eckerson, 2007; Mishra & Silakari, 2012). Compared
with traditional descriptive analytics which summarizes and visualizes data
for exploratory purposes, predictive analytics involves iterative interactions
between customers and marketers through customers’ behavior and feed-
back and marketers’ personalized actions based on customer data (Bradlow
et al., 2017; Wedel & Kannan, 2016; Yu, 2022). Specifically, companies can
use predictive analytics to classify customers into clusters based on their user
profiles and segment price-sensitive customers for promotional tactics. Compa-
nies can also employ predictive analytics to predict the products that are

M. W. Liu · Q. Zhu (B) · Y. Yuan · S. Wu

Tsinghua University, Beijing, China
e-mail: zhuqch.17@sem.tsinghua.edu.cn

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 667

Switzerland AG 2023
C. L. Wang (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Interactive Marketing,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14961-0_29
668 M. W. LIU ET AL.

needed by a target customer within a certain time frame and promote them in
a timely manner.
In effect, the market for predictive analytics software had a value of about
$5 billion in 2020 and is estimated to exceed $40 billion by 2028 (Statista,
2021). Statistics from Netflix, a leading provider of media-streaming services
in the U.S., show that 80% of the content viewed by its users is discovered
through recommendations by predictive analytics, which saves $1 billion a year
in customer retention (Morgan, 2018). Companies from emerging markets
such as Chinese e-commerce platforms Alibaba and JD.com have been among
the first to adopt predictive analytics. By predicting customers’ preferences,
these companies recommend items prominently on their homepages with
features such as “you may also like.” Apart from up-and-coming Internet-
based companies, bricks-and-mortar companies are also increasingly adopting
predictive analytics. Walmart leverages big data and predictive analytics to
launch new products, modify the shipping policy, customize recommenda-
tions, and, ultimately, increase sales (ProjectPro, 2022). Also, fast fashion
companies including H&M and Zara use artificial intelligence to predict
fashion trends and adjust their supply chain (Nikolopoulos, 2022).
Despite the widespread application of predictive analytics in interactive
marketing, previous research has mostly assumed customers’ voluntary partici-
pation and engagement in predictive analytics. In effect, customer engagement
is a prerequisite for the effectiveness of predictive analytics in interactive
marketing. However, customers can choose to refrain from engaging in
companies’ predictive analytics by refusing to share their personal data, turning
down personalized notifications, or responding negatively to customized
marketing offerings. For example, salient privacy concerns usually lead to
customers’ low intention to share their personal data (Pallant et al., 2022;
Schweidel et al., 2022). Besides, customers are unwilling to let their deci-
sions be decided by predictive analytics including algorithms and artificial
intelligence under certain conditions (Castelo et al., 2019; Longoni et al.,
2019). Therefore, understanding the psychological factors driving customer
engagement in predictive analytics is of great value to both marketing
scholars and practitioners. Self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000a,
2000b) provides an appropriate theoretical perspective for such objective.
Specifically, this chapter puts forward a theoretical framework showing that
predictive analytics simultaneously increases and decreases customer engage-
ment through two competing psychological mechanisms, which are closely
related to customers’ basic psychological needs. Specifically, this framework
proposes that predictive analytics increases customer engagement by satisfying
customers’ need for meaningful affiliation and decreases customer engage-
ment by undermining customers’ sense of control. The relative strength of
the positive and negative influences is moderated by several factors including
self-construal, data use transparency, and trust.
The remainder of this chapter is organized as follows: first, this chapter
reviews the research on predictive analytics and customer engagement. Second,
 29 APPLYING PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS IN INTERACTIVE MARKETING … 669

this chapter provides a framework for understanding the psychological factors

that increase and decrease customer engagement in predictive analytics and the
moderating factors. Finally, this chapter discusses the theoretical contributions,
practical implications, and future research directions.

2 Literature Review
2.1 Predictive Analytics
In traditional marketing, marketers are limited by technical and instrumental
restraints and rely heavily on broad customer characteristics, including demo-
graphics (such as gender, age, ethnicity, educational attainment, and area of
residence) and psychometric attributes (such as lifestyle and personality), for
market segmentation and targeting (Sarin, 2010). However, with the rapid
advances in technologies such as mobile Internet, big data, and artificial intel-
ligence in recent years, companies can observe and collect extensive data on
customers’ information and behaviors, such as individual customers’ purchase
records, web-browsing behavior, and keyword searches (Johnson et al., 2019;
Schweidel et al., 2022). With these more refined data, companies are able to
determine the characteristics and preferences of individual customers, and to
launch personalized marketing campaigns using the user profiling technique
(Trusov et al., 2016). Previous research has shown that a significant portion
of customers’ personal characteristics, such as age, gender, sexual orientation,
ethnicity, religious and political views, intelligence, and personality traits, can
be inferred from their social media profiles with great accuracy (Kosinski et al.,
2013).
Predictive analytics plays an important role at various stages of interactive
marketing and serves diverse purposes. Predictive analytics can help marketers
to acquire new customers using identification modeling (Baecke & Van den
Poel, 2012), segment customers using customer clustering (Wu & Chou,
2011), conduct lead scoring for customers using propensity modeling and
predictive scoring (Nygård & Mezei, 2020), implement recommender systems
using collaborative filtering (Koren & Bell, 2015), personalize customer expe-
riences (Montgomery & Smith, 2009), and behaviorally target customers
(Trusov et al., 2016). Overall, after companies obtain information about indi-
vidual customers’ characteristics and preferences, they can gain competitive
advantages that increase response rates (Munz et al., 2020) and drive sales
(Oberoi et al., 2017). Meanwhile, plenty of studies have gauged the effective-
ness of predictive analytics in different settings and circumstances such as the
in-flight marketplace (Gardete, 2015) and advertising (Shen & Villas-Boas,
2018). For example, personalization is proven to be effective in increasing
customer click-through rates (Bleier & Eisenbeiss, 2015), brand engagement,
attachment, and loyalty (Shanahan et al., 2019). It was even found that
670 M. W. LIU ET AL.

a technique as simple as adding the recipients’ names or other customer-

specific information to emails is sufficient to increase the marketing campaign’s
effectiveness (Sahni et al., 2018).

2.2 Customer Engagement

Customer engagement is defined as “the intensity of an individual’s partici-
pation in and connection with an organization’s offerings or organizational
activities, which either the customer or the organization initiates” (Vivek
et al., 2012, p. 133). Customer engagement is both a psychological state
and behavioral manifestations when customers have a favorable interaction
with companies or brands (Brodie et al., 2011; Jaakkola & Alexander, 2014;
Zimand-Sheiner et al., 2021). Sashi (2012) proposed a model to describe the
cycle of customer engagement, which includes seven stages (connection, inter-
action, satisfaction, retention, commitment, advocacy, and engagement) and
reflects a complete formation process of customer engagement. This model
is consistent with the conceptualization of customer engagement as a multi-
dimensional construct that incorporates cognitive, affective, and behavioral
facets (Brodie et al., 2011; Hollebeek et al., 2014). On the other hand, van
Doorn et al.’s (2010) conceptual model of customer engagement behavior
categorizes the antecedents of customer engagement behavior into customer-
based, firm-based, and context-based factors. These three types of factors can
not only directly influence customer engagement behavior but also interact
with one another.
In the domain of predictive analytics in interactive marketing, customer
engagement plays a critical role in that predictive analytics requires customers’
voluntary participation and engagement (Kunz et al., 2017). Recent meta-
analyses further reveal that customer engagement is critical in modern interac-
tive marketing (Barari et al., 2021; de Oliveira Santini et al., 2020). Specifically,
customer engagement in predictive analytics consists of cognitive, affective,
and behavioral aspects, consistent with existing conceptualization of customer
engagement (Brodie et al., 2011; Hollebeek et al., 2014). First of all, compa-
nies need customer data to employ predictive analytics (Pallant et al., 2022;
Schweidel et al., 2022). On the other hand, laws and regulations require
companies to apply predictive analytics based on customers’ consent (Gold-
farb & Tucker, 2011; Wedel & Kannan, 2016). Finally, the effectiveness
of predictive analytics is dependent on customers’ favorable attitudes and
behavioral intentions toward personalized marketing offerings (Munz et al.,
2020; Oberoi et al., 2017). However, previous research on predictive analytics
in interactive marketing has mostly assumed customers’ voluntary participa-
tion and engagement, while overlooking customers’ psychological factors that
influence their engagement in predictive analytics. Therefore, this chapter
proposes a theoretical framework to understand the psychological factors that
drive customer engagement in predictive analytics.
 29 APPLYING PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS IN INTERACTIVE MARKETING … 671

3 A Theoretical Framework for the Effects

of Predictive Analytics on Customer Engagement
Self-determination theory argues that people have three basic psychological
needs, i.e., the needs for relatedness, autonomy, and competence (Ryan &
Deci, 2000a, 2000b). The need for relatedness deals with individuals’ need to
have meaningful affiliation with others. The need for autonomy concerns with
individuals’ need to have a sense of control over the environment and their
outcomes. The need for competence refers to individuals’ need to have feelings
of challenge and effectiveness (which is not relevant to customer engage-
ment in predictive analytics). The framework in this chapter takes the former
two psychological needs of customers into account and proposes that predic-
tive analytics simultaneously increases customer engagement by satisfying
customers’ need for meaningful affiliation and decreases customer engagement
by reducing customers’ sense of control. The framework further proposes that
the positive effect through need for meaningful affiliation is moderated by
customer self-construal and that the negative effect through sense of control is
moderated by data use transparency and trust. Figure 1 displays the proposed
theoretical framework. The theoretical relationships among the key constructs
are explained in detail.

3.1 Positive Influence Through Need for Meaningful Affiliation

As social beings, people have a need to belong (Baumeister & Leary, 1995;
Ryan & Deci, 2000a, 2000b) or, more fundamentally, a need for mean-
ingful affiliation. It is generally found in marketing studies that the affiliation

Self-construal

Need for meaningful

affiliation
+
+
Predictive Customer
analytics engagement
_
+
Sense of control

Data use transparency

Trust

Fig. 1 Theoretical framework for the effects of predictive analytics on customer

engagement
672 M. W. LIU ET AL.

between customers and companies resembles interpersonal affiliation, meaning

that customers can establish relationships with products, companies, and, most
importantly, brands (e.g., Belk, 1988; Fournier, 1998; Reimann et al., 2017).
In effect, customers need meaningful affiliation with brands and actively
seek to reinforce such affiliation. For instance, in a crowded environment,
customers tend to fulfill their need for social belongingness through attach-
ment to inanimate objects (Huang et al., 2018). When companies satisfy
customers’ need for meaningful affiliation, customers will display more posi-
tive responses, such as a heightened desire to make purchases, willingness to
spread positive word-of-mouth, and higher brand forgiveness (Huang et al.,
2018).
In traditional marketing, sales representatives and service staff can be
well aware of customers’ names, preferences, and purchase histories, hence
satisfying the customers’ need for meaningful affiliation. However, with the
ongoing homogenization and standardization of marketing practice, the need
for affiliation is often subsumed by large-scale marketing and advertising activ-
ities. Importantly, customers value the individual attention they receive during
their contact with companies. For example, as a crucial dimension of the
SERVQUAL model, which is widely applied in the service sector to capture
customers’ perception of service quality, empathy is defined as the “caring,
individualized attention the firm provides its customers” (Parasuraman et al.,
1988, p. 23). In the context of e-commerce, customers consider personaliza-
tion to be a salient determinant of perceived website interactivity (Song &
Zinkhan, 2008). Therefore, compared with traditional marketing campaigns,
predictive analytics can better satisfy customers’ need for meaningful affilia-
tion by making individual-specific predictions based on individual customers’
preferences. In effect, recent research has shown that many customers are
willing to share their personal data with companies to receive personalized
content based on predictive analytics (Ameen et al., 2022; Pallant et al., 2022;
Schweidel et al., 2022). Customers’ need for meaningful affiliation can also
drive their positive response to marketing offerings generated by predictive
analytics. In other words, customers are more likely display higher engagement
in predictive analytics when their need for meaningful affiliation is met. Hence,
this chapter proposes that predictive analytics increases customer engagement
through satisfying customers’ need for meaningful affiliation.

3.2 Negative Influence Through Sense of Control

Sense of control is defined as individuals’ belief about the extent to which
they can influence the environment and their outcomes (Kraus et al., 2009;
Skinner, 1996), which is distinct from individuals’ perceived control over their
own behavior in the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen, 1991; Armitage &
Conner, 2001). As individuals yearn to exert control over their everyday life
and surroundings, a sense of control is considered one of humanity’s most
fundamental psychological needs (Ryan & Deci, 2000a, 2000b). Sense of
 29 APPLYING PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS IN INTERACTIVE MARKETING … 673

control has far-reaching impacts on customer behavior and decision-making.

When customers’ sense of control dwindles, they are inclined to compensate
for it in ways that are not necessarily related to the source of control depriva-
tion (Kay et al., 2008). For example, customers may try to restore their sense
of control through behaviors such as supporting external systems (Kay et al.,
2008), purchasing utilitarian products (Chen et al., 2017), and variety seeking
(Yoon & Kim, 2018).
Predictive analytics requires customers’ personal data, such as individual
characteristics, online behavior, and purchase records as inputs. However,
customers usually have concerns about how their data will be used and
analyzed. Specifically, customers fear that their privacy might be leaked
(Aguirre et al., 2015; Kim et al., 2019; Lin et al., 2022). After disclosing
their personal information, customers often have no idea of how this infor-
mation will be stored and handled, and they lack the ability to manage and
protect this information, either of which places them in an inferior position in
terms of online information exchange (Walker, 2016). Therefore, their sense
of control is likely to be compromised. Previous research has shown that a
major reason that customers are reluctant to share their personal informa-
tion and engage in predictive analytics is that customers’ sense of control is
lowered due to their privacy concerns (Ameen et al., 2022; Pallant et al.,
2022; Schweidel et al., 2022). Besides, letting a company collect their data
threatens the customer’s sense of control over their own decision-making
process (Zwebner & Schrift, 2020). Moreover, customers’ lowered sense of
control can also drive their negative response to marketing offerings generated
by predictive analytics. Hence, this chapter proposes that predictive analytics
decreases customer engagement through lowering customers’ sense of control.

3.3 Moderating Effect of Self-Construal

Self-construal pertains to how individuals understand themselves and can
be further resolved into independent self-construal and interdependent self-
construal (Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Oyserman et al., 2002; Wu et al.,
2019). Independent self-construal means that a person views themselves as an
independent entity and highlights individuals’ independence and autonomy;
interdependent self-construal means that a person defines themselves in rela-
tion to other individuals and groups, and foregrounds relationships and
social connections (Cross et al., 2011; Markus & Kitayama, 1991). Cultur-
ally, self-construal is usually embodied as individualism (i.e., independent
self-construal) and collectivism (i.e., interdependent self-construal). Although
both self-concepts can coexist in any culture or individual, East Asian cultures
like China’s are usually characterized by interdependent self-construal, whereas
Western cultures like those of European countries and the U.S. tend to
exhibit a stronger independent self-construal (Markus & Kitayama, 1991).
Different types of self-construal can also be activated temporarily (Agrawal &
674 M. W. LIU ET AL.

Maheswaran, 2005; Liu et al., 2019), influencing individuals’ behavior and

decision-making in that moment.
While customers with an independent self-construal value independence,
freedom, and personal space, those with an interdependent self-construal value
the collective, as well as group and interpersonal relationships (Markus &
Kitayama, 1991; Oyserman et al., 2002; Wu et al., 2019). As a result, indi-
viduals with an interdependent self-construal have a more intense need for
meaningful affiliation than those with an independent self-construal. The latter
have a lower need for affiliation and, because of their predilection for inde-
pendent thinking (Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Oyserman et al., 2002; Wu
et al., 2019), may even nurture a distaste for companies’ attempts to influ-
ence their decision-making with predictive analytics. As predictive analytics
offers individual customers more attention and recommendations so that
they feel connected to companies, companies can better align with the rela-
tional needs of customers with an interdependent self-construal. Thus, this
chapter proposes that the positive effect of predictive analytics on customer
engagement is moderated by customer self-construal, such that interdepen-
dent self-construal reinforces customer engagement in predictive analytics,
whereas independent self-construal weakens customer engagement in predic-
tive analytics.

3.4 Moderating Effect of Data Use Transparency

The use of customer data by companies is usually governed by two trans-
parency strategies. The first, less transparent strategy is to avoid any emphasis
on information collection and use; the second, more transparent strategy is
to provide explanations insofar as possible (Gerlach et al., 2019). Previous
research has identified data use transparency as an important determinant that
mitigates the negative effects of information use (Awad & Krishnan, 2006;
Martin et al., 2017).
Owing to the anonymity of Internet use, prevailing solutions to problems
such as privacy concerns focus on regulating the use of personal informa-
tion and improving the transparency of data use (Milne & Culnan, 2004).
Under the condition of non-transparent data use, predictive analytics may
cause customers to believe that they are subject to information asymmetry,
thereby reducing their sense of control over the information and subsequently
reducing customer engagement. In contrast, greater data transparency can
reinforce customers’ sense of control and increase their engagement (Awad &
Krishnan, 2006; Grigorios et al., 2022; Kim et al., 2019). Thus, this chapter
proposes that the negative effect of predictive analytics on customer engage-
ment is moderated by data use transparency, such that transparent data
use reinforces customer engagement in predictive analytics, whereas non-
transparent data use weakens customer engagement in predictive analytics.
 29 APPLYING PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS IN INTERACTIVE MARKETING … 675

3.5 Moderating Effect of Trust

A widely adopted definition of trust is “a psychological state comprising the
intention to accept vulnerability based upon positive expectations of the inten-
tions or behavior of another” (Rousseau et al., 1998, p. 395). Trust is of
great importance to marketing research and practice. For customers who
frequently receive online recommendations, customer trust is based on long-
lasting satisfaction (Komiak & Benbasat, 2006). On the other hand, trust
influences customers’ attitudes and behavior in that stronger trust leads to
positive customer response to brands and companies (Kantsperger & Kunz,
2010; Sirdeshmukh et al., 2002). In the digital age, trust has become a major
tool for companies to sustain customer loyalty (Aguirre et al., 2015). In effect,
many e-commerce platforms such as eBay exist based on trust among their
users.
When customers decide whether to engage in predictive analytics, for
example, by disclosing their personal information to a company, they are
facing an uncertain condition and their sense of control is lowered. There-
fore, customers’ preexisting trust in the company plays an important role in
customers’ decision-making. When customers have high trust in the company,
they tend to share their information and data without worrying about whether
the company might take advantage of them (Cloarec et al., 2022; van Ooijen,
2022). However, when customers have low trust in the company, their low
sense of control including privacy concerns might be strengthened. There-
fore, this chapter proposes that the negative effect of predictive analytics on
customer engagement is moderated by customer trust in the company, such
that high trust reinforces customer engagement in predictive analytics, whereas
low trust weakens customer engagement in predictive analytics.

4 General Discussion
Drawing on the literature on two basic psychological needs proposed by
self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2000a, 2000b), i.e., need for
meaningful affiliation and sense of control, this chapter proposes a general
theoretical framework to understand how predictive analytics in interac-
tive marketing influences customer engagement. This chapter theorizes that
predictive analytics increases customer engagement by satisfying customers’
need for meaningful affiliation and decreases customer engagement by under-
mining customers’ sense of control simultaneously. This chapter also identifies
self-construal, data use transparency, and trust as important moderators for
the positive and negative influences of predictive analytics. In doing so, this
chapter presents both theoretical contributions and practical implications.
676 M. W. LIU ET AL.

4.1 Theoretical Contributions

Despite the burgeoning practice of predictive analytics in interactive
marketing, research has mostly assumed customers’ voluntary participation
and engagement, overlooking customers’ initiative in predictive analytics. To
fully understand customers’ role in predictive analytics, this chapter turns to
the psychological factors that determine customer engagement in predictive
analytics in interactive marketing. This chapter proposes a general theoretical
framework to incorporate the positive and negative influences of predictive
analytics on customer engagement, thus enhancing the understanding of the
critical role of customers’ psychological factors in customer engagement in
predictive analytics.
The psychological mechanisms underlying customer engagement in predic-
tive analytics are in effect underexplored. This chapter identifies need for
meaningful affiliation and sense of control as two distinct psychological factors
that have divergent effects on customer engagement, pointing to the value of
grasping customers’ psychological states in interactive marketing. In addition,
this chapter identifies the boundary conditions for the positive and negative
paths from predictive analytics to customer engagement. Specifically, the posi-
tive effect of predictive analytics on customer engagement through need for
meaningful affiliation is moderated by self-construal, while the negative effect
of predictive analytics on customer engagement through sense of control is
moderated by data use transparency and trust.

4.2 Practical Implications

Existing practice of predictive analytics has almost assumed that customers
will prefer personalized marketing campaigns to standardized ones and there-
fore will engage in predictive analytics. However, the theoretical framework
proposed in this chapter informs that companies which plan to employ
predictive analytics should take customers’ psychological factors into account.
Specifically, companies should realize that customers have not only a need for
meaningful affiliation but also privacy concerns and are afraid to lose sense
of control. Therefore, companies can try to promote the positive influence of
need for meaningful affiliation, and inhibit the negative influence of sense of
control.
The theoretical framework also suggests that companies and brands can
enhance customers’ sense of control by adopting a more transparent data
use strategy and enhancing customer trust in them. On the other hand,
they can prime customer self-construal through advertisements to strengthen
customers’ need for meaningful affiliation. Consequently, this chapter would
help companies to encourage customer engagement in predictive analytics and
finally increase sales and customer satisfaction. In addition, this chapter also
offers policymakers potentially useful guidance on policymaking for stimu-
lating domestic demand and increasing industrial efficiency in the age of digital
 29 APPLYING PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS IN INTERACTIVE MARKETING … 677

economy. For example, policymakers can enforce strict laws and regulations to
protect customers’ privacy and other interests to free customers from worrying
about losing control, which will encourage customer engagement in predictive
analytics.

4.3 Future Research Directions

The framework proposed in this chapter integrates prior research on predic-
tive analytics and customer engagement. Yet, it is theoretical in nature and
future research could provide empirical examinations. Customers’ need for
meaningful affiliation and sense of control can be affected by other marketing
factors (e.g., previous experiences and satisfaction) and contextual factors (e.g.,
time pressure), which needs future research. In addition, “big data overcharg-
ing” or “big data price discrimination,” i.e., the practice of differential pricing
based on the predictions of price ranges acceptable to customers using available
information, by Chinese trip booking companies such as Ctrip and Qunar.com
has exposed another downside of predictive analytics to the public. Previous
research indicates that algorithm-based pricing eliminates people’s responsi-
bility and might result in ethical issues (Johnson, 2015). Therefore, future
research could study how ethical issues influence customer engagement in
predictive analytics.

Acknowledgements This chapter is supported by the National Natural Science Foun-

dation of China (72072098, 71991462), the Beijing Social Science Foundation
Key Program (18GLA005), and Tsinghua University Initiative Scientific Research
Program.

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 CHAPTER 30

AI-Based Recommendation Systems: The

Ultimate Solution for Market Prediction
and Targeting

Sandra Habil, Sara El-Deeb, and Noha El-Bassiouny

1 Introduction
Artificial intelligence (AI) is a global revolutionary phenomenon. As a disrup-
tive technology, it has transformed how people live, work, behave, and
socialize (Robinson et al., 2020). Furthermore, it has changed multiple indus-
tries and the retail sector in particular (Pillai et al., 2020; Shankar et al., 2021).
In this regard, consumers are now concerned about technology worldwide.
They expect value creation from retailers through their response to the tech-
nological advancements of this era (Hwang & Oh, 2020). Relatedly, value
creation has started to shift away from in-store channels and toward online
platforms. This value can be created by identifying the needs, behaviors, pref-
erences, and interests of individuals and meeting them in the retail sector
(Adapa et al., 2020). Therefore, multiple mega firms (such as Google, Face-
book, Netflix, and Amazon) started to incorporate AI-driven systems in their
online activities using retargeted ads and recommendation systems (Shah et al.,
2020). In contrast, several retailers face obstacles in terms of satisfying their

S. Habil (B) · S. El-Deeb · N. El-Bassiouny

German University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt
e-mail: sandra.metry.habil@gmail.com
S. El-Deeb
e-mail: Sara.eldeeb@guc.edu.eg
N. El-Bassiouny
e-mail: Noha.elbassiouny@guc.edu.eg

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 683

Switzerland AG 2023
C. L. Wang (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Interactive Marketing,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14961-0_30
684 S. HABIL ET AL.

consumers’ needs, understanding their demands, and competing in the current

challenging retail landscape. This is due to the absence of technology-oriented
systems in their business (Adapa et al., 2020; Aloysius et al., 2018; Hossain
et al., 2020).
Thanks to AI systems, new opportunities have been introduced to
humanize consumer interaction with online platforms and the new disruptive
technologies. These systems have changed the framework of marketing strate-
gies and online consumer behaviors (Davenport et al., 2020; Wang, 2021). In
the context of e-retailing, the main advantage of online shopping is to save
time and effort. Nowadays, online shopping lost its advantage. This is due
to the fact that consumers spend too much time surfing dozens of websites
because of the countless number of products on offer in addition to the online
information overload. Therefore, personalized recommendation systems have
become the golden key to enhancing the online shopping process. These
systems provide the consumers with relevant recommendations that meet their
selection criteria and satisfy their needs (Liao et al., 2021).
Several scholars have shed light on the fact that the value of AI is not solely
reflected in technology performance. Notably, the value of AI is associated
with consumers’ perceptions of and attitudes toward technology acceptance,
privacy terms, their sense of trust, the level of human interaction required,
and the overall experience expected (Hallikainen et al., 2019). In this regard,
many scholars have shown high interest in studying various technical features
of AI in relation to marketing activities. However, there is an unfulfilled gap
regarding AI value creation (Payne et al., 2021). This is due to the fact that
several authors do not consider these technologies as fundamental tools for
marketing analysis, but only characterize them as operational tools. Besides,
few studies have traced a relationship between marketers and consumers in the
AI era. Similarly, there is a noticeable discrepancy between what consumers’
need and what marketers offer (Yu, 2021).
The main aim of the chapter is to fill the gap in terms of the value
creation that can be provided by recommendation systems and retargeting
ads as AI-driven systems in the retail sector. In addition, this chapter portrays
how these systems can help retailers predict consumer needs and meet their
demands through personalized recommendations and ads. Notably, the find-
ings of this chapter represent the first empirical contribution to the interactive
marketing literature by representing how recommendation systems and retar-
geting can create value for consumers and businesses. Furthermore, this
chapter presents a case study that combines the theory and practice of
personalized recommendation systems and retargeted ads used by Amazon.
Regarding the chapter structure, it starts with an overview of AI and its
role in the interactive marketing field. Then, various types of recommendation
systems are presented after identifying the role of recommendation systems
and personalization in the retail sector. Afterward, the retargeting technique
is portrayed and followed by a case study on Amazon. Lastly, a conclusion is
 30 AI-BASED RECOMMENDATION SYSTEMS: THE ULTIMATE SOLUTION … 685

drawn, along with a summary of the theoretical and practical implications of

the findings and further directions for future research.

2 Literature Review
2.1 Artificial Intelligence Overview
AI is a state of the art that turns the world into an interconnected network.
The integration scope of AI has evolved to reach several sectors such as
medicine, education, manufacturing, and e-commerce. Relatedly, it acts as
an interactive marketing tactic in terms of achieving multiple marketing
objectives such as customer attraction, framing the total customer experi-
ence, and designing their future expectations and behaviors (Verma et al.,
2021). Notably, AI apps are efficient in studying consumer habits, decisions,
preferences, and purchases (Chatterjee et al., 2019).
The term “intelligence” has a wide scope of dentitions and it is difficult to
tackle it from a single perspective. Even today AI does not have a standard
definition. Although it seems like a new technology, the roots of AI go back
to the 1950s (Haenlein & Kaplan, 2019). Notably, AI was first introduced
by John McCarthy (De Bruyn et al., 2020; McCarthy, 2007). Artificial Intel-
ligence (AI) is defined as “the science and engineering of making intelligent
machines, especially intelligent computer programs” (Tussyadiah, 2020, p. 2).
However, critics pointed out that the definition of AI cannot be standardized
as it evolves over time. As a result, the term “Artificial General Intelligence”
(AGI) was introduced to reflect what has been achieved by technology so far.
Therefore, the definition of AGI is described as “everything we cannot do yet”
(De Bruyn et al., 2020).
With the presence of AI in the e-commerce sector, the online customer
journey has proved its success over the classical journeys as they can easily be
monitored by the new technologies. Lately, companies have been able to keep
tracking their consumers’ online behaviors through their rate of clicks and
their interests, preferences, and previous search (Lies, 2019). To elaborate, AI
has enabled a comprehensive analysis by tracking consumers’ time spent on
certain websites, monitoring shopping baskets and checkout clicks in order
to provide a better presentation for the future recommended ads (Bag et al.,
2021; Lies, 2019).

2.2 Interactive Marketing in Artificial Intelligence Era

“Interactive marketing” has become a controversial area in terms of its defini-
tion. Lately, the technological transformation, mobile applications, and digital
transactions have allowed most marketing activities to be interactive. For
instance, various marketing practices can be conducted virtually such as post-
purchase services, consumer-brand relationships, and data analysis processes.
These practices help gather data about consumers and generate beneficial
686 S. HABIL ET AL.

insights to the firms. This is due to the appearance of new patterns of e-

consumer behaviors while conducting endless interactions. Relatedly, these
interactions can provide dozens of data records such as online buying behavior,
location, and the viewership rate of ads and videos. Therefore, interac-
tive marketing is no longer limited to direct marketing or even to internet
marketing. In addition, the scope has been widened beyond classical activi-
ties to introduce new virtual world and interactive content to consumers and
businesses (Moe & Ratchford, 2018; Wang, 2021).
According to Wang (2021, p. 1), interactive marketing is defined as “the
bi-directional value creation and mutual-influence marketing process through
active customer connection, engagement, participation and interaction”. In
other words, the aforementioned definition highlights the dynamics of the
interactive marketing process. To elaborate, the nature of the interchange-
able communication exchanged between consumers and firms’ ads/offerings
are denoted in addition to the bilateral values added to both parties. The
instant consumer reaction is a mandatory element in this process as it reshapes
consumer behaviors in the future. As a result, the need for new innovative
technology to align with the everyday advancements has been introduced by
the “interactive technologies”.
According to Varadarajan et al. (2010, p. 97), interactive technology is
defined as “ methods, tools or devices that allow various entities (individ-
uals, machines, or organizations) to engage in mediated communication to
facilitate the planning and consummation of exchanges between them”. In
other words, these kinds of technologies enable two-way communication
between consumers and retailers. This bidirectional interaction is coupled
with instant feedback in the mediated environment through interactive expe-
riences. Notably, interactive technologies have transformed the classical way
of communicating in marketing activities and the consumer decision-making
process (Cao & Li, 2018).
Thanks to AI revolutionary systems, the classical paradigm of interactive
marketing is reshaped and doors are opened to confront a novel spectrum of
new digital interactive relationships. This new transformation is expanded to
multiple sectors such as retail, fashion, entertainment, and tourism. Conse-
quently, the new technologies (i.e., AR, VR, chatbots, and voice assistants)
played a major role in articulating interactive, tailored, and personalized
content and experiences. In this sense, these technologies widened the scope
of interactivity. The relationship between marketer and consumer has changed
to a new equation that includes the promoting brand (Ameen et al., 2021;
Flavián et al., 2019; Rauschnabel et al., 2019; Wang, 2021).
Furthermore, the doors have been opened for new interactive marketing
strategies to be developed. These strategies can introduce new opportunities
for marketers to predict the market trends of consumer behaviors in relation
to AI. In this sense, these new trends can enrich the existing research domains
in theory and practice by introducing new interactive tools for achieving
 30 AI-BASED RECOMMENDATION SYSTEMS: THE ULTIMATE SOLUTION … 687

multiple marketing objectives (Lim et al., 2022). In the context of inter-

active marketing, the recommendation system is a well-noted phenomenon
providing interactive personalized content and advertising activities based on
consumers’ online activities (Jain & Aggarwal, 2020; Rese et al., 2020).
Significantly, recommendation systems can contribute in enhancing the overall
shopping experience. Furthermore, these systems enrich e-retailers with the
great value provided by various cross-selling channels where consumers enjoy
standardized personalized offers on the e-retailer’s platforms (Cirqueira et al.,
2020; Zimmermann et al., 2022).
Within the same domain, interactive marketing concentrates on online
customer relationship management, which includes customer’s journey, post-
purchase activities, social media interactions, and customized content and
ads. On the other hand, interactive marketing has introduced new ways for
businesses to use algorithms that help in numerous virtual activities such as
retargeting, recommendations, and customized content strategies. Nowadays,
most AI-based systems focus on user orientation, namely, recommendation
systems and retargeting. User orientation is defined as “the ability to provide
content and service that are tailored to individuals based on their prefer-
ences and behaviors” (Kurtz et al., 2021, p. 72). Due to the round-the-clock
developments originating from technology, a call is necessary for research
into diversified areas including online advertising, recommendation systems,
retargeting advertising, and content personalization, which will be showcased
throughout the current chapter (Moe & Ratchford, 2018; Wang, 2021).

2.3 Recommendation Systems (RS)

In order to understand the role of AI-driven systems in creating value,
“personalization” should be explained. The following section will highlight
how personalization plays an important role in delivering content through
recommendation systems and retargeted ads.

2.3.1 Personalization
The e-retail sector is a very aggressive marketplace in terms of competition.
Therefore, companies are seeking new ways to differentiate themselves from
competitors (Winter et al., 2021). For instance, huge amounts of money
are spent to gather consumers’ data that can be used in further marketing
and strategic objectives. These data can generate accurate targeting, personal-
ized recommendations, consumer profiling, and new behavior insights (Hayes
et al., 2021). As a solution, multiple AI-driven systems provide personalization
in order to create a business competitive advantage to the retailers. Notably,
personalization is defined as “incorporating recognizable aspects of a person
in the content information” (Winter et al., 2021, p. 2). New technologies
have facilitated the process of the consumer personal data collection, opening
the door for marketers to tailor personalized ads with high levels of effective-
ness (Grigorios et al., 2022). Surprisingly, sometimes consumers reveal their
688 S. HABIL ET AL.

personal data intentionally through various forms of online activity (Naeem &
Ozuem, 2021; Zhu & Kanjanamekanant, 2021).
Notably, personalization is a fundamental tool for co-creating value by
meeting individualistic needs. To elaborate, personalized content can intro-
duce different forms of value in terms of convenience, relevant choices,
related solutions for consumers, and facilitating the decision-making process
(Alimamy & Gnoth, 2022). Significantly, personalized AI technologies activate
the value-in-use concept. To elaborate, when consumers perceive the person-
alized online shopping offers, they can visualize the value to be gained from
the e-retailer platform. Accordingly, their perception of the brand and the
e-retailer will be influenced positively (Shen et al., 2020). Relatedly, person-
alization can enhance the e-retailers performance. This is due to the fact that
consumers are more attracted to retailers providing personalized content. On
the other hand, personalization plays an important role in creating value in
terms of online shopping trust and risk. Consequently, when personalization
is closely related to accurate, relevant, and specific consumer needs, the level
of risk can be reduced (Malshe & Friend, 2018). In this sense, personaliza-
tion has an influence on consumers’ attitudes and purchase intentions, which
are the main antecedents of their online behaviors (Alimamy & Gnoth, 2022;
Ameen et al., 2022).
Nowadays, firms customize their offerings to consumers, enhancing their
online shopping experience. In addition to this, personalization helps in
profiling consumers based on their names, pictures, gender, and prior online
activities for example watching movies and website visits (Pfiffelmann et al.,
2020). Notably, personalized content can achieve a significant impact in rela-
tion to consumers’ attraction to the ads, wider scope of acceptance, and
increasing the time spent viewing ads (Winter et al., 2021). Surprisingly 70%
of consumers expect personalized experience from the retailers. On the other
hand, 53% of marketers apply personalization in their strategies (HubSpot,
2022).

2.3.2 Recommendation Systems Overview

In order to provide personalized content, a huge amount of data is required.
These data provide valuable information to understand consumers’ online
behavior and explore new behavior trends. Thanks to AI, large quantities of
data can be precisely managed and analyzed by AI applications such as data-
driven tools and machine learning (ML). In addition, these tools introduce
error-free forecasts about consumer demand and purchasing patterns to the e-
retailers. All these benefits can be achieved by using ML and data-driven tools
such as recommendation systems. Notably, recommendation systems represent
two-sided added value to the e-retailers and consumers. They can present an
optimal customer experience and can affect consumers’ purchase intentions,
as well as their decision-making process. On the other hand, these systems can
 30 AI-BASED RECOMMENDATION SYSTEMS: THE ULTIMATE SOLUTION … 689

yield useful insights to firms, allowing them to successfully introduce person-

alized value propositions to their consumers (Kliestik et al., 2022; Longoni &
Cian, 2022; Rausch et al., 2022).
Generally, AI has allowed firms to perform outstandingly for both
consumers and suppliers (Haenlein & Kaplan, 2019; Mogaji et al., 2020).
No doubt, some businesses have claimed that, if they do not implement AI
in the near future, they will leave the market. Other firms that are using AI
in their operations have proved its success in achieving higher profits (Stone
et al., 2020). Recently, e-commerce activities have been consumer-centric as
consumers become the major interactive players in this reformed marketplace
(Pagani et al., 2019). Therefore, the user and the marketing features are
two fundamental components of any classical recommendation system as it
becomes the new digital market prediction tool (Zhang et al., 2021a).
A recommendation system (RS) is described as “a program which attempts
to recommend the most suitable products/services to a user, aims at providing
personalized services by retrieving the most relevant information and services
from the Big Data generated on open, private, social and IoT (Internet of
Things) data islands” (Beheshti et al., 2020, p. 2). Besides, the main aim
of these systems is to simplify consumers’ choices and give them a hand in
decision-making. In this sense, the recommendation systems can generate
customized offers for consumers that are derived from their past behav-
iors in terms of search, likes, preferences, and previous online website clicks
(Sundari & Subaji, 2020).
Recommendation systems have proved a great success in achieving multiple
marketing objectives for retailers such as increasing sales volume. They also
play an important role in providing higher levels of satisfaction. In addi-
tion, useful insights can be generated from various types of recommendation
systems. This is due to the fact that these systems can provide a new method
for marketers to reach the right segment through different phases of their
shopping journey. In this regard, consumers gain great value from recom-
mendation systems through information searches and product comparison
processes. Added to this, the personalized content provided by these systems
increases the chance of buying new products. In contrast, recommendation
systems are perceived as a “black box” for online shoppers. As a result, the
level of consumer trust in the e-retailer platform is affected. This is due to
the fact that consumers do not understand how these systems work and why
these suggestions are presented to them (Adadi & Berrada, 2018; Rodgers &
Nguyen, 2022; Zimmermann et al., 2022).

2.3.3 Types of Recommendation Systems

For deeper understanding, this chapter showcases multiple types of recom-
mendation system: Demographic-based filtering, Knowledge Graphs-based
Recommendation System (KGs), Collaborative-based filtering (CF), Content-
based filtering (CBF), Context-Aware Recommendation Systems (CARS), and
Hybrid-based filtering (HF).
690 S. HABIL ET AL.

Demographic-Based Filtering
Demographic-based filtering is another articulation of a recommendation
system technique. It is considered as a preliminary tool used when any
firm starts to integrate recommendation systems into their operations. Prac-
tically, it operates based on demographics data collected about consumers
in terms of age, gender, and geographical location. Relatedly, demographic-
based filtering depends on profiling consumers into correlated groups. The
recommendations are derived based on the similarity between consumers’
homogeneous characteristics. Additionally, this method occasionally leverages
on consumers’ personality traits and emotional states (Gazdar & Hidri, 2020;
Quijano-Sánchez et al., 2020; Renjith et al., 2020; Srivastava et al., 2020).

Knowledge Graphs-Based Recommendation System (KGs)

For advanced personalized recommendations, Knowledge graphs-based
recommendation system (KGs) is introduced. To pinpoint, KGs has proved its
significance in visualizing the relationships between consumers’ characteristics
and what is offered. In other words, it has the remarkable capability of iden-
tifying consumers’ preferences from their former behaviors. Technically, this
system has the ability to store and accumulate information about consumers’
interests, preferences, and needs. Further, it depends on the knowledge of
consumers while generating the tailored recommendations. As a result, it is
characterized by a high level of accurate personalization techniques. With
respect to its performance, KGs lacks the consideration of consumers’ contex-
tual events, which act as a fundamental key to predicting consumers’ future
behaviors. Importantly, these events play an important role in interpreting
consumers’ non-stop changing behaviors. Lastly, KGs substitutes the insuf-
ficient online data that are considered as an indicative foundation for accurate
future predictions (Guruge et al., 2021; Renjith et al., 2020; Zhang et al.,
2021b).

Collaborative-Based Filtering (CF)

One of the most significant types of recommendation systems is collaborative-
based filtering (CF). This method is widely implemented in different sectors
because of its superiority in terms of accuracy and its lack of complexity.
Notably, CF outcomes are based on the data generated from preceding online
buying behaviors of consumers who have similar preferences and activities.
This technique relies on the fact that consumers make persistent choices
over time. Notably, CF algorithms are articulated based on two approaches:
memory-based CF and model-based CF. First, the memory-based approach
generates scores for multiple users or item similarity, then provides recommen-
dations based on similar or relative scores. Second, the model-based approach
works on a prediction basis. To elaborate, it predicts consumers’ preference
of the uncategorized items and recommends them to consumers by using
machine learning technique in the consumer profiling (Nawara & Kashef,
2021; Sharma et al., 2021; Srivastava et al., 2020; Zhang et al., 2021a).
 30 AI-BASED RECOMMENDATION SYSTEMS: THE ULTIMATE SOLUTION … 691

Content-Based Filtering (CBF)

Content-based filtering (CBF) is the fourth type of recommendation system.
This type provides a high level of interactivity between consumers and the
system. In other words, content-based filtering capitalizes on consumers’
favorites, interests, and interactions with online items. Afterward, recommen-
dations are developed based on similar products or items. Notably, this tech-
nique considers certain ratings on unsearched items using keywords and tag
algorithms. Importantly, it is a very successful tool for providing customized
recommendations. In particular, CBF has the ability to use the deep learning
method in order to create image classifications. After analyzing the images
viewed online by the consumers, correct recommendations of similar items
are personalized. Apart from effective personalization, this recommendation
system does not provide a high level of recommendation accuracy (Guruge
et al., 2021; Nawara & Kashef, 2021; Renjith et al., 2020; Srivastava et al.,
2020).

Context-Aware Recommendation Systems (CARS)

In order to understand Context-Aware Recommendation Systems (CARS),
context conceptualization should be explained. Relatedly, “context” is defined
as “the identity of items or users, for example, their locations, time, activities or
any changes that can happen to them” (Nawara & Kashef, 2021, p. 144272).
Notably, the recommendations originated by CARS are derived from direct
and indirect data relative to users’ context, settings, and surrounding environ-
ment. In particular, the direct data are related to personal information such as
birthdate, gender, etc. In contrast, the indirect data can be derived from users’
location, time zone, events, etc. Surprisingly, the contextual information has
become the key factor for consumer decision-making. For example, location
matters when a consumer decides to go shopping, as he/she will look for
the nearby shopping centers that are recommended (Hasanzadeh et al., 2022;
Nawara & Kashef, 202 l; Srivastava et al., 2020; Zhang et al., 2021b).
Contextual information is also related to online events. For instance, activ-
ities such as rating items or buying certain products can lead to a larger scope
of interaction between consumers and the system. Furthermore, it can predict
relative sequential events due to its ability to reflect consumers’ interests and
preferences. Unexpectedly, CARS has been criticized for its inaccurate perfor-
mance due to the drawback of previous behavior avoidance. Consequently, it
may result in non-personalized recommendations and misleading suggestions
(Alghamdi & Assiri, 2020; Nawara & Kashef, 2021; Zhang et al., 2021b).

Hybrid-Based Filtering (HF)

Another remarkable recommendation system is Hybrid-based Filtering (HF).
This approach is based on merging at least two types of recommendation
systems. Although each system performs independently, the operation of both
can be integrated in order to provide an enhanced single recommendation.
692 S. HABIL ET AL.

To be precise, HF is considered the final outcome of combining content-

based filtering (CBF) and collaborative-based filtering (CF). Relatedly, the
main advantage of HF capitalizes on providing accurate customized recom-
mendations. Relatedly, multiple systems integration helps avoid the drawbacks
faced when using each system separately. Notably, HF succeeds in overcoming
many of CARS’ limitations in terms of accuracy and in considering the history
of consumers’ online behaviors (Amer et al., 2021; Nawara & Kashef, 2021;
Renjith et al., 2020; Singh et al., 2021).

2.4 Retargeting
Consumers’ online behavior data can be presented in the form of website
activity, previous searches, and data usage (such as purchasing behavior,
click-through ads, social networking sites interactions, and individuals’ email
addresses). Consequently, these data become companies’ trove for devel-
oping personalized ads, using cookies as a tracking method. Remarkably,
what distinguishes online ads from personalized ones is the relevant content.
Following from this, online behavioral targeting (OBT) significantly translates
consumers’ collected data into individually tailored content (Boerman et al.,
2017; Li & Nill, 2020; Puri & Mohan, 2020).
Within the AI domain, OBT becomes the new market prediction solu-
tion. This type of targeting is based on consumers’ online behavior in visiting
a particular website or after being exposed to an ad but not reaching the
purchase phase. Surprisingly, this method has started being implemented
extensively in the e-commerce sector (Sahni et al., 2019). Online Behavioral
Targeting (OBT) is defined as “the practice of delivering relevant, personal-
ized messages to consumers based on the analysis of their online behaviors and
sometimes other available metrics such as demographics and geographic data”
(Liu & Wei, 2021, p. 1). In other words, OBT presents personalized spon-
sored ads showcasing previously checked products or websites visited earlier
by the consumers (Puri & Mohan, 2020).
Notably, the significance of these ads is pinpointed as a multi beneficial tool.
From the consumers’ side, they perceive it as a very informative and helpful
online tool and decision-maker. On the other hand, the performance of busi-
nesses can be enhanced after applying online behavioral targeting in terms of
ROI, sales, and a higher number of website visits (Hamby & Ilyuk, 2019;
Li & Nill, 2020; Liu & Wei, 2021). To complete the picture, the high level
of personalization presented through behavioral targeting is created by “retar-
geted ad”. Retargeted ads are considered to be another facet of behavioral
targeting (Boerman et al., 2017).
A well-denoted phenomenon is that consumers do not think rationally all
the time when they make purchase decisions. They activate different internal
criteria when they react to certain stimuli (ads). Sometimes consumers act
impulsively, while other times they think about the information they are
exposed to. Meanwhile, the nature of an ad plays an important role in
 30 AI-BASED RECOMMENDATION SYSTEMS: THE ULTIMATE SOLUTION … 693

consumers’ reactions, perceptions, and behaviors. According to their nature

of personalization, retargeted ads let consumers behave rationally as they act
like a marketer. To elaborate, when consumers are exposed to the product
they were just checking earlier on a website, they stop, check, and think about
buying it. In fact, it was demonstrated that the higher compatibility between
an ad and the context of the website that appeared in, the more positive
the consumers’ perceptions. Notably, retargeted ads represent a high level of
persuasion, which helps decrease consumer ads irritation that may occur (Aiolfi
et al., 2021; Hamby & Ilyuk, 2019).
According to Pinasang et al. (2020, p. 2108), retargeting is described
as “the practice of serving ads based on prior engagement”. In the digital
marketing domain, retargeting is a conspicuous method aimed at reaching
e-consumers. It concentrates on the consumers who visited certain websites
with the intention of buying a certain item but who did not complete their
purchase. In the e-commerce sector, retargeting is presented as e-commerce
cart retargeting (ECR). ECR is defined as “a form of digital behavioral retar-
geting wherein online reminder ads are delivered to consumers who had carted
products but left without purchasing” (Aiolfi et al., 2021, p. 1093). In this
sense, retargeting significantly translates consumers’ buying intentions into
actual buying behavior (Pinasang et al., 2020).
On the bright side, retargeted ads play an important role in company/brand
differentiation among competitors. Notably, it can generate favorable reactions
from multiple consumers when ads are perceived as suitable within the website
context, in addition to content quality. As a result, the rate of acceptance for
these ads can be increased as well as higher intentions of ad clicks (Van den
Broeck et al., 2020). In the same sense, retargeted ads are very beneficial for
consumers in terms of product information and content relevance. Therefore,
these ads provide very significant marketing outcomes. For practitioners, these
ads resulted in higher profits in comparison to non-personalized ads. Addition-
ally, it has been proved that retargeted ads can increase the number of website
visits by 14%. Accordingly, marketers have started to integrate retargeted ads
extensively in their campaigns. Thus, 50% of online campaign budget are allo-
cated to these retargeted ads by 70% of the marketers (Goic et al., 2021;
Hamby & Ilyuk, 2019).
On the dark side, retargeted ads are still a controversial research area. The
main role of these ads is to remind the consumers about what they left while
surfing the e-retailer website. However, retargeted ads do not always result
in good outcomes. It has been argued that a high frequency of these ads
can result in consumers’ annoyance. Not only that, but the e-retailer and/or
the product can be viewed negatively due to this irritation effect. Further-
more, these ads may seem to consumers to be an obstacle while they engage
in online activities. In this sense, these personalized ads can be susceptible
to consumers which may adversely affect ad acceptance. Notably, the new
retargeting techniques endeavor to reduce the time elapsed between the two
694 S. HABIL ET AL.

actions of abandoning the main website and the appearance of the retargeted
ad (Lee et al., 2021; Li et al., 2021).
However, the time factor in the retargeting strategy is a double-edged
weapon. It is very tricky to deploy retargeted ads a few minutes after leaving
the website, as it may lead to unfavorable outcomes. These ads may seem like a
dominating marketer represented by the e-retailer in order to direct consumers
toward what they buy. In the same sense, consumers might perceive these ads
as a pressuring tool used by the advertiser to generate profits as a way of
helping them. Therefore, it backfires to the extent of stopping the consumers
from buying the product and decreasing the sales volume for the firm (Aiolfi
et al., 2021; Li et al., 2021). However, retargeted ads can increase consumers’
concerns about privacy and personal data disclosure as a typical AI system
dilemma. This is because consumers become aware that any form of person-
alization will automatically require sensitive personal information (Hamby &
Ilyuk, 2019; Li & Nill, 2020; Puri & Mohan, 2020).

2.5 Personalized Recommendations, Proven Results—Amazon Case

Study
About Amazon: In 1994, the first US-based e-commerce company was
founded by Jeff Bezos. Back then, Amazon started as an online book
store. Over time, it witnessed high success by becoming the largest online
bookstore. In reaching this goal, Amazon is now the platform where any
consumer goes to shop online. It is a marketplace where sellers and buyers
are easily connected worldwide. Besides, it allows an array of digital transac-
tions involving various product categories between the aforementioned parties.
Notably, Amazon.com used their name as a logo to reflect the variety of
product categories offered from A to Z (Althafairi et al., 2019; Hänninen,
2020; Türegün, 2019).
Besides its geographical expansion, Amazon owns more than 40 subsidiaries
(such as Amazon Prime, Abebooks.com, and Amazon Drive). Relatedly, it
provides a variety of products, including but not limited to DVDs, video
games, electronics, clothing, and even online books. According to its tech-
nological advancement, Amazon was recently technically characterized as a
logistics platform and, as an internal advertising platform, in addition to
its main activity of e-commerce. All of these efforts opened the door for
Amazon to be ranked as number one B2C e-retailer in 2021. This is due to
its high levels of convenience, product variety, and availability in addition to
the cheaper prices (Althafairi et al., 2019; Amazon.com, 2021; Amazon Jobs,
2022). In the era of Covid-19, how did Amazon achieve this success in the
last couple of years?
Amazon’s Personalization Efforts: Undoubtedly, Amazon.com is a pioneer
e-commerce platform applying AI in their operations in order to add value
for their consumers. Amazon.com was the earliest subsidiary of Amazon Inc.
 30 AI-BASED RECOMMENDATION SYSTEMS: THE ULTIMATE SOLUTION … 695

to satisfy consumers’ needs by providing personalized real-time recommenda-

tions. Therefore, Amazon Personalize was introduced and relied on the most
common AI method ML, in order to provide personalized content. Signif-
icantly, Amazon opened the doors for its consumers to enjoy personalized
experiences, products, recommendations, and tailored direct marketing activi-
ties. Notably, the highest positive impact of personalization was found in the
sectors of retailing and entertainment. Although consumers may have concerns
about personalization and data security, Amazon has kept its promise to secure
their data in compliance with data protection global regulations (AWS Amazon
Personalize, 2021).

By using Amazon Personalize, we have seen a 5 × “increase in response

to recommended products compared to our prior big data analytics solution
resulting in increased revenue per month. In particular, Amazon Personalize
has increased the number of products that the customer has never purchased
before up to 40%. Jaehyun Shin, Big Data Team Leader (Lotte Mart) (AWS
Amazon Personalize, 2021)

Amazon Personalize is described as “a fully managed machine learning

service that goes beyond rigid, static rule-based recommendation systems and
trains, tunes, and deploys custom ML models to deliver highly customized
recommendations to customers across industries such as retail and media and
entertainment” (AWS Amazon Personalize, 2021). Importantly, it added value
to the multitude of global brands in various sectors such as Marc O’Polo,
Lotte Mart, Yamaha, Coursera, Subway, and Domino’s Pizza. All the collab-
orations between Amazon and these mega brands reveal huge success in
providing significant personalization for each brand based on its sector. These
collaborations have resulted in a high volume of sales, consumer satisfaction,
and consumer loyalty. In particular, the e-retail sector has gained numerous
benefits from Amazon Personalize. For instance, it has helped add value to
consumers and brands in terms of articulating unique website experiences,
refining product recommendations, shortening new product discovery times,
and providing customized consumer notifications pushed to their mobiles and
email (AWS Amazon Personalize, 2021).
Remarkably, this kind of ad is exclusively enabled for eligible products
within specific products categories. Geographically, Amazon sellers can apply
these ads worldwide, in the Middle East, Europe, South and North America,
and Asia–Pacific. Astonishingly, after the first year of launching, Amazon
witnessed a weekly increase of almost 40% in orders derived from their retar-
geted sponsored ads. In addition, the viewership of product details increased
by 54% on a weekly basis because of these ads (Amazon Ads, 2020). Here is
the question: how can Amazon solve the dilemma of providing personalized
content and protecting consumers’ personal data?
Within the domain of transparency and privacy regulations implemented
worldwide, Amazon has taken several actions in the consumer data protection
696 S. HABIL ET AL.

direction. To pinpoint, Amazon is engaged in multiple long-term commit-

ments to ensure higher levels of privacy and data protection for consumers.
Namely, there are several restrictions applied by Amazon to meet the global
standards for consumer privacy, such as the General Data Protection Regula-
tion (GDPR) and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Directive (the
ePrivacy Directive). For consumers, Amazon ensures high levels of cookies and
data tracking customization based on their preferences. Amazon also clarifies
their security and data management terms for third parties in accordance with
global data privacy standards (Amazon Ads, 2022).
Amazon Recommendation Systems and Retargeting Techniques: To focus
on the personalized ads and recommendations in the MENA region, a personal
communication was conducted with Mr. R.H. (Amazon Global Marketing
specialist, MENA region and France). Talking about MENA Amazon, he
clarified that consumers are now aware of personalized and retargeted ads
in the retail sector. In the same sense, Amazon provides a comprehensive
package of benefits and values for consumers and suppliers. On the consumers’
side, he revealed that they demonstrate a high level of satisfaction regarding
these ads. They were perceived as a helpful and informative tool while shop-
ping on Amazon as they facilitated the decision-making process. Surprisingly,
although consumers may have some concerns about their data tracking, they
did not engage in any negative behavior regarding the privacy issues. Notably,
Amazon kept its promises to consumers in terms of guaranteeing a high level
of data security. In contrast with rival websites, Mr. R.H. mentioned that
“Amazon provides tailored and retargeted ads based on the ‘keywords’ used in
the search” which represents content-based filtering recommendation system.
Further, he explained that keyword searches provided the consumers with
personalized ads including sponsored brands and products.
On the other hand, MENA Amazon allowed business to gain fruitful
outcomes from personalization such as a higher chance of product being
viewed. To illustrate, consumers commonly surf the first two or three pages of
Amazon’s platform, which resonates with suppliers’ interest in using retargeted
ads. Technically, Amazon helps the suppliers place their ads in earlier results
webpages when consumers search about similar products. Furthermore, Mr.
R.H. highlighted that the effectiveness of this tool translates to a higher sales
volume for suppliers who integrate the customized sponsored ads. Given the
above, Amazon is framed as an efficient marketing budget allocator. It does
not charge advertisers for ad viewership while the consumer is scrolling the
platform. However, advertisers will be charged when the consumer clicks on
the sponsored ad.
To conclude, Amazon pinpoints a significant mark in the development of
personalization and consumer data privacy. Amazon also has solved the equa-
tion of how to develop recommendations while ensuring the highest level of
data security. Furthermore, Amazon’s personalized recommendation system
becomes different by applying the “keyword” method for providing these ads
instead of cookies and data tracking techniques. All these efforts have resulted
 30 AI-BASED RECOMMENDATION SYSTEMS: THE ULTIMATE SOLUTION … 697

in Amazon being identified as a very truthful e-retailer that complies with

the global standards of privacy in accordance with GDPR and the ePrivacy
Directive.

3 Conclusion, Implications, and Future Research

The main goal of the current chapter has been to portray how recom-
mendation systems and retargeting can help create value for consumers and
businesses through interchangeable facets of personalization. The findings
contribute to the interactive marketing literature by showcasing how value can
be added by predicting consumers’ future online behaviors and understanding
their current needs. Relatedly, these AI-driven systems provide consumers
with the most relevant and accurate marketing offerings. Empirically, the
current chapter shows there is a significantly narrowed relationship between
what marketers think and what consumers want. In this regard, personalized
recommendations and retargeted ads shape the value added to the consumers
as higher levels of satisfaction, loyalty, enhanced decision-making, and more
accurate personalized offers.
Theoretical implications: This chapter suggests a new direction for the inter-
active marketing literature by drawing a road map for e-commerce retailers
to create value for consumers. This value can be presented through the
implementation of recommendation systems and retargeting. Furthermore,
the current chapter has shown the importance of personalized recommenda-
tions and ads in the online shopping process. Contrary to the prior literature,
consumers show a high tendency to reveal their personal data in exchange for
personalized content. Surprisingly, they reveal a higher level of trust when they
get personalized content. In the context of interactive marketing, the current
chapter meets one of many unfulfilled gaps in terms of AI-driven systems and
value creation. It represents the value-in-use provided by these systems and
visualized by the consumers in the form of tailored ads, content, and offers.
Additionally, the current chapter opens novel avenues for interactive
marketing by exploring different research domains such as marketing,
psychology, and personality traits. Recommendation systems and retargeting
might be related in predictable ways to other consumer behavior phenomena
and marketing activities. For instance these systems can provide insights about
new product developments, market trends, and changes in the stages of the
consumer decision-making process. The chapter also provides new perspectives
on personality traits and shopping context research to study the individual
differences variables that predict variances in online consumer behaviors,
perceptions, and attitudes. Furthermore, these AI-driven systems can be linked
to research on the role of trust and privacy concerns in relation to personalized
content.
Practical implications: The success of these systems in the retail sector
can open the door for different sectors to follow similar paths. Relatedly,
698 S. HABIL ET AL.

the case study has portrayed consumer behaviors in reaction to recommenda-

tions and retargeting. It has reflected consumers’ interest in personalization by
resulting in high levels of consumer satisfaction and loyalty. Similarly, person-
alized ads allow consumers to experience informative, accurate, and relevant
content instead of facing information overload in the e-commerce sector.
Therefore, there is a call for practitioners to rely on these systems to under-
stand changeable consumer behaviors to achieve various objectives in terms
of profit, trust, consumer profiling, and new product development. Results
given in the current chapter have shown that personalized recommendations
can positively influence consumers’ buying decisions. Relevantly, these systems
ensure high levels of online consistency, accuracy, and comprehension.
Notably, e-retailers can gain a unique competitive advantage and reach
their consumers by providing customer-centric communication. Relatedly,
new business opportunities can be opened by generating accurate consumer
insights that reflect consumers’ real-time interests. Consequently, recommen-
dation systems can be used to translate these interests into personalized
marketing offerings that increase customer engagement levels (Adapa et al.,
2020; Aloysius et al., 2018; Hossain et al., 2020). On the other hand,
marketers are recommended to focus on behavioral targeting and retargeting
to save huge amounts of money and to reach the right target consumers. In
addition, retargeted ads should highlight the functional features and hard-sell
strategies that emphasize the utilitarian benefits to encourage consumers to
buy the product they left in the online shopping cart. This is expected to have
a potential increase in the value gained from the AI-driven systems that are
clarified throughout the chapter. Lastly, it is recommended that marketers and
practitioners should put into account the environment and channel they will
use (website or application), the level of risk and uncertainty they will face,
and the type of product they will provide.
Future research: Scholars can shed light on the impact of in-store recom-
mendation systems on consumers’ experience and shopping behaviors. The
physical context of consumers should be considered by recommendation
systems during the in-store shopping journey. There is a call for future research
to focus on providing explainable recommendation systems to consumers
by clarifying how firms use the online gathered data. These explainable
recommendations can lessen consumers’ concerns about systems-related issues
and justifies the reason behind the offered recommendation. Accordingly,
consumers’ purchase intentions will be affected positively (Adadi & Berrada,
2018; Cirqueira et al., 2020; Rodgers & Nguyen, 2022). Additionally, it is
recommended that future research should consider trust and risk as they are
major players in the value co-creation process. (Iglesias et al., 2020). For
that reason, a proposed direction for future studies might be to consider a
unique value by identifying the major risk factors and the main characteristics
that increase consumer trust and affect online shopping behaviors. Another
agenda for future research is to discover the tolerance of different contexts,
cultures, and types of consumer regarding the risk and trust concerns in
 30 AI-BASED RECOMMENDATION SYSTEMS: THE ULTIMATE SOLUTION … 699

the context of AI personalized content. In a similar strain, future research

can run longitudinal studies to understand whether the level of personalized
recommendations’ trust and risk changes with repeated interaction with the
e-retailer.
Finally, the new interactive marketing techniques have redefined the land-
scape of e-commerce. Marketers should uncover the dynamics of the new
interactive technologies in order to synchronize online and offline shop-
ping activities. Lately, marketing activities have been directed toward reaching
consumers at every touch-point in order to enrich them with a satisfying shop-
ping experience (Wang, 2021). Therefore, scholars can find new domains to
be further explored in the context of interactive marketing. There should be
a call for future research to explore the role of new technologies (e.g., arti-
ficial intelligence, virtual reality, or augmented reality) in creating value for
consumers. Similarly, new tools and strategies for marketers are required in
order to deliver personalized offers to the right customers and capture their
attention. Furthermore, there is a need for extra research to discover the new
patterns of consumer behaviors in this digitalized era (Lim et al., 2022; Wang,
2021).

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 CHAPTER 31

Deep Learning Applications for Interactive

Marketing in the Contemporary Digital Age

Billy Yu

1 Introduction
Never before have individuals been so connected and their opinions have
been so easily available on records on social media. Today’s Big data logs
down to high-frequency individual levels, e.g. click-streams. Data types are
diverse and unstructured, e.g. multimedia, text, and network relations. These
are not readily analyzable with conventional statistical or algorithmic methods.
Intensive manual pre-processes are necessary to translate them into analyz-
able features. However, human labors are costly and the job demands serious
professional judgment. Not to say, accuracy, fairness, and reliability would
be questionable. Marketers and data scientists utilize artificial intelligence (AI
et al., 2021; Davenport et al., 2020, 2021). Say, in customer product search,
AI can target ads based on browsing histories. In customer service support, an
AI chatbot can reduce company costs for basic inquiries. Why AI can work like
a human? Under the hood is deep learning (DL). It uses networks of artificial
neurons, like the human brain, to solve problems by learning from available
data. DL models automate feature extraction; they learn features from various
kinds of data in the analysis (Dargan et al., 2019). Today, DL models can
surpass human performance on many tasks, e.g. chess playing (Alzubaidi et al.,
2021). They also process Big data more speedily than traditional algorithmic
methods, making it appropriate for interactive applications.

B. Yu (B)
Macao Polytechnic University, Macau, China
e-mail: billyyu@mpu.edu.mo

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 705

Switzerland AG 2023
C. L. Wang (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Interactive Marketing,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14961-0_31
706 B. YU

Although the importance of DL applications has been widely acknowl-

edged, gaps exist in the interactive marketing literature concerning the
assessment and selection of DL tools for planning and management. Marketers
shall work with data scientists (Grewal et al., 2020). However, their domain
specificities are distinct and disjointed. Marketers are proficient in business
problems, but they lack the technical knowledge to identify possible DL solu-
tions and the language to communicate with data scientists. Also, DL is a big
topic; the learning curve is steep. Marketers need a bird-eye view and concepts
linking their domain problems with the technology.
This chapter seeks to guide how best to leverage DL. From the customer
engagement perspective (Harmeling et al., 2017), it presents cases according
to a framework of marketing functions. Along the way of explaining essential
processes, it identifies major issues as bridges to the DL solutions. Corre-
sponding use cases are presented in increasing order of technical difficulties.
Altogether, eleven typical issues are highlighted as subsections. Examples of
them are the curse of dimensionality, language-image nexus, and exploiting
latent similarity. They add insights for practical applications and can act as
baseline solutions for the advancement of interactive marketing. The ending
section summarizes some challenges, implications, and future opportunities for
marketers to consider.

2 Literature Review
2.1 Synopsis of DL
Davenport et al. (2021) and Huang and Rust (2021) describe marketing
applications can differ in intelligence levels. Low-level intelligent applications
perform repetitive, structured tasks to automate routine processes. High-level
intelligent applications deal with complex tasks like recognizing images, under-
standing text, and anticipating customer responses. In Huang and Rust’s
(2021) terms, they can be thinking AI to process data for decisions, or feeling
AI to analyze interactions with humans. Application intelligence depends on
how it is implemented.
High-level intelligent applications usually require DL to accomplish the job.
There are kinds of models in DL. Some common building blocks are feed-
forward neural network (FNN), convolutional neural network (CNN), and
recursive neural network (RNN). FNN is the oldest class of artificial neural
networks. Each neuron in it is simply a regression operator with inputs as
regressors. Its internal weights (equivalent to the regression coefficients) are
continuously adjusted in the training process. It is generic to deal with all
kinds of numerical problems. CNN is similar in operation but it is particularly
good in recognizing local data patterns. It is important for the image and 2D
data analysis. RNN handles sequence data, it is good for temporal problems
in which preceding events might affect the latter. There are many variants and
mechanisms, like gated recurrent unit (GRU) and long short-term memory
 31 DEEP LEARNING APPLICATIONS FOR INTERACTIVE MARKETING … 707

(LSTM) model as variants of RNN that are more capable of learning long-term
dependencies; and the attention mechanism can selectively concentrate on a
few relevant portions of the input data. For practical applications, different
blocks (technically called layers) of them are stacked together ingeniously so
that they can extract useful features, e.g. ResNet for image recognition and
BERT for Natural Language Processing (NLP, Alzubaidi et al., 2021; Dargan
et al., 2019).
DL techniques popular in the marketing literature can be categorized into
three: supervised learning, unsupervised learning, and reinforcement learning
(Hatcher & Yu, 2018). Supervised learning has a clear purpose of linking
inputs with the corresponding outputs (called labeled data). Types of problems
it solves include classification and prediction. Thus, accuracy is a measure of
its model performance. Unsupervised learning purposes to discover unknown
relationships among unlabeled data. It usually works on clustering and dimen-
sionality reduction. Reinforcement learning is used to solve task problems.
It learns by interacting with the environment. A reinforcement learning agent
continuously updates its internal policy (adjusting its model weights) by trying
to do the right thing and get some rewards; it keeps trying until it can maxi-
mize the cumulative rewards. It is excellent in chess playing and autonomous
driving.
DL processes are of two key phases: training and inference. The training
phase demands substantial and representative data. Research data scientists
try to understand a problem and construct models from the aforementioned
building blocks as well as from the mathematical toolboxes (Dargan et al.,
2019; Hatcher & Yu, 2018). They iteratively revise models until they can
fit selected data. For contemporary social analysis, data complexity drives the
need for sophisticated large-scale pre-trained models, e.g. VGG, ResNet for
images, and BERT and GPT for languages (Han et al., 2021). In the infer-
ence phase, user data scientists can use a trained model. In the context of
this chapter, they are the marketing domain experts trying to enhance some
marketing goals.
In complex tasks, plain implementation of a pre-trained model usually
cannot achieve optimal performance. A pre-trained model needs modifica-
tions. It is because, during the model training processes, training data may
not contain all cases necessary for specific scenarios. Pre-trained models are
usually generic and not tailored to any specific task context. Fine-tuning them
is needed. Fine-tuning transfers the knowledge of a pre-trained model to a
more powerful model by modifying it with additional contextual data (Han
et al., 2021). The technique is called transfer learning and it is an indispensable
remedy to jumpstart a project for marketing data scientists (Alzubaidi et al.,
2021; Han et al., 2021; Mikolov et al., 2017). More details will be elabo-
rated as per occasions that marketers may come across in interactive marketing
applications.
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2.2 Marketing Activities

In interactive marketing, engagement is a key research subject (Wang, 2021).
At present, information flows through the communication networks among
customers, the firm, and all stakeholders in an omnichannel environment
(Gao & Huang, 2021). Marketers nurture a participatory culture and fandom
community (Wang, 2019) through enhancing in-flow experience, interac-
tivity (Carlson et al., 2017; Carvalho & Fernandes, 2018), gamification,
and kinds of entertaining activities (Eisingerich et al., 2019). They aim for
customer engagement. Yet, technological advancement, like in the Metaverse
and wearable devices, has brought more engagement opportunities.
For the observability of customer engagement, Harmeling et al. (2017)
characterize interactivity in a behavioral sense. They quantify customer engage-
ment as actions like referrals, reviews, and feedback. To achieve marketing
objectives, they call for firms’ deliberate efforts to motivate, empower, and
measure customer contributions. Customer engagement is categorized into
three marketing functions: (1) customer acquisition, expansion, and retention,
(2) marketing communication, and (3) product innovation. For engagement
marketing, they urge marketers to identify and leverage the four types of
customer-owned resources: their network assets, persuasion capital, knowledge
stores, and creativity. A firm shall steer customers toward pseudo-marketers.
They encourage firms to educate customers to contribute. Thus, enacting
customer contribution is key. Task-based initiatives are to facilitate learning.
It is an idea to offer resources and promote active learning by training the
customer to contribute. The processes often require customers to extend
their knowledge into a new domain. Hollebeek et al. (2019) elucidate that
customers shall gradually develop mental rules and guidelines in their commu-
nities. Customer sharing and learning is a spiral relation. Also, when a
customer sees others demonstrating engagement behavior, he would develop
a stronger brand identity and social relationships (also Fujita et al., 2020).
Brodie et al. (2019) attribute such contributions to the ecosystems. They
use service-dominant logic to broaden the concept of customer engagement
to actor engagement in networks, in which actors apply their competences
to benefit others and enjoy the reciprocal relation. Thus, engagement is
embedded in an institutional context and their connectedness is a critical prop-
erty of the customer-owned resources. However, such customer–customer
interaction is difficult to initiate; and the sharing has a high propensity to cover
customers’ subjective interpretations of matters (Hollebeek et al., 2019).
Hollebeek et al. (2019) recommend marketers to overcome obstacles in
both sharing and learning. Experienced customers are valuable for sharing;
and learning is a volitional process that can be triggered by situational require-
ments. Institution is a solution (also Brodie et al., 2019). When customers
are networked, they would learn to be a vital and sustaining part of the
value network. Vargo and Lusch (2016) describe it as the network effect with
increasing returns. When more actors share an institution, there will be greater
 31 DEEP LEARNING APPLICATIONS FOR INTERACTIVE MARKETING … 709

potential coordination to benefit all. In a larger network, it would be easier

for one to see the needs of others and, likewise, a question would have more
potential people to help.
In customer knowledge for innovation (Cui & Wu, 2016), Hollebeek et al.
(2019) suggest leveraging Big data to understand their needs. Social discus-
sions should reveal meaningful qualitative features for innovation (Reisen-
bichler & Reutterer, 2019; Song et al., 2020). Calder et al. (2016) show
that engagement in co-creation involves cognitive, emotional, and behavioral
aspects. Engagement is feedback from customer experience related to their
higher-order personal life. Loureiro et al. (2020) suggest marketers should
align the firm’s and the customer’s life goals so as to incentivize them. Then,
customer resources can also be exploited (e.g. Harwood & Garry, 2015;
Vargo & Lusch, 2016). The challenge is how firms can leverage the customer
knowledge stores, collectible from Big data.

3 Contemporary DL Applications
A universal DL model for all marketing tasks is yet to emerge. Marketers have
to pick from a wide range of DL models. The decision depends on the data
types and marketing purposes. For readers to familiarize with the application
concepts, they are roughly listed in ascending order of difficulties and each
subtitle highlights an issue to deal with.

3.1 Customer Acquisition, Expansion, and Retention

In today’s omnichannel environment, information resources are intercon-
nected and interactive. Customers do not rely on a single one of them. Payne
et al. (2017) call for integrated marketing communications. They emphasize
the importance of off- and online touchpoints for engagement and prof-
itability. Keeping the flow is vital and marketers shall utilize Big data efficiently
(Carlson et al., 2017; Carvalho & Fernandes, 2018). To the purpose of this
section, most discussions are about enhancing engagement formation through
the promoted pathway (Barari et al., 2021).

3.1.1 Predictive Modelling

Using clickstream to predict customer behaviors since direct marketing (Lim
et al., 2022). It helps information serving in real-time (Grant et al., 2013), like
ads display (Chapelle et al., 2015), and the in-flow experience and engagement
(Carlson et al., 2017; Carvalho & Fernandes, 2018). However, the volume of
clicks is not sufficient to accurately predict engagement behaviors (Zhou et al.,
2021a). Worse, in the omnichannel environment, data complexity grows and
traditional methods rely heavily on the marketer’s professional judgment on
data transformation.
Instead of resorting to manual transformation, Ling et al. (2019) propose
an LSTM model to analyze customer interactions. Their model is trained
710 B. YU

Fig. 1 Micro-level customer purchasing prediction

from scratch using historical data for prediction (Fig. 1). Utilizing the LSTM
notion, Sarkar and De Bruyn (2021) personalize engagement with great
prediction accuracy, outperforming most handcrafted methods. Similarly, Sun
et al. (2021) propose a custom-made model to predict consumer path-to-
purchase journeys. Their model handles panel data of many characteristics like
online firm size, offline presence, mobile app availability, etc. Usually, by then,
production efficiency and overall management of the factors of production can
be brought into focus (Kumar et al., 2019).
With the popularity of wearable devices, tracking technology is capable
to record electroencephalography (EEG) waveform of customers’ uncon-
scious sensory reactions. It enables neuromarketing in consumer engagement
(Dulabh et al., 2018). EEG is a form of series data. In Khurana et al.’s
(2021) survey for neuromarketing, DL techniques based on RNN and CNN
are especially promising to analyze EEG for predicting customer preference.
It helps understand how marketing stimuli should be presented. In essence,
deep 1D-CNN is more capable to analyze EEG, Yıldırım et al. (2020) propose
an end-to-end model that outperforms all conventional methods in EEG
classification problems.

3.1.2 Curse of Dimensionality

Engagement formation can go through an organic pathway of perceived
quality and perceived value (Barari et al., 2021). Marketers presume similar
perceptions can be a means to engage customers and capitalize repurchases
 31 DEEP LEARNING APPLICATIONS FOR INTERACTIVE MARKETING … 711

(Kumar & Nayak, 2019). Yet, a characteristic of today’s customer data is the
great number of variables with high sparsity. It is the curse of dimensionality.
Say, for book recommendation, the number of both books and customers are
enormous. The search space for a proper recommendation is a major chal-
lenge. Collaborative filtering (CF) is the solution technique. It assumes that
if two customers have the same opinion on one issue, they are likely to have
a similar opinion on another issue. Data dimension can be reduced by elim-
inating less relevant features. A textbook CF solution is the singular value
decomposition method (SVD), based on algebra. However, SVD cannot scale
properly. The solution by autoencoder method is more efficient and popular
(Alkhayrat et al., 2020). An autoencoder consists of an encoder and a decoder
(Fig. 2). It operates under the unsupervised learning technique. The encoder
compresses the input into the lower-dimensional space, yielding a latent repre-
sentation. The decoder reconstructs it to the original input. The encoder part
is useful for dimension reduction and fast inference. A survey by Zhang et al.
(2020) shows the usefulness and efficiency of autoencoders in recommenda-
tion tasks. Sometimes, autoencoders are combined with traditional SVD to
form more powerful integrated models. They render a real-time recommender
system more viable for interaction marketing. An added advantage of autoen-
coders is their capability to process heterogeneous data such as text or images.
They bring opportunities to recommend diverse items.

Fig. 2 Autoencoder
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Fig. 3 Reinforcement learning

However, a regular autoencoder may generate homogeneous scores among

the most popular items; overlooking items relevant to individual customers.
Borges and Stefanidis (2019) address that by introducing randomness in
regular autoencoder operation. Recommendation unfairness and mismatch can
be significantly reduced, which can elicit customer engagement behaviors by
providing more relevant information (Mariani et al., 2022; Roy et al., 2018;
Varnali, 2021).
Recently, a state-of-the-art approach is reinforcement learning. It aims to
learn an advertising strategy by trial and error (Fig. 3). Zhao et al. (2021)
devise a reinforcement learning agent to consider the platform and customers
together as the environment and let it interact with them. An optimal strategy
is to maximize the value function, e.g. expected long-term cumulative revenue
from consumers. They directly train the DL model for advertising, which
updates strategy continuously and eliminates the need to process the large
sparse matrix.

3.1.3 Complex Data Processing

Customer posting can be utilized to leverage the persuasion capital and
their network assets. It is an important engagement factor (Fujita et al.,
2020; Hollebeek et al., 2019). It is particularly true for images (Li & Xie,
2020). Ren et al. (2021) use Google Vision API to extract photographic
 31 DEEP LEARNING APPLICATIONS FOR INTERACTIVE MARKETING … 713

content of various entities from customer-posted photos. Under the hood is

a pre-trained model for image recognition. The extracted content helps them
understand customer interests and preconceptions. Photographic promotions
are improved accordingly for hotel experiences.
Interactivity is important for customer engagement. In that DL offers the
foundation for personal assistants that can provide customer experience for
active control and responsiveness (Alalwan et al., 2020). Marketers use tech
giants’ pre-trained models for speech recognition, in which waveforms are
analyzed and transformed into voice commands (Isyanto et al., 2020). Google
Assistant has the best performance for customer interactivity, and tech giants
continuously collect new customer data, like usage and preferences, to enhance
their services for interactivity.

3.1.4 Role of Specificity

In an attempt to understand customer posting, ) could not find a pre-trained
model satisfying their need to identify specific destination scenes. Worse,
they had insufficient photo scenes to train a model. Thus, they fine-tuned
a chosen pre-trained model (Densenet169) with additional 25 categories of
scene images. Results were satisfactory and their illustration contributes to
market smart destinations.
To understand engagement levels and emotions, eye tracking provides
important cues. Important measures are gaze points, scan patterns, and time
spent on gaze points (Burch et al., 2021). However, exogenous factors,
like equipment and lighting, affect performance. Calibration of pre-trained
models is usually troublesome. Akinyelu and Blignaut (2021) calibrate a pre-
trained model (VGG16) by fine-tuning it with 39 facial landmark points. They
improve the performance of gaze estimation models. Eye tracking can also be
improved with more informative stereo images, Burch et al. (2021) attempted
it with stereo cameras. However, their chosen pre-trained model (OpenFace)
is not stereo-ready. Fine-tuning the model with additional stereo images, they
optimize it for real-time interactive marketing applications.
Facial expression also provides an important cue for engagement marketing;
recognizing it gives an edge to timely decision-making in action-oriented
marketing (Rambocas & Pacheco, 2018). Ozcan and Basturk (2020) utilize
more available static images, which are much less informative than videos.
They fine-tuned a pre-trained model with their optimization tricks in DL
modeling to evaluate the facial attributes. They effectively identify customer
sentiment in real time with much less powerful hardware.

3.1.5 Customer Privacy

Marketers are aware of the risk of privacy issues for customer engagement
(Mosteller & Poddar, 2017). Surprisingly, Mariani et al. (2022) reveal that
marketing literature on DL ignores it. Fortunately, computer scientists have
anticipated that. A simple approach to protect privacy breaks down large,
complex deep neural networks for cooperative training (Osia et al., 2020).
714 B. YU

Fig. 4 Federated learning

In it, the clients run the initial layers of the neural network and send the
output to the cloud server for deeper-layer processing. It helps reduce the risk
of exposing sensitive information.
However, more accepted and secure is to exploit the aforementioned
reinforcement learning model. It allows training at the local source, so no
centralized data is necessary. The technique is called federated learning (Yang,
2021; Zhang et al., 2021). Instead of exposing customer data in any form,
clients only share their learned experiences in the form of model weights
(Wang et al., 2020). A trusted curator aggregates their sharing and generates
a global model, which is then distributed back to the clients (Fig. 4). Thus,
no client data is ever shared in any form. However, this distributed training
demands more intelligent edge devices, like smartphones and autonomous
vehicles, as well as their internet access.

3.2 Marketing Communication

Media posting should help develop stronger brand identity, social relation-
ships (Fujita et al., 2020), and the customer sharing–learning spiral (Hollebeek
et al., 2019). However, posting is in natural language. Its unstructured nature
makes analysis difficult. DL-based NLP is to uncover its nuanced opinions
(Balducci & Marinova, 2018; Hatcher & Yu, 2018; Wedel & Kannan, 2016).
It handles the cluttered nature and shows graceful degradation on noisy inputs
(Goldberg, 2017). More important, it extracts the latent meaning without
human intervention (Dargan et al., 2019; Dhaoui et al., 2017). A typical
process is twofold. Words in a message are first individually represented in a
 31 DEEP LEARNING APPLICATIONS FOR INTERACTIVE MARKETING … 715

Fig. 5 Illustration of word embedding

manageable number of latent features, called word embedding (Fig. 5). Then,
the whole message is analyzed as a sequence of words in that embedding.

3.2.1 Language Denotation

To elicit positive emotions by responding with proper tones, Argyris et al.
(2021) process complainant tweets with the GloVe pre-trained model for
word embedding. They then use classification models of GRUs and RNNs to
understand the customer sentiment. With that, they expand a popular speech
act classification from a speaker’s perspective to a listener’s perspective. Like-
wise, Basiri et al. (2021) process words in product reviews with GloVe. Then,
they build a model with an ingenious combination of bidirectional GRU and
attention layers to classify the polarity of customer sentiment. Social dialogues
sometimes contain unofficial languages, e.g. emoticons and slang. Cheng and
Tsai (2019) propose a DL SA framework using both GloVe and Word2Vec
embeddings and a set of RNN-based models to classify messages with unof-
ficial languages for positive and negative sentiment. Liu et al. (2019) adopt a
hybrid method of NLP and kinds of regressions to analyze sales conversion.
Their work reveals that consumers do not read reviews all the time, but only
for expensive products or those of uncertain quality.
Some NLP applications are advanced. Communication in globalized social
media desires automatic translation. Data scientists vigorously make progress
on translation performance using all linguistic or lexical semantics. Marketers
may use the trained model directly (Belinkov et al., 2020). However, the tech-
nology is still unsatisfactory. Machine translation should be subject to post-
editing or crowdsourcing before presenting to customers (Jiménez-Crespo, &
Ramírez-Polo, 2021). Chatbots also provide engagement in some customer
services (Moriuchi et al., 2021). Nevertheless, they should be customized with
company data to meet the job requirement (Pradana et al., 2017). Kulkarni
et al. (2022) highly recommend using customized datasets to fine-tune chat-
bots for customer service. Despite the efforts, Moriuchi et al. (2021) worry
chatbot deployment risks engagement. Today’s technology is still incompetent
for this high-level intelligent application.
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3.2.2 Language-Image Nexus

The mere presence of image content has a robust positive engagement effect
(Li & Xie, 2020). High-quality pictures can lead to even higher engagement,
effectively leveraging the persuasion capital of customers. Recently, memes
go viral in social marketing. They effectively drive discussions among users
and create emotional ties (Arroyo-Almaraz & Díaz-Molina, 2021). Never-
theless, choosing illustrative icons and impactful images is imperative. Li
and Xie (2020) confirm that image–text fit enhances user engagement. The
current process of designing memes is manual, time-consuming and success
depends heavily on the designer’s judgment. Conventional statistical tools
are not able to process this data heterogeneity. DL methods by generative
adversarial networks (GANs) are well-developed for cross-medium synthesis,
like text-to-image (Tao et al., 2020) or even speech-to-image syntheses (Li
et al., 2020). GANs use a pair of DL models: a generator and a discriminator
(Fig. 6). The former learns to generate a plausible image and the latter learns
to distinguish if an image is from the generator or it is real. They compete
against each other during training. Training stops when the discriminator is
not able to differentiate between fake and real. GANs provide an efficient
way to help create memes. Yet, meme-marketers do not exploit them at the
moment of this writing. Nevertheless, GANs shall be fine-tuned with previ-
ously successful memes for the designers’ specific purposes. Engagement by
memes can leverage all four types of customer-owned resources, from their
creative knowledge to networks. Thus, marketers shall encourage customers
to make memes and platform designers shall offer such resources to help
customers contribute (Harmeling et al., 2017).

Fig. 6 Generative adversarial network

 31 DEEP LEARNING APPLICATIONS FOR INTERACTIVE MARKETING … 717

3.2.3 Exploiting Latent Similarity

Customer engagement can be anticipated by satisfaction, under the condi-
tion of high convenience (De Oliveira Santini et al., 2020). As an enabler in
content marketing, topic modelling is a tool for both. Topic modelling makes
content more visible to customers, by identifying the natural groups of topics
in social sharing. A typical model is Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) which
statistically traces clusters of words, marketers use it to improve the content
quality and relevance (Harmeling et al., 2017). Reisenbichler and Reutterer
(2019) confirm LDA can discover hidden topics but doubt its usefulness.
Topics retrieved are not meaningful, unless with considerable manual touch-
ups. Bhat et al. (2020) agree and supplement that LDA is not scalable for
today’s media content. They propose the DeepLDA models made up of a
few FNN layers. Their results show significant performance accuracy besides
computational effectiveness. DeepLDA harnesses customer knowledge more
effectively.
Exploiting similarity can entice sharing (Fujita et al., 2020; Hollebeek et al.,
2019); it is a tactic influencer exploit customarily. For experiential engage-
ment marketing initiatives, Harmeling et al. (2017) suggest that influencers
shall leverage the high persuasion capital and share high-quality information
in favor of autonomous customer contributions. Argyris et al. (2020) inves-
tigate if visual congruence can induce social influence (the VCSI theory).
Their image classification model results provide empirical support and show
that the affiliation between influencers and followers mediates the effect of
visual congruence. Congruence seems to be an important factor in influ-
encer marketing. Kumar and Nayak (2019) emphasize content quality for
customer-to-customer interaction and state that value-congruity is an impor-
tant psychological motivation for customer engagement. However, there
seems to be a ceiling to the benefits of congruence. Based on an NLP analysis
of tourism data, Yu (2021) reveals that marketers and consumers interact in
a subtle way; their messages are not exactly congruent. Customers probably
want to complement the marketers. It substantiates preceding findings in the
framing effect literature and underpins some marketing wisdom.

3.2.4 Exploring Links

Customer network assets are implicit in the connections, which contain
relations at many layers, like affiliations, Q&A, cross-referencing, or sender–
receiver chains. Social network analysis (SNA) is the tool to reveal possible
benefits. Argyris et al. (2020) used SNA-generate centrality variables to test
some hypotheses related to social influence. Yu et al. (2020) used thousands
of tweets to spot market niches. However, conventional tools are not scalable
and flexible to handle the heterogeneity of networks. Fortunately, DL-variants
make SNA more viable at scale, Abbas (2021) reveals a series of DL tech-
niques in SNA to exploit the interpersonal ties (Hollebeek et al., 2019), like
recommendation systems, structural analysis, and anomaly detection.
718 B. YU

To overcome obstacles in both customer sharing and learning, Hollebeek

et al. (2019) advise marketers to capture and fulfill the situational requirement
of customers, which is dynamic and depends on many market factors. Discus-
sions in social media shall help. Using a simple DL model, Song et al. (2020)
identify the formation path of engagement. They reveal the positive influence
of interactivity and perceived information quality on customer engagement,
which is consistent with Hollebeek et al. (2019) views on the customer
learning side. However, customers frequently use different representations or
keywords for the same entity. Finding a solution can be difficult, even when
it is already in the discussion. This inconvenience hurts customer engagement
(De Oliveira Santini et al., 2020). Conventionally, marketers process it manu-
ally to match instances referring to the same real-world entity (Lebmeier et al.,
2021). Magellan is an international project on the matter; DL is their recent
implementation for entity linking and textual entailment (Doan et al., 2020).
In fact, the DL entity matching solution significantly outperforms conven-
tional methods (Mudgal et al., 2018). Barlaug and Gulla (2021) identify steps
and techniques in the DL entity matching process. Their works help nurture
an institution for learning and marketers can provide meaningful insights into
firms’ utilization of customer knowledge stores (also Song et al., 2020).

3.3 Product Innovation

Loureiro et al. (2020) call for more intense stakeholders’ interaction for
engagement in the co-creation processes. The conventional process of ques-
tionnaire survey in Kansei engineering is time-consuming and expensive.
While customer knowledge stores accumulated in social media should reveal
meaningful product features (Reisenbichler & Reutterer, 2019; Song et al.,
2020), marketers are urged to leverage the role mixed between designers and
customers (Hollebeek et al., 2019). Passive and unintentional co-innovation
processes are viable (Cui & Wu, 2016). Social media content can be a knowl-
edge creation enabler, a customer engagement driver, or even an impact on
the service ecosystems (Bresciani et al., 2021).

3.4 Descriptive Feature Identification

To harness customer creativity, Jin et al. (2021) propose a text-mining
approach (a Kansei-integrated Kano model) to learn customer affective needs
and design insights. Still, Adikari et al. (2021) propose a more efficient DL
approach by a combination of LDA and NLP for emotional analyses. Their
model examines consumer emotions (like joy and anticipation) and generates
precise actionable insights. Wang et al. (2019) convert the Kansei engi-
neering problem into a multi-class DL classification problem. Their proposed
heuristic DL method extracts affective opinions from product reviews into
seven attribute pairs (e.g. like–dislike, aesthetic–inaesthetic, useful–useless, reli-
able–unreliable). It outperforms conventional statistical methods in terms of
 31 DEEP LEARNING APPLICATIONS FOR INTERACTIVE MARKETING … 719

accuracy and customer understanding. To make sense of reviews, Hong and

Wang (2021) propose a novel framework by summarizing customer opinions.
After using grammar rules and an LDA model to identify semantically mean-
ingful phrases, their framework generates summaries by a modified LSTM. All
these DL models help provide unique indications to the marketing co-creation
process (Hollebeek et al., 2019).
Gan et al. (2021) devise a method to go into detail about product appear-
ance. Assisted by survey data to identify key physical aesthetic features (e.g.
outer shape and color) and emotional preference features (e.g. intelligent
and pleasant), they train CNN-based GANs to generate novel design images.
Industrial design firms can thus understand customers’ psychological require-
ments more vividly. Their approach plays an essential role in affect-related
design. Nevertheless, the technology is still emerging. Professional touch-up
is needed for production applications.

3.4.1 Indirect Feature Extraction

Product innovation can be accomplished without the customer’s explicit narra-
tive of features. Based on augmented reality (AR) and mixed reality (MR),
Pardo et al. (2021) propose a big design framework (Design Learning) to
utilize the promoted pathway for engagement (Barari et al., 2021). They use
DL as a feature extraction module to determine the product feature vector.
They demonstrate autonomous design in customized toys, and their design
framework can be considered a game itself.
Based on the science of electrophysiology, Guo et al. (2020) utilize cogni-
tive and emotional responses for engagement co-creation (Calder et al., 2016).
They identify Kansei words by presenting visual stimuli (SUV pictures) to
customers and measuring their EEG signals. Precisely, they operationalize
N400 (a component of the event-related potentials shown by EEG) to provide
measures of meaning processing in the brain, which is under active DL
research (Rabovsky et al., 2018). They show that using N400 can compensate
limitations of conventional questionnaire surveys for feature identification.
Zhou et al. (2021a, 2021b) aim at improving consumer engagement in
online classrooms. They adopt Azure’s pre-trained DL model for facial expres-
sion detection. With detected instructors’ emotions and other visual aesthetic
features, their model accurately predicts both individual-level consumer
behavior and aggregated video popularity. It helps improve video production.
Gestures and kinetics are also factors to enhance video production, there are
more pre-trained models (Kay et al., 2017) available for marketers to choose
from. However, extant marketing-specific datasets and related researches are
rare, although giants in the industry have considerable research on the matter
(e.g. Wang, 2021).
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4 Discussions
From the above cases, this chapter evidences that DL markedly supports
interactive marketing. Eleven typical issues are highlighted, with solution
techniques elucidated with interactive marketing illustrations. This chapter
shows that DL models usually perform better than conventional algorithmic
approaches regarding prediction accuracy, processing speed, and scalability. It
also explains why automatic feature extraction is vital for today’s marketing
applications. By introducing technical terms for communication with data
scientists, it helps marketers contemplate exotic but feasible projects with DL
capabilities.
In sum, mechanical AI (Huang & Rust, 2021) is generally found in
unsophisticated automation, lightweight DL application, with or without fine-
tuning. Thinking AI is found in the most impactful DL applications. By
training from scratch or fine-tuning a pre-trained model, it performs in predic-
tion accuracy and responsiveness. Feeling AI for analyzing human interactions
is emerging. It incorporates sophisticated DL models for customer emotions.

4.1 DL Benefits and Challenges

DL allows data pooled from various sources in today’s omnichannel environ-
ment. It also overcomes the Big data problems like data heterogeneity, gigantic
volume, and high sparsity. Aspects of a customer can be extracted automati-
cally in abstract representations. A DL model also scales up easily without
scarifying processing speed. Not only does it make immediate responsiveness
more viable for interactive marketing (Alalwan et al., 2020; Lim et al., 2022),
but more accurate real-time tailored offers can be guaranteed to enhance the
in-flow experience and brand engagement (Carlson et al., 2017; Carvalho &
Fernandes, 2018). All these can attribute to the ever-growing DL toolsets
(e.g. Abbas, 2021; Alzubaidi et al., 2021; Dargan et al., 2019; Hatcher & Yu,
2018).
However, DL applications are not without challenges. Marketers shall
consider customer expectations carefully. DL does not always work satisfac-
torily in high-level intelligent applications, like chatbots and translation. Also,
a trained model is bounded by the conditions of its training data. The abstract
model’s understanding may discriminate against unseen or rare cases. Worse if
the subject matter is about race or gender. Marketers should be aware of these
limitations and prepare to intervene with professional judgments.
Mastering DL demands programming skills. Python is the programming
language popular in the DL community. It is not easy but worthy for marketers
to spend time on. Yet, De Bruyn et al. (2020) remind marketers should
vigilantly realize their domain expertise in setting their models’ objective func-
tions. It should align with the marketing goal. Perfection is difficult. An old
saying applies, practices make perfect.
 31 DEEP LEARNING APPLICATIONS FOR INTERACTIVE MARKETING … 721

4.2 Practical and Managerial Implications

Beginners may start with SA and refer to basic tutorials (like Inzaugarat, 2021)
or an interesting work by Cheng and Tsai (2019). For complex data types, pre-
trained models should be used (Han et al., 2021). Easy ways for images are
OpenFace (Burch et al., 2021) and Google Vision API (Ren et al., 2021).
Marketers shall also try the DL framework Keras, in which many popular pre-
trained models are readily available, e.g. VGG (Akinyelu & Blignaut, 2021),
ResNet, Inception, and EfficientNet (Alzubaidi et al., 2021). For voice or text
data, easy ways are Amazon Alexa and Google Assistant. The former is best
in speech recognition and intent extraction; the latter has enormous poten-
tial for advanced applications. Good pre-trained models are BERT and GPT
(Dargan et al., 2019; Goldberg, 2017; Wedel & Kannan, 2016). However, the
OpenAI’s latest GPT-3 model is not open-source and its fine-tuning process
is non-standard. Nonetheless, researchers may also choose to use pre-trained
models only for feature extraction and then deploy traditional tools for theory
analysis (e.g. Argyris et al., 2020).
Platform designers shall provide DL tools to customers for their advan-
tage; they shall incentivize them to fulfill their goals (Loureiro et al., 2020).
Tools, like image generation for convenient meme creation or image recogni-
tion in social media, shall help leverage their persuasion capital and learning.
However, pre-trained models should better be fine-tuned to tailor application
purposes. Management challenges lie in the cross-channel and cross-functional
marketing teams.
For successful DL implementation, management should take care of many
processes: from information acquisition and knowledge distillation to oper-
ational enhancement. DL is more than an approach to enhance individual
practices; it demands support and can revolutionize the business process.
Sjödin et al. (2021) even propose AI democratization capabilities and a culture
of AI experimentation.

4.3 Looking Forward

Many technological trends would drastically change the interactive marketing
landscape, like the Metaverse and function-rich wearables. Nevertheless, the
challenges they bring, like Big data, are what DL intends to tackle. Powerful
wearables with sensors are advantageous to DL so that more customer tracking
data would be allowed to process locally. Promising research opportunities are
ahead. DL foreshadows a genuine way to understand customers.
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 CHAPTER 32

Personalized Recommendation During

Customer Shopping Journey

Shobhana Chandra and Sanjeev Verma

1 Introduction
Customers are inundated with choices, often irrelevant to their needs in the
present era. The number of choices may seem beneficial, but it requires more
mental engagement and leads to confused customers. Also, customers often
lack the expertise to evaluate what is best for them. Recommender systems
are the technology that presents the consumer with a curated list of choices
to reduce their mental or information load. They are also known as recom-
mendation agents, recommendation systems, or recommenders’ systems. The
output of recommender systems is personalized recommendations that assist
users towards a goal-oriented focused search. It is the foundational tech-
nology that forms the backbone of all interactive marketing systems. The
interaction process between a recommender system (RS) and a consumer has
three stages. The first stage entails the determination of consumer prefer-
ence based on expressed needs or implied needs, purchase and social media
behaviour, location, demographics, psychographics, and visual and spatial data.
The second stage encapsulates the generation of a recommendation list by
predicting future preferences and behaviour with the help of AI/ML algo-
rithms. The third stage is the interactive process between the RS and the users,

S. Chandra (B) · S. Verma

National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE), Mumbai, India
e-mail: shobhana.chandra@gmail.com
S. Verma
e-mail: sanjeev@nitie.ac.in

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 729

Switzerland AG 2023
C. L. Wang (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Interactive Marketing,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14961-0_32
730 S. CHANDRA AND S. VERMA

consisting of the decision-making process and the behavioural response, which

further completes the feedback loop for the immediate and future preference
prediction.
The Human-Recommender interaction is a two-way process, with personal-
ized recommendations forming the interface between the user and the system.
Personalized recommendations (PR) deliver the relevant content through
product, person, content, or service suggestions, which evolves based on the
demographic and psychographic characteristics of present and past behaviour
of the users. It further involves the active participation by users through feed-
backs such as, clicking a like button, wish listing, purchase, rating, and reviews.
Thus, creating value and engagement for self, other customers, and businesses.
From this perspective personalized recommendations form an important
component of interactive marketing, which is described as bi-directional value
creation through mutual influence and involves active customer engagement
(connection, participation, and interaction) (Steuer, 1992; Wang, 2021).
Extant literature on recommender systems has mainly focused on algo-
rithmic accuracy and prediction power while the interaction process has
received scant attention (Champiri et al., 2019; Knijnenburg et al., 2012;
Xiao & Benbasat, 2007). Moreover, previous literature offers a fragmented
view of the interaction process using various theoretical lenses like technology
adoption, consumer decision-making, and psychology. Technology adoption
and diffusion theories include technology acceptance theory, innovation diffu-
sion theory, and task-technology fit models (Pu et al., 2012) focused on users’
comfort and perceived usefulness. The second set of theories describes the
consumer decision-making process to decipher the Recommender-Consumer
Interaction like Valence theory (Ghasemaghaei, 2020), Effort accuracy model
(Ashraf et al., 2017), Information overload theory (Aljukhadar et al., 2010),
Information processing theory (Abumalloh et al., 2020), and construal
level theory (Aljukhadar et al., 2017; Kohler et al., 2011). Recommender
System has also been studied from the lens of psychology entailing theories
like the Elaboration Likelihood Model (Huang & Zhou, 2019; Trzebiński
et al., 2021), Theory of Planned Behaviour (Kowatsch & Maass, 2010),
Similarity-Attraction Theory (Lukyanenko & Komiak, 2011; Xu et al., 2018),
Theory of Reasoned Action, Cognition-Affect-Behaviour Model (Abumalloh
et al., 2020). Researchers have applied theories such as Cognitive absorption
(Ghasemaghaei, 2020), Cognitive load (Castañeda et al., 2019; Zhang et al.,
2020), Stimulus-organism-response (Tuncer, 2021; Wu et al., 2016; Xiao
et al., 2019), Flow state theory (Martinez-Lopez et al., 2009, 2015; Tuncer,
2021), and Psychological Reactance (Aljukhadar et al., 2017; Schreiner et al.,
2019), to explain the evaluation of personalized recommendations (Fig. 1).
Previous studies, however, have offered a partial explanation of the person-
alized recommendation. Moreover, no multidisciplinary integration is done
beyond the specificity of theoretical approaches on the topic. Hence there is a
need to consolidate the theoretical underpinnings to develop a comprehensive
 32 PERSONALIZED RECOMMENDATION DURING CUSTOMER ... 731

Consumer Recommended list of User Evaluation and

Preference: items: Response:
▪ Explicit ▪ User views
▪ Preference AI/ML Algorithm or ▪ Past
elicitation user modeling for purchase
Past prediction
interaction

User Feedback:
▪ Ratings
▪ Behavioral
Response

Fig. 1 Recommender system interaction process

conceptual framework that aid the understanding of the personalized recom-

mendation process throughout the customer journey entailing prepurchase,
purchase, and post-purchase stages. The present study attempts to bridge the
knowledge gap through thematic and content analysis of existing literature.
The present chapter consolidates the disorganized and fragmented research
on personalized recommendation and summarizes it. The objectives of the
present study are to map the development of theory in the field of person-
alized recommendation from the perspective of Interactive marketing and to
develop a conceptual framework.

2 Conceptualization
2.1 Personalized Recommendation System
According to Resnick and Varian (1997), personalized recommendation systems
augment inexperienced users’ choices through collaborative filtering. It is
defined as a system that recommends appropriate products or services based
on consumers’ preferences and desires (Alyari & Navimipour, 2018). It can
also be viewed as a system that learns from customers and recommends the
product or services that would be most valuable to them amongst the avail-
able ones (Schafer et al., 1999). Recommender systems primarily use two
types of data filtering techniques: Content and Collaborative filtering. Content
filtering systems have had sparsity and scalability problems (Claypool et al.,
1999; Sarwar et al., 2001), while Collaborative filtering gives out overspecial-
ized recommendations (López-Nores et al., 2013). To overcome these issues,
Hybrid systems offer a useful alternative.
The primary filtering techniques used in the Recommenders system are
explained in detail below:
732 S. CHANDRA AND S. VERMA

1. Collaborative Filtering: The basic premise behind the Collaborative

filtering technique is that users with similar profiles will have matching
preferences. It recommends the popular items amongst the individuals
with similar tastes and preferences to the target user (Shang et al., 2010).
2. Content filtering: In content filtering, the content of the items is
analysed and mapped to the user’s past purchases to predict future pref-
erences. It creates profiles of items based on their contents which are
matched with users’ requirements (Luo et al., 2012).
3. Hybrid: This approach combines two or more techniques to overcome
the weakness of each technique and utilizes the strength of integrated
techniques to increase the accuracy of prediction (Tran & Cohen, 2000).

Besides these, a few other variants like the knowledge-based filtering

technique or the demographic filtering techniques play an instrumental
role in personalization. Since the focus of this chapter is on the Human-
Recommender interaction, the authors limit themselves to the basic recom-
mendation techniques although several advanced forms exist.

2.1.1 Personalized Recommendation

The literature on personalized recommendation describes it as a system
(Schreiner et al., 2019), business intelligence platform (Xue et al., 2016),
or marketing technique (Ampadu et al., 2022) that suggests information,
product, or services relevant to the customers. The personalized recommenda-
tion system gathers customer data through opinion mining and past behaviour
to filter relevant information for users. Today personalized recommendations
backed by big data analytics capture the interest and requirement of users
and interact with them in real-time to elicit favourable responses for the busi-
nesses (Qian et al., 2013). Personalized recommendation can be described as
the output or the user interface of the personalized recommendation system
to enhance user experience and satisfaction (Zhang et al., 2020) by reducing
information load as well as decision-making time. It is the output of recom-
mender system that is presented to the users when they visit a website like
Amazon or Netflix, or advertisements appearing on a personal Facebook
webpage, or the search results on Google. In the perspective of E-commerce
or M-commerce it is the list of products or services that appear during the
search. It is an opportunity for the business to showcase their offerings at the
same time it helps to improve the decision quality of the individual.

3 Review Methodology
The objective of the chapter was to analyse the extent of theory develop-
ment in the field of personalized recommendations and develop a framework
to understand the role of personalized recommendation in customer purchase
journey. Xiao and Benbasat (2007), were one of the first researchers to develop
a conceptual framework for personalized recommendation, so the authors
 32 PERSONALIZED RECOMMENDATION DURING CUSTOMER ... 733

followed forward referencing in Scopus. The author’s preference for Scopus

over other databases was driven by ensuing considerations (1) the journals
appearing in the database are selected on stringent criteria of indexation (Paul
et al., 2021), (2) it is easy to download bibliometric information and full text
for review (Donthu et al., 2021), and (3) the coverage of scientific publi-
cations in the area of Business and Management on Scopus is relatively large
with over 2000 high-quality publication (e.g., more than 26,400 titles by over
5000 publishers) (Fahimnia et al., 2015). Initial search resulted in the retrieval
of 647 documents. The authors followed SPAR-4-SLR procedure to select the
articles (Paul et al., 2021) for analysis. In the arranging stage, journal articles
and reviews, as they follow the scientific peer review process, and confer-
ence proceedings, as they give a glimpse of future research, were considered.
After filtering 550 documents remained for further process. In the next stage
the authors assessed the articles by carefully reading the title, keywords, and
abstracts. The articles which were purely technology or algorithms-based were
excluded and the articles with interactive marketing perspectives were selected
by both researchers independently and compared for consensus. Thereafter
thematic analysis was performed (Table 1).

4 Thematic Analysis
The thematic analysis of the resulting articles suggests that the theories
contributing to RS literature are from three major disciplines: informa-
tion system, psychology, and consumer behaviour. The authors discuss their
contributions in this section and categorize them into six themes.

4.1 Technology Acceptance

Extant literature on technology-mediated personalized recommendations
focused on the user’s acceptance of recommended suggestions. The theoret-
ical underpinning used to explain the phenomena and process revolves around
the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) (Knijnenburg & Willemsen, 2010;
Pu et al., 2012; Roudposhti et al., 2018; Thirumalai & Sinha, 2011; Yang &
Wang, 2012; Ying et al., 2018), Innovation Diffusion Theory (IDT) (Maass &
Kowatsch, 2008; Wang & Doong, 2010), Task Technology Fit (TTF) (Ahn &
Park, 2012; Martínez-López et al., 2015), IS continuance (Ashraf et al., 2016,
2020), and Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT)
(Knijnenburg et al., 2012; Panniello et al., 2016; Wang et al., 2015).
Knijnenburg and Willemsen (2010) framework highlights that the expe-
riential value of RS depends on the subjective perceptual evaluation of the
objective features like algorithm and interface characteristics. The subjective
perceptual evaluation influences the users’ behavioural intention moderated by
personal and situational characteristics. Maass and Kowatsch (2008) borrowed
the construct perceived relative advantage from Rogers IDT and the perceived
ease of use from the TAM to predict the behavioural intention to use PR. Ahn
734 S. CHANDRA AND S. VERMA

Table 1 Review procedure under SPAR-4-SLR procedure (Paul et al., 2021):

Assembling Arranging Assessing

Identification: Organization: Evaluation:

• Research Objective: To
analyse the extent of
theory development in the
field of personalized
recommendations and to
develop a framework to
understand the role of
personalized
recommendation in
customer purchase journey
• Domain: personalized
recommendations
• Source type: Journals and
Conference proceedings
• Database: Scopus
Acquisition:
• Search: forward referencing
of article “E-Commerce
Product Recommendation
Agents: Use, Characteristics,
and Impact ”
Search Period: till December
2021
Total documents returned
from assembling stage: 647
documents
• Organizing codes:
Language, document type,
source type, and subject
area
Purification
• Language: English
• Source type: Journals and
Conference Proceeding
• Document type: Articles,
Conference papers, and
reviews
• Subject area: Business,
management, and
accounting; computer
science; decision sciences;
psychology; and social
sciences
Total documents returned
from assembling stage: 550
documents
• Total documents for
analysis: 128 documents
• Content analysis: Abstract
was thoroughly analysed
by two independent
researchers and compared
• Thematic analysis: aa and
segregated foundation
wise into
technology-related,
psychology-related ad
consumer decision-making
Reporting:
• Convention: Figures,
tables, and words
• Limitations: Accuracy
and completeness of
document data in Scopus
and the scope of thematic
and content analysis
• Sources of support: No
financial support received

and Park (2012) state the antecedents to user evaluation of RS are intention
specificity, agent-intention fit, familiarity with the agent, and online shopping
frequency. The evaluation of the system is based on the TAM constructs—
Ease of use and Perceived usefulness, which determines the effectiveness of
the decision.
The willingness to buy from an online store and add-on purchase depends
on the users’ psychological evaluation. The user flow state is roused by the
person’s attitude and attention towards PR, which leads to performance eval-
uation, satisfaction, and ultimately willingness to purchase. Roudposhti et al.
(2018) added recommendation quality as an additional input variable to TAM
Ease of use and Perceived usefulness. According to their model, satisfaction
is the mediator to purchase intention, while construct shopping enjoyment
plays a significant role in consumer satisfaction and impulse buying behaviour.
According to the framework by Xui-Li and Wei (2017), behavioural inten-
tions are the outcome of TAM input variables, influenced by IDT theory’s
compatibility.
 32 PERSONALIZED RECOMMENDATION DURING CUSTOMER ... 735

4.2 Persuasion
RA has been viewed as persuasive interactive technology by researchers.
Researchers Xu et al. (2018) have used Fogg’s triad to understand the
persuasive impact of PR on users. According to Fogg’s triad, technology can
influence users in three ways: tools, media, and social actors. As tools, RA can
improve the decision quality of the users (Xiao & Benbasat, 2007), as media
it creates a persuasive user experience and as social actors, they exert their
anthropomorphic influence (Xu et al., 2018). Trzebiński et al. (2021) applied
Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) and observed that in case of high
personal relevance, the choice of the product is made through the central route
of persuasion, and the users evaluate the recommendations built on abstract
or experiential information. Also, studies suggest in case of high personal rele-
vance, strong arguments should be presented for users to be receptive to the
recommendations (Buder & Schwind, 2012).
Further influence of recommendations can be enhanced by using persuasive
strategies—Reciprocation, Consistency, Social Proofing, Liking, Authority, and
Scarcity (Cialdini, 1993), moderated by personality (Sofia et al., 2016). In
their research, Ho and Bodoff (2014) combined ELM and consumer search
theory to reveal that users with a higher need for cognition are less receptive
to persuasion, and confidence in one’s attitude towards a choice positively
impacts recommendation acceptance.

4.3 Attitude Formation

The ELM describes the routes of attitude formation, while the Affect-
Behaviour-Cognitive model describes the component of attitude (Eagly &
Chaiken, 1984). Research indicates a positive relationship between recommen-
dation quality—a cognitive component, and with affective component—trust,
which further impacts customer loyalty (Abumalloh et al., 2020). Researchers
Sheng et al. (2014) take the framework of the Affect-Behaviour-Cognitive
model with the dimensions of TAM and TRA to develop a comprehensive
conceptual model of PR use and continuance.

4.4 Human-Recommenders Interaction

Research has established that the application of the similarity-attraction
paradigm in the algorithms improves trust in the quality of recommendations
(Abumalloh et al., 2020). In Human-Recommender interaction, cognitive
load is high when individuals interact with multiple elements simultaneously
compared to when learned successively. This explains the importance of the
recommender system as they reduce the size of relevant options for the user’s
simultaneous evaluation, thereby reducing the cognitive load (Knijnenburg
et al., 2012; Xiao & Benbasat, 2007). It also accentuates the importance
of presentation to improve the human learning process. Researchers have
736 S. CHANDRA AND S. VERMA

attempted to resolve the ambiguity regarding the number of recommen-

dations, level of details, and the product attributes elicited to provide a
list of choices using Cognitive Absorption Theory (Agarwal & Karahanna,
2000) and user disorientation. According to the studies, cognitive absorption
outweighs the disorientation effect of details in the recommendation as it saves
the users’ effort to search and remember additional information about the
product (Ghasemaghaei, 2020).

4.5 Consumer Response

Researchers have further explored the impact of personalized recommenda-
tions on users’ acceptance or rejection of suggestions. One of the psycho-
logical responses is reactance due to the apprehension of an imposed choice.
Researchers have studied the impact of the phenomena under time pres-
sure, trust, and user characteristics (Aljukhadar et al., 2017; Yanping & Yan,
2012). In another study, the researchers conclude that reactance towards
advertising decreases by utilizing multiple media channels, the credibility of
retailers, and higher variety in recommendations reduce the reactance towards
recommendations (Schreiner et al., 2019).
The human behavioural response towards technology-mediated person-
alized recommendation has been studied using the Theory of Planned
Behaviour (TPB), (Ajzen, 1991). Researchers have modified TPB constructs
to study the impact of PR for purchase and the intention of continued
usage (Sheng et al., 2014). TPB is also the base framework for TAM, which
has been extensively applied in the study of Human recommender interac-
tion (Knijnenburg & Willemsen, 2010; Pu et al., 2012; Roudposhti et al.,
2018; Thirumalai & Sinha, 2011; Yang & Wang, 2012; Ying et al., 2018).
Tuncer (2021) used the Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) (Mehrabian &
Russell, 1974) framework to show the positive effect of information tech-
nology (IT) affordance in creating trust and flow experience to enhance social
commerce intentions. Contextual cues also play an important role in stim-
ulating customers’ perceived functional and emotional value to improve the
purchase intention in cross-border e-commerce (Xiao et al., 2019). Further
research suggests that visual appeal measured by visual complexity and contrast
impacts the processing fluency of the users. Visual complexity measures the
amount of information presented to the users, decreasing processing fluency
and the perception of pleasantness. It has been observed that visual contrast
improves the perception of pleasantness (Wu et al., 2016). The stimulus
is visual appeal, which triggers user evaluation using processing fluency to
generate a response in terms of pleasantness. In another study, attributes like
informativeness, product search effectiveness, and lack of sociality stress in RA
positively impact user impulsive purchase behaviour (Zhu et al., 2016). In
the context of online advertisements, the breadth and depth of information
act as stimuli to create a sense of usefulness, reactance, and privacy concern,
which culminate into a behavioural response of click-through rates. The study
 32 PERSONALIZED RECOMMENDATION DURING CUSTOMER ... 737

indicates the positive relationship between high depth and narrow breadth
retargeting to increase click-through rates (Bleier & Eisenbeiss, 2015).
Studies show that satisfaction and post-adoption beliefs, perceived deci-
sion quality, and perceived usefulness significantly impact the continued use of
personalized recommendations (Ashraf et al., 2016, 2020). Chen and Demirci
(2019) found that the online shoppers with hedonic orientation prefer the
functional aspect of PR, and those with utilitarian orientation prefer repre-
sentational aspect (Visual appeal and website reputation) for continuance
intention.

4.6 Consumer Decision-Making

The quality of decisions depends on the processing of information. Researchers
observed that users prefer diverse recommendations while making a consid-
eration set, and complementary products when making the final choice
(Yan et al., 2016). Application of valence theory revealed that detailed, in-
depth, personalized information increases the disorientation effect on the
users, whereas an individual’s product knowledge moderates the impact and
reduces it (Ghasemaghaei, 2020). Another observation is, when the perceived
information overload is higher, consumer reactance reduces, users conform
to recommendations and have higher confidence on their choice quality
(Aljukhadar et al., 2010). Köhler et al. (2011) further elaborate that, as the
temporal distance of consumption moment increases, users prefer abstract to
concrete details using construal level theory. Also, from the experiments by
Ashraf et al. (2020), it is evident that a direct positive relationship of perceived
decision effort on perceived usefulness of recommendations exists using the
Effort-Accuracy framework.

5 Discussion
Customer interaction with the recommender system can be explained with
the help of the customer purchase journey, which encompasses the prepur-
chase, purchase, and post-purchase stages (Table 2). The prepurchase stage
consists of need recognition, search, and consideration. RA is particularly
helpful in search and consideration phases in an online context. The purchase
stage consists of choice, ordering, and payment, while post-purchase includes
consumption, repurchase, satisfaction, and loyalty (Lemon & Verhoef, 2016).
The examination of interactive marketing literature reveals the impact of
System-generated recommendations at each touch point.

5.1 Prepurchase
Personalized Recommended advertisements and promotions are helpful at the
need generation stage, where a latent need is triggered leading to impulse
738 S. CHANDRA AND S. VERMA

Table 2 Customer shopping journey

Customer purchase journey Research directions

Pre-purchase 1. What is the role of personalized ads in the purchase

journey and the impact of ad blockers?
2. How to reduce the impact of information clutter with the
increasing online content and improve recommendation
accuracy?
3. What kind of PR content are easier to process cognitively
for the users?
4. What is the role of personalized recommendation content
on consumer decision-making process?
5. Which components of PR are most influential in the
purchase journey?
6. What are the PR contents that reduce perceived risk and
enhance trust in recommender system?
7. What is the impact of product characteristics on the role of
personalized recommendations in customer purchase journey?
What is the impact of product characteristics on the influential
importance of each component of PR content?
Purchase 1. What is the impact of personalized recommendation on
offline conversions?
2. What is the impact of perceived risk on the final online
purchase?
3. What risk mitigating mechanisms do consumers use?
4. How the perceived freedom to choose without the social
pressure to oblige a human presence impacts the purchase
decision?
5. What role does absence of physical bargaining have on
purchase decision?
Post-purchase 1. What are the antecedents to customer loyalty towards
personalized recommender systems?
2. What prompts the customer to switch from online
personalized recommendations to offline purchases?
3. How do consumers attribute dissatisfaction or cognitive
dissonance to system-generated personalized recommendation?
4. How do consumers attribute satisfaction or dissatisfaction,
or cognitive dissonance towards the seller in online
post-purchase?
5. How does the post-purchase experience spill over, from
product purchased to loyalty towards personalized
recommendation?

or incidental purchase (Wang, 2021). These personalized ads could be from

social media or websites as marketers are creating real-time interactive inter-
ventions which are organic (Borah et al., 2020). However, the option of ad
blocking available to the customers restricts access to even relevant person-
alized advertisements. Research has revealed that the tendency to use ad
blocker is mediated by attitude towards personalized ads and moderated by
 32 PERSONALIZED RECOMMENDATION DURING CUSTOMER ... 739

trust on the platform. Moreover, trust is built by engaging in transparent

permission-based data collection practices (Brinson & Britt, 2021). But the
study conducted by Jung and Heo (2021) suggests that personalized ads are
successful in attracting attention irrespective of the media clutter. The contra-
dictory results of these studies call for a better understanding of the role
of personalized ads in purchase journey of consumers. Also, the findings of
previous research suggest that with the proliferation of online informational
resources, customers consider few options for information and product search
based on their previously built perception and pre-established socialized image
(Broilo et al., 2016). This brings into question, the clutter created by informa-
tion sources and the business sense to rationalize the online communication
networks.
The System-generated personalized recommendations (PR) characteristics
have a persuasion effect on the consumers, reducing the cognitive load if
displayed appropriately. For example, how easy or helpful are the recommenda-
tions to the users while making a choice. This would depend on the placement
of choices for easy location. What details are presented in the recommenda-
tions? How are the recommendations explained? It can also lead to a flow
experience with appropriate display, layout, and easy navigation. Flow expe-
rience is often seen as one of the mediators of the behavioural intention
of online shopping outcomes (Kamis et al., 2010; Tuncer, 2021). Study by
Ramezani Nia and Shokouhyar (2020) revealed that website aesthetics affect
perceived quality, trust, satisfaction, and arousal, which indirectly impacts
purchase intention. Moreover, researchers Wu et al. (2016) have proved that
the less visually complex the image of product, the better the processing
fluency of the users, and the better the perception of recommendations. Expo-
sure to information in video format creates perception of media richness and
enhances emotions, which improves the purchase intentions as compared to
the textual format (Han & Stoel, 2017). In case of apparel recommenda-
tions, the visual presentation of complementary products rather than the face
of the model is found to be more informative (Yoo & Kim, 2012). Customer
reviews and ratings of products form an important component of personalized
recommendations, and their usefulness is determined by the users according
to their personal characteristics like susceptibility to interpersonal influence
and confidence in the process (Lee & Ma, 2012). In addition, source cred-
ible online reviews and purchase intention are mediated by brand equity
of e-commerce site (Chakraborty, 2019). Also, easily understandable format
of consumer ratings increases users’ processing fluency and helps to build
consumer trust (Kostyk et al., 2017). Further research reveals manipulation
of reviews by the firms diminishes consumer trust even for a positive review
and reduces purchase intentions (Ma & Lee, 2014). Consistency between
product and individual reviews are found to be helpful (Jia et al., 2021).
Consumers prefer reviews based on performance, characteristics, and features,
740 S. CHANDRA AND S. VERMA

to a sensory review based on touch, smell, sight, hear, and taste. It is also
evident that consumers rely on credible and beneficial online product reviews
to make purchase decision (Mumuni et al., 2019). Customers perceive review
comments with numerical cues to be more useful (Li et al., 2022). To summa-
rize, customers rely on reviews which are perceived to be objective, easy to
understand, unsponsored, authentic, consistent with product ratings, based on
e-commerce brand but what are the antecedents of the formation of percep-
tion of authenticity of reviews needs to be probed further. In addition, product
display quantity has a positive impact on the purchase intention with price
acting as a moderator (Guo et al., 2021). Besides, reputation and website
quality are found to enhance positive emotions of users, which further medi-
ates purchase intentions (Kim & Lennon, 2013). The studies on journey from
purchase intention to behaviour are sparse and the area needs to be explored
further.
Acceptance of recommendations also depends on the product character-
istics. Research indicates that consumers are prone to accept personalized
recommendations from third-party platforms. Also, PR is most accepted for
search products than experience products and least used for credence products
(Lepkowska-White, 2013). Longer reviews of high-involvement product with
cognitive experience have been found to be helpful and informative (Jia et al.,
2021). Experiments by Lee and Hosanagar (2021) confirm that personalized
recommendations increase product views of search and utilitarian products
while conversion/view rate is higher for experience and hedonic products.
Though the experiments well captured the effect of personalized recommen-
dations on online views, the impact on offline conversion rate is an unexplored
area.
In the PR characteristics, the attributes and product information take the
central route of information processing while product ratings and explana-
tions function as cues. The complexity of the product and the expertise of
the users act as the moderators. Research shows that formation of the percep-
tion of appropriate product information load and explanations significantly
enhance the perceived decision quality of PR users (Huang & Zhou, 2019;
Sofia et al., 2016). Recommendations that used quantitative as well as qual-
itative data improve decision satisfaction and confidence, and the results are
more pronounced in high-involvement products (Kwon & Chung, 2010).
Researchers propound that humans tend to resist the advice from recom-
mender systems when their free will to make decisions is perceived to
be threatened, known as consumer reactance. Researchers have found that
display, style of explanation, the credibility of retailer or aggregator, and
gender play a significant role in forming user preferences/perceptions about
PR (Schreiner et al., 2019). Further researchers found that time pressure
 32 PERSONALIZED RECOMMENDATION DURING CUSTOMER ... 741

propels consumers to accept recommendations, while perceived manipula-

tive content, and forced exposure to recommendations negatively impact
consumers’ acceptance (Yanping & Yan, 2012). Also, perceived psychological
distance affects the type of recommendations. In a temporal near consump-
tion situation, concrete recommendation was accepted, while for temporal
distant consumption abstract recommendations were acceptable. Moreover,
overall transparency was found to have a positive influence on the accep-
tance of recommendations. Also, Brand and manufacturer familiarity reduce
consumers reactance. Further, as the recommendations are perceived to reflect
the individual’s values, needs, and style, higher behavioural intention to use
recommendation is observed (Köhler et al., 2011). Researchers Lukyanenko
and Komiak (2011) propose that cognitive and emotional identification with
PR leads to acceptance and behavioural intention. They also suggest that value
incongruence can lead to higher consumer reactance towards PR. In addi-
tion to these, researchers have found a seller and product information reduce
consumer risk perception towards seller and aggregators and enhance attitude
towards buying (Meents & Verhagen, 2018).
Studies have shown that recommendation adherence increases due to
perceived performance, media, and social functionality of the PR (Xu et al.,
2018). The perceived effectiveness of PR depends on the difference between
the anticipated benefits and risks of the options given by the RA (Tuncer,
2021). Another study suggests that the effectiveness of the recommendations
is evaluated on the perceived functional and emotional value moderated by
brand familiarity (Xiao et al., 2019) and trust in the recommender system.
Managerial Implications: Consumers utilize PR not just to purchase but
also as an informational source. The role of PR has to be evaluated from the
perspective of showcasing the products to the right customers at appropriate
opportunity. Managers need to pay attention to the contents of PR to achieve
fluency in purchase journey. Research as to which components of PR are most
influential in consumer decision-making process could help managers focus on
the aspects which are most valued by the customers. Managers need to look
at PR not just from online conversion perspective but should also view their
influence on offline conversions. So, the impact of PR is at times muted and
needs to be understood holistically.

5.2 Purchase
Researchers have studied the impact of RAs on user behaviour, including
click-through rates, product views, acceptance of recommendations, actual
purchases, and add-on purchases. The Stimulus-Organism-Response frame-
work has often been used to explain the process. Once the individual is
exposed to PR characteristics, as discussed earlier, the choice process can be
explained from the perspective of response. It was found that users prefer
742 S. CHANDRA AND S. VERMA

the additive compensatory decision rule as the perceived cognitive effort is

relatively less compared to the elimination by aspect rule to make their final
choice (Wang & Benbasat, 2009). Researchers found that consumers only
divulge their personal information if they find the recommended alternatives
to be fruitful or are aptly rewarded to do so (Gabisch & Milne, 2013).
Zhu et al. (2016) have shown positive impact of informativeness, effective-
ness of search or recommendation, and lack of sociality stress on perceived
behavioural control and satisfaction, which prompts users towards impul-
sive buying. So personalized recommendations do influence impulse buying
behaviour of consumers. However, low impulse buying tendency leads to
abandonment of cart. On the other hand, context and trust are found to
moderate the effect of buying tendency (Styvén et al., 2017). The removal
of upfront payment obligations improves consumer sentiment towards pricing
and reduces assertiveness in the expressed reviews (Wolkenfelt & Situmeang,
2020). Customers having prior experience with personalized recommenda-
tions, pay less price premium and are not affected by recommender system
reputation (Yang et al., 2019). The biggest perceived risk in an online
purchase, is security risk, caused due to fraud or hacking or possibility of
financial loss due to unsecured transaction (Ariffin et al., 2018). E-commerce
quality of service (QoS) is one of the main contributors towards shopping
motivation and final purchase (Ghavamipoor et al., 2017). Online shopping
experience is propelled by complaint handling and cognitive factors and trust
is an outcome of the purchase experience (Izogo & Jayawardhena, 2018).
The overall online shopping experience is driven by variety, value for money,
and delivery (Haridasan & Fernando, 2018). In contrast to the prepurchase
stage where aesthetics and information are of eminent importance, during the
purchase stage security risk and service quality play a crucial role in creating
customer satisfaction and repurchase intention. So, the incidents of abandon-
ment of carts need to be studied in-depth to improve the conversion rates on
views.
Managerial Implications: The above amalgamation of literature reveals
online purchase depends on the balance between perceived risk in the trans-
action process and trust, in addition to brand familiarity. Moreover, trust
is established due to prior experience and quality of service with PR. The
managerial implications are the increased importance of brand building and
customer relationship management by the e-commerce platform and the seller
for the commercial success of PR.

5.3 Post-Purchase
After purchase, consumers compare their expectations with the performance
of the product and if it exceeds, leads to positive confirmation of recom-
mendations. This further improves satisfaction with the behavioural outcome
 32 PERSONALIZED RECOMMENDATION DURING CUSTOMER ... 743

and ensures continued usage of the personalized recommendations. Perceived

decision quality, formed because of experiences gained after purchasing or
consuming the product has the highest impact on the continued usage inten-
tion of PR (Ashraf et al., 2016). Successful commercial RAs are perceived to
be smart, friendly, trustworthy, and informational (Aljukhadar et al., 2010).
Further the loyalty towards personalized recommendations depends on the
need for touch (NFT), of an autotelic (pleasure/intrinsic) or instrumental
(functional/cognitive/explicit) type. Studies reveal that the autotelic NFT has
a positive effect on perceived enjoyment, ease of use, and usefulness while
instrumental NFT has a negative effect on the above-mentioned constructs.
However, the impact of instrumental NFT is shown to be moderated by high-
quality, text-based synchronous communication by the supplier (Lee et al.,
2017). Research indicates that e-loyalty towards personalized recommendation
systems depends on e-satisfaction, customer service, privacy, and hedonism
(Ahmad et al., 2017). The impact of personalized recommendation on post-
purchase behaviour has received less attention from the researchers and is
worth exploring to understand the antecedents of customers’ loyalty towards
e-commerce brands. This could also help to explain online customer churn.
Managerial Implications: Consumer loyalty is dependent on the post-
adoption belief formed due to e-satisfaction with the purchase experience,
consumption of product, and customer service. The managerial implica-
tions are to partner with an e-commerce platform, which has reputation in
maintaining customer service level, ensure product performance quality, and
maintain communication with customers.

6 Future Research Directions

The analysis and categorization of articles according to customer purchase
journey show that a substantial number of studies have been done in the
prepurchase stage of the customer journey. Still, the purchase and post-
purchase part of the journey has not received adequate attention. Even the
studies in the prepurchase are fragmented and need to be consolidated.
Moreover, the recent events have propelled the use of recommender systems
and personalized recommendation, surpassing the apprehensions around tech-
nology acceptance. It is rather an acceptance of recommendations that
warrants attention now, and the future course is to understand the loyalty
towards applications or aggregators for personalized recommendations. The
authors also discovered that the studies done are based on quantitative
measurements, and these may show the behaviour but may not explain the
underlying thought process of the users. Following future research questions
emanates from the above discussion on the various stages of consumer purchase
journey.
744 S. CHANDRA AND S. VERMA

7 Conclusion
The chapter explored the theoretical underpinnings of system-generated
personalized recommendations from the perspective of Human-Recommender
interaction on the customer shopping journey. Thematic and content analysis of
retrieved literature revealed six themes of theoretical foundation. The literature
was further analysed according to customer purchase journey and manage-
rial implications at each stage; prepurchase, purchase, and post-purchase were
discussed. Findings discern the concentration of studies highlighting the
utility of personalized recommendations during the prepurchase stage of the
customer purchase journey. However, the findings on the role of person-
alized recommendations during prepurchase are fragmented and warrant a
holistic view. Extant literature also suggested the scant attention has been
paid to personalized recommendations during the purchase and post-purchase
stage of customers’ journey. The authors discovered that though personalized
recommendation has existed for the last thirty years, the scientific literature is
fragmented (silent) in mapping its impact on the customer purchase journey.
On the basis of authors’ analysis, this chapter presented the conceptual model
to describe customer shopping journey and discussed the status of research
from the perspective of interactive marketing and discussed the future research
directions (Fig. 2).
 Context: Time
Consumer Pressure, Urgency, Perceived risk,
Need Knowledge Forced Exposure, Trust,
Generation Familiarity, Brand Transparency in
process
32

Customer Feedback

SPR Cognitive Load

Characteristics:
Display Layout,
Navigation,
Personalized
Recommendation Consumer Acceptance
Product Ratings Reactance Evaluation of Satisfaction
Customer Purchase
alternatives
Reviews/ Ratings
Seller Ratings,
Explanations. Consideration
Flow Experience
set

Product Affordance Loyalty

Characteristics Personal
Characteristics

Prepurchase Purchase Post-purchase

PERSONALIZED RECOMMENDATION DURING CUSTOMER ...

Fig. 2 Conceptual model role of system-generated personalized recommendations (PR) on consumer shopping journey
745
746 S. CHANDRA AND S. VERMA

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 CHAPTER 33

Location-Based Proximity Marketing:

An Interactive Marketing Perspective

Aida Loussaief, Edward Ying-Lun Cheng,

Marta Yuan-Chen Lin, and Julian Ming-Sung Cheng

1 Introduction
After a long period of environmental revision, the flow of commercial oppor-
tunities has entered a so-called “sales funnel” process. This can be illustrated as
the downward flow of a field of possible customers from unqualified to qual-
ified to closed customers (Cooper & Budd, 2007). However, mobile devices
have completely changed traditional sales alignment and consumer consump-
tion patterns, and a new wave of business operations—mobile commerce
(mCommerce)—has emerged. In mCommerce, the customer relationship life-
cycle begins from the moment customers go out and use their mobile devices.
The entire process is somewhat less orderly compared to traditional marketing

A. Loussaief
Time University, Tunis, Tunisia
e-mail: loussaiefaida@yahoo.fr
E. Y.-L. Cheng
University College London, London, UK
M. Y.-C. Lin
Industrial Technology Research Institute, Hsinchu, Taiwan
J. M.-S. Cheng (B)
National Central University, Taoyuan City, Taiwan
e-mail: mingsungcheng@yahoo.com
University of Economics Ho-Chi-Minh City, Ho-Chi-Minh City, Vietnam

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 753

Switzerland AG 2023
C. L. Wang (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Interactive Marketing,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14961-0_33
754 A. LOUSSAIEF ET AL.

and sales (Fulgoni, 2014). Firms may attempt to build-up close relation-
ships with any type of customers (such as unqualified or qualified) through
marketing technologies (martech) at any time, if necessary.
Some specific innovations in martech have been identified by Gartner’s
analysts in the report of Hype Cycle for Digital Marketing, 2020. Among the
technologies that are of great importance to contemporary marketing, two of
the five are related to real-time and location intelligence marketing (i.e., the
collection and analysis of sources of geospatial data which is then transformed
into the insight to solve challenges) (McGuire & Leachman, 2021). Marketers
are especially aware of the fact that consumers are constantly using mobile
devices such as mobile phones, pads, and smart watches. In fact, according to
the World Advertising Research Center, the majority of consumers (i.e., 75%)
will increasingly use mobile devices to access the Internet by 2025 (McDonald,
2019). This all explains why a great number of marketing tactics emphasize the
capacity of geo-locating visitors through their mobile devices, thus being able
to advantageously provide these potential customers with real-time, location-
relevant, and personalized offers and messages. Geo-locating visitors refers to
the process of identifying geolocations of a firm’s website visitors via their IP
addresses.
Location intelligence has been proven effective across the customer life-
cycle, resulting in increased engagement, conversions, and sales (Kang et al.,
2015). It enables firms to genuinely attract visitors’ interests and reach people
at the right time and the right place with the right message. In the past, loca-
tion data were a hotly discussed topic. Firms utilized location data to provide
location-based services such as friend finder, dating, and location identification
(e.g., nearby stores, restaurants, etc.), despite there being no real practical
marketing application (Minxuan, 2018). It took until 2010 for firms such
as Starbucks, The North Face, and L’Oréal to combine GPS (Global Posi-
tioning System) and electronic tags to launch a new marketing method called
“Geofencing.” Geofencing is a location-based service in which an app or other
software uses location-based technologies to trigger a pre-programmed action
specified by program administrators or developers. The action is then trig-
gered when an object or person enters or leaves a predefined virtual boundary.
For example, Starbucks used geofencing to place advertisements through real-
time location detection to motivate potential consumers to make purchases
(Macy Storm, 2019). Later on, several other technologies were introduced
and applied to provide such location-based proximity services which are inter-
active in nature. For example, well-known firms such as Apple and Google
have used their own hardware equipment and software services—i.e., via the
interactivity between Bluetooth-based iBeacon/EddyStone and customers—to
emit an endless stream of network services and usage trajectories through their
location-based technologies so as to better understand consumer preferences
and appearances (Developer, 2022; Ni, 2015). It is anticipated that in the
 33 LOCATION-BASED PROXIMITY MARKETING … 755

future, more and more behaviors experienced by people with location identi-
fication will be emitted/recorded as usable and analytical data, thus rendering
these tracked digital data/records more valuable.
There are two significant technical indexes for contemporary location-based
technologies—small area targeting radius and hyper-local contextual informa-
tion (i.e., an advertisement technique to target consumers when they are near
a predefined location) and hyper-local contextual information (i.e., a web-
standard means to represent and exchange the understanding of the physical
world without the limitation of human-entered data). These two indexes help
justify and determine the accuracy of how close people are to approaching
a specified location. The phrase “proximity” is thus introduced to delineate
such detection of closeness within a short distance for marketing purposes
(e.g., through the interaction with these people, better customized promotion
materials can be delivered), a phenomenon termed “proximity marketing.”
By using these two indexes to detect people nearby, firms are able to more
precisely address the locations of customers, collecting and analyzing the data
of these potential customers in real time. It should be noted here that prox-
imity marketing differs from traditional location-based marketing as proximity
marketing takes into account “closeness” between two objects which is further
applied for marketing purposes (Samuel et al., 2021); whereas location-based
marketing incorporates the use of the geographic location of the user to deliver
a service or a marketing message regardless of being far or close (Zou &
Huang, 2015).
If firms can leverage real-time proximity marketing tools, thus speedily
providing them with more relevant offers through customer interaction, these
potential customers will be guided toward conversion from the original inten-
tion (McGuire & Leachman, 2021). Of course, customer desires will be
affected by ambient stimuli as well (Morin et al., 2007). External environ-
mental features such as design, display, and social cues can inspire customer
expectations, influence their emotional states, and impact their satisfaction
which, in turn drives customers’ approach or avoidance behavior (Puccinelli
et al., 2009). Being able to ascertain and predict these customers’ desires
based on collected data through interactive proximity marketing followed by
providing a better ambient retail store atmosphere, personalized experiences
will be entirely triggered and eventually firms will have a head start on their
competitors.
In recent years, proximity marketing has risen in popularity. More and
more firms such as Target, Walmart, and Amazon have deployed prox-
imity marketing strategies to gamify visitors’ experiences and encourage
impulse purchases (Mittal, 2021). According to Choudhary (2019), proximity
marketing is predicted to grow at its highest ever compound annual growth
rate in 2022. During the COVID-19 pandemic, many countries’ governments
and health officials have applied proximity marketing technologies to create
their own solutions for digital, rather than physical, contact tracing to reduce
the spread of the virus (Singh et al., 2020). With major players kickstarting
756 A. LOUSSAIEF ET AL.

sensor- or beacon-based apps to collect proximity data, it is believed that

proximity technologies will be applied as a central marketing tool.
Given that proximity marketing is in its relative infancy and its full poten-
tial has not yet been realized, the purpose of the present chapter is to
develop an understanding of interactive proximity marketing and provide
insight into including the literature, practices, and future development of this
phenomenon. As such, the following four research questions are developed:

RQ1: What is the concept of proximity marketing?

RQ2: What are the different types and practices of proximity marketing
and its respective technologies?
RQ3: What are the theoretical foundations, drivers, and consequences in
consumers’ adoption and acceptance of proximity marketing?
RQ4: What are the research avenues that might help scholars and prac-
titioners to build a more robust and unified vision of proximity
marketing?

The remainder of the chapter is organized as follows. First, in Sect. 2 this

chapter clarifies the proximity marketing concept by indicating its benefits,
listing its different technologies, and providing a discussion about its main
practices. Section 3 is devoted to a literature review that informs our under-
standing of the theoretical foundations, antecedents, and consequences of
proximity marketing acceptation. Then, in Sect. 4, this chapter develops an
agenda section for future research. Finally, conclusions are made at the end of
this chapter.

2 Location-Based Proximity Marketing

In this section, the background of location-based proximity marketing is
provided.

2.1 The Proximity Marketing Concept

Location-based advertisement and promotion kits have been around for a
while. Since the beginning of the practice based on the IP addresses of users
in the 1990s, underlying technologies have advanced at an astounding rate.
Phones became truly mobile around the turn of the millennium and the
race to develop more advanced mobile devices and the broadband cellular
network systems that support them have gone mainstream. From a marketing
perspective, the rapid growth of mobile device adoption with GPS capa-
bility has enabled the ability to push advertisements or notifications to the
mobile devices of individuals according to their current physical locations while
they are on the move. Due to the fact that the use of smartphones surged
massively in the late 2000s, proximity marketing was introduced to the public
 33 LOCATION-BASED PROXIMITY MARKETING … 757

at that time accordingly (Ewen, 2018). The widespread upgrowth of proximity

marketing was expected when Apple and Google debuted their Bluetooth low
energy (BLE) beacon technology in 2013 and 2015, respectively. That is, both
Apple iOS and Google Android users can receive messages sent through their
respective iBeacon and Eddystone devices. Meanwhile, proximity beacons have
also been gaining attention from marketers due to their potential role as the
natural next step in location-based marketing in some indoor spaces due to
issues created by GPS.
Generally speaking, a location-based proximity marketing campaign works
in several simple steps through a small and wireless device that transmits signals
to mobile devices. Beacons (e.g., specific tags, Bluetooth, or Wi-Fi networks)
work in conjunction with a retailer’s specific application. When shoppers are
within a certain proximity of a beacon device, retailers can send notifications to
their mobile devices. In this way, retailers can send information such as adver-
tising offers, marketing messages, and customer support on a more personal
and individual level for their customers.
While proximity marketing targets customers within a rather small area,
the evolution toward targeting consumers with personalized, timely, and
geographically precise messages presents numerous possibilities. According to
the global accounting firm PwC, technology transforms in-store experiences
in four ways: consumer analytics, mapping services, in-store marketing, and
loyalty programs (Egol et al., 2012). Consumer analytics allows firms to iden-
tify a range of behavioral criteria data regarding the previous actions and
behaviors of shoppers to target them more accurately, such as their engage-
ment in retail categories or visit preferences. Classifying visitors according to
their engagement within different venues and reaching out to these visitors
with personalized messages and effective proximity campaigns which better
match their needs and interests can create highly refined visitor segments.
In finding it difficult to locate shops in large buildings such as shopping
complexes, hospitals, libraries, etc., customers may spend almost a quarter of
their shopping time simply looking for the places they wish to visit (Samuel
et al., 2021).
Considering that the support of GPS is no longer useful within indoor
premises due to the fact that physical buildings distort or absorb signals,
indoor navigating services provided by proximity technologies can be
extremely beneficial in creating comfortable shopping experiences. In addi-
tion, by triggering time-sensitive geo-targeted offers on consumers’ devices,
an interactive in-store environment which delivers appropriate content at the
precise location and the right time will turn browsers into potential buyers.
Likewise, notifications which encourage customers to participate in loyalty
programs such as issuing stamps or rewards for future visits have also proven to
improve conversion rates (Mittal, 2021). These four approaches illustrate how
firms can transform in-store customer experiences when applying proximity
marketing.
758 A. LOUSSAIEF ET AL.

By using proximity technologies, signals on locations can be accurately

detected and firms can dynamically adapt to meet shoppers’ evolving consump-
tion behaviors. Shoppers’ potential purchase maps can be determined and
personalized relevant promotion materials can be delivered, thus increasing
the likelihood of shopper engagement and conversion. It is estimated that
proximity-based marketing campaigns can achieve a higher than 50% conver-
sion rate from advertising (Petro, 2014). This innovation does not require
much physical effort of human resources since proximity technologies get
consumers in the door and such an automatic targeting mechanism also frees
up employees’ work on in-store customer services (Shopkick, 2017). Proximity
marketing can bring about certain advantages over other rival marketing strate-
gies and is expected to be one of the most efficient ways to gain a competitive
edge when it comes to the mobile marketing landscape.
As can be seen from above, proximity marketing is a very helpful interactive
marketing strategy to improve consumer experience (Margulis et al., 2019).
Through active customer connection and interaction, proximity marketing
offers a two-way communication with mutual influence (Bilolo et al., 2015).
This bidirectional interactive communication will be initiated by both the firm
and the customer and can vary according to industry and agreement with the
customer, while the relationship is still established through several multidi-
mensional interactions (Margulis et al., 2016). Under such a circumstance,
proximity marketing naturally incorporates a customer relationship manage-
ment approach designed to apply information technology to develop an
interactive relationship with customers (cf., Kuo, 2011). Whereas, customers
participate and engage in controlling and modifying the environment in real-
time scenario (Margulis et al., 2019). As such, customers will create and
eventually receive value delivered by firms over time (Kuo, 2011). Below this
chapter discusses the benefits of proximity marketing.

2.2 Benefits of Proximity Marketing

Although mobile marketing may have reached maturity in recent years, prox-
imity marketing is still at its nascent stage as an emerging service that firms
are just beginning to utilize. However, those firms which have already lever-
aged such technologies have recognized its benefits and advantages, such as
having insight into customer preferences and leading to purchase conversion,
delivering and measuring the immediate phygital experience, increasing foot
traffic and brand awareness, and arousing playfulness, enhancing engagement,
and subsequently catering to customers’ impulse purchase tendencies.
In recent years, the retail industry has faced a dramatic change in consumer
behavior due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It has been identified that at the
moment, shopping habits have been changed—75% of consumers have turned
to using their mobile devices while shopping in stores (Girish, 2019). This
consumption behavior merges the ways in traditional bricks-and-mortar shops
and current digital storefronts, while in the post-pandemic era, such behavior
 33 LOCATION-BASED PROXIMITY MARKETING … 759

may continue and even become more important than ever before. With the
help of proximity technologies, the line between physical and digital expe-
riences has become more and more blurred. Through the introduction of
proximity marketing, a new form of phygital retailers, which also refers to
hybrid marketing channels, has emerged and is able to provide an immediate,
immersive customer experience (Moravcikova & Kliestikova, 2017). This form
of phygital retailers can further enable better on-site and online interactions
between retailers and customers simultaneously, whereas customer experi-
ences with concrete data can be measured at once. This feature—tracking and
analyzing potential customer content preferences—is a highly valuable aspect
of proximity marketing. Offering tailored advertisements at an appropriate
time in the right place would more likely result in a higher sales conver-
sion rather than distributing template promotions randomly. At this moment,
brick-and-mortar stores have been gradually losing attractiveness and more
customer attention has been paid to e-tailers (Internet retailers). However,
American physical retailing giant Macy’s expanded its proximity programs to
all stores nationwide, which made headlines all over the United States during
holiday seasons. This not only helped Macy’s to drive foot traffic, but also
increased brand awareness (Shopkick, 2020).
While the above mainly constitute the benefits and advantages from a
firm’s/retailer’s perspective, for consumers, proximity marketing can provide a
more user-friendly shopping experience by bringing in more relevant merchan-
dise to consumers’ attention. For example, the coupon industry is essentially
overwhelming the consumers by bombarding irrelevant advertisements which
eventually fails to lead to a pleasant user experience. Instead of receiving
random marketing information, customers are more likely to benefit from
proximity marketing by getting discounts based on their desirability, either
according to their tastes or their brand preferences (Willems et al., 2017).
According to the findings of Spiekermann et al. (2011), consumers receiving
coupons based on distance information (i.e., through proximity marketing
promotion) are five times more likely to use discount coupons, as these are
more in line with their needs. Besides, the offers through proximity promo-
tion might be received as playful and interesting services, thus fostering a
growth of interest levels. Also, proximity marketing can save consumers’ time
and bring convenience. Before making any payment, consumers may want
to compare various promotions and look for the best offers available, which
can be done instantly by applying proximity marketing techniques (Retail
Customer Experience, 2011).

2.3 Types and Practices of Applied Proximity Marketing Technologies

Depending on the required levels of accuracy, several location-based tech-
nologies are available and can be applied in proximity marketing. In this
section, the authors provide a table (Table 1) listing various proximity tech-
nologies, discussing how these technologies work, providing the advantages
760 A. LOUSSAIEF ET AL.

and disadvantages of these analytical solutions, and finally illustrating how

proximity marketing is applied by brands and organizations. These technolo-
gies include: (1) GPS, (2) NFC (Near Field Communication) tags, (3) BLE
beacons (Bluetooth Low Energy beacons), (4) Wi-Fi, and (5) QR (Quick
Response) Codes.

3 Literature Review on Proximity Marketing

Location-based proximity marketing applies location-based service technolo-
gies to detect a consumer’s location, subsequently triggering a desired
marketing action. There are myriad location-based service applications with
large user bases which enhance user experiences by integrating and inter-
acting with nearby surroundings. These location-based services have also
attracted much academic research over the last two decades, mainly in the
disciplines of engineering and computer science (Oikonomidis et al., 2021).
However, as noted, it was not until 2010 that marketers started applying
these technologies for marketing purposes (Minxuan, 2018). One decade
later, despite its emergence, proximity marketing has surprisingly not yet been
broadly applied, while scholarly reflection in the literature has been less than
extensive (Levesque et al., 2016; Lin et al., 2021, 2022). Nonetheless, this
chapter provides in this section an academic literature review based on the
limited existing proximity marketing studies, so as to provide a glance at the
current development in this subject matter. This section first reviews descrip-
tive and exploratory studies, followed by theoretical foundations, as well as the
antecedents and consequences of proximity marketing acceptation. Finally, this
chapter develops a framework based on the comprehensive review of existing
research.

3.1 Descriptive and Exploratory Research

Some figures within the existing research in proximity marketing are descrip-
tive and exploratory in nature. For example, Daradkeh et al. (2012) describe a
new context-aware computing model and cases positing possible proximity
marketing use for mobile users through Wi-Fi proximity so as to access
user-generated content. Willems et al. (2017) conduct an exploratory study
on the effectiveness of in-store marketing communication to identify appro-
priate location-based content for in-store proximity marketing. Gajanova et al.
(2019a) explore the aspects of research issues related to NFC technology and
identify areas of optimization of this technology in business practices. Margulis
et al. (2019) examine the use of ubiquitous technologies in the banking
industry with their clients, specifically RFID, and compare the uses of the
technologies in the entertainment and retail industries, these industries being
recognized leaders in proximity marketing implementation. This comparison
aims to bring insight to improving customer experiences in banking, thus
rendering banking firms more competitive for today’s demanding customers.
Table 1 Various types of technologies applied for proximity marketing and their applications in practice

Technology How it works Advantages Limits Practices

GPS – Pinpoints a user’s particular – Works in a radius of
location
– Push messages are sent to the
user’s mobile device when the
user enters a given geographic
area
– Not precise and less applicable – Google Maps will send an
50 meters for “micro-location”
proximity-based activities
– Drains mobile phone battery
– Lack of accuracy for indoor
applications
active reminder to users based
on location; once it has been
detected that they have
completed an interaction at
the location, visits to local
business, and institutions will
be evaluated to maximize
customer engagement
33

(Bonnie, 2021)
– GasBuddy launches a
GPS-based app that provides
prices at nearby gas stations
to connect with local foot
traffic and encourage users to
go directly to a store or gas
station based on their current
locations (Mesgleski, 2018)

(continued)
LOCATION-BASED PROXIMITY MARKETING …
761
Table 1 (continued)
762

Technology How it works Advantages Limits Practices

NFC Tags – Works by two devices: an
NFC tag and a nearby mobile
device
– The message is sent over
radio waves
– Do not require a power
source
– Used for precise indoor
positioning within only 30 cm
– Extremely cost-effective – Using NFC Tags, Nike
launches the Nike NBA
Connected jersey with
NikeConnect technology—this
technology integrates the jersey,
smartphone devices, and Nike
A. LOUSSAIEF ET AL.

Connect app to help fans who

own the jersey instantly receive
a personalized and exclusive
experience (NIKE, 2017)
– Wired magazine and Lexus
team up to create an
NFC-enabled print
advertisement that encourages
readers to use their
smartphones to read tags and
let them “test drive” the
Lexus Enform—the luxury
carmaker’s in-car navigation
and information
service—simply by placing
their phones over the
advertisement (Vagus, 2012)
Technology How it works Advantages
BLE Beacons – Signals from battery-driven – Capable of locating accuracy
beacons in the interim of GPS (too
broad) and NFC (too narrow) – Users can opt-out by not
ranges
– Able to work in tandem with
mobile apps or devices to
trigger particular notifications
or perform an action when
the device detects a signal
which is entering the beacon
range
Limits
– Requires user consent to
interact with beacons
permitting the use of
Bluetooth, or by uninstalling
the app on their mobile
devices
Practices
– Macy’s notifies visitors of its
offers, discounts, and
promotions for in-store and
online purchases through its
Shopkick app, given visitors’
browsing histories and
current locations (Lunden,
2013)
– Macy’s created a “Walk in
and Win” campaign for Black
33
Friday in which shoppers
received push notifications as
they approached beacons
throughout a Macy’s store
which encouraged shoppers
to participate in the
marketing campaign and
provided a chance to win $1
million in gifts and other
prizes (Lunden, 2013)
(continued)
LOCATION-BASED PROXIMITY MARKETING …
763
Table 1 (continued)
764

Technology How it works Advantages Limits Practices

Wi-Fi Can be used in a similar way as – The signal tends to be – Requires higher hardware and – Cancer Research UK uses
BLE beacons stronger and covers a wider setup costs Devicescape Engage’s Wi-Fi
range of distance compared to – Not a good option for technology and network to
BLE beacons location accuracy messaging engage with World Cancer
– Widely accessible from all on a granular level Day attendees and create a
mobile devices way for people to make
A. LOUSSAIEF ET AL.

instant donations from their

smartphones (Moore-Colyer,
2017)
– LinkNYC’s project aims to
transform old New York
phone booths into Wi-Fi
kiosks by providing free Wi-Fi
Internet services; users take
advantage of fast free Wi-Fi,
make Internet (VoIP) calls,
and search for information
about the weather and local
restaurants (Page, 2017)
Technology How it works
QR codes – Two-dimensional matrix
barcodes which store live data
records as to exactly where
shoppers are located, and
display information when
codes are scanned by QR
code scanners embedded in
smartphones
Advantages
– An effective proximity
marketing tool, especially
during the Covid-19
pandemic, which provides
contactless interactions with
customers
Limits
– Users may not be interested
in scanning the QR code to
view its content
Practices
– During Digital Signage Expo
2018, by scanning QR codes,
attendees could customize a
2019 Porsche Cayenne Turbo
and interact with the model
through in-air haptic cues; a
website was created, a
dedicated microsite with rich
media content focusing on
their personalized vehicles
33
(Sweeney, 2018)
– The Amazon GO store allows
customers to purchase
products in-store without
wasting time queuing, while
customers can compare
products, read reviews, and
access special information
from their mobile devices by
scanning the respective QR
codes (Schneider, 2016)
LOCATION-BASED PROXIMITY MARKETING …
765
766 A. LOUSSAIEF ET AL.

3.2 Theoretical Foundations

There are several theories which have been applied to explain proximity
contexts, including the Construal Level theory (CLT), the Unified Theory
of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT), UTAUT2, and the Tech-
nology Acceptance Model (TAM). The applications of these theories will now
be discussed. Table 2 shows a summary of these applied theories.
Formulated by Trope and Liberman (2010), CLT offers an integral frame-
work for the study of psychological distance (Norman et al., 2016). The basic
assumption of this construal level theory is that individuals tend to think in
concrete ways about objects and events close to them, and in abstract ways
about objects and events perceived as distant (Trope & Liberman, 2010).
A construal is recognized as a mental representation formed by a person.
The “level of construal” refers to the degree of concreteness or abstract-
ness in which the individuals represent the object or event (ibid.). As the
proximal or psychological distance of the beholder increases, it is represented
by increasingly higher levels of construal. Eventually, the mental representa-
tion of the object becomes more abstract, simplified, coherent, and idealized.
Conversely, as distance decreases, the level of construal will be lower, leading
to an increasingly concrete, detailed, and contextualized mental representation
that influences preferences and choices (Fiedler et al., 2012). In the proximity
marketing context, CLT has mainly been used to unveil the use of proximity
marketing devices and their impacts on buying behavior and to determine
appropriate location-based content for in-store proximity marketing (Hakim &
Almahdi, 2020; Willems et al., 2017).

Table 2 Applied theories in proximity marketing

Theoretical perspectives Technology Use in proximity marketing context

Construal level theory (Trope & RFID – Determine appropriate

Liberman, 2010)
Unified Theory of Acceptance and
Use of Technology (Venkatesh
et al., 2003)
Unified Theory of Acceptance and
Use of Technology 2 (Venkatesh
et al., 2012)
Technology Acceptance Model
(Davis, 1989)
Digital signage location-based content for
BLE Beacons in-store proximity marketing
– Identify the impact of proximity
marketing devices on buying
behavior
NFC – Examine the determinants of
NFC-based mobile payment
technology acceptance in the
restaurant industry
Geolocation – Investigate the factors influencing
the adoption of geolocation and
proximity marketing technologies
NFC – Investigate the differences in
determinants of NFC acceptance
for restaurant payments
 33 LOCATION-BASED PROXIMITY MARKETING … 767

Venkatesh et al. propose the theory of UTAUT on the basis of eight

previously established models in the year 2003. UTAUT assumes that perfor-
mance expectancy, effort expectancy, and social influence have a direct effect
on behavioral intention while facilitating conditions and behavioral intentions
directly influence user behavior. Furthermore, user age, gender, experience,
and voluntariness of use are integrated as moderator variables. UTAUT is
mainly developed to explain employee technology adoption and use. However,
due to its insufficient explanatory power in the context of consumer technolo-
gies, Venkatesh et al. developed UTAUT2 in 2012 based on their early work of
UTAUT, adding hedonic motivation, price value, and habit in their original
work to expand its explanatory power. UTAUT and UTAUT2 are useful in
identifying which factors influence the adoption and use of geolocation, prox-
imity marketing technologies, and NFC acceptance for restaurant payments
(Correa et al., 2021).
TAM, originating from the fields of sociology and psychology, aims to
predict the adoption of new technology among users and to underline the
design problems of an information system before its usage becomes frequent
among technology users (Davis, 1989). TAM explains the motivation of
users toward technology adoption through three constructs: perceived useful-
ness, perceived ease of use, and attitude toward use (ibid.). In the proximity
marketing field, TAM is applied to investigate customer behavioral intentions
toward NFC-based mobile payment in restaurants (Khalilzadeh et al., 2017).

3.3 Antecedents and Consequences of Proximity Marketing Acceptances

This section presents a systematic review of the antecedents and consequences
of proximity marketing in both descriptive and empirical studies, thus inspiring
future research on proximity marketing.

3.3.1 Extant Descriptive Studies on Antecedents and Consequences

of Proximity Marketing
Drawing upon the literature in technology innovation, marketing, and
psychology, Bilolo et al. (2015) propose an integrative research model for
proximity marketing adoption. They predict that the technological character-
istics of proximity marketing may clash with personal value, privacy sensitivity,
lack of knowledge, and technology-based anxiety, thus influencing consumer
reaction (adoption, reluctance, and resistance) when experiencing proximity
marketing. Fullerton et al. (2019) propose a framework for assessing the
strength and directionality of “consumer-perceived techno-marketing effec-
tiveness” (CPTE). Techno-marketing refers to a firm’s application of emerging
technologies such as proximity marketing. The authors consider that differing
levels of economic benefit, experienced enjoyment, invasiveness, and trans-
parency may be examined as antecedents of overall CPTE rating. Lengletm
and Mencarelli (2020), based on an in-depth analysis of the literature, offer
a macro-analytical and conceptually unified vision of proximity marketing.
768 A. LOUSSAIEF ET AL.

They propose that antecedents of proximity marketing are divided into dyadic
functional antecedents: relationship length, communication, and interaction
frequency, in addition to relationship-specific assets and dyadic relational
antecedents such as trust, commitment, and identity similarity.
As for consequences, according to Bilolo et al. (2015), the applica-
tion of proximity marketing technologies may lead to those related to
firm performance such as brand image and sales. Lengletm and Mencarelli
(2020) indicate that proximity marketing consequences may be cognitive,
emotional, and/or behavioral, while each consequence can be discussed from
three perspectives: customer-focused, dyad-focused, and seller-focused. In
terms of cognitive consequences, the category “customer-focused” refers to
perceived quality, satisfaction, and perceived value; “dyad-focused” covers
benefits for the other, mutual trust, and relational governance; and “seller-
focused” consists of satisfaction and relational performance. Regarding
emotional consequences, “customer-focused” consists of evaluations and
preferences and “dyad-focused” involves emotions toward partners, while
“seller-focused” addresses evaluations. Finally, for behavioral consequences,
“customer-focused” includes behavioral loyalty, choice, purchasing behavior,
and word of mouth; “dyad-focused” is composed of cooperation and repara-
tive behavior; and seller objective performance represents the “seller-focused”
perspective.

3.3.2 Prior Empirical Studies on Antecedents and Consequences

of Proximity Marketing
Almahdi et al. (2018) examine the role of proximity marketing communication
effectiveness of local retailers on GSM mobile phones to understand how it
contributes to customers’ shopping experiences and impacts their perceptions
toward the latest state-of-the-art technologies like NFC and Short Message
Service-Cell Broadcast (SMS-CB). The results show that informing customers
about the arrival of new products and brands with latest offers/discounts can
persuade and motivate customers to go shopping, thus impacting the effec-
tiveness of proximity marketing communication. Further, proximity marketing
message content, credibility, authenticity, and trust toward the retailer—as
well as responsiveness and assurance—all positively influence the effective-
ness of proximity marketing communication on NFC- and SMS-CB-enabled
mobile phones. In addition, Correa et al. (2021) evaluate the acceptance
of proximity marketing strategies among Colombian consumers. The results
show that consumer hedonic motivations, price value, performance, and effort
expectation positively influence the intention to adopt proximity marketing
technologies.
As for the consequences, Margulis et al. (2017) attempt to identify and
measure the impact of consumer characteristics on purchase intention. The
results reveal that the higher the concern of customers about their privacy
when collecting information through a proximity marketing platform, the
greater their knowledge of proximity marketing and technology. Willems et al.
 33 LOCATION-BASED PROXIMITY MARKETING … 769

(2017) present a study on the effectiveness of in-store marketing communica-

tion appeals through digital signage. They find that shoppers who are exposed
to a digital signage screen have a higher purchase intention toward the prod-
ucts advertised on that digital signage screen and are more likely to purchase
such products. According to Gajanova et al. (2019b) Slovak customers who
have an interest in proximity marketing show more positive buy-in response.
Their results also indicate that Slovak customers who are involved in the
concept of proximity marketing or location-based marketing and received
a reward are likely to recommend a shop to other customers and have a
higher level of loyalty. Finally, Hakim and Almahdi (2020) find that proximity
marketing devices have a significant impact on consumer purchase intention,
enhance product awareness, and create a loyalty bond with the store.
In summary, antecedents of proximity marketing are important in deter-
mining good proximity marketing communication and strategies that result
in positive behavioral outcomes. Figure 1 displays a conceptual model of
proximity marketing technologies.

4 Agenda for Future Research

This section outlines eight avenues of research that might assist customer
involvement and enjoyment, unlock more added value to the proximity
service, enhance the proximity system performance, and help build a solid
theoretical framework for proximity marketing.

4.1 Use of Proximity to Improve Consumer Experiences and Enhance

Their Engagement
Consumer experiences have emerged as a sustainable source of competitive
differentiation for firms to attain long-term customer loyalty (Holmlund et al.,
2020). As noted, proximity marketing can be utilized to provide individual,
customized marketing programs and enhance consumer phygital experiences.
The utilization of proximity marketing synchronizes the consumer’s digital
as well as physical experiences to get more immediate consumer involvement
and engagement in marketing programs (Ballina et al., 2019). In support of
marketing stimuli such as promotional offers, product recommendations, or
instant shopping incentives, proximity marketing can provide not only imme-
diate but also very specific personalization experiences adapted to consumer
profiles, rendering the content more relevant and valuable to customers
(Wang, 2021). With minimal physical devotion by firms and retailers, and
if such consumer stimuli are actively triggered, with consumers having more
autonomy and better motivation to act, they will make immediate responses
and maximize their involvement and engagement in marketing programs
(Margulis et al., 2019).
In addition to the above, current evolving mobile-related technologies such
as the arrival of 5G and the development of 6G for the future indicate a great
 770

Antecedents
Latest information on new
Product arrival, price and brands
Proximity marketing message
Content and its relevancy to weekly shopping
Consequences
Responsiveness (promptness and helpfulness both
Purchase intention
online and in-store)
Purchasing behavior
Proximity marketing message
Loyalty
Credibility, authenticity and trust upon retailers
Product awareness
A. LOUSSAIEF ET AL.

Assurance (competence, courtesy, credibility, and

Brand image
security both online and in-store)
Sales
Hedonic motivations
Perceived quality
Price value
Satisfaction
Performance Proximity marketing
Perceived value
Effort expectation Adoption
Benefits for others
Consumer value Communication effectiveness
Mutual trust
Privacy sensitivity Perceived effectiveness
Relational governance
Lack of knowledge
Relational performance
Technology-caused anxiety
Evaluations
Technology-perceived benefits
Preferences
Perceived level of economic benefits
Emotion to partners
Perceived level of experienced enjoyment
Word of mouth
Perceived level of invasiveness
Cooperation
Perceived level of transparency
Reparative behavior
Relationship length
Communication Seller objective performance
Interaction frequency
Relationship specific assets
Commitment
Identity similarity

Fig. 1 Conceptual model of antecedents and consequences of proximity technologies

 33 LOCATION-BASED PROXIMITY MARKETING … 771

opportunity for the future research of proximity marketing and the develop-
ment of supporting technologies (Ballina et al., 2019). Despite all the potential
benefits, proximity marketing can bring to the consumer experience, a review
of the literature reveals there is relatively limited research regarding the appli-
cation of proximity marketing and consumer experience enhancement. One
exception, Margulis et al. (2019), presents unclear results about customer
experiences with proximity marketing across industries. Our agenda for future
research is to better understand and further explore these downstream and
upstream roles of proximity marketing.

4.2 A View from the Perspectives of Retail Stores

A review of the literature reveals that extant studies explore proximity
marketing mainly from one side of the retail-customer relationship—i.e., the
customer perspective—such as product awareness enhancement (Hakim &
Almahdi, 2020), useful information for shopping choices (Almahdi et al.,
2018), customer enjoyment (van de Sanden et al., 2019), customized
customer experiences (Margulis et al., 2019), personalized customer engage-
ment (Hakim & Almahdi, 2020), and customer loyalty (Gajanova et al.,
2019b). The focus on customers might be due to customer-centrism being
the key to successful strategic marketing (Fullerton et al., 2019) while research
in proximity marketing remains in its infancy. Regardless, the application
of proximity marketing can ease and enhance firms in managing customer
relationships and help develop a solid brand image (Bilolo et al., 2015). There-
fore, it would be worthwhile to explore to retailer’s perspective. Researchers
can consider the best way of defining retailers’ goals in terms of proximity
marketing applications and the approach of measuring their progress toward
those goals (Morgan et al., 2019).
According to van de Sanden et al. (2019), retailers often lack the knowl-
edge and time to analyze proximity marketing data, foregoing the opportunity
to gain actionable insight into challenges and difficulties with the system, a
potential avenue for future research. Moreover, as retailers lack the under-
standing of how to exploit and integrate the capabilities of emerging proximity
marketing technologies for commercial ends (ibid.), future research can draw
its attention to explaining how to propose tailor-made offers, valuable content
planning, and appealing messages based on consumer needs (Margulis et al.,
2017), as well as how to identify the best locations for proximity marketing
campaigns (Willems et al., 2017). Therefore, researchers can bring insight into
the dilemma of determining how to design successful proximity marketing
campaigns and create a competitive advantage from the perspective of retail
stores possessing limited resources.
772 A. LOUSSAIEF ET AL.

4.3 Proximity Marketing Platform System Management

As a proximity marketing system may include a system platform provider and
a number of retail stores, better system management for synthesizing all entire
system tasks to achieve a better shopping experience should be developed. One
key challenge to managing such a system with a group of members might be
dealing with inconsistencies such as goal divergence, domain dissensus, various
perceptions of reality, and how retailers perform (cf., Mekraz & Gundala,
2016). Likewise, leadership application represents another significant chal-
lenge. Leadership can be used to align proximity system members with the
strategies needed to achieve overall marketing goals in the system and benefit
individual retailers (cf., Guzmán et al., 2020).
Power and conflict are two notable influential forces when applying lead-
ership. The exert of power over other members includes coercive and non-
coercive (or economic and non-economic) techniques which can be utilized
by the leader of the system to motivate other retailers and/or the platform
providers to change their individual behaviors (cf., Kumar & Sadarangani,
2019). Conflicts are inevitable and experienced during the work cycle in a
team (Salas et al., 2015) and can be further magnified by the complexity of
the team’s task (de Dreu & Weingart, 2003). Conflict may lead to errors and
deterioration in performance if it is destructive (Salas et al., 2008) but can be
constructive in nature and eventually beneficial to the system. These proximity
marketing system management issues can guide system leaders to encourage
all system members to work cooperatively to pursue system performance as
a whole. To date, however, these matters have remained unexplored in the
literature, yet are critical for future research considerations.

4.4 Comparative Studies Across Various Proximity Marketing

Technologies
As discussed previously, depending on the required level of accuracy, there
are several location-based technologies that have been applied for proximity
marketing purposes, such as Wi-Fi, BLE beacons, and GPS. Extant articles
mainly investigate the applications of proximity marketing based on one single
individual technology (see for example, Lin et al., 2022; van de Sanden et al.,
2019, Willems et al., 2017). While applications and research in proximity
marketing are in their nascent stage, there is a dearth of literature related to
comparative research across proximity technologies. According to Ali et al.
(2021) and Chen and Tian (2015), a comparative study can generate a clearer
analysis of the similarities and differences among various proximity technolo-
gies, leading to a deeper understanding of the most critical issues of central
concern, promoting better comprehensive information, and answering relevant
questions to assist with strategic proximity marketing decisions.
While retailers may still struggle to identify the appropriate application
of proximity marketing in line with their goals, such a comparative study
 33 LOCATION-BASED PROXIMITY MARKETING … 773

across technologies will further provide insightful explanations, identifying the

most appropriate technology to implement better ways to inspire consumer
engagement in retail stores through proximity marketing (van de Sanden
et al., 2019). As a consequence, retailers’ proximity marketing services will be
enhanced and customer experiences will be improved, eventually contributing
to retailer brand image and return-on-investment (Levesque et al., 2016).
Therefore, comparative studies across the applications of various technologies
in proximity marketing need to be established. Researchers can focus on the
identification and analysis of different proximity marketing technologies from
the perspectives of technologically delivered quality, safety, and ethical implica-
tions as well as cost-effectiveness and performance-efficiency (see below). Such
comparative studies represent a crucial avenue of research. This chapter thus
calls for special attention to such approaches.

4.5 Effectiveness and Efficiency Comparison Between Proximity

Marketing Technologies
Extant research regarding the performance of proximity marketing technolo-
gies is limited in presenting a descriptive overview of how these technologies
work (see, Allurwar et al., 2016; D’Auria et al., 2021). As a consequence, an
effectiveness and efficiency comparison between proximity marketing systems
and technologies can be an essential avenue of research. Such an approach
gives an idea of whether a gap between ideals and reality exists (Biehl &
Velten, 2008; Shah & Zhongjun, 2021). Moreover, the analysis allows the
evaluation of the most effective and efficient solution to implement proximity
marketing and provides firms with methods for adopting suitable technologies
required for better performance (Willems et al., 2017). Finally, better insight
into the scope—i.e., the applicability, effectiveness, and efficiency of various
proximity marketing technologies under different scenarios—can be gained
(Hilken et al., 2018). Therefore, research into performance comparisons
can be crucial in an era when more performance explorations in individual
technology contexts will have been conducted.

4.6 Consumer Interaction with the Proximity Platform and Retail

Stores
The success of proximity marketing requires effective consumer interac-
tion with proximity platforms and retail stores so as to develop memorable
experiences and thus increase consumer engagement through the platform
system (Kang et al., 2015). Such an interaction entails a well-developed plat-
form infrastructure to better perform communicative functions (Nicholas &
Shapiro, 2020). According to Raghunandan and Parimal (2015), when inter-
acting with proximity marketing activities, the content displayed on mobile
devices through the proximity platform should be maximized, which can in
turn enhance consumer enjoyment. Furthermore, consumer interaction will be
774 A. LOUSSAIEF ET AL.

better evaluated if individualized personalization is performed (Riegger et al.,

2021). There are also contingencies in which the effectiveness of the interac-
tion among consumers, the proximity platform, and retail stores varies. For
example, store atmosphere (Van De Sanden et al., 2019), the amount and
speech of messages/information deliveries (Tsai et al., 2017), the crowding
level of the shopping area (Bernritter et al., 2021; Blut & Iyer, 2020), brand,
and retail store density (Chen et al., 2020), etc., all might affect the interac-
tion intention, willingness, and attention of consumers. These lead us to call
for future studies regarding consumer interaction with the proximity platform
and retail stores to advance our knowledge regarding proximity marketing.

4.7 Martech, Artificial Intelligence, and Proximity Marketing

Marketing has become a technology-powered/oriented discipline, while
marketing technology—i.e., martech—applies an increasing range of techno-
logical methods (such as artificial intelligence (AI) and proximity technologies)
to perform marketing activities (William et al., 2021). Via martech, marketing
campaigns are planned and executed to achieve marketing goals, whereas
the results of these campaigns are thus collected, measured, and analyzed.
Marketing performance can then be tracked through analytic solutions which
provide a quantifiable means to measure the effectiveness and efficiency of
marketing campaigns. Eventually these insights into campaigns can be applied
to future marketing activities (Parimi, 2021).
Among martech, AI and machine learning algorithms are two potential
solutions for personalization automation in marketing campaigns (Relatech,
2019). The introduction of AI to analyze data collected via proximity tech-
nologies will be more powerful in predictive analysis to support tactical
marketing actions and is a fruitful avenue for future research (Grewal et al.,
2020). Moreover, developing the AI system and anti-spam algorithms to miti-
gate spam promotion and advertising requires effective ways to use real-time
data collected from proximity technologies (Wu et al., 2021). Therefore,
future research can also explore the applications of AI and machine learning
algorithms in proximity and contextual marketing to identify and mini-
mize spam materials so as to better deliver appropriate content to the right
customers at the right moment (D’Auria et al., 2021).

4.8 Dark Sides of Proximity Marketing

While the possibilities of proximity marketing seem limitless, there are still
a number of obstacles to overcome so as to fully exploit its potential. The
proper application of proximity marketing can enhance and ensure the quan-
tity of communication with potential customers (D’Auria et al., 2021) through
interactive personalized messages. However, the applications of some tech-
nologies such as BLE beacons may remind consumers to recognize the data
and information proximity system collected by providers and retailers, thereby
 33 LOCATION-BASED PROXIMITY MARKETING … 775

raising privacy concerns (Aguirre et al., 2015; Grewal et al., 2016). While the
personalization of in-store messages can enhance consumer engagement with
the retailer (ibid.), it can also come at the cost of being perceived as intru-
sive in relation to consumer privacy (Aguirre et al., 2015). As pointed out
by Linzbach et al. (2019), though one may regard proximity technologies
as an entry point to better promotion strategies, another may raise privacy
concerns. Recent studies such as Lin et al. (2021) have started to explore such
matters, yet it demands even more attention and effort. in physical retail store
environments and in high-density areas such as indoor and outdoor shopping
centers, customers may feel swamped with messages. These negative percep-
tions may cause on-spot refusals, potentially followed by lower future retailer
patronage intentions or negative word of mouth (WOM). A large number of
studies have already confirmed that the information overload of social media
causes negative emotions such as social fatigue and social anxiety, which in turn
leads to unwillingness to use relevant media (Dhir et al., 2018; Luqman et al.,
2017; Ravindran et al., 2014; Shin & Shin, 2016). As a result, there is the risk
of increasing the consumer perception of “information overload” which may
result in negative feelings toward such technologies or retailers and eventually
affect the effectiveness of marketing campaigns adversely. The potential down-
sides of these negatives may attenuate or even reverse the benefits of proximity
marketing and are thus deserving of attention.

5 Conclusion
In recent years, the reform of mobile phone technology and the rapid dissem-
ination of data information have brought forth new business opportunities
for personal data, especially location data, and encouraged new and innovative
business model development. While increasingly sophisticated and unconven-
tional targeting technologies have been introduced accordingly, marketers are
now able to identify customer-specific locations and deliver subsequent person-
alized materials such as tailored and contextualized information according to
customer movements. Such a new form of information and message distri-
bution at the right time and the right place using location-based mobile
technologies, known as proximity marketing, is expected to become one of
the most powerful and popular marketing technologies and is an important
part of future mCommerce.
Proximity marketing technologies enable firms to provide complex location-
based customer services and functions. Examples include providing incentives
for visitors to motivate their in-store conversions and patronize retailer stores
when passing through or allowing the flexibility to tailor advertisements based
on visitors’ preferences according to their movement. Of great importance is
the fact that these function through automatic targeting mechanisms without
human contact. Despite these obvious benefits, data security and privacy
management remain among the key concerns of customers, putting a spotlight
on the application of proximity marketing. Privacy regulations such as General
776 A. LOUSSAIEF ET AL.

Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), ePrivacy Regulation, user perceptions

of intrusive location-based messages, and anticipatory responses to informa-
tion overload must be established to ensure the willingness of consumer
participation in proximity marketing programs (van de Sanden et al., 2019).
Despite its applicability and gradual popularity for the time being, empirical
research aiming to gain insight has not fully addressed the issues of proximity
marketing applications. This chapter presents a comprehensive assessment and
review of current literature to identify the benefits of technologies and their
implementation and practices to assist practitioners in leveraging proximity
marketing technologies and consequently facilitating retailers to apply this
innovative technology to effectively connect with their profitable customers
through valuable messages and credible offers. This systematic literature
review makes important contributions to the research on proximity marketing
by providing unique insights which are previously unavailable. Further, a
conceptual framework is developed based on a comprehensive review of the
antecedents and consequences of proximity marketing acceptance. Finally, this
chapter proposes an agenda for future scholarly research. As only a limited
number of existing articles in proximity marketing exist, more academic studies
in this field should be encouraged.

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 PART VII

Practical Implications of Interactive Marketing

 CHAPTER 34

Customer Interactive Experience in Luxury

Retailing: The Application of AI-Enabled
Chatbots in the Interactive Marketing

Ni Zeng, Liru Jiang, Gianpaolo Vignali, and Daniella Ryding

1 Introduction
In contemporary and omnichannel retail environments, consumers are
surrounded by a wide range of products and a wealth of information about
goods and services. Retailers that can interact with their customers by
providing a memorable experience and offering value stand apart and have
the potential to create deep customer engagement. The advent of technology
is changing the game of the retail environment. It has provided customers
with more information to help them understand products and make better
decisions, also helping retailers improve customer experience. Currently, the
emerging priority for retailers is to improve customer experience and embrace
technological innovation (Grewal et al., 2021b; Shankar et al., 2011). Particu-
larly, the impact of artificial intelligence on the retail industry is expected to be
huge and substantial (Davenport et al., 2020). Following the emergence of the

N. Zeng (B) · L. Jiang · G. Vignali · D. Ryding

University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
e-mail: ni.zeng@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk
L. Jiang
e-mail: liru.jiang@manchester.ac.uk
G. Vignali
e-mail: gianpaolo.vignali@manchester.ac.uk
D. Ryding
e-mail: daniella.ryding@manchester.ac.uk

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 785

Switzerland AG 2023
C. L. Wang (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Interactive Marketing,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14961-0_34
786 N. ZENG ET AL.

Covid-19 pandemic, the use of technology in commerce has risen dramatically

(Shankar et al., 2021b). Many brick-and-mortar retailers have been forced to
close their physical shops due to the implementation of measures aimed at
preventing the spread of the coronavirus, such as social distancing and lock-
down. Shopper behaviours and orientations have shifted dramatically, with
most consumers preferring to shop online or reduce the frequency of offline
shopping, particularly, during the lockdown. Thus, retailers are increasingly
turning to technology-based solutions, such as online ordering and delivery,
click and collect, and robot-assisted operations. Shankar et al. (2021b) believe
that robotics is expected to prosper in Covid-19 and beyond the future,
enhancing retail automation significantly.
The rapid development and innovation in new technologies, platform revo-
lution, participatory culture, and the spread of social media are all reflected
in the explosive growth of interactive marketing (Wang, 2021). Chatbots,
Virtual reality, and Augmented reality are significantly changing consumer-
brand interaction relationships and improving customer experience through
portable and embodied tools and highly engaging virtual connections (Flavián
et al., 2019). Particularly, chatbots are widely used in luxury retail and facili-
tate the interaction between customers and brands, also changing the customer
value (Chung et al., 2020; Hoyer et al., 2020). For example, Burberry, Chanel,
and Louis Vuitton have launched chatbots services on official websites or social
media platforms for providing personal service regarding sales services and
product information. Customers can interact with chatbots to discover the
products and get suggestions about specific items. Furthermore, consumers
could interact and engage with chatbots 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, regard-
less of working or opening hours. Retailers could reduce human customer
service overtime and avoid the risk of being unavailable outside of business
hours.
The application and demand of technology innovation is increasing in
the fashion industry, but there is still a gap in the literature that exam-
ines the new role of interactive technology in an omnichannel environment
(Cook, 2014; Juaneda-Ayensa et al., 2016). In addition, how interactive tech-
nology impacts customer behaviours also is a question, which deserves to be
addressed. (Verhoef et al., 2015). A further remit for exploration is chatbots as
an emerging and popular technology that is transforming customer experience,
creating customer value, and enhancing customer engagement. However, little
is known about consumers’ perceived value and engagement behaviours with
chatbots when used in a retail environment (Hoyer et al., 2020; Moriuchi
et al., 2021).
This chapter introduces the most popular and widely used artificial intel-
ligence enabled technology—Chatbots, particularly, focussing on the applica-
tion of chatbots in luxury retail and synthesising the effect of chatbots on
customer engagement from the interactive marketing perspective. First, this
chapter briefly introduces the concept of interactive marketing and customer
 34 CUSTOMER INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCE … 787

engagement. Second, this chapter introduces the definition of AI and chat-

bots in detail and suggests the need to distinguish between AI and AI-enabled
technologies, which provides a general idea about chatbots. Third, this chapter
presents several examples of the application of chatbots in luxury retail, which
provides a luxury retail perspective for the application of chatbots in interac-
tive marketing. Also, it points out the future research directions of interactive
marketing in the luxury sector. Fourth, this chapter explores the role of chat-
bots in interactive marketing based on the previous research and proposes
six features chatbots should have in luxury retail based on our research on
the current application of chatbots. Fifth, this chapter synthesises the effect
of Chatbots on customer responses and customer engagement. Finally, this
chapter identifies some of the research gaps and future research directions in
the field of artificial intelligence and interactive marketing.
Thus, this chapter will focus on chatbots technology and provide an analyt-
ical summary of recent research in the related research area, including the
application of chatbots in luxury retail, interactive marketing, and customer
engagement. It should be noticed that the widely used chatbots are text-based
chatbots in luxury retail, so this chapter will focus on the text-based chatbots.

2 The Emergence and Definition

of Interactive Marketing
The focus of scholars and retailers is increasingly changing from traditional
marketing to interactive marketing as the Internet becomes more widely avail-
able in society and academia (Barwise & Farley, 2005). Interactive marketing
has been developing since the early years of the 1990s (Blattberg & Deighton,
1991), and interactivity has influenced many aspects of marketing in this short
span of thirty years. The new forms of direct-to-consumer marketing and
E-business have been made feasible by technology innovations such as the
Internet, wireless devices, customer databases, and other technology inno-
vations. The concept of interactive marketing was established. Interactive
marketing has evolved from traditional direct marketing to e-commerce, and
it also has an inseparable relationship with digital marketing.
As the breadth of interactive marketing is growing, it is not hard to find
that interactions and dialogues are two vital features of interactive marketing
(Wang, 2021). Although there is disagreement in the academic field about
the notion of interactive marketing, Stone and Woodcock (2014) point out
that interactive marketing requires a greater awareness of customers, their
behaviour, and how they would like to connect with the brand, as well as the
capacity to provide individualised experiences which they feel are valuable and
engaging. Meanwhile, Wang (2021) states explicitly that interactive marketing
refers to ‘the bi-directional value creation and mutual-influence marketing
process through active customer connection, engagement, participation and
interaction.’ Thus, this definition of interactive marketing is applied to this
book chapter.
788 N. ZENG ET AL.

The emergence and development of social media and advanced technology

have provided new chances and challenges for marketing practices. Customers
can use social media to search, comment on, produce, and share informa-
tion across several platforms. Customers were able to interact directly with
companies because of technological advancements. These are the essential
elements of interactive marketing communication channels (Florenthal &
Shoham, 2010). Wang (2021) also mentions that through customised live
streaming, interactive video, and gamification platforms across various kinds
of digital, mobile, and social media marketing, interactive marketing provides
the customer with dynamic and engaging content. Majid (2021) highlights
that interactive marketing communication channels improve the possibility of
customer acquisition over time, but no-interactive channels do not have this
effect. It shows that digital media and technologies are increasingly being used
to facilitate essential connections between firms and customers (Shankar et al.,
2021a, b). At the same time, the customer demand of interactivity is also
increasing. As a result, an approach called chatbots was offered to make the
website more engaging.

3 Understanding Customer
Engagement Within Interactive Marketing
Interactive marketing introduced in the last section is closely related to
customer engagement. Vohra and Bhardwaj (2019) conclude that interactive
elements of the market environment are an essential part of forming recent
customer relationships. Specifically, Eigenraam et al. (2018) mention that the
interactive process between brands and customers leads to customer engage-
ment. In order to understand the application of chatbots, either knowledge
of interactive marketing or customer engagement cannot be ignored. So, this
session mainly introduces customer engagement.
The concept of customer engagement has been widely applied in business;
however, a more academically oriented study about it is needed (Grewal et al.,
2017; Pansari & Kumar, 2017). In addition, there are different viewpoints
on the definition, notions, and structures of customer engagement. It’s hardly
unexpected that consumer engagement may be defined in a variety of ways.
Van Doorn et al. (2010) and Verhoef et al. (2010), for example, focus
on the physical components, seeing consumer engagement as a behavioural
dimension (beyond transaction) (2010). Customer engagement is consid-
ered a psychological state in certain research (Hollebeek, 2011; Vivek et al.,
2012). While this chapter only focusses on a single dimension, Bowden
(2009) emphasises that customer engagement is a multidimensional concept.
Customer engagement could be defined as a psychological process including
cognitive, emotional, and behavioural dimensions (Bowden, 2009). Further-
more, Pansari and Kumar (2017, p. 295) define customer engagement as
‘the mechanics of a customer’s value addition to the firm, either through
direct or/and indirect contribution.’ According to Pansari and Kumar (2017,
 34 CUSTOMER INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCE … 789

p. 295), a relationship can move to the stage of engagement when it is fulfilled

and has an emotional connection, which could lead to consequent purchases,
referrals, social media influence, and feedback behaviours of customers. These
behaviours are referred to by academics as customer engagement behaviours.
Likewise, Van Doorn et al., (2010, p. 253) note that WOM (Word of Mouth)
activity, recommendations, helping other customers, blogging, and referral are
customer engagement behaviours. Different from Pansari and Kumar (2017),
Van Doorn et al., (2010, p. 254) define customer engagement as the ‘cus-
tomer’s behavioural manifestations that have a brand or firm focus, beyond
purchase, resulting from motivational drivers’. It is not hard to find that the
major issue in the customer engagement area is whether customer involve-
ment leads to purchase behaviour. Kotler and Armstrong (2010) say that if
marketing is about ‘managing successful customer relationships’, it will even-
tually lead to financial transactions. Thus, it is important to note that purchase
behaviour is also considered as one of the customer engagement behaviours,
and Pansari and Kumar (2017)‘s definition of customer engagement is more
appropriate for this chapter.
Now that we have an understanding of what customer engagement is,
knowing what is influencing customer engagement is important. Currently,
new technologies are developing fast, influencing customer engagement.
For example, the research by Alimamy and Naddem (2021) indicates that
customer engagement can be increased through augmented reality (AR) tech-
nology. So, in order to understand chatbots within interactive marketing,
artificial intelligence technologies being used by marketers are introduced in
the next session.

4 The Definition of Artificial

Intelligence Enabled-Chatbots
Technological advancements have hastened drastic developments and had
a substantial impact on the retail environment in recent years, also been
changing the consumer cognitive, emotional, and behavioural responses
(Grewal et al., 2017, 2021b). And it has reshaped and will continue to reshape
the retail environment from marketing strategies to operation patterns to inter-
action (Grewal et al., 2021a). Artificial intelligence (AI), Machine Learning
(ML), Virtual reality (VR), Augmented reality (AR), big data, and mobile
apps have all contributed to services that influence the retailer’s interaction
with customers, as well as back-end technology that make retail operations
easier (Roggeveen & Sethuraman, 2020). Particularly, the impact of AI on
retail is expected to be significant (Grewal et al., 2017). Since most chatbots
used in the luxury industry are text-based chatbots, this section will focus on
text-based chatbots.
Both academia and retailer pay increasing attention to artificial intelligence
(AI)-based technologies in recent years. The most widely used artificial intelli-
gence technologies are AI-based vehicles (e.g., unmanned aerial vehicle and
790 N. ZENG ET AL.

Tesla), Virtual assistants (e.g., Alexa), service robots, big data (e.g., Intel-
ligent recommendation tool), and the most related to this chapter natural
language processing (e.g., chatbots). The applications of artificial intelligence
have been used in the luxury retail industry in a variety of ways. Shankar
(2018) describes that there are two major ways AI might affect retailing:
(1) demand-side applications (e.g., personalisation/recommendation systems,
customer relationship management, in-store customer experience manage-
ment, payment management, customer service management), (2) supply-side
applications (e.g., supply chain optimisation, inventory management, shop task
creation, logistics, and tore payout optimisation). It is worth noting that we
need to distinguish between service AI and technologies that enable AI.
The definition of artificial intelligence in marketing follows the tradition of
literature. Intelligence demonstrated by machines is a commonly recognised
definition of AI (Shieber & Rapaport, 2005). Meanwhile, Syam and Sharma
(2018, p. 136) define AI as ‘the ability of machines to mimic intelligent human
behaviour’ and pay special attention to ‘cognitive functions that we associate
with the human mind, including problem-solving and learning.’ In the same
vein, Huang and Rust (2018, p. 155) indicate that AI as ‘machines that
exhibit aspects of human intelligence.’ Davenport (2018) points out that arti-
ficial intelligence relies on several key technologies, such as machine learning,
deep learning, natural language processing, neural networks, rule-based expert
systems, physical robotics, and robotic process automation. However, all of
these definitions have a common problem that is they assume that human
intelligence determines artificial intelligence. But in fact, unlike the human
brain, AI paired with big data and deep learning can recognise patterns, trends,
and purposes that are beyond the capability of human intelligence (Bock et al.,
2020); they also argue that previous definitions have failed to provide a clear
operationalisation of AI construction. Based on this situation, Kaplan and
Haenlein (2019, p. 17) define AI as ‘a system’s ability to interpret external
data correctly, to learn from such data, and to use those learnings to achieve
specific goals and tasks through flexible adaptation.’ The definition of Kaplan
and Heanlein (2019, p. 17) took the first step in outlining the domain of AI
and accurate measurement of AI construct (Bock et al., 2020). The techno-
logical innovations in artificial intelligence (AI) allow the development of new
and more efficient virtual assistants (online chatbots) (Guha et al., 2021).
As the retail market becomes more competitive, retailers are increasingly
looking to artificial intelligence as a way of distinction. Text-based chatbots,
software systems that engage with humans using natural written language,
have gained popularity over the previous decade (Rapp et al., 2021). Due to
the significant advantages of this emerging technology, such as reduced opera-
tional costs and the ease of engaging customers. Retailers are increasingly using
conversational artificial intelligence (chatbots) for delivering customer service
and improving customer experience. Conversely, there is still a lack of research
on consumer perceptions of chatbots interactions and how these interactions
 34 CUSTOMER INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCE … 791

affect customer engagement, customer responses, and other consumer service

offerings and lead to subsequent consumer behaviours.
Chatbots are considered as the next key technical innovation in the era of
fast-growing conversational services, allowing businesses to enable consumers
to connect with messaging systems using artificial intelligence and machine
learning technology (Tran et al., 2021). According to Rapp et al. (2021), it
has more than 300,000 chatbots were active on Facebook Messenger alone
in 2018, and it is predicted that by 2022, 85% of customer service interac-
tions will be powered by chatbots. The luxury industry is also following this
trend, they implement digital services-chatbots for offering its customers 24/7
personalised service.
Chatbots, also known as dialogue/conversational systems/agents, have
gotten a lot of attention in recent years. Chatbots are software applications
that use artificial intelligence and natural language processing to understand
what the human requirement is and guide them to their desired result with as
little work for the end user as possible. Analogously, Brandtzaeg and Følstad
(2018) indicate that chatbots are software agents that give access to services
and information by interacting with users in their native language via text or
voice. It is quickly becoming the most popular platform for user interaction
and engagement due to their capacity to automate user-performed activities
(Suhaili et al., 2021). Chatbots allow retailers to electronically interact with
potential customers in order to address frequent questions or have a simple
conversation. Furthermore, when compared to virtual agents without phys-
ical agents, such as chatbots, virtual agents with physical objects can give
extra social indicators from facial expressions, bodily postures, and speech.
Visual signals such as human faces and animated agents have been claimed
to trigger higher social reactions and provide a natural sense of interaction
with customers (Qiu & Benbasat, 2009).
Currently, retailers are increasingly relying on artificial intelligence tech-
nology, with no human presence on the sales side (Roggeveen & Sethuraman,
2020). The use of new technologies enables companies to meet customer
expectations while achieving corporate goals and creating value. Many fashion
e-commerce functions, such as offering suggestions, researching and searching
large catalogues, supplementing virtual fitting room features and delivering
(post-sale) client assistance, might benefit from chatbots (Landim et al., 2021).
However, the role of chatbots is to facilitate the human sales and human
customer service rather than replace them.
As a consequence, an increasing number of luxury companies recognise the
bright future and growing popularity of chatbots. In this next section, the
application of chatbots in luxury retail will be discussed.
792 N. ZENG ET AL.

5 The Application of Chatbots

in Luxury Fashion Retail
This section describes some examples of chatbots that have been used in luxury
fashion retail and theirbenefits and challenges are also discussed.
Chatbot are being used by brands for communicating with customers,
which is no exception for luxury fashion brands. It is important to know how
luxury fashion brands are using chatbots not only through literature but also
through practical examples. In this section, a table is used for concluding the
application of chatbots by 10 luxury fashion brands. Platforms (official app,
official website, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter) and relevant functions of
these 10 brands are concluded in the following Table 1, which will be followed
by a description of the application based on relevant literature.
The data in this table was collected in January 2022 in the UK, therefore
cannot represent the cases in the past, in the future or in other countries.
According to this table, only 3 luxury fashion brands from the 10 are using
the chatbots technologies in communicating with customers, in addition, no
luxury fashion brands from the selected 10 brands are using chatbots functions
on the official app or Twitter.

Table 1 The application of chatbots in luxury retail

Brand name Platform Function

Dior Instagram Product introduction;

AR Filter
Facebook Product introduction;
AR Filter
Twitter/Official App/Official Website None
Gucci Facebook Celebrity-related game,
show and product; Quiz
for personalising
product
recommendation
Official App/Official None
Website/Instagram/Twitter
Louis Vuitton Official Website Store availability;
Product discovery; LV
assistance
Official None
App/Instagram/Facebook/Twitter
Givenchy/Prada/ Official App/Official None
YSL/Burberry/Fendi/ Website/Instagram/
Hermes/Chanel Facebook/Twitter

Source The official App/ official website/social media platforms of Dior, Gucci, Louis Vuitton,
Givenchy, Prada, YSL, Burberry, Fendi, Hermes, and Chanel (2022)
 34 CUSTOMER INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCE … 793

As one luxury fashion brand that makes use of chatbots in the table shown
above, Dior uses chatbots in both Instagram and Facebook Messenger, the
functions of chatbots used by Dior are totally the same on both platforms.
The functions of chatbots used by Dior include product introduction and AR
filter, which shows that the luxury fashion brand is using a combination of
different technologies, for example, AR filter and chatbots, to communicate to
customers; however, the product being introduced is just a limited collection,
rather than all products; The AR filter has the similar problem, only very little
product can be tried on through the AR filter function provided. When it
comes to the client centre, only human advisors can reply to the customers
rather than chatbots.
Gucci only uses chatbots in Facebook Messenger. Compared with Dior,
the chatbots of Gucci introduces relevant activities or product introductions
through playing games with customers, which provides more fun and engage-
ment. In addition, the chatbots of Gucci asks customers questions about their
personal preferences through a short quiz, after which the product which may
suit the customer will show up and the customer can either shop it directly or
book an appointment in the store. Although Dior and Gucci both make good
use of chatbots on social media, it is not difficult to find out that the chatbots
for these two brands can only chat with customers about pre-determined and
limited topics/items, no reply will be given by the chatbots if the customer
asks things not pre-mentioned by the chatbots.
In addition, compared to Dior and Gucci, rather than on social media plat-
forms, Louis Vuitton uses chatbots on its official website. Except for store
availability and product discovery, the functions of the chatbots used by Louis
Vuitton also include ‘LV Assistance’, which provides the service of ‘my order’,
‘delivery’, ‘store information’, ‘repairs’, ‘return & exchanges’, ‘product care’
and ‘authenticity’. These functions provided by the chatbots of Louis Vuitton
can not only show product and brand information to customers but also help
customers to solve their problems with the shopping.
To conclude, chatbots are playing the role of introducing product, intro-
ducing brand-related activities, introducing celebrity endorsement, providing
personalised recommendations for customers, AR filter, and shopping assis-
tance. This result is like the research result made by Chung et al. (2020), who
indicate that chatbots can be used for delivering trendiness, entertainment,
interaction, customisation, and problem-solving by luxury brands. Compared
to the past, chatbots nowadays tends to apply new technology such as AR try-
on to service customers. However, according to the current research, chatbots
are not being commonly used by luxury fashion brands on different platforms.
In addition, the functions of the chatbots being used by certain luxury fashion
brands are relevant limited, in other words, there are many other functions of
chatbots are not being fully used by luxury fashion brands at this stage.
However, research about the application of chatbots by luxury fashion
brands might differ at different time points. For example, the research made
by Chung et al. in 2020 showed that chatbots were commonly used by luxury
794 N. ZENG ET AL.

fashion brands (Salvatore Ferragamo, Burberry, Louis Vuitton, Prada, Gucci,

and Tommy Hilfiger). Accordingly, some brands, for example, Burberry, used
chatbots on different platforms to communicate with customers in the past,
but these functions disappeared.
Except for different time points, not all the applications of chatbots by
luxury fashion brands are the same in different countries. For example,
Burberry is not using chatbots to communicate with customers in the UK
currently, however, this brand is using chatbots for communicating with
Chinese customers through WeChat, and the functions include ‘store loca-
tion’, ‘gift package’, ‘order status’, ‘payment’, ‘order dispatching time’, and
‘clothing size changing’. Additionally, some luxury fashion brands use chat-
bots for their cosmetic product rather than apparel, for example, YSL, and
Chanel.
In conclusion, according to this chapter about the application of chatbots
for luxury fashion brands, new technology is being applied, but the applica-
tion of chatbots is not common, some luxury fashion brands even stopped
using chatbots. In addition, the application of chatbots of the same luxury
fashion brands may change based on different times, different countries, and
different product lines. For further studies, the reasons for certain luxury
fashion brands‘ stopping using chatbots can be researched, finding the reasons
for giving up chatbots at a certain time point can help scholars understand the
disadvantages of chatbots thus improving it, in addition, this can help luxury
fashion brands to know how to make use of chatbots effectively.

6 Chatbots in the Interactive Marketing

The fashion industry is being transformed by artificial intelligence (AI)-
enabled applications in various key aspects including personalised advertising
(interpretation of consumer preferences based on big data analytics) and chat-
bots assistance (intelligent agents that interact with consumers by providing
customer service, product/service recommendation). As demonstrated by the
examples in the preceding paragraph, chatbots are already being used exten-
sively by luxury brands. Fashion brands employ chatbots to interact with
customers in a more conversational environment by providing individualised
advice, delivering event alerts, asking fans to watch live fashion shows via
chatbots, and letting users to discover products, book collections, or seek
personalised recommendations. In the future, social media marketing will rely
on new technologies like chatbots to engage directly with customers and
develop personal relationships with them (Appel et al., 2020). As retailers
increasingly implement chatbots for customer service and customer experi-
ence, there is a rising demand to learn more about this technology and
seek in-depth insight into it. It is critical that retailers and researchers, in
particular, need to understand the influence of this technology on relation-
ships and interactions. Conversational platforms (e.g., chatbots) will most
certainly expand quickly over the next three to five years, allowing them to
 34 CUSTOMER INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCE … 795

transcend beyond traditional customer service systems to applications that

help customers make better decisions and provide incredibly immersive brand
engagement experiences (Copulsky, 2019).
Companies nowadays frequently utilise their business websites to market
their products and sell them directly. Because of Covid-19 and the develop-
ment of E-commerce, selling products through websites is also considered to
be one of the most efficient sales channels, and many luxury companies do
not want to lose their online marketing domination. Commercial organisa-
tions may improve the user experience and thereby enhance sales transaction
prospects by including chatbots into their websites (Kushwaha & Kar, 2021).
As a result, an increasing number of luxury businesses are launching online
purchasing services. Interactivity is still in high demand among consumers. As
a result, technologies such as chatbots were developed to give the website
a more interactive aspect (Pradana et al., 2017). Chung et al. (2020) say
that chatbots have revolutionised the dynamics of marketing communication
by converting one-way transactions into two-way interactions with virtual
support agents. Thus, interactivity should be a pivotal feature of chatbot’s
future development.
As the authors mentioned in the previous section, a chatbot is an artificial
intelligence (AI) implementation in the form of software or an application that
allows the customer to interact with it by conversation. It can receive text or
voice input and interpret natural language. In the marketing field, a chatbot
may function as a salesman, assisting businesses in promoting their products.
Because chatbots can interact with and influence customers, they can assist in
attracting more customers, hence increasing the advertising power of brands
(Pradana et al., 2017). Luxury fashion brands may utilise chatbots to create
digital customer service solutions that boost client interaction, enable uncon-
strained use, give highly customisable flexibility, and provide a simple and
convenient customer experience (Chung et al., 2020). Nevertheless, chatbots
not only provide a pleasant interface between consumers and businesses, but
they also allow companies to mine data acquired from user chats for insights
about service quality and customer emotion (i.e., their feelings towards the
service provided). Blut et al. (2021) signify that anthropomorphised product
(e.g., chatbots and physical robots) could evoke positive emotional responses,
such as enjoyment, pleasure, and warmth. Customers perceive anthropomor-
phised products to be more social, and they are more likely to feel emotionally
connected to them and experience feelings of warmth as a result (Van Doorn
et al, 2017). Meanwhile, they can also cause a range of negative emotions
(Blut et al., 2021).
796 N. ZENG ET AL.

7 The Effect of Chatbots

on Customer Engagement
Prior research has recognised the benefits of chatbots technologies across
various research areas. Among the many disciplines, customer engagement
research is a growing trend in marketing and management. Both industry
and academics have recognised the value of artificial intelligence technology in
providing outstanding customer experience and increasing customer engage-
ment (Chung et al., 2020; Grewal et al., 2020; Wang, 2021). Therefore, this
part will specifically focus on chatbots and present the previous research on
the effect of chatbots on customer engagement from the interactive marketing
perspective. There are three main aspects, the first part is the study of the chat-
bots concept, which the authors have introduced in the previous paragraph,
the second part is about the factors that influence customers to engage with
chatbots technologies and the third part is the customer responses of engaging
with chatbots technologies.
Kasilingam (2020) used the technology acceptance model and diffusion
of innovations theory to estimate the intention and attitude of customers
to shop using chatbots on their smartphones. Their study demonstrates that
attitudes towards chatbots were significantly influenced by variables such as
perceived usefulness, perceived ease-of-use, perceived enjoyment, price aware-
ness, perceived risk, and personal innovation. Nevertheless, intention to use
was only directly influenced by trust, personal innovation, and attitude.
However, Moriuchi et al. (2021) argue that TAM is a useful theoretical frame-
work for explaining user adoption of technology and has been widely applied
to quantitative research across a wide range of fields, but it ignores customer
preparedness and the relationship between technology and consumers. To
better identify customer intention to adopt artificial intelligence technologies
like chatbots and more interactive technologies like augmented reality inter-
active technology, their study employs Theory of Conversation (ToC) and
the Partially Observance Markov Decision process (POMD). It shows that
customer attitudes regarding technology had an impact on how they engage
with technology. When communicating with chatbots, however, this techno-
logical interaction did not influence attitudes of these respondents towards the
retailers, which had a rippling impact on their pleasure with their purchasing
experience. They point out that chatbots are inhibiting customers’ deeper
levels of connection with the brand and it should not be seen as a way
to provide engagement value. Contrary to this finding, Tran et al. (2021)
determines that engaging with chatbots is more pleasant for customers than
interacting with online human agents. Their findings also reveal that in the
fashion sector, customers prefer chatbots to online human agents to a larger
extent than in the telecoms sector (Tran et al., 2021). Much of the past
research has focussed on chatbots as a factor influencing user acceptance and
adoption (Kasilingam, 2020; Moriuchi et al., 2021). However, these studies
have generally focussed on the technology itself, ignoring the value of chatbots
 34 CUSTOMER INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCE … 797

from the standpoint of customers. The research of Tran et al. (2021) expands
on the existing literature in the realm of customer perception and experi-
ence by gaining a better knowledge of how customers view their engaging
with chatbots and the noticeable variations between consumer-human agent
interactions.
Similarly, Zarouali et al. (2018) point out a framework about the consumer
responses of chatbots, which is established on the consumer acceptance
of technology model including three cognitive (i.e., perceived usefulness,
perceived ease-of-use, and perceived helpfulness) and three affective (plea-
sure, arousal, and dominance; PAD-dimensions). Their study shows that two
cognitive (i.e., perceived usefulness and perceived helpfulness) and all three
affective factors have a positive influence on the attitude of consumers towards
the brand that has the chatbots service. All of the important variables have
an indirect influence on the willingness of customers to use and recommend
chatbots, which is mediated by the attitude of customers. Additionally, the
more participants recognised a mind behind chatbots, the greater co-presence
and interpersonal connection they felt with the chatbots, according to Lee
et al. (2020). When chatbots employed social cues, the connections with co-
presence and proximity were stronger. The relevance of thought perception
and social cues in chatbots language in establishing a favourable chatbots expe-
rience is demonstrated by their study. Tsai et al. (2021) present that Consumer
engagement will be mediated by perceived parasocial interaction and conversa-
tion, which is influenced by strong social presence communication of chatbots.
Moreover, through psychological mediators, the anthropomorphic design of
chatbots might enhance the beneficial impacts of social presence communi-
cation. Furthermore, Chung et al. (2020) show that chatbots have positive
influence on customer satisfaction by demonstrating the quality of commu-
nication in luxury retail. However, they also mention that luxury brand
customers still wish to interact with an actual service assistant, which means
the role of chatbots is to be a more convenient facilitating tool rather than a
complete replacement for an actual sale/service assistant.

8 The Situation
and Challenges of Using Chatbots
Through the research on the current application of chatbots in luxury retail,
the following facts could be found:

a. The functions of chatbots are too limited and inflexible, customers only
have limited topics when they talk with the chatbots.
b. The technology of artificial intelligence is not being well applied to chat-
bots. Instead of automatic reply from chatbots, the questions raised by
customers are replied by real human being advisors, as a result, the
customers need to spend a long time waiting for the answers.
798 N. ZENG ET AL.

c. The VR try-on function provided by chatbots is only for limited product

(for example, Dior), new technology is not fully used to communicate
with customers through chatbots.
d. The functions of chatbots are quite different among different luxury
fashion brands. Some brands use chatbots creatively for entertainment
purposes, some brands use chatbots mainly for solving shopping prob-
lems. The effectiveness of different applications of chatbots has not been
studied or proved based on current market environment.
e. Chatbots are being used differently in different countries, different
platforms, different product types, and different time periods.

Besides, Technology is a double-edged sword that brings not only conve-

nience but also challenges related to data privacy, algorithmic bias, and ethics,
and obviously chatbots are not immune to this. Consumers have shown
increasing worry about data privacy over the last two decades, particularly
in terms of their (in)ability to manage the types of personal information
acquired about them or shared with others (Grewal et al., 2021a). Infor-
mation security and privacy are major concerns that any company should
consider (Grewal et al, 2017). Using technology offers benefits to both retailer
and customer, but with the pervasive implementation of technology and big
data, the personalisation-privacy paradox should be seriously considered. In
the advertising marketing area, the helpfulness and usefulness of chatbots
are considered to have a negative impact on the intrusiveness of chatbots
advertising (Van den Broeck et al., 2019).
According to the previous research, a number of factors associated with
chatbots advertising, such as the lack of explicit authorisation, the use of
personal communication channels, and the ad’s reference to personal infor-
mation, may cause chatbots advertising to be seen as invasive. As said by Tam
and Ho (2006), when customers are told that information will be collected
and personalised advertising is useful, then their behavioural intentions will
improve. If customers are not notified, they will close the personalised context
and hide their behavioural intentions (White et al., 2008). Furthermore, the
study by Aguirre et al. (2015) examined how awareness of customers and
its accompanying provisional agreement have an important impact on the
efficiency of personalisation, while feelings of vulnerability would cause rejec-
tion of personalised services. Meanwhile, Aguirre et al. (2015) point out that
clarifying the role of information gathering and its impact on vulnerabilities
and click-through rates could help to solve the paradox of personalisation
and privacy, but this is contingent on the online environment. Similarly,
in-store technology can also resolve this problem. Naturally, the key influ-
encing factor behind customer willingness to use technology is privacy (Lee
et al., 2012). According to Grewal et al. (2017), personalised service offers
can increase customer engagement, as well as reduce customer engagement,
because customers might realise that their data and information have been
collected by retailers and start to worry about their privacy. This might
 34 CUSTOMER INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCE … 799

reduce customers’ willingness to use interactive technology and engage in.

Hence, luxury retailers should be cautious about under what kinds of situation
customer would like to use interactive technology in physical store and how
they collect and use customer information and privacy, in order to balance the
personalisation-privacy paradox. Also need to consider the influence of privacy
concern of artificial intelligence technology on consumer behaviour.
In addition to the crisis of trust and privacy concern, there is another issue
with the chatbots system itself that has been mentioned in existing litera-
ture. Because chatbots currently rely on input pattern matching and try to
locate a prepared answer that fits the input, the major aim of existing chatbots
is to interpret user input and reply in the appropriate context. The down-
side of this strategy is that it works well in dialogues with definite goals
in mind, but it fails to deliver good outcomes in open-ended conversations
(Suhaili et al., 2021). Therefore, with the increasing density of informa-
tion and customer expectations, the development of chatbots also requires
continuous improvement.

9 Conclusion and Discussion

New technologies have a significant influence on marketing tactics. They are
changing the way customers engage with retailers. Advanced technologies
have the ability to analyse and interpret massive volumes of data from many
sources, including information on human behaviour and emotions, with the
goal of offering meaningful consumer experiences. It is worth mentioning
that Consumers may now enjoy a more focussed, personalised, pleasurable,
and efficient experience due to the development of artificial intelligent tech-
nologies. As the shopping habit and behaviour of customers are changing in
the digital age (Davenport et al., 2020). Luxury retailers realised that they
should connect with customers in digital environment and interact with their
customers in an innovatively and excitingly way. Chatbots with artificial intelli-
gence technology will be a new way to meet these shifting customer demands
(Forbes, 2017).
Based on the study of current literature related to this chapter, four features
of chatbots have been identified, including low cost, quick response, attrac-
tiveness, and can provide personalised service. However, the characteristics
required for chatbots will vary from industry to industry and luxury and
non-luxury. For instance, consumers from different industries require different
levels of communication quality with chatbots (Cheng & Jiang, 2021) and
luxury restaurants involve more hedonic value than non-luxury restaurants
(Nozawa et al., 2022). Thus, it is necessary to explore the features of chat-
bots in luxury fashion retail. Through our research on the present application
of chatbots in luxury retail, this chapter proposes that chatbots need to have
low cost, quick response, attractiveness, personalised service, intelligence, and
interactivity features in luxury fashion retail.
800 N. ZENG ET AL.

Some limitations have also been detected, but no matter how advanced
technology becomes, it will not be able to totally replace human services.
Despite increasing research on the customer acceptance and adoption of chat-
bots, research on customer interaction and engagement with chatbots is still
lacking. This chapter aims to call for more attention and research into the
application and effect of technology in the field of interactive marketing.
Besides, future research could conduct exploratory research to find more
features that luxury consumers expect from chatbots or empirical research to
test our findings.

10 Future Research Direction

By examining and summarising the existing literature, the authors have iden-
tified a number of research gaps and future research directions, which could
provide suggestions for the trend of chatbots research in general, particularly,
in the luxury fashion sector (Table 2).

Table 2 The research gap and further research directions

Research gaps and directions Authors

Future researchers could try to validate the TAM Rese et al. (2020) and Moriuchi et al.
and DOI model using a larger dataset (2021)
Furthermore, future research could use different
theories to test the acceptance and adoption of
chatbots in different departments. Other models,
such as TAM2 or UTAUT, can also be used
What is the impact on the experience of consumers’ Hoffman and Novak (2018)
affective responses?
How do chatbots affect decisions-making process of
customers, and How do customer participate in the
consumption that is provided by chatbots?
The emotional responses of customers to chatbots Tran et al. (2021)
may differ between segments, and additional studies
may be undertaken across industries, particularly
luxury industry
Future studies should explore the effects that differ Chung et al. (2020); Lee et al.
among age groups that are unfamiliar with chatbots (2020)
Follow-up studies need to examine brand Youn and Jin (2021)
personalities by manipulating AI chatbots’ attributes
relevant to these brand personalities, such as
sophistication of AI chatbots deployed for luxury
brand management
How do chatbots affect consumer security and Ameen et al. (2021)
privacy issues? Can they deliver benefits? When and
how?

(continued)
 34 CUSTOMER INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCE … 801

Table 2 (continued)

Research gaps and directions Authors

Additional research is needed to identify key Ameen et al. (2021)

behavioural differences between Millennial and
Generation Z consumers in their interactions with
new technologies
Are there cross-cultural and cross-national
differences influencing how Generation X, millennial
and Generation Z customers behaviours engage with
new technologies
How has customers’ interaction with technologies
changed as a result of Covid-19?
How the advanced technologies change the
interactive marketing during the Covid-19

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 CHAPTER 35

Engaging and Entertaining Customers:

Gamification in Interactive Marketing

Devika Vashisht

1 Introduction
It happens with most of us today. Sitting on the verge of the chair, hands
clammy, eyes stuck to the monitors or mobiles. In the background, the spouse
is yelling at you to leave the phone and help her and the courier boy ringing
at the doorbell. However, you still feel to keep going and inwardly say to
yourself “just one more round”. That’s how games rule us. Companies know
this mantra and hence, they have long motivated their customers with game-
like incentives such as keeping contests for customers or lucrative participation
badges, rewards etc. (Robson et al., 2015).
Gamification is one of the burning topics in business literature (Kim &
Mauborgne, 2014). Usually when we think of the word “marketing”, the
first thought that comes to our mind is a fervent marketer, somebody who
is good at convincing people for a product’s value. In the era of technology
and the use of gamification in marketing, we feel that traditional marketing
approaches are not the only techniques and methods to promote products.
Gamification is rather that many companies have turned themselves to for
effective marketing. Companies want to retain their customers and hence,
innovate and adopt new ways of keeping their customers engaged in their
brand activities through interactive marketing (Noorbehbahani et al., 2019;
Vashisht, 2015). The gamification of product advertising has resulted in a new

D. Vashisht (B)
Indian Institute of Management Sirmaur, Sirmaur, India
e-mail: devika.vashisht@iimsirmaur.ac.in

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 807

Switzerland AG 2023
C. L. Wang (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Interactive Marketing,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14961-0_35
808 D. VASHISHT

method of audience engagement, and M&M’s “Eye Spy pretzel” is one of

the successful instances in which brands have shifted to this method of adver-
tising. M&M, in an attempt to promote their new pretzel product, released
a picture in which Facebook users had to spot a pretzel amidst a large scatter
of various M&Ms. This resulted in 26,000 likes, 6200 shares and 11,000
comments, which was significantly remarkable for a low-budget commercial
(Digital Training Academy, 2015). This shows how embedding a gaming
element in a non-gaming context increases the target audience’s engagement
and willingness to use a product. This tells the merits of gamifying ads. In
an online gamification, the reach and people engagement are very high as
compared to the traditional methods of advertising. In addition to this, gami-
fication of commercials also allows players to interact with the commercial.
Traditional advertising media lacks this element in it and audience is there-
fore disconnected from the ad. The gamification of ads hence disables these
limitations of traditional advertising ways.
So, what is gamification? Gamification is basically, applying the mechanism
or techniques of gameplay, such as competition, scoring, ranking etc. in a
non-gaming context (Deterding et al., 2011) such as education, training and
development, transportation, healthcare etc. A game is defined as a system in
which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, which result in a
quantifiable outcome (Tekinbas & Zimmerman, 2003). Hofacker et al. (2016)
advocate that Schell’s (2008) four-game elements; mechanics, story, esthetics
and technology, if judiciously premeditated, may possibly be the key drivers
for an effective gamification.
Interactive marketing, as one of the highest proliferating areas in the
modern business realm, is described as the two-directional value construction
and mutual-influence marketing process through lively customer association,
engagement, participation and interaction (Wang, 2021). Zichermaann and
Cunnningham (2011) recommend that marketing practitioners should use the
term player in place of customer to swing the cognizance towards somebody to
engage or engross with instead of somebody to sell something to. This inclines
in the direction of building interactive marketing like a complete game rather
than merely adding limited game elements using gamification techniques.
Today, marketing no more remains “a show” to persuade prospective
customers why they should purchase. As a marketer, one must create an envi-
ronment or aura where customers feel a bond or connection with the brand
(Vashisht, 2015). This connection could be in the form of a want to purchase,
a favorable brand attitude, a positive brand image or a sense of brand loyalty.
This motive can be achieved by making right use of interactive marketing
content and gamification that could be one of the vital and relevant strate-
gies to practice in this context. With a combo of gamification and interactive
marketing, the users get to enjoy interacting with their preferred brands and
on the other hand, the businesses enhance their user engagement. Hence,
it’s a win–win situation for both, i.e., the customers as well as the corporates
(Hofacker et al., 2016).
 35 ENGAGING AND ENTERTAINING CUSTOMERS … 809

Gamification when used as a tool in interactive marketing, it aids

firms increase their sales and profits. Customer-focused gamified interactive
marketing impetuses firms closer to their business objectives by assisting
in gathering customer data, enhancing user engagement, augmenting brand
awareness and stimulating repeat purchase (Hofacker et al., 2016). Gami-
fied interactive marketing has been used for years with brands like Ford,
M&M, Coca Cola, Starbucks, No Frills, McDonald’s and Nike using this
dynamic marketing technique to achieve their business goals. For instance,
the chocolate company, Magnum has designed an exhilarating and innovative
ad for the launch and promotion of its ice cream bar, Magnum Temptation.
Magnum developed an online game, a redolent of Super Mario, by part-
nering with Citrine and YouTube. However, the real playing arena is integrated
throughout pages of the internet. In this game, the players have to collect bon
bons in a car trip or hang gliding kind of situations. Based on how they play
and reach their destination, they get final scores and ranks. The bon bons
that the players collect while playing the game, turn into a Magnum Tempta-
tion bar. This campaign was very successful as compared to the traditional and
print ads as this online game involved gamers very much in which gamers felt
empowered and interacted with the brand till the time they finish their game
(Convertize, 2019). With 2.8 billion gamers in 2021, up from 2.7 billion
gamers in 2020 and out of these 2.8 billion, 2.5 billion are playing games on
their mobile devices (HotPlay, 2021); gamification can be an advanced and
groundbreaking method of integrating brand information and promotions.
The advent of gamification interactive marketing not only changes business
marketing strategy but also modifies consumption behavior. As a marketing
gizmo, gamification, in addition to boosting sales and profits, can enhance
customer engagement, improve product/brand identification and construct
loyalty (Yang et al., 2017). To supplement a competitive advantage, it is of
vital significance for marketing specialists to recognize the central elements
and important characteristics contributing to most of the customers’ experi-
ence and to increase engagement with gamification in marketing. Many firms
have used gaming techniques in apps, such as competition, scoring systems
and incentives, to attract and retain customers, thus expanding their brand
reach and generating more sustainable development possibilities. For instance,
Nike launched Nike Run Club (NRC) (originally called Nike + Running
App) in 2010 that became very popular running app later. In this app, the
users can personally regulate and record their workouts and socially share
and compare accomplishments. Besides gathering customers’ information and
connecting them, NRC’s enticing features, including immediate/daily feed-
back that promotes empowerment, ranking on leaderboards that inspires social
relatedness as well as trophies and badges awarded that sustain engagement,
have attracted millions of players/users, who have turned into brand fans
(HotPlay, 2021). Hence, Nike example makes it very clear that gamification
boosts company’s competitive advantage in the market for sustainable devel-
opment, and the key lies in whether the tactics can foster engagement and
810 D. VASHISHT

endure continued intention to use. Also, gamification in interactive marketing

boosts up the connection between customers and brands by creating value
through gaming experiences (Kim & Ahn, 2017).
Other than the theoretical aspects of gamification in interactive marketing,
there are very important practical aspects too, that must be discussed. Gami-
fication involves integrating gaming elements into the marketing strategy to
embolden customers to execute specific actions. Loyalty programs are one
such strategy being used by the marketers today. They are executed to reward
customers who are loyal to a brand. The programs are premeditated to have
customers earn points for every purchase they make, and hence, encourage
buyers to spend more on company products to qualify for the rewards. Second
effective strategy that uses the combination of games and interactive marketing
is Chance games. These games give visitors a chance to receive rewards in
exchange for valuable contacts that they will provide to the companies. For
instance, “Spin the wheel” is one such easy chance game that incorporated by
many big brands into their marketing campaigns to achieve user engagement
and conversion goals. Digital badges are another gamification element that can
be incorporated in the interactive marketing strategies. Badges are very popular
and can be seen everywhere from Facebook’s trophies for “Top Fans” to
Google Maps badges for its “Local Guides”. They are powerful brand loyalty
building tools. Also, this “in-marketing badge” strategy encourages users to
interact and share brand-related information with other participants and get
badges. This strategy aids brands to upsurge customer touchpoints, which
goes a long way to improve brand awareness. McDonald’s multimillion-dollar
Monopoly campaign and America’s Army FPS games are some of the best
examples of gamification in interactive marketing. Advergames is yet another
example of gamified interactive marketing strategy. Many big companies such
as Kellogg’s, Pepsi, Sprite, 7UP and Burger King have used and got profited
from the advergames. Advergames are described as interactive online games
embedded with brand messages sponsored by companies (Vashisht, 2015).
In-game advertising is also a very successful example of gamification in inter-
active marketing (Vashisht, 2021). In addition to this, virtual reality is also
one of the newest innovative tools marketers use to augment their association
with customers. Gamified interactive marketing strategies bank on customer
engagement to increase brand awareness and by incorporating virtual reality
into gamification strategy, one can create an immersive marketing experience
that will captivate customers like never before. Hence, studying gamification
and from the perspective of interactive marketing is very important as to estab-
lish if it affects online customers, what are the key elements, mechanisms and
theories that must be incorporated in the design of gamified systems to engross
customers and develop the decision-making process on digital podia relaxed,
cool, easy and entertaining for the users. Furthermore, this chapter suggests
new opportunities of research on gamified systems in e-commerce contexts.
Similarly, its high popularity in the corporate indicates that there is a high
 35 ENGAGING AND ENTERTAINING CUSTOMERS … 811

need to know more about gamification and uncover its various dimensions as
gamification is something that is updating very fast.
Implementing a gamification interactive marketing strategy is not easy. It
takes time to find the right techniques that are perfectly suited to a particular
brand. Hence, this chapter provides an overview of gamification in interac-
tive marketing, explaining the meaning of gamification, interactive marketing,
gamified interactive marketing, its theoretical and practical implications and
the future of gamification that can help scholars and marketers to under-
stand, design and implement the concept of gamified interactive marketing
in business practice.
The rise of newfangled electronic technologies has created changed the
complete look of marketing to the new age marketing called “interactive
marketing”. In the meantime, the gamification which is updating on a very
fast pace has grabbed worldwide scholars’ attention. Since one of the objectives
of marketing is to upsurge customers’ engagement and loyalty by influencing
and appealing them to take part, gamification has a great potential for interac-
tive marketing. Though a lot of good work has been done on gamification
in interactive marketing, still there has not yet been a widespread analysis
of such work. Hence, this chapter finds a few knowledge gaps that need to
be answered, for a better understanding and organizing the literature avail-
able on gamification. This chapter tries to answer five important research
questions, such as what are the major investigation areas of applying gami-
fication in interactive marketing; what are the benefits of using gamification
in interactive marketing; what technologies are used by the practitioners to
execute gamification in interactive marketing; what marketing theories are
useful in understanding the use of gamification in interactive marketing and
what are the implications of gamification in interactive marketing and future
of gamification. Therefore, this chapter attempts to contribute both theoreti-
cally and practically to the area of gamification, majorly in terms of providing
definitions, types and theories to comprehend the gamification concept and
understand how users’ minds engage and function in a gamification setting
and hence, what best ways can be designed for effective and successful gamified
systems and solutions.
Thus, in order to better understand the concept of gamification and from
the perspective of interactive marketing, the chapter has been structured in
the following way. First, an overview of interactive marketing is discussed
that clarifies the whole idea of interactive marketing, its meaning and scope.
Next, it discusses the reasons behind the existence and increasing demand for
interactive marketing in today’s world under the sub-heading “need to be
interactive”. This is followed by an overview of gamification, its definition,
meaning and scope, which is then trailed by why there is a need to gamify
nowadays. This is followed by the applications of gamification in various
contexts, trailed by a discussion on gamification theories that are mostly used
by the scholars to associate with the attributes of gamified systems. Further,
812 D. VASHISHT

the chapter provides contribution of the findings and discussion points to rele-
vant theory and practice. At last, the concept and practical understanding of
gamification in interactive marketing are concluded.

2 Interactive Marketing
2.1 Overview
There is a huge change in the marketing’s gizmo set because of the fast-
paced innovation these days. Due to a big roar of e-commerce, emergence
of social commerce, high growth in direct and database marketing, automa-
tion in sales force management and boom of internet, marketing is being
restructured. Also, a shift from broadcast marketing to interactive marketing
has been observed in the past few years. Theories and managerial implica-
tions of mass-marketing are shifting their focus towards new ways of marketing
which is more tailored and approachable to the end user. “Interactive” word
works on a two plus one communication topography principle. The first two
topographies that are inferred by this term are the capability to address or
talk to a person and the skill to compile and ponder the reaction of that
person. These two topographies create a third one, that is, the capability to
address or interact with the same person again by considering his or her unique
response. Hence, interactivity acts as a very important and powerful element
that converts virtuous marketing into worthy conversation or dialogue or
fruitful interaction. The knack to position a more human aspect in the market
without mislaying the scale economies of mass-marketing is the mantra for the
success of interactive marketing model in today’s world.
In the past few years, interactivity has been reflected in the marketing
budgets in the form of newscast advertising, radio advertising, print adver-
tising, catalog retailing, promotional mailing and telemarketing. The assurance
of newfangled and superior interactive apparatuses to maintain relations with
customers and to bond with the connected conglomerate to its stations and
its partners is being offered by the growth in data storage and transmission
(Wang, 2021).
Today, the internet is seen as a medium that assures high-tech interactivity
when compared with the old traditional marketing media, such as a tele-
marketing call or a typical sales presentation (Caldwell, 2002). The probable
reason for the internet being a strong medium in comparison with the tradi-
tional marketing platforms is that a newscast commercial prompts a reaction,
for instance, a toll-free call, which is then stockpiled in the computer database
and which activates a customized direct mailing. This sequence signifies a kind
of low-tech interactivity. Similarly, a typical sale presentation to a customer can
be very personalized but at the same time less engaging one unlike the internet
which is highly engaging (Caldwell, 2002). In the case of the web world, as
soon as the customer visits the website, a series of information gets shared and
swapped within a few minutes. Also, when a customer connects again or visits
 35 ENGAGING AND ENTERTAINING CUSTOMERS … 813

the website for a second time, he or she can continue conversation or chat-
ting where they stopped earlier. The internet medium is as elusive, as supple, as
appropriate, as relatable and as influential as a personalized discussion. Further,
interactive marketing is something that is more memorable than the tradi-
tional sale presentation and is free from the dislike that salesmen have for the
monotonous work. Other media might be more riveting but, the internet is
outstandingly receptive, approachable and very interactive as it gives response
quickly (Wang, 2021).
In a nutshell, it can be said that marketing practitioners have come to a
stage where bleary advertising commercials are no more impactful. In its place,
buyers need and anticipate more customized information that has grown to a
very large extent due to mountable progress in technology. Thus, brands have
started engaging customers with more personalized and interactive messages
using a strategy called interactive marketing. Hence, it makes us very clear
that today’s marketers look for a marketing strategy that can emphasize inter-
action as well as alliance. One such strategy is interactive marketing which
acts as a two-way method to connect and communicate in place of merely
schmoozing your customers. Interactive marketing can be called a strategy
that carries the flavor of conversational marketing. Just like the conversational
marketing, interactive marketing centers around creating and maintaining the
relationships and ensuring eloquent and well-expressed dealings and exchanges
that go afar the repetitive, old-fashioned, stony and impersonal way of old-style
marketing, which is perfect to integrate.
Trigger-based or event-driven marketing are a few names given to inter-
active marketing. Basically, interactive marketing is a marketing approach that
encompasses directly responding to the shopper’s engagements, comportment,
predilections, anticipations, or demands. For the past 12–13 years, this prac-
tice is being used in digital advertising but has become more abundant these
days as customization has become essentiality. Usually, marketing practitioners
use the same old-fashioned way of designing commercials, broadcasting to
the globe and waiting for their consumers to respond. However, due to the
extensive accessibility of data and the practice of using various other tools, the
outdated methods have been supplanted by more persuasive and compelling
strategies of two-way interactions.

2.2 Need to Be Interactive

Today’s marketer has shifted focus from traditional advertising media to new
and creative advertising media and, hence, uses novel marketing ways in one
or the other form to influence and reach its clients. But, one must definitely
think of why to invest one’s time, money and efforts in interactive marketing
against something else. The existing literature (An & Stern, 2011; Peters &
Leshner, 2013; Vashisht et al., 2021; Wang, 2021) provides an answer to it
as it highlights that interactive marketing has divergent merits over traditional
marketing tools. First of all, interactive marketing cuts the advertising clutter as
814 D. VASHISHT

it easily attracts people because of its lucrative and entertaining nature wherein
users are less likely to get a feel that they are being targeted by the marketers
through these marketing weapons (Vashisht et al., 2021). Secondly, clients
that are very impatient in terms of time and attention usually, quest for more
specific information that they can abridge swiftly and without any difficulty.
To such customers, interactive marketing is more effective than traditional
methods. Next, this practice can help the marketers in making customers
to easily realize that practitioners really understand their customers and care
about their wants and comforts, which in turn helps in making a strong trust-
worthy bond with customers. Also, the customers’ media consumption habits
have changed a lot, they are more inclined to digital media now, and hence
interactive marketing can be the best way of persuading them (Vashisht, 2015).
Further, more personalized content assures high engagement which can be
easily displayed and delivered via interactive marketing. Thus, marketers are
bringing in and implementing the innovative and novel marketing ideas in the
form of interactive marketing.

3 Gamification
I love this as I pen it down; the word “gamification” instantly makes me
ponder, “This is going to be exciting!”. The first example that I am going
to quote here might have been experienced by many but more frequently
with those who are parenting their young kids where parents use the trick of
converting a boring task into an entertaining and enjoyable game to increase
their kids’ participation, such as kids get a “reward” from parents or teachers
for doing homework on time. Gamification works. Another instance of gami-
fication is when I use “MyFitnessPal” app. It gives me encouraging response
when I reach definite levels which makes me happy and keeps me motivated,
and that’s why I never quit my fitness workout. This shows how the magic
of gamification works and impacts people’s participation just by incorporating
game elements in a non-gaming context. But then the question arises how
does gamification work? Relevant literature shows that gamification gener-
ates a sense of being rewarded each time we finish the activity which in
turn makes our achievement feel noticeable and real, and this boosts us to
keep trying and motivated (FinancesOnline, 2022). Today, gamification is
very much omnipresent in one or the other form. Vashisht (2015) shows that
gamification is present in advertising in various ways to increase the impact of
campaigns on customers’ memory and attitude towards the advertised brand.
This is one of the reasons that nowadays almost every advertiser is picking up
the potential of gamification and interactive promotions in their marketing and
advertising mix (Review42, 2022). This idea impacts game-stirred design and
technicalities in non-gaming settings. At the present time, the classic game-
like rudiments, such as rewards, badges, and loyalty programs are entering
implausible sectors, such as retail, banking, insurance, education, health and
medicine. Gamification is no more an ordinary word now but has become an
 35 ENGAGING AND ENTERTAINING CUSTOMERS … 815

exceptionally influential way that can provide brands a robust advantage over
advertising clutter.
Gamification succeeds not because it gimmicks, but because it elicits strong
emotional responses (GlobeNewswire, 2019) Gamification makes task more
pleasurable and engaging by applying game concepts to non-game situa-
tions. Consider how it senses to be whisked away to another planet via an
online game. You discover yourself involved in a plot in which you must
overcome incredible obstacles. As you gain experience and get tiny but consis-
tent victories, you are rewarded phase-wise. This sense of “winning” provides
gamers with a perpetual sense of happiness and pleasure. When we appre-
ciate something, dopamine, a pleasure-producing neurotransmitter, is released
into our brains (Foerde & Shohamy, 2011). Hence, gamification keeps our
minds involved and retains us on our missions (Mordor Intelligence, 2022).
The literature deconstructs gamification into a few crucial elements, such as
progress bars, multiple small and big goals, commendations for the efforts in
the form of rewards, quick feedback, the surprise element, attention window
and, interaction with multiple people. The “progress bars” track our progress
over time and help us see how far we’ve gone and how far we still have to
go. The “goals” become the main quests and side quests, which are divided
into tasks. The explicit feedback establishes a connection between tasks and
outputs, making learning easier and faster. The surprise element is the neural
golden trophy in gamification. The element of surprise makes us keep going
as we’re curious about what’ll happen next. Focused attention window is the
next important element in gamification, as the gaming task improves memory
and confidence, as gamers love to take complete challenging tasks. The rele-
vant literature shows that gamification has also been demonstrated to benefit
learning by generating experiences that fully engross apprentices, grasp their
attention and prompt them to continue working towards a collective objective.
It offers interactive learning aspects, which generates a sense of immersion,
allowing learners to feel more involved in the learning process, and hence,
gamification results in more engaging and enjoyable learning (Zippia, 2022).

3.1 Need to Gamify

Nowadays, advertisers are more inclined towards making playable ads wherein
they blend the advertising content with an interactive game or incorporate
the gaming elements in a non-gaming context. The foremost reason for doing
it is that gamification in advertising gives an appealing, high-involving and
exciting experience with your brand that in turn helps customers to remember
the name of the advertised brand, and this is the chief plus point of a gamified
promotion (Zippia, 2022). This marketing stratagem can be utilized by any
firm across any sector, and it is one of the most operational means for brands
to convey their message in an artistic way to their consumers.
Different types of brands from all over the world have understood the
impact of using gamification in their marketing and advertising strategies
816 D. VASHISHT

and that’s why they put a number of gamified elements in their strategies,
such as leaderboards, countdown, badges etc. (Review42, 2022). For instance,
achievement is one of the widely used gamified components used in today’s
strategies in the form of points or levels or badges that are awarded to the
players for completing some pre-specified game-tasks. Similarly, countdown is
another mostly used gamified element that is implemented in a task to make
a player completely involved in the task and to complete the task in a partic-
ular time period. Likewise, progress is also a highly used tactic wherein the
players’ progression is displayed in the task which makes them completely tied
with the task. The implementation of such gamified elements in a non-gaming
context makes the interaction of consumers with the advertised brand, contin-
uous, uninterrupted and impactful unlike that in case of traditional marketing
strategies (Vashisht, 2021).
Gamified elements are basically the golden traits of the game that when
inserted in the non-gaming context change the complete feel and scenario of
the context. The context which used to appear as boring or routinized or more
a kind of business activity now no more remains a routinized activity. Instead,
it becomes an interesting task for the target audience as it involves the element
of surprise, new ways of interaction with the gamified elements in a more
entertaining way. This makes the gamification very impactful and interesting
to everyone. Apart from this big advantage of the use of gamified elements
in the non-gaming context, there is another huge benefit of gamification and
that the gamification technique can be applied for any business and individual
of any age. Hence, if gamification can easily cut the clutter and make your
brand more visible, noticeable and enjoyable and memorable, then one should
definitely gamify its brand.

3.2 Gamification in Interactive Marketing

3.2.1 Virtual Events
The knack or capability to animatedly demonstrate and launch your products
in real-time is one of the major highlights of remote digital demonstrations.
This is not possible with the old-fashioned kinds of sales technique and online
content. Also, the pre-recorded videos can’t seize the real-time fun of a good
presentation. Similarly, the target customers have no option to clarify their
issues or interact with the stagnant channels’ presentations. Unlike, traditional
mode of product launch, virtual events can do wonders in terms of high
interaction with the target audience. Through virtual events, the presenta-
tion becomes very real as if the customers are interacting with the products
in real-time. In case of any doubt or query, the customer can easily clarify it
with the brand through “chatbot”. A chatbot is “a computer program that
simulates and processes human conversation (either written or spoken), allowing
humans to interact with digital devices as if they were communicating with a
real person” (Oracle, 2022). Hence, virtual events have proved to be more
scalable, low-cost and highly interactive as compared to the traditional media
 35 ENGAGING AND ENTERTAINING CUSTOMERS … 817

channels. But, the question arises, what makes a virtual event a type of gami-
fication? The answer to this question lies in two elements; one is interactivity
and the second is entertainment. A few examples of gamified virtual events
could be forager quests or fun-minutiae or revealer passports or polls. In
forager quests, the partakers need to complete a list of activities throughout
the course of the event to win a prize. In fun-minutiae, the questions are asked
during sessions that attendees can answer from their event apps. In revealer
passports kind of events, the engagement between attendees and exhibitors
is exhilarated by making a “stampable” digital passport that gets marked by
every participating exhibitor an attendee interacts with. In polls, the people
are encouraged to take the polls by rewarding points for each one taken. The
more polls, the more points and, at the end of the event, the most points
wins. Polls can offer planners with valuable data. Brands such as Starbucks,
KFC and M&M’s have confirmed track records of successful virtual events by
incorporating gamification (Ibentos, 2021).

3.2.2 Email Marketing

One of the key merits of interactive marketing is to effectively gain customers’
attention by providing them with the relevant content they want to see and
read. Through this trigger-based marketing, practitioners use the client data
to find out what prompts their target customers, get acumens and minimize
their marketing costs. This is possible through one of the interactive marketing
strategies, named email marketing, wherein one can send out emails with inter-
active and to the point content such as to repeat a visit to your website or
purchase something that is left in their online carts. This marketing tactic guar-
antees more conversions as compared with that in case of traditional marketing
tactics. Also, email marketing is a way to use the right resources to engage
with customers and learn from customer feedback. It provides a platform for
the marketers to let their buyers know that brands appreciate their customers
considering their business, and provide them with valuable information. Occa-
sional emails, feedback surveys and customer email loyalty programs are some
of the gamified email marketing types. To bring happiness to your email
subscribers and acknowledge them with holidays, gamified emails prove to be
more useful. Also, in order to boost customers to leave more feedback, game
mechanics are incorporated into the emails. Adding game elements into the
feedback surveys persuade customers to provide high-quality feedback. Simi-
larly, gamification works marvels to confirm long-term customer engagement
when employed as part of customer loyalty email programs. Gamified emails
draw more referrals and significantly upsurge the number of forwards your
emails get. A case study shows that gamification marketing can result in getting
3 times more revenue from email marketing and increasing email database by
2.5 times (https://www.promodo.com/services/email-marketing/). Also, it
is reported that animated GIF emails see an upsurge in click-through rates
of up to 26%. According to an A/B test done by BlueFly in an effort to
discover the best email marketing tactics, emails with GIFs pulled in 12% more
818 D. VASHISHT

revenue than their non-animated counterparts (https://www.digitalcommerce

360.com/internet-retailer/).

3.2.3 Return on Investment Calculator

Return on investment (ROI) calculator is very effective and trendy nowadays.
It is a powerful weapon for those brands who find it difficult for them to
display the return on investment to their customers while using those branded
products or services. These ROI calculators are customizable and offer users
to put their own numbers or figures into practice to get some answers which
makes it seamless for the interactive marketing. For instance, any Equated
Monthly Installment (EMI) Calculator application makes loan EMI calcula-
tions easy whether it is for 5 years, 20 years or 30 years. This is another form
of gamification in ROI or EMI calculations which is far better and effective
than old traditional way of calculating ROI or EMI on papers or with the help
of bank personnel.

3.2.4 Live Video FAQs

FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) have been around as long as the internet.
At first glance, FAQ is one of the easiest ways to answer regular or common
questions and issues, which helps buyers to easily solve the problem at their
level itself and saves their time as well as that of the brands. Not only this but
FAQs are one of the favorable chances for the brands to have a great conversa-
tion with their visitors, make stronger associations with them and easily market
their products or services. Thus, today’s marketers have started using live video
FAQs in place of old-fashioned and static FAQs. These live video FAQs are
very interactive in nature and highly customizable which in turn help brands
in expanding their online video presence and connecting with the customers
more effectively. Adding the gamification elements, such as customizable video
interactions has made FAQs an effective medium for the brands to connect
with customers for a longer period of time as compared to that in case of static
FAQs. As per Influencer Marketing Hub (2022) report live video industry
whether it is live streaming, or live video FAQs, it is expected to be valued at
184.3 billion US dollars by 2027.

3.2.5 Conversational Marketing

Conversational marketing is one that talks to the customers. This is being done
through live chat, chatbots or voice assistants. These experiences are tactfully
positioned on the websites, social media channels, paid advertising and even
in physical stores or connected home devices, like smart speakers. According
to Drift’s, 2020 State of Conversational Marketing report, usage of chatbots
as a brand communication channel increased by a whopping 92% since 2019;
24.9% of buyers used chatbots to communicate with businesses in 2020, up
from 13% the year before (Drift, 2020).
 35 ENGAGING AND ENTERTAINING CUSTOMERS … 819

3.2.6 Click-To-Messenger Ads

Click-to-messenger ads have become very prevalent on Facebook these days.
These are very analogous to the conversational display ads, except they demon-
strate clients’ traditional Facebook newsfeed ads and then drive users to
Facebook’s messenger app or interface. From there, brands stimulate users
with questions, requests or experiences linked with the content of the ad and
then they are able to interact and learn more about them and drive them to
convert. As per the stats available on AdEspresso (2020), Facebook (and its
ads) contributes 80.4% of US social referral share to e-commerce and retail
sites. Also, the average Facebook user clicks on 11 ads per month. Regardless
of some users outspokenly complaining about on-platform ads or messenger
ads, most of the customers’ ads really don’t bother them. Instead, they enjoy
those ads when finding these ads relevant or informative. The reason behind
customers enjoying messenger ads is the presence of gamification elements,
i.e., fun and infotainment in the ads (AdEspresso, 2020).

3.2.7 Polls and Quizzes

Marketers also use polls and quizzes to engage their customers in their brand
activities. Polls and quizzes have a different way of involving users. They
engross their customers by throwing high-involving questions to them and
providing them immediate feedback in the form of results. Brands find polls
and quizzes to be an easier option to persuade customers than big questions
because, in polls, one gets the answer sooner as it’s easier to complete and
there is no need to navigate through multiple steps to find out what the result
is. Polls and quizzes are considered to be more interactive and engaging tools
to keep your clients or customers involved with your brand for a longer period
of time. Also, one is able to know many facts about the brand and services.
Polls and questions are not just about asking for information. They are a tool
that can influence opinions, behavior and decisions. One study found that
49% of consumers rely on influencer recommendations on social media to
make informed purchase decisions (Digital Marketing Institute, 2021). Also,
it is reported in one of the articles that 57% of people like seeing polls and
quizzes from brands on Instagram as they’re easy to implement using stories
(HootSuite, 2022).

3.2.8 Advergames
Enhancing consumers’ brand recall involves the integration of brand-specific
information into media that they use regularly for entertainment or non-
entrainment purposes (Keller et al., 2011). Recently, marketers have begun
to embrace a new, innovative way of creating recall in this platform, known
as advergames (Kinard & Hartman, 2013). Advergames represent computer
games specifically created to function as advertisements to promote brands,
where the entertainment content mimics traditional game forms (An & Stern,
2011). The advergame is not just an ordinary game but a brand message
in itself that is used as an interactive marketing tool to completely engage
820 D. VASHISHT

players in the game without feeling that they are being targeted by the brands
for the advertising purpose (An & Stern, 2011). The main objectives of
advergames are to deliver a strong message for the embedded brand and to
achieve higher traffic on the brand website or brand-related aspects (Kinard &
Hartman, 2013). Also, advergames are made with an intention to increase the
interaction time of the customers with brands (Kinard & Hartman, 2013).
Advergames is one of the best examples of successful use of gamification
in advertising context. The curiosity in advergames has considerably ampli-
fied in the last 17 years, because of its perceived advantages (Călin, 2010).
For instance, advergames offer low-cost marketing in comparison with the
traditional advertising channels, such as TV, radio and print media. Similarly,
advergames capture customers’ minds so strongly that users do not feel hesi-
tant about sharing their personal information such as demographic profile,
behavior, needs, attitudes and preferences. Also, advergames have the ability
to retain its customers easily unlike the traditional advertising media (Vashisht,
2015). The average time spent in an advergame is 7 to 30 min, which cannot
be reached in the case of a classical TV advertisement (Călin, 2010).

3.2.9 In-Game Advertising (IGA)

Currently, users are moving more towards online search and stuff and getting
habituated to making videos and reels (Shattuc, 2020). This change in
customers’ habits and preferences has forced the marketers and advertisers
to find and use fresh, innovative and very original ways to persuade their
customers (Vashisht, 2015). A non-traditional advertising tactic that has been
firmly used in the computerized game industry is brand placement: implanting
the brand(s) in the games (named in-game advertising). In-game advertising
(IGA) is defined as the incorporation of non-fictional products and brands
within the playing environment of video and computer games through simu-
lated real-life marketing communications mechanisms (Smith et al., 2014). In
IGA, the advertiser can make the game itself as a brand message by implanting
the brand information, into topographies essential for the game play, such as
in-game displays, game characters and or/tools used while playing the game
(Vashisht et al., 2021). A report shows that the overall in-game advertising
market is estimated to reap $13,989.6 million in the time period 2021–2028,
rising from $6,059.2 million in 2020, at a healthy CAGR 11.2% (Research-
dive, 2021). In the latest years, companies of all sizes have held opportunities
to advertise in the video game industry, mostly in association with esports
games. For instance, BMW, a German multinational corporate manufacturer of
luxury vehicles, signed global partnership agreements with five major esports
teams (G2 Esports, FunPlus Phoenix, Cloud9, T1 Entertainment & Sports
and Fnatic) in April 2020 (Researchdive, 2021). Also, the fast increasing adop-
tion of mobile games due to the permeation of plentiful online multiplayer
games and location-based games, such as Player Unknown’s Battlegrounds,
Free Fire and Pokémon Go among others, is one of the key factors driving
the in-game advertisement market (Researchdive, 2021).
 35 ENGAGING AND ENTERTAINING CUSTOMERS … 821

3.2.10 Loyalty Programs and Contests

Contests are a distinctive way to advance brand awareness and audience
engagement without openly promoting the brand. They deliver an enjoyable
and very interactive way for people to involve with the brand. Contests can
drive countless user-generated content and word of mouth advertising so the
audience promotes the brand for the company. This is particularly vital with
social media as the brand can intensify and disseminate its message commend-
ably when the audience is doing it with the brand. Gamification makes loyalty
program stand out from other loyalty programs. For instance, US consumers
are a member of 16.7 loyalty programs on an average, but actively use about 8
of them (Customer Thermometer, 2022). That’s quite a lot, and they become
a member of more if they wished to. The challenge for any company is being
likeable enough to customers to get them to join their loyalty program. For
that brands need an edge; something a little different. Gamification in loyalty
programs can deliver that. In today’s competitive environment, in order to
survive brand’s loyalty, it must be gamified or else it must become ready
to get kicked out of the market, as gamified loyalty programs will increase
digital engagement, digital customer journeys and social sharing (Customer
Thermometer, 2022).

3.3 Gamification Theories

The existing literature on gamification shows that there are some specific theo-
ries that are mostly used by the scholars to explain one or the other form,
element or mechanism involved in the design of gamified systems or the
influence of gamification. These theories are mentioned below:

3.3.1 Self-Determination Theory (SDT)

SDT is often used in the literature on gamification to expound the effective-
ness of gamification in appealing and alluring the users (Hofacker et al., 2016;
Högberg et al., 2019; Jang et al., 2018; Kim & Ahn, 2017). In SDT, it is
postulated that when an individual’s three fundamental psychological needs,
i.e., competence, autonomy and relatedness, get fulfilled, the person experi-
ences immense satisfaction and well-being (Deci & Ryan, 1980; Ryan & Deci,
2000). These three needs are associated with intrinsic motivation (Deci &
Ryan, 1980). The usual proclivity or liking towards acclimatization, profi-
ciency, impulsive interest and investigation which are crucial to cognitive and
social development is termed as intrinsic motivation. It symbolizes a key source
of gratification, liveliness and strength all through the life (Ryan & Deci,
2000). On the other hand, extrinsic motivation is the performance of an
activity with the aim of achieving discrete result(s) (Ryan & Deci, 2000). As
per the SDT theory, individuals are affected by both intrinsic and extrinsic
motivations. The higher the intrinsic motivation, the superior will be one’s
control over his or her conduct and an additional energy or willpower one
will sense. Using the insights of SDT, gamification acts as a source of extrinsic
822 D. VASHISHT

motivation, where earning points, badges, prizes or other rewards elucidates

people’s more involvement in gamifying activities (Högberg et al., 2019; Jang
et al., 2018). However, other scholars consider these rewards as a form of
intrinsic motivation (Hofacker et al., 2016; Kim & Ahn, 2017). For instance,
Olsson et al. (2016) revealed that one’s involvement with an application gets
lifted up due to the use of gamified systems, which is actually the impact of
intrinsic motivation. Also, Kim and Ahn (2017) substantiated that intrinsic
rewards, such as feedback increase one’s implicit motivation to engross in a
loyalty program than the explicit rewards, such as points.

3.3.2 Technology Acceptance Model (TAM)

In accordance with TAM theory, the ease to use an application and its useful-
ness decide people’s engagement with it. Initially, people find any new thing
whether it’s a device or an application tough to use as the usual tendency
of the people is to resist change. Learning a new method to do something
is always difficult because people tend to resist change; nevertheless, if the
company applications are beneficial, enjoyable and easy to use, consumers are
more willing to use the new applications. For instance, in one of the studies, it
was found that individuals intend to use a webpage like Empire Avenue with
the proviso that they can acquire some knowledge about it and they iden-
tify it as entertaining (Ayding, 2018). Another study revealed that customers
engross with the Oreo cookie game when they find it user friendly and helpful
(Yang et al., 2017).

3.3.3 Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB)

TPB is a decision-making theory that determines behavior predictors. In accor-
dance with TPB theory, an intention heads the behavior, and the attitude
towards the behavior, subjective norms and perceived behavioral control define
this intention. Attitude has been defined as a favorable or unfavorable assess-
ment of the behavior and subjective norms are described as the observed
social pressure to perform, or not, the behavior in question (Ajzen, 1991).
The perceived behavioral control is referred to as the perceived level of diffi-
culty when it comes to behavior execution (Ajzen, 1991). Relevant literature
(Hamari, 2013) shows that TPB theory has been employed in the context of
gamification to elucidate the intention or purpose of customers to use gamified
products or services. For instance, Hamari (2013) established that how badges
effectively engage users with a gamified product can be best expounded by
TPB. As users can compare their performance with that of other players and
their subjective norms then drive everybody to an enhanced level of perfor-
mance. On the other hand, Bittner and Schipper (2014) compared the use of
two theories, i.e., TPB and TAM, in the context of gamification. They discov-
ered that TPB is helpful in estimating the objective to purchase non-gamified
products, while TAM forecasts the intention to purchase gamified products.
 35 ENGAGING AND ENTERTAINING CUSTOMERS … 823

3.3.4 Flow Theory (FT)

FT postulates that an activity becomes a better experience if it appears as
challenging to the user without entirely exceeding his/her skill level (Csik-
szentmihalyi & LeFevre, 1989). This theory provides insights to reason out
why a gamified brand or product appears to be more pleasurable and involving
in nature to the users (Yoo et al., 2018). In addition to this, Berger et al.’s
(2018) study demonstrate that due to high interactivity and optimal challenges
a user can easily become self-brand associated or linked with the brand.

3.3.5 Social Influence Theories (SIT)

SIT theories examine “how one person or group affects another’s opinions,
attitudes, emotions, or behaviors” (Goldsmith, 2015, p. 3). Hamari (2013)
found that performance comparison between users of Sharetribe was a medi-
ating factor in the impact that badges had on the frequency of use of this
website. Basically, these theories help practitioners to understand and make
use of the fact that while applying gamification in any corporate context it
must comprehend how the presence of other users or players will affect a user
who is into a gamified system or product (Hamari, 2019; Koivisto & Hamari,
2019). For instance, in the gamified design of “spin the wheel” people get
motivated to play this game and win the product when they are compared with
the performance of others. Hence, these theories are very helpful to apply the
trick of impacting customers by “social influence” accordingly.

3.3.6 Vividness Effects Theory (VET)

The specialty of gamification environment is that it appears as a vivid envi-
ronment to the customers because of which they get more involved with
the gamified products, brands or services which is less possible in case of
non-gamified products (Vashisht et al., 2021). In accordance with VET,
Vividness has been defined as “the representational richness of a mediated
environment as defined by its formal features, that is, the way in which
an environment presents information to the senses” (Steuer, 1992, p. 11).
Vividness is stimulus-driven, depending completely upon technical physiog-
nomies of a medium. Rafaeli (1985) refers to this property as “transparency”
(p. 9). A highly vivid medium can be considered “hot” as it “extends one (or
many) sense(s) in ‘high definition’” (McLuhan, 1964, p. 36). Many factors
contribute to vividness, but two of them that are very significant, i.e., sensory
breath and sensory depth. Sensory breadth refers to the number of sensory
dimensions simultaneously presented, and sensory depth refers to the reso-
lution within each of these perceptual channels. Breadth is a function of the
ability of a communication medium to present information across the senses.
Gibson and Carmichael (1966) define five distinct perceptual systems: the
basic orienting system (which is responsible for maintaining body equilib-
rium), the auditory system, the haptic (touch) system, the taste–smell system
and the visual system. Inputs to several of these systems from a single source
can be considered informationally equivalent (Gibson & Carmichael, 1966).
824 D. VASHISHT

However, the redundancy resulting from simultaneous activation of a number

of perceptual systems reduces the number of alternative situations that could
induce such a combination of perceptions and therefore strengthens the
perception of a particular environment.

3.3.7 Transportation Theory (TT)

TT states that the fun and pleasure drawn from the experience of being
involved can affect one’s attitude and beliefs in the real world (Green et al.,
2004). In the context of gamification, since one’s involvement is more and
intense as compared to that in case of a non-gamification context, customers
develop a more favorable brand attitude as the positive feelings generated while
being in the gamified system get transferred to user’s evaluation of the brand
which finally results in positive levels of brand attitudes (Optinmonster, 2020).

3.3.8 Engagement Theory (ET)

ET states that when individuals get linked, fastened with, and enthralled by a
specific action, their high-commitment level drives them to concentrate on a
task to such a degree that their brains get captured by it for a remarkable time
period (Kearsley & Shneiderman, 1998). This kind of enthralling action can
be felt in gamification context. That is why people get involved in the gamified
systems for a longer period of time.

3.3.9 Expectancy Violation Theory (EVT)

EVT can best explain the impact of novelty element present in gamifica-
tion (Burgoon & Jones, 1976). This theory describes that when individuals
perceive positive defilements of anticipations, i.e., things are better than they
had expected, they see the result as more favorable than that in case of nega-
tive defilements of their anticipations. Hence, it can be said that gamification is
acknowledged and admired to be more fresh and attention seeker as compared
to the traditional way of advertising (Smith & Yang, 2004).

4 Findings and Discussion

The review of the literature on interactive marketing and gamification provides
very interesting findings and discussion points. First, gamification isn’t just
about converting all business files and tasks into a gigantic game of Kujenga.
Or maybe it is, I won’t tell you how to live your life. So, we’re thinking beyond
the catchword. Gamification is beyond just a technology; it’s psychology.
Indeed, it has become the charm of marketing, with 93% of marketing
practitioners claiming they worship gamification (Review42, 2022). Present
marketing scientists sturdily consider play is a key element of the human expe-
rience. Applying the concept of gaming in business strategy, health, education,
training and development has accelerated in the recent years and organizations
enjoy high engagement and ROI (Review42, 2022). Hence, it can be said that
 35 ENGAGING AND ENTERTAINING CUSTOMERS … 825

gamification is a trend that is already subtly changing the way we learn, work,
see, perceive and possibly live.
Secondly, as an industry, it has developed considerably over the last few
years and is predicted to grow even further (Mordor Intelligence, 2022),
especially in this pandemic time, wherein we have all had to acclimatize to
a progressively more digital and no-contact sphere. The gaming industry is
expected to grow by 30.1% by 2024 (Mordor Intelligence, 2022).
Third, the sales and business figures in different reports indicate an expo-
nential growth potential of the gaming industry, such as it is predicted
that by 2025, the international gamification sales revenues will be around
US $ 32 billion and gamified learning will be valued at US $ 32 billion
(GlobeNewswire, 2019). Also, a report by Zippia (2022) shows that 70% of
global 2000 companies use gamification in some way, 50% of startups use
gamification and 80% of American households own at least one gaming
device—because of this, people are approaching this technology with pre-
grown skills and knowledge related to gaming, and may be more susceptible
and adaptive to the system (Zippia, 2022).
Fourth, gamification not only attracts and retains the external customers
(the end-users) of the company but also the internal ones, i.e., the employees
(FinancesOnline, 2022). The research reports show that gamification is found
to be very engaging and interactive education and training tool for the overall
skill and personality development of the employees as it supports memory
(Talentlms, 2019). A study shows that in the course of gameplay learning,
resilient hippocampal stimulation occurs which makes the content easier to
reminisce and recollect (Foerde & Shohamy, 2011). It is found from the rele-
vant literature that the corporate sector is the biggest customer of gamified
learning solutions and 78% of people say that a gamified recruiting process
makes them more excited and fervent to work for the enterprise giving the
training (Talentlms, 2019).
Fifth, one of the major findings and discussion points is the evidence from
the literature that indicates the persuasive power of gamification on customers’
activities. For instance, 81% of clients claim that gamified actions enhanced
their sense of belonging (Optinmonster, 2020). So, just like with the case of
employees, gamification can upsurge engagement; however, with customers,
there is an auxiliary advantage of community building. As per the report gami-
fying the website can boots browsing time by up to 30% and game-based
impetus escalates user engagement by 48% (Optinmonster, 2020).
Sixth, another important finding and discussion point in the context of
gamification is related to types of gamification and their effects. Adding one
or more game elements in the virtual events, email marketing and return on
investment calculators is a highly needed powerful tool in order to increase the
effectiveness of the events, emails or app/online calculators. Adding gaming
elements, such as fun, rules, entertainment, points and prize increase the
enjoyable and meaningful interaction of the customers with the brand. For
instance, sending an old-fashioned email to hundreds of customers would
826 D. VASHISHT

not be that much useful unlike gamified emails to only 20 customers. Statis-
tics on modern gamification techniques shows that use of gamification in
virtual events (Ibentos, 2021) or email marketing or return on calculators
increase customer retention on company’s website or application for a longer
period of time (https://www.promodo.com/services/email-marketing/). As
a result of which the brands that use such gamification techniques in events or
emails or apps taste an increased amount of revenues (https://www.promodo.
com/services/email-marketing/). For example, in one of the articles, it was
reported that emails with GIFs brought 12% more revenue than their non-
animated counterparts (https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/internet-ret
ailer/). Similarly, in case of messenger ads, live video FAQs and conversa-
tional marketing, gaming elements upsurge their impact on customers. As
per a report by Drift (2020), chatbots helped the brands to increase their
customer database by 13% in 2020 as compared to that in 2019. Likewise,
click-to-messenger ads display the ads to the users first and later drive them
to messenger apps or interface. From there, brands excite customers with
queries, desires or involvements allied with the content of the ad and then they
are able to interact and learn more about them and drive them to convert.
Also, it is found that many customers actually enjoy these gamified ads as
find them very enjoyable and relevant to them (AdEspresso, 2020). Same is
the case with polls and quizzes. People find them fun, informative and not
very boring unlike static and lengthy questions with limited interactions. Polls
provide two major advantages to the brands; one is that brands can have an
elongated and more meaningful interaction with customers in the form of
polls and quizzes, and secondly, brands can improve the brand awareness of
the customers through these gamified polls and quizzes. Similarly, in case of
gamified loyalty programs and contests, brands can maintain meaningful rela-
tionship with its customers and can have or create a vast customer database by
making use of the gamified loyalty programs. Further, in case of advergames
and in-game-advertising (IGA), people actually play the game without feeling
that they are being targeted by the advertisers through these games. This is
the best part of advergames and IGA, one will not be able to the commercial
motives of such games and still keep enjoying the branded stuff, i.e., brand
message in the form of games.
The chapter findings indicate that major areas of research in gamification are
definition of gamification from the perspective of interactive marketing, types
of gamification, application of marketing theories in gamification, increased
popularity and use of gamification by big and small businesses across different
sectors. After a thorough review of various research papers and articles,
the chapter highlights the key benefits of applying gamification in interac-
tive marketing. High brand recall, superior brand awareness, positive brand
attitude, positive psychological responses to advertising, potential to create
competitive advantage, interactive brand design, improve customer experience,
encourage customer engagement with marketing activities and high user inter-
action with the website or brand are the major benefits. Findings also indicate
 35 ENGAGING AND ENTERTAINING CUSTOMERS … 827

that advergames, ads-on game, gamified websites and gamified apps are four
major techniques that are being used in implementing gamification in interac-
tive marketing, and majorly the gamification literature can be broadly classified
into two main categories, i.e., conceptual studies (cover definitions, nature
and scope of gamification) and empirical studies (cover experimental studies,
majorly on advergames and IGA).
The empirical findings gel with the theories provided in the gamified
marketing literature, such as vividness effects theory postulated by Steuer
(1992) which says that a vivid environment stimulates the respondent to get
immersed in it which in turn results in positive responses (Vashisht, 2021).
Gamification results in high brand recall (Peters & Leshner, 2013), favor-
able brand attitude (Goh & Ping, 2014), positive word of mouth and high
brand advocacy (Vashisht et al., 2021). Also, these findings are consistent with
the existing theories such as transportation theory (Green et al., 2004) and
engagement theory (Kearsley & Shneiderman, 1998). Transportation theory
advocates that the fun and pleasure drawn from the experience of being
involved can impact one’s attitude and beliefs in the real world (Green et al.,
2004), which is why gamification statistics figures show a positive level of
brand attitude (Optinmonster, 2020).
The chapter findings also get support from the engagement theory
(Kearsley & Shneiderman, 1998), which says that when individuals get
connected, bolted with and mesmerized by a specific action, their high-
commitment level grant them to focus on a task to such an extent that their
brains are to a great extent captured by it for a notable time period. Also,
Expectancy Violation Theory (Burgoon & Jones, 1976) can best explain the
effect of novelty element present in gamification. This theory says that when
people see positive violations of expectations, i.e., things are better than they
had anticipated, they perceive the outcome as more favorable than that in
case of negative violations of their expectations. Hence, it can be established
from the discussion that gamification is recognized and praised to be more
novel and attention seeker as compared to the traditional way of advertising
(Smith & Yang, 2004).
Also, the chapter findings are found consistent with the theories, such as
Self-Determination Theory (SDT), Technology Acceptance Model (TAM),
Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), Flow theory (FT) and Social Influ-
ence Theories (SIT). These theories are found to be helpful in explaining
why gamification works in marketing. According to some authors, from the
perspective of SDT, gamification can be considered as extrinsic motivation as
earning points, rewards or badges keeps people engaged in the gamifying tasks
(Högberg et al., 2019; Jang et al., 2018). While others argue that gamifica-
tion is an intrinsic motivation, for example, employing feedback as an intrinsic
reward upsurges one’s intrinsic motivation and hence, one’s engagement with
the gamified activity increases (Kim & Ahn, 2017). Similarly, TAM theory
explains why people find gamified stuff better, as TAM suggests that ease of
828 D. VASHISHT

use and usefulness of the application decide user’s interest of using the appli-
cation. In case of gamification, the gamified marketing techniques are more
user friendly such as return on investment app calculators, EMI-calculator
apps and video-FAQs. Likewise, taking insights from TPB, FT and SIT theo-
ries, one can clearly say that in the context of gamification marketing, if a
medium or a technique or an application has the potential to engross user’s
attention and can involve him/her in the game-environment completely, then
customer’s virtual-game experience gets transferred to his/her real-life situa-
tion, as a result of which the customer carries and shows positive thoughts,
feelings and favorable brand attitude towards the advertised brands.
The authors do agree with the fact that the positive side of gamification
definitely lures marketers to use it in one or the other form across sectors,
but one must also look the other side of it in order to completely understand
the nitty–gritty of the concept. Though gamification poses more advantages,
it also poses certain challenges to both marketers and users. The greatest
annoying side of gamification is that lightning doesn’t strike twice. This might
be quite tough to digest but it’s true that a game developed by big designers
for e-learning purposes can be successful in one course or program but may
be a failure in another course. This indicates that one size doesn’t fit all,
which means one gamified system/solution/strategy which is very successful
for a particular course may not be apt for another. This is one of the biggest
challenges of gamification. Also, designing and then successfully executing
gamification is not an easy task, it is a complex and much costlier process.
Further, gamification may become a distraction strategy rather an effective
strategy. Thus, in such cases, there could be 50–50 chances of getting success
using a particular gamification strategy. Similarly, one more major challenging
part of gamification could be how to know and choose the best gamifying
strategy for your business from a plethora of alternatives. This again needs a
thorough analysis, more time and efforts of the designing team. Hence, while
figuring out the best way of gamification for a corporate, both positives and
negatives must be analyzed and then a decision needs to be taken.

5 Implications and Future of Gamification

This chapter brings out several implications. I would like to highlight these
implications with examples. First, contingent on users’ competitive nature,
Nike designed the marvelous gamification Nike+ Fuelband with an attached
Nike+ App where customers can customize their exercise, drills, challenges
and win trophies with the gamified marketing. This implies that gamification
can help brands as this is one of the strategies that match with the nature of
today’s customers, i.e., to be competitive, which was nicely used by Nike.
Second, Starbucks developed the “Flip the Cup” app gamification to
provide discounts and coupons to its clients in an innovative way. Star-
bucks’ marketers boosted their customers’ engagement by 90% with a simple
one-hand game (Appetite Creative, 2022).
 35 ENGAGING AND ENTERTAINING CUSTOMERS … 829

Third, Coca Cola designed a “Shake It” game with a mobile app where
one can shake it to win awards and rebates from different Coca Cola partners,
which made this very tough to resist gamification. It was done to upsurge the
interaction time of its customers with the brand, in which they got success.
Fourth, Samsung gamified their interaction with customers by inviting them
physically to a game called “Prankvertising” in which gamers must keep their
eyes on the Samsung S4 mobile for about 60 minutes and avoid all sorts of
distractions to finally win a Samsung S4 mobile. This gave them better brand
exposure as compared to their earlier traditional ways of making campaigns
and ads.
Fifth, Ferrero came out with two different types of gamified branding to
escalate user engagement across various nations.
Sixth, Domino’s has achieved a higher position in the competitive pizza
pick-up and delivery market due to its consistent high-quality standard of food
and service. To maintain this position in the market, Domino’s required fast
and effective training for its employees. Classic training strategies wouldn’t
fulfill the objective. Hence, in the year 2015, Domino’s made the Pizza Maker
course, a gamification training strategy that employs simulations to engage,
measure and reward employees in the course of the learning experience. This
course included some game elements that aided employees to mend their
previous scores; the games helped new employees in designing the menu and
more accurate pizzas quicker, thus lessening onboarding time.
Seventh, there is no doubt that experienced and knowledgeable senior exec-
utives are valuable assets for any company; however, they might not be too
comfortable with new training programs that are held in the companies for
the skill and attitude updation of the employees. This was Deloitte’s hurdle
when the company employed a leadership training course for senior execu-
tives and later faced difficulty in encouraging them to begin and complete the
course. Thus, Deloitte embedded gamification in the program. For instance,
badges, leaderboards and status symbols were embedded in the course so as
to inspire executives to take part in a status-oriented competition with their
peers. Only three months after gamification was applied, the time to complete
the program fell by 50%, with an approximately 47% rise in the number of
users that return to the site daily. Indeed, many members called the training
program as being “addictive”.
Eighth, a few years back, Microsoft needed a technique to confirm that
the language translations were meaningful and correct when it was facing
the challenge of innumerable language localization needs for its gigantic line
of products. To complete this arduous job, Microsoft developed a “Lan-
guage Quality” game using its own Silverlight application. The game allowed
Microsoft staffers around the world to view screens and check for language
accuracy. To confirm that its employees were involved and responding,
Microsoft even threw in some deliberately poor translations. The game
engrossed 4500 users who appraised 500,000 screens and did translation
corrections or improvements grounded on their native tongues. Microsoft
830 D. VASHISHT

Japan was the most remarkable participant among all. These are very few
examples, gamification has helped many giants.
The successful gamified stories of these brands indicate a very bright future
of gamification, wherein artificial intelligence and machine learning can help in
designing more personalized gamified experiences for the customers as every-
body likes different components of games. Next, gamification can become
more powerful using “metaverse”. This could be the next level of gamifica-
tion that can generate spaces for rich user interaction imitating the real world.
By incorporating virtual reality into gamification strategy, one can create an
immersive marketing experience that will enthrall users like never before.

6 Conclusion
Gamification is more than just a game. It is a digital marketing method
that uses gaming elements to provide a high-involving, charming and enter-
taining consumer experience to improve remarkable brand awareness, brand
attitude and brand advocacy through gamification marketing. This gamifica-
tion marketing might be employed in several business realms with a persuasive
brand message conveying and mounting engagement. However, one must not
overlook to take account of achievement incentives, such as levels or points
or gifts, to encourage consumers to continue playing the game. The gami-
fication will remain to grow across different sectors. As gamified solutions
become more refined, a significant growth in their effectiveness is seen and
its growth will be seen still increasing from the present figures in the coming
five years. Big brands will be seen continuing their innovations for improving
their existing gamified systems. Smaller enterprises will get into the game too,
with the support of social media and access to more digital tools. Also, the
increased use of smartphones will be seen creating a robust demand for gami-
fied mobile solutions. Gamification is not only a strong weapon for corporates
to attract, lure, engage and interact with customers but also it has become
a central tool in the workplace which improves employee engagement and
organization impact. This impact will magnify as gamified software progresses
and upsurges in scope. This leads to a new set of gamification benefits. In
a nutshell, despite your business category, gamification in marketing is not
something you can ignore in your marketing strategy.
From the chapter findings and discussion, it can be concluded that four
major investigation areas have been recognized in the context of gamification
in interactive marketing, they are: definition of gamification from the perspec-
tive of interactive marketing, types of gamification, application of marketing
theories in gamification, increased popularity and use of gamification by big
and small business across different sectors. The prime identified major bene-
fits of applying gamification in interactive marketing are: superior brand recall,
high brand awareness, positive brand attitude, positive psychological responses
to advertising, potential to create competitive advantage, interactive brand
design, improve customer experience, encourage customer engagement with
 35 ENGAGING AND ENTERTAINING CUSTOMERS … 831

marketing activities and high user interaction with the website or brand.
Further, it can be established that advergames, ads-on game, gamified websites
and gamified apps are four major techniques that are being used in imple-
menting gamification in interactive marketing, and majorly the gamification
literature can be broadly classified into two main categories, i.e., conceptual
studies (cover definitions, nature and scope of gamification) and empirical
studies (cover experimental studies, majorly on advergames and IGA).
Also, from this chapter, it can be concluded that marketers can make more
successful gamified systems by making use of the theories cited in this chapter,
such as Self-Determination Theory (SDT), Technology Acceptance Model
(TAM), Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), Social Influence Theory (SIT),
Vividness Effect Theory (VET), Transportation Theory (TT), Flow Theory
(FT), Engagement Theory (ET) and Expectancy Violation Theory (EVT). In
order to increase the user’s or customer’s or employee’s participation and keep
them completely involved in the gamified task, a marketer must understand
the basics and know-how of the mechanism(s) which help users to perceive
the gamified task/activity/course/program (e.g., live video FAQs, click-to-
messenger-ads, return on investment calculators, conversational marketing,
chatbots, gamified email loyalty program, polls and quizzes, interactive online
events etc.) more engaging in nature and useful to them as compared to that
with the old-fashioned marketing activities (e.g., static FAQs, traditional ads,
old-fashioned event formats). In these situations, the above-cited theories will
help the practitioners to comprehend, design, develop and execute the gami-
fied systems which could be a win–win situation for both, i.e., the user and
the marketer.

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 CHAPTER 36

Interactive Experience of Physical Servicescape

and Online Servicescape: A Review and Future
Research

Zalfa Laili Hamzah and Muhammad Waqas

1 Introduction
Businesses should be able to distinguish themselves in the ever-growing service
market by having a distinct value proposition by providing an interactive expe-
rience. The interactive experience is unique for a business, as they gain a
competitive advantage and long-term business growth in interactive marketing
through physical and online interaction (Brodie et al., 2011; Wang, 2021).
As services are utilised, an interactive experience emerges and users become
a co-producer/co-creator (Brodie et al., 2011; Lusch & Vargo, 2011). For
example, the merging of physical and virtual contexts allows consumers to
experience the product in the digital landscape via virtual fitting rooms or
bring the digital world to physical stores, where shoppers can experience every
part of the brand through immersive multimedia content (Merrilees, 2016).
Many researchers believe that value is produced in services through mutual and
co-creative processes, where consumers interact with firms, employees, and
other resources (Brodie et al., 2011; Lusch & Vargo, 2011). In interactions
with a company, consumers have a set of normative expectations about their

Z. L. Hamzah (B)
Universiti Malaya, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
e-mail: zalfa@um.edu.my
M. Waqas
National University of Sciences and Technology, Islamabad, Pakistan
e-mail: muhammad.waqas@nbs.nust.edu.pk

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 837

Switzerland AG 2023
C. L. Wang (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Interactive Marketing,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14961-0_36
838 Z. L. HAMZAH AND M. WAQAS

involvement in the service process, including how much they should partic-
ipate effectively (Fellesson & Salomonson, 2016). Customers’ expectations
of the service provider and front-line employees (FLEs) during the service
process (e.g., in terms of attitudes, behaviour, personality, and performance)
and the expectations of their role are essential factors in developing a truly
interactive experience in the value co-creation process.
Co-creation of values refers to active customer participation in a busi-
ness process to create values with companies to fulfil their needs and desires
(Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004). Companies no longer act autonomously,
designing products or services and crafting messages with little or no consumer
interference (Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2004). For example, customers must
queue to place their orders using standardised rules drawn from the fast-food
restaurant and then walk up to the counter and receive their orders when their
meals are ready. In an expensive business, customers can personalise and be
permitted to take a less active role in the service production process; however,
they will be required to adhere to specific rules associated with fine-dining
conduct.
The term interactive experience describes identifying service design to
ease the interaction between two parties. Interaction refers to any customer
activities when interacting with companies, and it has been promoted as a
potentially robust instrument for establishing successful new service delivery
as one of the most important constructs in interactive marketing. Because
consumers are not loyal to any channel, the retail industry must provide
a seamless purchase experience for its online and offline channels. There-
fore, creating a distinguished service with unique benefits and a greater value
for customers is feasible for reinforcing customer engagement. Interaction
occurs within the four types of service interaction: between front-line staff and
consumers; between the firm’s tangible or technical resources and customers;
between the firm’s service system and customers; and between a customer and
other customers (Jiang, 2008). Therefore, when discussing service interaction,
there is a pressing need to answer the following questions:
What interactive experiences do customers want to have with brands and
organisations? What dimensions/factors enhance interactive experiences that
lead to customer behavioural outcomes in online and offline contexts? How
should organisations consider designing compelling interactive experiences at
physical or online channels? As consumers are more demanding nowadays
and not loyal to any channel, the retail industry must provide a seamless
purchase experience for its online and offline channels (i.e., omnichannel
marketing). Understanding such questions is essential to companies crafting
business design and strategies to stimulate interactive experiences influ-
encing customer engagement, customer preferences, and purchase behaviour
towards a product or service brand, eventually leading to organisational
outcome, i.e., business profitability. Specifically, interactive experience with a
focal agent/object/context within specific service relationships is essential in
customer engagement and co-creation (Brodie et al., 2011).
 36 INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCE OF PHYSICAL SERVICESCAPE … 839

This chapter echoes Wang (2021), Merrilees (2016), and Bolton and
Saxena-Iyer (2009). They emphasise that interactive experience aims to
provide a comprehensive review and critique of a diverse range of contem-
porary literature that informs our understanding of the antecedents and
consequences of a compelling interactive experience within physical and online
servicescape. Specifically, the objectives of this chapter are:

1. to explain the meaning of interactive experiences, particularly in interac-

tive services for both physical and online servicescapes, and shed light on
how important the study of brand-consumer interaction is for a marketer;
2. to highlight the importance of this emerging area of interest and research
gaps by considering previous and most recent research on interactive
experience in physical and online servicescapes within prior published
research;
3. to identify different theoretical perspectives and research streams that
investigated determinants and impact of interactivity experience of phys-
ical and online servicescapes.
4. to propose a new conceptual model of phygital interactive experience
based on similarities of attributes identified in the physical and online
service scapes.

The remainder of this chapter is organised into six sections. Section 1

discusses the background of this chapter. Section 2 presents the method-
ology, the core set selection, and the analysis of this work. Section 3 discusses
the theoretical background of interactive experience and servicescape expe-
rience, while Sect. 4 discusses the data analyses. Finally, Sect. 5 details
the contributions of this work to the theoretical and managerial aspects of
businesses.

2 Methodology
This chapter reviews the literature (SLR) on the antecedents and consequences
of interactive experience physical and online servicescapes. This approach
aids in systematically summarising previously published material and enables
researchers to replicate previous searches on similar or related topics. The
criteria are the application of SLR to marketing and information system.
SLR benefits practitioners and managers by gathering knowledge from various
research (Tranfield et al., 2003). This work synthesises the growing body
of literature servicescape for the physical and online interactive experience.
Most of the literature discusses consumer behaviour, service management field,
management studies, marketing, and consumer research, all making significant
contributions. The author provides a historical overview of existing studies and
a synthesis of current thought to develop an agenda for future research into
this critical yet often neglected aspect of services. To our knowledge, this is the
840 Z. L. HAMZAH AND M. WAQAS

first attempt to gather existing findings from physical and online servicescapes
interactive experiences that focus on their antecedents or consequences.
The systematic literature review was conducted to achieve two objec-
tives. First, it presents the current state of interactive experience and physical
and online servicescapes literature. Second, it presents the agenda for future
research by highlighting the gaps in the current literature. To achieve the
objectives, research papers were identified from five databases containing
academic research including EBSCOHOST, Emerald, Sage, Science Direct,
and Scopus. The papers on online servicescape were published from 2012 to
2022, while physical servicescape literature was within the 2000 and 2022
period. The rationale behind selecting 2012 as the starting year for this review
is that the debate on online servicescape in marketing began in the early 2012s
with Lee and Jeong (2012) and built on previous studies examining interac-
tivity in online learning. Exploration of articles was undertaken using keywords
such as “online interactivity”, “online experience”, “servicescape”, “physical
servicescape”, and “online servicescape”. Only studies published in business
management, accounting, psychology, and social sciences were retrieved to
adhere to the research objectives. The initial search for online servicescape
generated 142 studies, while physical servicescape generated 200 studies. After
eliminating articles that did not meet the selection criteria, 57 articles of online
servicescape and 70 articles of physical servicescape were left and included in
the final analysis. This study did not include conference papers, books, thesis,
and papers published by publishers that were not included in abovementioned
five databases (Waqas et al., 2021b).
The initially retrieved 142 research articles were transferred on an excel
sheet to spot replications. After removing 38 duplicated articles, 104 articles
were retained for further assessment. All the remaining articles were carefully
examined to elucidate their relevance to the topic of online interactivity and
physical servicescape. Detailed analysis of the articles revealed that 47 papers
were irrelevant to interactive experience and servicescape and were eliminated
from further analysis. The remaining 57 articles were relevant to the area of
interactive experience and servicescape. Figure 1 presents an overview of the
article selection and retention process.

3 Discussion of Results
3.1 Theoretical Perspective of an Interactive Experience of Physical
and Online Servicescape
Experiential offerings have surpassed goods and services as the fourth most
valuable economic commodities (Kandampully et al., 2022; Pine & Gilmore,
2013). Many companies use customer experience (CE) to distinguish them-
selves from their competitors. Creating a memorable positive experience is
the key to winning over customers (Pine & Gilmore, 2013). The literature
on interactive (Wang, 2021) and service marketing supports the idea that
 36 INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCE OF PHYSICAL SERVICESCAPE … 841

Fig. 1 PRISMA article search process

customers value the experience more than the actual value (Bitner, 1992).
Positive customer experience increases financial performance, brand image,
customer loyalty and satisfaction, and word-of-mouth referrals (WOM).
However, because they frequently involve people, services such as perfor-
mances are frequently more complicated and, as a result, impossible to
forecast. It is, therefore, difficult to conceptualise and analyse the experience
before the service is delivered (Kandampully et al., 2022).
Designing and planning physical environments for a servicescape has been
an essential topic in the services marketing literature. However, due to the
unique characteristics of services, particularly their intangibility and perisha-
bility, the inseparability of production and consumption, and heterogeneity
in delivery quality, further understanding of experiences at physical services is
essential in ensuring long-term business sustainability.
This chapter aims to critically review interactive experience research for
physical and online servicescape within 22 years (2000–2022) and 10 years
(2012–2022) for online servicescape. The review highlighted the importance
of this emerging area of interest by considering previous research papers. As
a result, an agenda for research was developed to serve as the foundation
for future studies into this important yet often neglected aspect of services.
842 Z. L. HAMZAH AND M. WAQAS

Furthermore, the current understanding of phenomena in these contexts is

essential for academics and practitioners in strategising when forming new
business ecosystems for customer connections and interactivities.

3.2 Theoretical Background

The Stimulus-Organism-Response (S–O-R) Model (Mehrabian & Russell,
1974) explains servicescape research and behavioural outcomes. In the stan-
dard S–O-R paradigm, stimulation is defined as variables that influence
an individual’s internal states but might be conceptualised as an influence
that stimulates the individual. According to Bagozzi (1986), the stimuli are
external to the individual and consist of the marketing mix factors and other
environmental inputs. The stimuli in this study are the physical environment
of the services industry, that is, hospitality, healthcare, education, restaurant,
and retail environmental qualities (ambient, design, and social elements) that
impact the emotional experience and responses of the customer. These are
defined as the internal processes and structures that intervene between external
inputs and the ultimate actions, reactions, or responses that are released, while
the original S–O-R paradigm is primarily concerned with pleasure, arousal,
and domination (PAD). PAD reflected effective, emotional, and cognitive
states and processes and moderated the interaction between the stimulus and
individuals’ responses.
Early research on online experience tended to direct attention to the flow
phenomenon. For example, in a computer-mediated setting, Van Noort et al.,
(2012a, 2012b) are accustomed to Csikszentmihalyi’s (1975) flow theory,
which states that the people in a state of flow are so involved in an activity that
nothing else seems to matter. This state of involvement or flow is considered a
cognitive state which relies on interactivity and telepresence, skill and control,
high challenge level, and focussed attention (Novak et al., 2000). Thus, online
flow is experienced within a computer-mediated environment when consumers
exercise online interactivity during web navigation (Van Noort et al., 2012a,
2012b). Other studies also suggested that the flow experience is a compelling
determinant of website usage due to its tendency to enhance interest and
excitement. For instance, Hoffman and Novak (1996) suggested that flow
mediates the influence of interactivity while navigating across websites. In
another significant study, in contrast to Novak et al. (2000), Fan et al. (2013)
suggested that flow experience emerges from hedonic elements of online
stimuli, which may enhance feelings of enjoyment and pleasure. Thus, for
flow to occur, consumers must obtain hedonic value through playfulness,
positive emotions, and stimulation, and utilitarian value through convenience,
accessibility, information, ease of use, challenge, freedom, and control.
Though numerous studies consider flow a central concept explaining a satis-
factory online experience (Javornik, 2016; Ozkara et al., 2017), a growing
body of empirical work questions the relationship between flow experience
and the servicescape (Huang, Li et al., 2017a, 2017b).
 36 INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCE OF PHYSICAL SERVICESCAPE … 843

The interactivity theory suggests that interactivity can be explained by

understanding the message exchange process (Voorveld et al., 2013). This
theory posits that an individuals’ perceptions of interactive media result from
the superiority of the interactive exchange (Barreda et al., 2016). The percep-
tions of interactivity will be stronger for a message which contains a reciprocal
exchange (Voorveld et al., 2013). Several studies thus far have analysed inter-
activity in human communications via online media (McMillan et al., 2003).
Campbell and Wright (2008) argued that interactivity occurs when two or
more system users reciprocally adjust their conduct and behaviours to each
other in specific conditions on an online medium. For online interactivity to
occur, there must be an interaction between consumers and technology (Cebi,
2013).
According to the interactivity theory, the quality of the human-technology
interface relates to the refined interactions between users and technology
(Forman & Zeebroeck, 2012). The interactivity theory also suggests that
system interactivity (i.e., user control) and social interactivity (i.e., two-way
communication) are the two critical elements of interactivity (Barreda et al.,
2016). Some scholars suggest that interactivity is a perceptual and personality-
based concept rather than a mere behavioural communication exchange
occurring during everyday media experiences (Bucy, 2004). In other words,
interactivity occurs through consumers’ perceptions created by technology and
other users.
Interaction has long been regarded as a distinguishing characteristic of
all services. It is necessary to communicate with customers since services
are defined by simultaneous creation and consumption, thus necessitating
customer–firm interaction (Bolton & Saxena-Iyer, 2009). Interactionservices
are defined as “services that have some form of customer-firm interaction in
an environment characterised by any level of technology (i.e., a high or low tech-
nology environment )” (Bolton & Saxena-Iyer, 2009, p. 92). Interactive services
are available in various industries, including consumer and business markets.
It is beneficial to describe interactive services along two dimensions: (1) the
amount to which the customer interacts with the service and (2) the extent to
which technology is leveraged in the production and delivery of the service.
By considering traditional services, Bolton and Saxena-Iyer (2009), conceptu-
alised that interactivity involves service interaction between a customer with
employees, processes, and technology by considering traditional services. It
is a reciprocal social exchange, where the customers’ participative behaviours
are just as important as those of the employees in service delivery. Effective
interaction services have influenced service quality and behavioural outcomes
(e.g., service usage, repeat purchase behaviour and word-of-mouth) and firm
outcomes (efficiency, revenues, and profits).
The following sections discuss a contextual interactive experience, online
interactive and interactive marketing, physical and online servicescape, and its
antecedents and consequences.
844 Z. L. HAMZAH AND M. WAQAS

3.3 Online Interactivity and Interactive Marketing

Interactivity is the extent of information exchange between users or between
a medium and users and how users control content and communication
(Vashisht, 2021). Liu and Shrum (2002, p. 54) define interactivity as “the
degree to which two or more communicating parties can act on each other,
on the communication medium, and on the messages and the degree to which
such influences are synchronised”. Similarly, Pavlič et al. (2021) define inter-
activity as controlling and modifying the mediated environment by customers.
Wang (2021) also supports the notion that interactivity involves the active
participation of consumers in controlling, modifying, and interacting with
media and content. With advances in digital media, interactivity occurred in
digital marketing and advertising (Pavlič et al., 2021). According to McDonald
(2022), interactive marketing refers to conversation-based marketing, where
marketers and consumers can communicate with each other. A similar notion
of interactive marketing has been presented by Wang (2021), who defined
interactive marketing as the bidirectional value creation and mutual-influence
marketing process through active customer connection, engagement, partici-
pation, and interaction.
Drawing on an extensive range of sources, online interactivity can be
defined as customers’ perceptions of how well an online medium interacts
with them through two-way communication, users’ control, and feedback
(Jeon et al., 2017). Therefore, online interactivity is characterised by features,
processes, and consumer perceptions (Mollen & Wilson, 2010). An online
medium can enhance interactivity through features such as chat rooms,
response time, search tools, email links, and instant messaging (McMillan,
2005; Zwick & Dholaki, 2004). Unlike feature-based interactivity, process-
based interactivity builds on consumers’ actions using an online medium (Jeon
et al., 2017).
According to McMillan (2005), consumers’ experience of an online medi-
um’s functions, such as personalised home pages, search engines, and chat
rooms, is process-based interactivity. Also, a perception-based view of online
interactivity is how consumers of an online medium perceive it as inter-
active when they use the medium (Mollen & Wilson, 2010). Perceptions
of interactivity of an online medium emerge from perceived communica-
bility, control, and responsiveness of the online medium (Jeon et al., 2017).
Hence, consumers may develop a strong connection with the brand when
they perceive they have some control over the online medium during the
communication process (Ye et al., 2019).
Several studies reported that online interactivity is a multidimensional
construct (Voorveld et al., 2013). Extant research proposes dimensions such
as two-way communication and synchronicity (Liu & Shrum, 2002). The first
dimension, two-way communication, can be defined as the ability of a system
to accommodate communication between the system and users and between
users and users (Liu & Shrum, 2002; Voorveld et al., 2013). Previous research
 36 INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCE OF PHYSICAL SERVICESCAPE … 845

has identified this dimension as the bidirectional transmission of informa-

tion (Liu, 2003), communication (Song & Zinkhan, 2008), and directional
communication (McMillan & Hwang, 2002). In addition, two-way commu-
nication can be facilitated by incorporating feedback mechanisms, chat rooms,
bulletin boards, and seller-buyer messaging (Liu & Shrum, 2002; McMillan &
Hwang, 2002). The second dimension of online interactivity is synchronicity.
According to Liu and Shrum (2002), synchronicity refers to how users’ input
into communication and the response they receive are simultaneous or without
delay. Other studies refer to this dimension as time (McMillan & Hwang,
2002), responsiveness (Song & Zinkhan, 2008), and the speed of response
(Johnson et al., 2006).
Several online media features can enhance synchronicity, including the
internet connection type and medium response immediacy (Voorveld et al.,
2013). The third dimension of online interactivity is active control, defined
as users’ voluntary and instrumental action that directly influences the
users’ experience (Liu & Shrum, 2002). Several studies referred to active
control using terms such as control (Song & Zinkhan, 2008), user control
(McMillan & Hwang, 2002), and users’ ability to influence a communi-
cation medium (Liu, 2003). Online media features such as search options,
sitemaps, and navigational tools can enhance the perceptions of active control
(McMillan & Hwang, 2002; Song & Zinkhan, 2008).
Much of the literature on online media pays particular attention to
increasing users’ interactivity with online media. For example, Loureiro et al.
(2017) examined the drivers of interactivity with brands in an online envi-
ronment. They found that users’ experience and involvement are the most
effective antecedents of interacting with brands and other users online. They
asserted that millennial consumers need to be involved with the medium and
feel positive emotions to initiate interactivity in an online environment. In a
similar study, Sook Lee and An (2018) showed that online lecture businesses
could enhance the attitude towards online platforms through website useful-
ness, eventually leading to an enhanced tendency of learners to participate in
online interactivity on the platform. In online news settings, Ksiazek et al.
(2016) asserted that soft content videos and videos that break from the objec-
tivity norm can increase users’ interactivity with the news content. They also
showed that consumers’ perceptions of the effectiveness of an online platform
and closeness with peers could enhance the perceived interactivity of the online
platform.
Recently, there has been an increasing amount of literature on conceptu-
alising interactivity from a subjective/perception-based perspective. Perceived
interactivity is considered an essential element of the information exchange
process irrespective of the type of medium (online or face-to-face) the
exchange occurs (Wei et al., 2015). Perceived interactivity refers to the subjec-
tive experience of consumers with interactions (Park & Yoo, 2020). According
to the perspective of perceived interactivity, consumers as perceivers define
whether or not a medium is interactive or not (Lin & Chang, 2018). Recent
846 Z. L. HAMZAH AND M. WAQAS

evidence also suggests that perceived interactivity depends on technical char-

acteristics, the process of information exchange, and user perceptions (Zhao &
Lu, 2012).
Similarly, Newhagen et al. (1995) consider interactivity a multidimensional
psychological construct of user-centric internal self-efficacy and system-centric
external efficacy. User-centric internal self-efficacy is the users’ perception
of the utility of interaction with the system. In contrast, the system-centric
external efficacy is the users’ perceptions of the responsiveness of the medium
(Wu, 2005). The perception-based perspective of interactivity indicates a link
between users’ perceptions of interactivity and the actual characteristics of the
medium (Vendemia, 2017).
It is essential to assess the perceptions of interactivity relative to actual
interactivity for several reasons. For instance, there can be different levels
of perceived interactivity even when no objective differences exist between
systems (Vendemia, 2017). For example, the research found that the perceived
interactivity of three computer brands’ websites differed, whereas there were
no objective differences between the three websites (Lee et al., 2004). In
other words, variance in actual interactivity can be controlled by keeping it
constant; however, perceptions of interactivity will always vary as users perceive
the interaction’s nature and quality differently. Several studies have examined
the role of perception in predicting attitude and found that perceptual factors
strongly predict the attitude towards the source more than actual character-
istics of the source, such as technological features (McMillan et al., 2003;
Voorveld et al., 2011). Another study showed that consumers’ perceptions of
personalisation of a message determined the effectiveness regardless of actual
personalisation (Li, 2016). Another reason for examining the perceptions of
interactivity is that perceived interactivity intervenes in the actual interactivity
and its outcomes. For instance, previous studies reported that feature-based
interactivity influences the attitude towards the source in a positive perception
of interactivity, which acts as a mediating variable in the relationship (Wu,
2005).

3.3.1 Interactive Experience of Physical Servicescape

The term servicescape or service encounter was introduced by Bitner (1992).
The servicescape refers to a physical environment in which services businesses
operate designed to facilitate the delivery of service offerings to customers.
Servicescape influences the nature and quality of customer and employee inter-
actions, most directly in interpersonal services. The context of servicescape
or service encounters has been conceptualised by a variety of scholars using
several terms, such as “the physical environment”, “atmospherics” (Kotler,
1973), “marketing environment” (Turley & Milliman, 2000), “economic
environment”, “interactive theatre”, “healthscapes” (Hutton & Richardson,
1995), environmental psychology” (Weinrach, 2000), “servicescape” (Bitner,
1992), “store environment” (Roy & Tai, 2003), “service environment”, and
“social-servicescape” (Tombs & McColl-Kennedy, 2003).
 36 INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCE OF PHYSICAL SERVICESCAPE … 847

Dierking and Falk (1992) introduced an interactive experience model for

museum experience by visitors. This model stated that interactive experi-
ence has three contextual factors: personal, physical, and social. The personal
context refers to the visitor who brings their psychological makeup, prior
knowledge, experience, attitudes, motivation, and interests. The physical
context includes objects and artefacts, architecture, feel, and the ambience of
the building. The social context refers to customer experience during visits and
encounters with museum staff and other customers. The literature shows that
Bitner’s (1992) seminal conceptualisation established one of the early concep-
tual models of servicescape, which was focussed on the influence of the physical
environment on customer behaviour. Bitner (1992) stated that ambient condi-
tions, spatial layout/functionality, and signs/symbols/artefacts are conceptual
models of servicescape. However, the “servicescape” has become a little-
discussed marketing topic in the digital age. However, the concept is still
critical for a service business with a physical location to engage customers.
This chapter review covers the literature on interactive experience in a physical
setting of servicescape and suggests potential future research on this subject.

3.3.2 Antecedents and Consequences of the Interactive Experience

of Servicescape
This section details a systematic review of the antecedents and consequences
of the interactive experience of servicescape. The review is expected to inspire
future studies on online interactivity. It attempts to answer the following
research question: What are the antecedents and consequences of the interac-
tive experience of servicescape? Since Bitner introduced the word servicescape
as the physical environment in which a service is constructed, several scholars
have worked to better understand the built environment’s impact in various
service contexts. The servicescape can impact customer behaviour and help
build a particular image, particularly in service industries such as hospi-
tality, amusement parks, banks, restaurants, healthcare services, and hospitals.
However, the impact of servicescape can differ based on context.
According to Giahchin and Ekhlassi (2013), servicescape is the phys-
ical environment, including visual and nonvisual elements that significantly
shape our feelings towards services provided. By creating the first impres-
sion on consumers, these elements influence their perceptions, feelings, and
behaviours. For example, visual cues are the most apparent environmental
cues when ordinary people take their first walk in the servicescape of a hotel
(Rosenbaum & Massiah, 2011), shaping their perception of the lobby’ phys-
ical features, or online photos and the nonvisual experiences of a hotel lobby
(Durna et al., 2015). In this regard, the stimulus-organism-response model
presents a theoretical foundation for the impact of the servicescape. Further-
more, this model shows that services related to environmental stimuli can bear
organic states such as emotions, affecting consumers’ responses (Dedeoglu
et al., 2018).
848 Z. L. HAMZAH AND M. WAQAS

In another study of a hotel environment, it is claimed that an environ-

ment is a crucial element in the service delivery process, which includes the
physical environment (where services are provided) as well as the social envi-
ronment (contact with service staff and other guests) (Dedeoglu et al., 2018).
These factors affect consumer behaviour and cognitive, emotional, and psycho-
logical states (Dedeoglu et al., 2018). Servicescape components are divided
into three broad categories, ambient condition; space/function; and signs,
symbols, and antiquities. Lucas classifies servicescape into five categories: envi-
ronment; casino design; cleanliness; interior decoration; and comfort (Durna
et al., 2015). Dong and Siu (2013) also emphasise the impact of Servicescape
(such as substance and communicative staging) on shaping a desirable service
experience.
Lin confirmed, in the case of hotel service providers, that visual service
aesthetics comprehension and appreciation (VSACA) plays a vital role in
influencing consumers’ emotions, satisfaction, and behavioural intentions.
The results suggest that understanding customers’ simultaneous cognitive-
emotional processing of servicescape aesthetics is crucial. Aesthetics combines
cognition (the mind) and emotions about the sense of beauty. VSACA
captures these aspects of a consumer’s experience.
Lee et al. (2019) examined the multidimensional structure of the hotel
servicescape to understand its impact on customers’ behavioural intentions
through the multidimensional perceived hedonic value. Their results indi-
cated that the servicescape (e.g., ambient conditions, spatial layout and signs,
and functionality of equipment) positively affected attendees’ service expe-
rience and that the service experience positively affected attendees’ loyalty.
Gong and Yi (2021) investigated the influences of servicescape elements on
different types of CCBs. They provided empirical evidence to support the
proposed assertion that servicescape positively affects consumer citizenship
behaviour (CCB)s. Compared with Chang’s (2016) and Dedeoglu et al.’s
(2018) research, their study adds CCBs of providing feedback to an organisa-
tion and helping other customers make recommendations as new servicescape
outcomes. Finally, Li (2021) developed a servicescape–value–engagement
framework to identify the effects of servicescape elements on components of
customer engagement through functional and wellness values. They found
that substantive and communicative servicescapes led to customers’ cogni-
tive, affective, behavioural engagements, and functional and wellness values.
In addition, substantive and communicative servicescapes indirectly influence
customers’ affective and behavioural engagement through functional and well-
ness values but indirectly influence customers’ cognitive engagement only
through wellness values.
The healthcare service industry differs from other retail service indus-
tries. It is difficult for people to evaluate and judge the quality of their
service. Due to that people use servicescape or healthscape such as phys-
ical surroundings in appraising the healthcare service. Healthcareservicescape
affects a patient’s perception, attitude, satisfaction, behavioural intention, and
 36 INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCE OF PHYSICAL SERVICESCAPE … 849

overall healthcare services experience. Batra and Taneja (2021) and Sahoo and
Ghosh (2016) found that servicescape (i.e., ambient factors and design and
social factors) has an impact on emotional satisfaction and perceived service
quality, which further affects a hospital’s image. Ambient factors include
lighting, smell, temperature, music, noise, cleanliness, and design factors such
as layout, design, equipment, parking lot, signage, and restroom are essential
for influencing consumer behaviour.
Roy et al. (2019) examine smart consumer experience co-creation (SEC)
in the context of the smart servicescape and smart customers in supermarket
retailing. The study identified servicescape aspects (technology) (aesthetics,
social presence, superior functionality, perceived engagement, and perceived
personalisation) and employee interaction as the primary precursors of SEC
that influence customers’ service brand equity and WOM intents. With the
assistance of interactive technology (i.e., AI, mobile devices), consumers can
compare prices and do product information research (Varadarajan et al.,
2010).
Finally, explore the dimensions of assessing beauty salons’ servicescape
and provide suggestions to improve the salon servicescape. Specifically, they
found that five factors, namely ambient conditions, facility aesthetics, arte-
facts, provisions, and spatial layout of servicescape and four factors in the
communicative staging of servicescape, namely employee duties, employee
commitment, employee-customer interactions and employee image, and two
factors, namely customer’s characteristics and customer’s interactions with
a social staging of servicescape as essential towards improving salon beauty
shops.
In summary, antecedents of servicescape are essential for determining an
excellent interactive experience that results in positive behavioural outcomes.
Figure 2 shows the conceptual model of the antecedents and consequences of
interactive experience in physical servicescape based on the current literature
review. Figure 2 displays a conceptual model of the interactive experience of
physical servicescape.

3.3.3 Online Interactive Experience

The media landscape has seen radical changes over the past few years from
traditional to digital platforms, which led to diminishing organisational control
over creation and dissemination, greater user control, and enhanced participa-
tion and interactivity among consumers and creators of content (Ksiazek et al.,
2016). This new media (i.e., technology-mediated communication) provides
a unique consumer experience (Nepomuceno et al., 2014; Ye et al., 2019).
One of the key defining characteristics of online media engagement is interac-
tivity (Kent et al., 2016). The online environment in which interactivity occurs
ranges from online information to existing websites and social networking
sites (Beuckels & Hudders, 2016). Online interactivity exists when users can
communicate with internet functionality, including bulletin boards, search
engines, and real-time chats (McMillan & Hwang, 2002). In other words,
850 Z. L. HAMZAH AND M. WAQAS

Fig. 2 Model of antecedents and consequences of physical interactive experience of

servicescape

these internet tools can evoke favourable interactive experiences in users (Ye
et al., 2019).
Extant research has shown that interactivity is a fundamental element that
plays a vital role in developing long-lasting, strong, and deep relationships
with consumers through reciprocal communication between firms and users
(Barreda et al., 2016). Additionally, interactivity enhances positive consumer
attitudes towards brand-related websites by providing product-related infor-
mation (Ye et al., 2019). Thus, interactivity is essential to building a brand in
an online environment (Voorveld et al., 2013).
A large and growing body of literature involves investigation into the
phenomenon of online interactivity (Cowan & Ketron, 2019; Tajvidi et al.,
2021). Vendemia (2017) found that much of the literature on online inter-
activity is inconsistent in conceptualising and operationalising the online
interactivity concept. Traditionally, it has been argued that actual interactivity
represents a medium’s characteristics or features or the ability to accommo-
date and create interactive content (Hoffman & Novak, 1996; Steuer, 1992).
Some features define actual interactivity by their presence or absence, hyper-
links, searchable pulldown menus, and the ability to facilitate online chat
(Wu et al., 2010). For example, traditional broadcast media such as television
and radio are one-way mass media that only facilitates one communication
from the content creator side and is thus low on actual interactivity. Viewers
and listeners of broadcast media cannot interact with the content creator.
On the other hand, a news channel on the website can facilitate interaction
between consumers and content creators through email and website adver-
tisements (Wu, 2005). These characteristics of online media signify high levels
 36 INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCE OF PHYSICAL SERVICESCAPE … 851

of actual interactivity, which is objective, clearly characterising interactivity

features (Vendemia, 2017).
A thorough grasp of online interaction is imperative to elicit precise
emotional and behavioural reactions, and in line with this, the marketing
profession is facing a new issue, as more and more service interactions occur on
the internet and via websites, that is, in cyberspace rather than in real market
space. Despite many online users, few decided to buy based on online visits.
This has pressured marketers and practitioners to increase the effectiveness of
their online marketing endeavours. Past studies have conceptually and empir-
ically conducted research in the online interactive experience; however, there
is a lack of an up-to-date systematisation of theoretical and empirical find-
ings—this chapter aims to systematically review the literature in this area. The
research findings are expected to help academics understand the link between
drivers and consequences of online interactive experience and design new ways
to remain competitive online.

3.3.4 Antecedents and Consequences of Online Interactivity

This section details a systematic review of the antecedents and consequences
of online interactivity. The review is intended to inspire future studies on
online interactivity. It attempts to answer the research question: “What
are the antecedents and consequences of online interactivity covered in the
literature?”.
Much of the current literature on online media pays particular attention to
increasing users’ interactivity with online media. For example, Loureiro et al.
(2017) examined the drivers of interactivity with brands in an online envi-
ronment. They found that users’ experience and involvement are the most
effective antecedents of interacting with brands and other users online. They
asserted that millennial consumers need to be involved with the medium and
feel positive emotions to initiate interactivity in an online environment. In
a similar study, Sook Lee and An (2018) showed that online lecture busi-
nesses could enhance the attitude towards the online platform through website
usefulness, eventually leading to an enhanced tendency of learners to partici-
pate in online interactivity on the platform. Ksiazek et al. (2016) asserted that
soft content videos and videos that break from the objectivity norm could
increase users’ interactivity with the news content in the online news setting.
They showed that consumers’ perceptions of the effectiveness of an online
platform and closeness with peers could enhance the perceived interactivity of
the online platform.
A large and growing body of literature detailed an investigation into the
consequences of online interactivity. In the context of online travel commu-
nities, Shen et al. (2020) showed that the perceived interactivity of online
travel communities drives value co-creation and trust among community users.
According to Shen et al. (2020), with the enhancement of online interactivity
of online travel communities, websites’ services would be further improved
852 Z. L. HAMZAH AND M. WAQAS

in the form of providing a wide range of quality information, internet envi-

ronment, enhanced safety level, and convenience of website functionality,
eventually improving users’ trust in online communities. Similarly, in online
interactivity with a brand, Loureiro et al. (2017) found that consumer satis-
faction is a reward for intensive interaction with a brand. They also showed
that consumers’ act of posting comments and reviews resulted in a passionate
attachment with brands, which signifies their love. Thus, online interactivity
can result in brand love. Finally, in the context of the internet-of-things (IoT),
Yu et al. (2017) found that an interactive website offers bidirectional commu-
nication between the user and site visitors, enhancing consumer satisfaction
with the electronic platform.
In an analysis of drivers of intentions to revisit a massive open online courses
platform, Huang et al., (2017a, 2017b) found that online platforms’ ability to
allow interactions between a teacher and learners enhances prompt responses
to students’ questions from the teacher and learning, which eventually leads to
increased intentions to revisit the online courses platform. In addition, Hu and
Wise (2020) argue that the interactivity of a medium can affect the medium’s
perceived informativeness, purchase intention, product attitude, and consumer
willingness to pay more. Fox et al. (2015) also supported the assertion that
interacting with online content can affect offline attitudes.
In the context of online celebrity brand equity, Liu et al. (2020) showed
that virtual interactivity enhances consumer attention towards brands, which
can help consumers recall a brand and shape the impressions in their memory,
consequently enhancing brand awareness. In the same vein, Jeon et al. (2017)
found that online interactivity is a source of utilitarian value and has the poten-
tial to enhance online trust. In an online travel website setting, Ye et al.
(2019) showed how online interactivity becomes an attribute in a technology-
mediated communication context that helps customers have a positive brand
experience and cultivates customers’ brand preference with an online travel
agency-branded website. This notion is also supported by Etemad-Sajadi
(2016), who argued that online real-time interactivity influences the users’
desire to visit and purchase products/services from the company in the future.
Also, Wei et al. (2015) investigated the role of online interactivity in enhancing
the online learning of users and found that online learning enhances the
potential of users’ to achieve better results in cognitive tasks.
Recently, there has been an increasing amount of literature on conceptu-
alising interactivity from a subjective/perception-based perspective. Perceived
interactivity is considered an essential element of the information exchange
process irrespective of the type of medium (online or face-to-face) where
the exchange occurs (Wei et al., 2015). Perceived interactivity refers to the
subjective experience of consumers with interactions (Park & Yoo, 2020).
According to the perspective of perceived interactivity, consumers as perceivers
define whether a medium is interactive or not (Lin & Chang, 2018). Recent
 36 INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCE OF PHYSICAL SERVICESCAPE … 853

evidence also suggests that perceived interactivity depends on technical char-

acteristics, the process of information exchange, and user perceptions (Zhao &
Lu, 2012).
Similarly, Newhagen et al. (1995) consider interactivity a multidimensional
psychological construct of user-centric internal self-efficacy and system-centric
external efficacy. User-centric internal self-efficacy is the users’ perception of
the utility of interaction with the system; the system-centric external efficacy
is the users’ perceptions of the responsiveness of the medium (Wu, 2005).
The perception-based perspective of interactivity indicates a link between
users’ perceptions of interactivity and the actual characteristics of the medium
(Vendemia, 2017).
It is essential to assess the perceptions of interactivity relative to actual
interactivity for several reasons. For instance, there can be different levels
of perceived interactivity even when no objective differences exist between
systems (Vendemia, 2017). For example, the research found that the perceived
interactivity of three computer brands’ websites differed, but there were no
objective differences between the three websites (Lee et al., 2004). In other
words, variance in actual interactivity can be controlled by keeping it constant;
however, perceptions of interactivity will always vary as users perceive the
interaction’s nature and quality differently. Several studies have examined the
role of perception in predicting attitude and found that perceptual factors
strongly predict the attitude towards the source more than the actual char-
acteristics of the source, such as technological features (McMillan et al., 2003;
Voorveld et al., 2011). Another study showed that consumers’ perceptions of
personalisation of a message determined the effectiveness regardless of actual
personalisation (Li, 2016). Another reason for examining the perceptions of
interactivity is that perceived interactivity intervenes in the actual interactivity
and its outcomes. Previous studies reported that feature-based interactivity
influences the attitude towards the source in the presence of a positive percep-
tion of interactivity, which acts as a mediating variable in the relationship (Wu,
2005).
In summary, online interactivity affects how people perform cognitive func-
tions. In another study, Beuckels and Hudders (2016) found that image
interactivity leads to higher perceptions of exclusivity, quality, hedonism,
and extended self-due to higher perceived telepresence. Figure 3 shows the
conceptual model of the antecedents and consequences of online interactivity
based on the current literature review.

4 Discussion
The literature review reveals that online interactivity and servicescape are two
growing research areas in interactive marketing. Researchers have investigated
them from various perspectives. A deep understanding of online interactivity
and servicescape has become a key research objective for marketing scholars
854 Z. L. HAMZAH AND M. WAQAS

Fig. 3 Conceptual model of the antecedents and consequences of online interactive

experience

and practitioners (Krishen et al., 2021; Mahr et al., 2019). Online interac-
tivity is seen as a critical antecedent of telepresence (Beuckels & Hudders,
2016), consumer attitude (Wu, 2005), user trust (Shen et al., 2020), and
consumer satisfaction (Loureiro et al., 2017). Although online interactivity
has attracted much scholarly attention, research on the concept of interactivity
remains nascent (Wang, 2021). While some research has been carried out on
interactive marketing, there is no systematic review that could highlight the
current state of scholarly work on servicescape-based interactive experiences
that highlights current research issues and future research directions.
This study makes several noteworthy contributions to marketing theory and
practice. On the practical side, it presents several antecedents and outcomes
of online interactivity and servicescape. Creating, providing, managing, and
evaluating positive interactive experiences in physical and online servicescape
can lead to favourable outcomes for the firm (Wang, 2021). Thus, a better
knowledge of the antecedents of online interactivity and servicescape would
help marketers create and provide the desired online experience to customers,
which would help firms enhance consumer trust, brand love, and customer
satisfaction.
The findings from the systematic literature review resulted in several contri-
butions to the current literature. First, this study offers a systematic review of
57 research articles identified in interactive marketing and servicescape. Doing
this helped in delineating how scholars investigated the concept of interac-
tive marketing. Second, this study reviewed existing research articles to reveal
the research gaps and propose future research directions. Third, drivers and
outcomes of online interactivity and servicescape have been presented. This
would help marketing scholars understand the current state of research on
 36 INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCE OF PHYSICAL SERVICESCAPE … 855

interactive marketing and servicescape and find the research gaps requiring
further research. Fourth, two conceptual models have been presented that
propose current and prospective drivers and outcomes of online interactivity
and servicescape. Therefore, this study offers a classification of research on
interactivity and servicescape following various criteria.

5 Future Research Direction

This section addressed the importance of further research addressing the inter-
active experience for physical and online servicescape context. There is a
need for greater investigation into the interactive experience notion and other
types of interaction in the literature on interactive marketing. The experiences
were determined to have their conceptual roots in the growing interactive
experience notion.
The literature review indicates very few studies covering a range of
issues related to an interactive experience with the physical environment and
online interactivity. Physical environment servicescape experience involves the
atmosphere, social factors, situation, cleanliness, facilities, and communica-
tion, while online interactivity covers the application of newly developed
technologies in enhancing online interactivity, the role of branded content
experience, and influencers in driving online interactivity, multichannel and
omnichannel activities driven through online interactivity, the influence of
interactive features of social media and mobile apps on customer engagement
and experience, measuring and evaluating the effectiveness of online interac-
tivity initiatives across varying business practices and activities, and the dark
side of online interactivity. There is an urgent need for more research on the
contemporary issues in physical servicescape experience and online interactivity
to complement and extend the current knowledge on servicescape experience
and online interactivity to phygital experiences. Following the structure of
existing literature review studies (e.g., Waqas et al., 2021b), the following
section explains and highlights several research questions in areas for future
research.

5.1 How Do/What are Specific Individuals (e.g., Firm, Customer),

and/or Situational Factors/Dimensionalities Affect
and/or Interact to Generate Servicescapes of Physical, Online,
Omnichannel, and Phygital Interactive Experience Contexts?
Based on the findings from a systematic literature review, this chapter
investigated various service industries such as hotels, healthcare, education,
restaurant, and stadium. These services industries should use servicescape
components to drive different components of customer behavioural outcomes,
e.g., customer engagement and value co-creation. This chapter proposes that
service industries improve their substantial servicescape to provide an excellent
interactive experience. The service atmosphere of hotels should be created to
856 Z. L. HAMZAH AND M. WAQAS

be visually pleasing. They are expected to give customers attractive architec-

ture, a pleasant environment, aesthetically appealing décor, enticing scents,
safety, cleanliness, communicative servicescape, and comfortable facilities to
improve customers’ value perceptions, social support, and involvement.
A well-designed servicescape can attract potential new customers and retain
existing ones. However, the improvement of the servicescape necessitates a
significant expenditure, and as a result, service industries must conduct thor-
ough financial evaluations. Newly constructed hotels should concentrate on
upgrading all of these physical environmental components to match their
target clients’ expectations while staying within their financial constraints. It
is exceedingly expensive for existing services to alter their architectural styles.
Instead, they could concentrate on addressing other innovative elements,
particularly involving employee-related factors in their physical stores.
In recent years, omnichannel retailing has brought about a revolu-
tionary change in the methods retailers employ to devise tactics for encour-
aging customers to participate in the decision-making process around their
purchases. Phygital is a new-age, transformative form of omnichannel retailing
that combines physical and digital elements, focussing on the human touch
to satisfy social and symbolic consumer needs. Within this new context, a
servicescape was regarded as the physical features that should be designed with
holistic elements, including physical (i.e., manufactured), social (i.e., human),
socially symbolic, and natural (environments) (Rosenbaum & Massiah, 2011)
and digital technology (i.e., artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality (VR) to
enhance loyalty and patronage). This chapter suggests that future research
investigate antecedents and consequences identified in physical and online
interactive experience into a phygital interactive experience (Fig. 4).

5.2 How Could Newly Developed Technologies Be Applied to Both

Contexts to Enhance the Interactive Experience?
New technologies such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and augmented
reality are receiving increased global attention in various areas. Some scholars
suggested that with advances in artificial intelligence and virtual/augmented
reality interface, consumers have an increased propensity to engage in online
real-time interactivity (Etemad-Sajadi, 2016). Artificial intelligence and virtual
reality technologies also transform online advertising, brand communications,
and consumer experiences (Taylor, 2019). Hence, understanding consumer
interactions and technology-enabled interfaces in an online environment will
be imperative for marketers in the future (Thomas & Fowler, 2021). For
example, future researchers can investigate how virtual reality or augmented
reality enhance online interactivity between users and online platforms and
interactivity among users. Similarly, research should explore how artificial
intelligence-powered online chatbots can interact with customers in providing
personalised services and the implications of such interactions for online
interactivity.
 36 INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCE OF PHYSICAL SERVICESCAPE … 857

Fig. 4 Conceptual model of antecedents and consequences of phygital interactive

experience of servicescape

5.3 What is the Role of Branded Content Experience and Influencers

in Driving Online Interactivity?
Existing research on social media content highlights the role of branded
content in enhancing consumer engagement (Hamzah et al., 2021; Waqas
et al., 2021a). Waqas, Salleh and et al., (2021a, 2021b, 2021c) conceptualised
and operationalised the customer interaction with branded content as branded
content experience, which refers to a cognitive and/or affective state arising
from cultural meanings given to the set of interactions between a customer and
a brand-related image/video/text on a social media platform. They also found
that branded content experience can enhance consumer engagement with
branded content on social media. Existing evidence indicates that branded
content experience may enhance online interactivity; however, no study has
examined the relationship between content experience and online interactivity.
Future research can investigate the impact of content experience on online
interactivity.
Though brands focus on enhancing the engagement potential of social
media content, influencers are specialists at creating content consumers engage
and interact with, which helps it go viral on social media (Campbell &
Farrell, 2020). An influencer is a person who posts content to social media
in exchange for compensation (Campbell & Grimm, 2019). Existing research
has examined the role of influencer marketing in developing reach, targeting
specific consumer segments, and gaining attention (Campbell & Farrell,
2020); however, very little is known about the impact influencers can have on
online interactivity among users or between users and media platforms. Future
858 Z. L. HAMZAH AND M. WAQAS

research can investigate the role of influencers in enhancing online interactivity

on various social media platforms.

5.4 Are Multichannel and Omnichannel Activities Driven Through

Online Interactivity?
Multichannel and omnichannel platforms have allowed marketers to develop
a broader and seamless consumer experience by merging touchpoints and
enabling consumers to interact with the platform throughout their consumer
journey (Hsia et al., 2020). However, most studies focus on the role of
omnichannel marketing in retailing (Hsia et al., 2020; Kang, 2018); there is
little research on how online interactivity drives different consumer behaviours
in omnichannel and multichannel settings. Future studies should examine the
role of online interactivity in enhancing shopping efficacy, fun, and unique
experiences on multichannel and omnichannel platforms.

5.5 Do Social Media and Mobile Apps Influence Customer Engagement

and the Type of Experiences with a Brand or Corporation?
Social networking websites such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are
examples of interactive media. These sites use graphics and texts to let users
share photos and information about themselves, chat, and play games (Waqas
et al., 2020). Similarly, content creators use mobile apps’ interactive features in
learning and classroom settings (Gan & Balakrishnan, 2017). When consumers
use interactive features of social media and mobile apps, they experience the
functions and useability of such platforms. However, little is known about
categorising consumer experiences with interactive features of social media
and mobile apps and how such experiences enhance consumption, contribu-
tion, and content creation on social media and mobile apps. Future research
should explore the types of experiences users have while using social media and
mobile apps’ interactive features and the role of such experiences in enhancing
consumer engagement.

5.6 How Can the Effectiveness of Interactive Experience of Services Be

Measured and Evaluated for Different Contexts?
Existing research has investigated the role of interactive experience in
enhancing perceived informativeness, purchase intention, product attitude,
and consumer willingness to pay more (Hu & Wise, 2020). However, little has
been done to measure and evaluate the effectiveness of interactive experience
initiatives across varying business practices and activities. For instance, how
outcomes of interactive experience vary across services and products, countries,
cultures, product categories, and online platforms has yet to be investigated.
Future research studies should measure and evaluate the effectiveness of
interactive experiences across different contexts.
 36 INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCE OF PHYSICAL SERVICESCAPE … 859

5.7 What Are the Dark Sides of Online Interactivity?

Several studies have thus far linked online interactivity with positive outcomes
such as perceptions of exclusivity, quality, and hedonism (Beuckels & Hudders,
2016). However, online interactivity enables others to collect and use others’
information (Karyda et al., 2009). There is little research on the dark
side of online interactivity. For example, there is no systematic evidence of
negative influences of online interactivity in the form of privacy, security,
and consumerism. Future research should examine the relationship between
users’ level of online interactivity and the breach of privacy. Future studies
should also investigate how online interactivity drives compulsive shopping
behaviours.

6 Conclusion
This section addressed the objectives of this chapter, including (1) explained
the meaning of interactive experiences, particularly in interactive services,
and shed light on how important the study of brand-consumer interaction
is for a marketer; (2) highlighted the importance of this emerging area of
interest and research gaps by considering previous and recently published
research on interactive experience and servicescape experience, and (3) iden-
tified different theoretical perspectives and research streams that investigated
determinants and impact of interactivity experience and servicescapes experi-
ences and highlighted the connections between them for suggestions of future
research.
This systematic literature review makes essential contributions to the
research on servicescape-driven interactive experience and the behavioural
response by providing unique insights that were previously unavailable. A
statistical analysis of the current data supports the assertion that aspects of
servicescapes can be used to increase customer engagement. Literature was
gathered from various digital libraries and thematically analysed to uncover
themes related to the study subject. Furthermore, three sub-categories were
discovered for aesthetics and affective computing themes, and two for the
demand fulfilment topic. These publications presented research on the impact
of specific approaches, tools, means, or procedures on the emotional reac-
tions of digital interactive technology users. This research enables practitioners
to use several treatments in their interactive physical servicescape digital and
interactive technologies to influence the users’ emotional responses/states.
Furthermore, this study reveals the comparatively limited number of papers
in the research’s focus area. More academic study can enable practitioners to
uncover more strategies related to the topic.
860 Z. L. HAMZAH AND M. WAQAS

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 CHAPTER 37

The Role of Touch, Touchscreens, and Haptic

Technology in Interactive Marketing: Evolution
from Physical Touch to Digital Touch

Ying Zhu

1 Introduction

“Touch comes before sight, before speech. It is the first language and the last, and
it always tells the truth.”

—Margaret Atwood.
Interactive marketing has evolved beyond its traditional form as direct
marketing to encompass advanced multichannel and omnichannel strategies
that facilitate multiple touchpoints with consumers (Lim et al., 2022; Wang,
2021). At each touchpoint, consumers interact with products, sellers, or other
consumers through various formats, including using their senses. As an indis-
pensable component of consumers’ daily life, touch has important practical
implications for retailers, service industries, and manufacturers, and theoretical
significance to scholars in interactive marketing.
As Holbrook (1999) highlights, consumers derive value from their interac-
tions with products or service providers and from using their senses in their
consumption experiences. The five senses (touch, smell, hearing, sight, and
taste) thus affect each stage of consumers’ interactive experiences, from pre-
to post-purchase to consumption. As one of the five senses, touch enables

Y. Zhu (B)
Faculty of Management, University of British Columbia, Kelowna, BC, Canada
e-mail: ying.zhu@ubc.ca

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 867

Switzerland AG 2023
C. L. Wang (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Interactive Marketing,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14961-0_37
868 Y. ZHU

consumers to engage in product assessments and interact with their surround-

ings through their skin, constantly collecting information that can inform their
decision-making.
Touch refers to “sensations aroused through the stimulation of receptors in
the skin” (Stevens & Green, 1996, p. 1), a definition that emphasizes the func-
tion of the skin as a receptor that identifies various materials. There are three
types of receptors embedded in the skin: thermoreceptors (sense temperature),
mechanoreceptors (sense pressure), and nociceptors (sense pain) (Paterson,
2009). Because the surfaces of human bodies are covered by skin, haptic infor-
mation is often more accessible than that provided by the other senses (Jones,
2018).
Consider a fictitious example: Jane wakes up and rubs her face on a fluffy
Coop pillow, enjoying a few more minutes wrapped in a soft Bedsure blanket
before getting up. She likes the feel of warm water flowing over her skin as
she washes her face with Olay’s face cleaner, but the tingling sensation of
Philips Sonicare toothbrush on her teeth is more of a routine than an enjoyable
experience. Jane puts on a silk blouse, experiencing its smooth texture across
her arms, back, and chest and then feels the warmth of the coffee mug she
holds in her hands before heading out to work.
Gaining a better understanding of consumer behavior in these interactive
processes is essential for businesses to implement effective haptic strategies and
for academia to advance knowledge in the touch literature. These processes
that Jane has with multiple products entail tactile effects and a haptic system
(Klatzky & Lederman, 1992, 1993; Lederman & Klatzky, 1987). The word
haptic comes from the Greek word haptesthai, which means “to touch”
(Merriam-Webster Dictionary). A haptic system refers to the active use of
hands to search and collect information from sensory receptors in the skin
and muscles (see Peck & Childers, 2003a). The haptic system includes two
types of sensory feedback: tactile and kinesthetic feedback (Abiri et al., 2019;
Kammermeier et al., 2004). Tactile feedback collects information from the
skin, such as sensing texture, while kinesthetic feedback receives information
from muscle responses, such as sensing weight (Giabbiconi et al., 2007). This
chapter focus on the tactile effect since most haptic research in marketing is
centered around tactile feedback.
Consumers use their hands to touch products and obtain information such
as texture (e.g., dress), hardness (e.g., hardcover book), roughness (e.g., sand-
paper), weight (e.g., watermelon), and temperature (e.g., a cup containing
a hot drink) (Klatzky & Lederman, 1993; Lederman & Klatzky, 1987).
A taxonomy of interactive touch encompassing hedonic behavior and three
pre-purchase behaviors, as proposed by Peck (2011), suggests that hedonic
behavior implies that consumers touch products only for the sensory expe-
rience, without any specific agenda. But the three pre-purchase behaviors
involve touching a product for the purpose of (1) buying it but not relying on
touch to obtain information for decision-making, (2) collecting information
through other senses (e.g., picking up a flower bouquet to smell it and assess
 37 THE ROLE OF TOUCH, TOUCHSCREENS, AND HAPTIC … 869

its freshness in a flower shop), or (3) gathering information about the product
(e.g., texture of a scarf).
Research on touch considers its relevance for consumer goods (e.g., pack-
aging), service businesses (e.g., furniture, architectural design), in-person sales
(e.g., interpersonal touch), and the retail industry overall (e.g., smart sensor
gloves in the Metaverse). To contribute to interactive marketing and haptic
literature, this chapter offers an initial review of haptic research through
an interactive marketing lens pertaining to both direct marketing and e-
commerce. Furthermore, this chapter proposes a conceptual framework (see
Fig. 1) for continued research by situating current haptic and tactile research
within an interactive marketing frame.
In turn, this chapter contributes new knowledge to three important topics
in interactive marketing: technology adoption, customer behavior, and multi-
channel marketing (Lim et al., 2022). Over a decade ago, scholars provided
valuable reviews of research into the sense of touch (Krishna, 2012; Peck,
2011). Since new tactile findings and haptic technologies (e.g., smart wear-
ables) are constantly evolving in recent years and supporting novel interactions
among consumers, products, brands, and businesses on various digital plat-
forms (e.g., e-commerce, mobile commerce, live streaming), the updated view
of touch research in interactive marketing provided herein is thus timely.
The literature review section that follows begins by diving into the roles
of touch and tactile effects in physical settings, followed by their roles in the
digital world. By introducing tactile research from the perspective of phys-
ical touch, as commonly occurs in retailing or person-to-person settings, this
review summarizes recent research on tactile effects that substantially affect the
interaction between consumers and products, as well as between consumers
and service providers. The second section of the literature review outlines
studies on how touchscreen devices facilitate consumers’ interactions with
products and people in online e-commerce or mobile commerce. The author
also delineates three ways businesses can address the absence of physical touch
on digital platforms and enhance consumer participation and engagement.

2 Traditional Tactile
Effects in Interactive Marketing
2.1 Consumers Interact with Products Through Physical Touch
Consumers interact with products by touching them to acquire information
and evaluate the items (Peck & Childers, 2003a), then use those evaluations
as cues for their decision-making (Peck & Johnson, 2011). Consumers activate
their haptic systems by touching products (Klatzky & Lederman, 1992, 1993;
Lederman & Klatzky, 1987); with their hands, they can gather information
about the material properties of items, such as the texture of a leather jacket
or the weight of a pan. As prior studies have shown, intrinsic cues such as
tactility exert important influences on perceived quality (Szybillo & Jacoby,
 870
Y. ZHU

Fig. 1 Conceptual Framework of Touch Research in Interactive marketing

 37 THE ROLE OF TOUCH, TOUCHSCREENS, AND HAPTIC … 871

1974). Because haptic cues formed through direct touch possess diagnostic
power, they help consumers evaluate product quality (Childers & Peck, 2011;
Liu et al., 2017). Grohmann et al. (2007) also note how touch interacts with
product quality to influence product evaluations, such that touch leads to more
positive product evaluations only for high quality products.
Theories in neuroscience also inform predictions about the positive and
negative emotions related to touch. For example, using functional magnetic
resonance imaging (fMRI), Rolls et al. (2003) illustrate that pleasant and
painful touch activates more regions of the orbitofrontal cortex than neutral
touch. Experiencing different tactile surfaces also leads to different levels
of emotion (Bhatta et al., 2017), such that a pleasant haptic experience
that produces a positive emotion may lead consumers to feel more closely
connected to a product (Jansson-Boyd, 2011). Wang et al. (2016) find that a
haptic sensation of roughness (vs. smoothness) also affects consumers’ dona-
tion intentions through emotions such as empathy; those who interact with
a rough object display more empathy than those who interact with a smooth
object and are more willing to donate.
Consumers develop a sense of ownership of products when they touch
them (Shu & Peck, 2011), and Peck et al. (2013) add that even the haptic
imagery formed by imagining touching a product can increase psycholog-
ical ownership, mirroring the effect of physical touch. They argue that the
vividness of haptic imagery evokes a sense of physical control, which then
increases psychological ownership. Consumers who imagine an interactive
process of touching a product, accordingly, exhibit stronger purchase inten-
tions than those who do not imagine this process (Pino et al., 2020). Because
touch enables consumers to interact with products, they are more likely to
buy products from retailers that allow them to touch products (McCabe &
Nowlis, 2003), whereas prohibiting touching can lead to frustration and an
unwillingness to purchase (Peck & Childers, 2003b).

2.1.1 Tactile Designs in Packaging

The interactivity of interactive marketing emphasizes consumers’ participation
and engagement in shopping environments. When a consumer picks up a pack-
aged product in a retail store, a key point of contact occurs, the stimulated
tactile feedback could be a significant determinant of the shopping experience
and affect both the customer’s evaluation of the product and the decision to
purchase. Such tactile feedback derives from three types of sensory cues: mate-
rial and surface, temperature and weight, and form and steadiness (Hultén,
2020). A good tactile design that incorporates haptic cues can also provide
consumers with a distinctive tactile memory of the product and communicate
a distinctive brand image, both of which may help companies differentiate
their brands.
Accordingly, many companies apply designs to provoke positive sensations.
A classic example of such tactile effects achieved through the combination of
form, surface, materials, and weight is the Coca-Cola glass bottle. In 1915,
872 Y. ZHU

the Coca-Cola company aimed for distinctive packaging and initiated a design
challenge with a request to “develop a bottle so distinctive that it could be
recognized by touch alone and so unique that it could be identified when
shattered on the ground,” a challenge successfully met by the Root Glass
Company in Terre Haute, Indiana (Coca-Cola Company, 2022). The tactile
sensations derived from its waisted shape, together with the distinctive ribs,
size, and weight of the bottle, are intense; even a blindfolded consumer can
tell a classic Coke bottle from other bottles (Lindström, 2005). More recently,
Marfa used burlap bags to package its soaps. By linking the related special
tactile memory with its handmade soaps, Marfa has constructed a unique
brand identity (Sundar & Noseworthy, 2016).
Because consumers frequently use their hands to weigh products (e.g., dish-
ware), scholars also have explored the connection between weight and product
evaluations. Heaviness signals product quality; lighter products (e.g., plastic)
might be perceived as low quality (Hultén et al., 2009; Lindström, 2005).
Jostmann et al. (2009) draw on the theory of embodied cognition (Barsalou,
2008) to predict and confirm that people who use a heavy clipboard eval-
uate objects as more important and valuable, such that they engage in more
elaborated thinking than people who use a light clipboard.
In food contexts, weight significantly influences price expectations and
perceived density (Piqueras-Fiszman et al., 2011): Participants who sample
yogurt served in a heavier bowl report greater perceived density (in the mouth)
and expect a higher price than if that same yogurt were served in a lighter
bowl. Other studies that investigate packaging materials and surfaces indicate
that even the texture of a food container can affect consumers’ taste percep-
tions. Tea in a glass container seems sweeter than the same tea in a plastic
container (Tu et al., 2015), and biscuits seem crunchier when served from
a container with a rough rather than a smooth surface (Piqueras-Fiszman &
Spence, 2012).

2.1.2 The Role of Touch in Multisensory Marketing

Interactive marketing can leverage the power of a multisensory approach to
enhance consumers’ connection and engagement with brands and products.
Multisensory marketing aims to engage consumers by simultaneously acti-
vating more than one sense (Krishna, 2012). Specifically, marketing research
has identified the joint effects of touch and vision on brand evaluations
(Littel & Orth, 2013) and perceptions of product functionality and novelty
(Rosa et al., 2014), as well as the impact of smell and touch on product eval-
uations (Krishna et al., 2010). These findings collectively illustrate that when
consumers interact with products through multiple senses, it tends to evoke
positive brand and product evaluations, especially if the sensory information
is congruent (Krishna et al., 2010; Littel & Orth, 2013; Rosa et al., 2014).
Accordingly, businesses incorporate multisensory marketing in their practices
to enhance consumers’ interactions with products and shopping environments.
Fast-food chains like McDonald’s and KFC have already introduced in-store
 37 THE ROLE OF TOUCH, TOUCHSCREENS, AND HAPTIC … 873

touchscreen kiosks, as well as scented products. That is, in 2020, McDonald’s

launched scented candles, following KFC’s fried chicken-scented sunscreen
introduced in 2016 and fire logs in 2018 (Kelso, 2020).
When multiple senses are involved, consumers’ information processing and
decision-making likely differ from when only touch is present (Krishna &
Schwarz, 2014), in that their decisions depend on the interaction of the
different senses. For example, in Krishna et al.’s (2010) experimental studies,
participants interacted with objects through two senses simultaneously: touch
and smell. During these interactions, congruence between smell and touch
led consumers to note a more positive haptic experience and higher product
evaluations. This insight suggests the need for further studies to explore cross-
modal sensory effects by examining how touch, visual, olfactory, auditory,
and taste cues work together to shape consumers’ online shopping behavior.
Classic cognitive consistency theory (Heider, 1958) suggests that incongru-
ence creates cognitive conflicts, resulting in stress and indecision, so scholars
also should examine how congruency (incongruency) across different senses
affects consumer behavior.

3 Need for Touch

An intention to interact with products, salespeople, and the shopping envi-
ronment depends on consumers’ individual traits (Dholakia et al., 2010),
including their need for touch (NFT), defined as “a preference for the extrac-
tion and utilization of information obtained through the haptic system”
(Peck & Childers, 2003b, p. 431) or “a person’s motivation or preference
to touch” (Peck & Childers, 2003a, p. 36). People vary in their need for
touch, such that those with high (vs. low) NFT feel more confident in their
evaluations when they can touch a product (Peck & Johnson, 2011). Women
indicate a higher need for a tactile component than men when evaluating prod-
ucts (Citrin et al., 2003). Research on the need for tactile experiences (Citrin
et al., 2003) reveals that consumers who rely heavily on tactile input (i.e.,
high NFT) are reluctant to depend solely on other sensory inputs (e.g., sight,
hearing) when making a purchase decision. Orth et al. (2013) show that the
positive effect of touch on product evaluation is mediated by trust only for
consumers with high NFT, not for those with low NFT. However, research
also identifies a boundary condition for NFT such that environmental encour-
agement through a “feel-the-freshness” point-of-purchase sign works for all
consumers, regardless of their NFT level (Peck & Childers, 2006).
The boom in e-commerce and online shopping, creating multichannel
environments, also has led to some notable consumer behaviors such as show-
rooming, such that consumers gather information offline through physical
touch, then purchase online (Mehra et al., 2013). In examining NFT in both
online and offline contexts, Kühn et al. (2020) find that consumers with
high NFT exhibit greater concern for product quality and less positive affec-
tive responses to products offered online. With a comparison of online and
874 Y. ZHU

offline participants’ willingness to pay (WTP), they also find that high NFT
consumers exhibit greater WTP differences across online and offline shopping
environments, whereas low NFT consumers show smaller WTP differences.
Cho and Workman (2011) also note that consumers with high NFT prefer
physical shopping channels more, but virtual shopping channels less, than
people with low NFT. Furthermore, Choi and Taylor (2014) reveal that 3D
advertising of products with material properties influences consumers with low
NFT but does not affect those with high NFT.
To measure the need for touch, Peck and Childers (2003b) develop a two-
dimensional scale: autotelic and instrumental NFT, in which the autotelic NFT
is hedonic-oriented and driven by the desire to seek fun and joy, but the
instrumental NFT is goal-oriented and driven by a utilitarian motive (Peck &
Childers, 2003b). Following the introduction of this NFT scale, substantial
research has addressed how autotelic and instrumental NFT affect consumers’
judgments and product evaluations during their interactions with products and
people (Jin & Phua, 2015; Zheng & Bensebaa, 2022; Peck & Childers, 2003a;
Grohmann et al., 2007; Peck & Johnson, 2011).

3.1 Autotelic NFT

The measure of autotelic NFT includes six agreement items, such as
“Touching products can be fun” and “When browsing in stores, I like to touch
lots of products” (for the full scale, see Peck & Childers, 2003b). Krishna and
Morrin (2008) find that people with high autotelic NFT appear less affected
by nondiagnostic haptic cues (i.e., information that is not directly relevant to
the assessment of a task); for example, their perceptions of water quality (i.e.,
the assessment of task) are less influenced by the firmness of a paper cup (i.e.,
nondiagnostic cue for assessing water quality). The reason for this tendency
might be that consumers with high NFT (i.e., who like to touch and feel)
have gained more expertise in using haptic cues over time, so they are better
equipped to identify and apply diagnostic haptic cues and ignore nondiagnostic
ones.
When Lee et al. (2017) investigated how NFT affects perceived ease of
use, perceived enjoyment, and loyalty intentions toward e-commerce websites,
they observed that autotelic NFT is positively associated with both perceived
ease of use and enjoyment. Additionally, Ranaweera et al. (2021) reveal that
consumers with low NFT favor congruency of haptic cues (e.g., smooth and
light); however, those with high NFT prefer the incongruency (e.g., smooth
and heavy) because they perceive such incongruency presents a more exciting
and sophisticated brand personality.
Peck and Childers (2003b) identify a positive association between
consumers’ autotelic NFT and impulsive purchasing behavior, then confirm
it with a subsequent study of the joint impact of NFT and environmental
touch on impulsive purchasing behavior: Consumers with high autotelic NFT
exhibit more impulsive purchase tendencies than those with low autotelic NFT
 37 THE ROLE OF TOUCH, TOUCHSCREENS, AND HAPTIC … 875

(Peck & Childers, 2006). Jin and Phua (2015) reveal that autotelic NFT
moderates the effects of in-game advertising on consumers’ brand trust and
brand excitement. Specifically, for consumers with low autotelic NFT, haptic
feedback evokes greater brand trust and brand excitement than when such
feedback is absent, whereas consumers with high autotelic NFT display more
brand trust and excitement in conditions in which haptic feedback is absent.

3.2 Instrumental NFT

The instrumental NFT measures a person’s need to access diagnostic informa-
tion, such as texture, weight, hardness, temperature, or form, then uses such
information to evaluate a product in terms of its function, quality, or perfor-
mance (Peck & Childers, 2003a, 2003b). The measure of instrumental NFT
includes scale items such as, “I feel more comfortable purchasing a product
after physically examining it” and “I feel more confident purchasing touching
a product” (see Peck & Childers, 2003b). Consumers with high instrumental
NFT are more accustomed to using touch to collect product information,
especially when other sensory information is absent (Peck & Wiggins, 2006).
Jha et al. (2020) show that the instrumental NFT moderates the effect
of the purchase environment on consumers’ cognitive responses to haptic,
though not non-haptic, products. Specifically, they find that the effect of the
purchase environment on cognitive response depends on the level of instru-
mental NFT such that high instrumental NFT leads to stronger cognitive
responses, including confidence, accuracy, and certainty of product evalua-
tion. Drawing upon the technology acceptance model (TAM), Lee et al.
(2017) show that instrumental NFT negatively affects perceived ease of use,
perceived enjoyment, and loyalty intentions. They argue that such negative
effects occur because consumers with high instrumental NFT are less confi-
dent about assessing products and more frustrated when they cannot touch
the product during online shopping. However, a later study by Hattula et al.
(2022) found that when using a touchscreen device, consumers with high
instrumental NFT are more confident and more likely to purchase than those
with low instrumental NFT because the former is more likely to imagine their
experience of haptic product properties than the latter. Additional research is
needed to reconcile these different findings on the instrumental NFT.

4 Interpersonal Touch in Direct Marketing

Direct marketing represents a traditional form of interactive marketing (Wang,
2021); for example, in person-to-person sales, touch often is indispensable. In
addition to touching products, consumers frequently interact with salespeople
or service providers through interpersonal touch, such as handshakes or brief
touches. Studies of interpersonal touch appear in various research disciplines,
including marketing (Luangrath et al., 2020; Martin, 2012), psychology
(Saunders et al., 2018), and neuroscience (Ebisch et al., 2014), as well as
876 Y. ZHU

cross-cultural investigations (Sorokowska et al., 2021). The collected evidence

across these domains indicates that tactile stimulation generates positive feel-
ings and increases consumers’ compliance with requests to answer a survey
(Hornik, 1987; Hornik & Ellis, 1988), order a suggested meal (Guéguen
et al., 2007), or leave tips (Crusco & Wetzel, 1984; Hornik, 1992; Luan-
grath et al., 2020; Stephen & Zweigenhaft, 1986). For example, in studying
interpersonal touch between restaurant servers and diners, Crusco and Wetzel
(1984) find that a brief touch on a diner’s hand or shoulder increases tips.
Hornik (1992) offers similar results and argues that touch, as a form of
nonverbal communication, provides social meaning, such as signaling closeness
and affection. Similarly, the positive impact of touch on tipping emerges in a
recent study by Luangrath et al. (2020), who take an innovative approach and
examine interpersonal touch from the perspectives of both the touch initiator
and its recipient. Drawing on theories of egocentric bias and the spotlight
effect, they identify asymmetric effects, such that touch initiators underesti-
mate the power of touch and worry it might create a negative impression, but
touch recipients indicate no negative responses and instead leave higher tips
for servers who provide brief touches.
Orth et al. (2013) examine interpersonal touch from a cross-cultural
perspective. In general, consumers trust a salesperson more in touch than no-
touch conditions, but the positive impact of touch on product evaluations is
significant only for consumers from a non-contact culture (e.g., Germany), not
those from a contact culture (e.g., France). These authors posit that consumers
from a contact culture, who expect touch in daily interactions, are less sensi-
tive to touch, so it has less effect on them. However, for consumers from
a non-contact culture, for whom touches by salespeople are unexpected, the
heightened level of trust also might increase product evaluations. All these
studies illustrate the positive effects of interpersonal touch. However, Martin
(2012) identifies a boundary condition related to accidental interpersonal
touch. In a field experiment, consumers accidentally brushed by a stranger
expressed lower brand evaluations and lower WTP; they also remained in the
store for a shorter time than those who were not accidentally touched.
The preceding studies all address consumers’ direct touches, whether with
products or other people, in direct marketing contexts. They also affirm that
the well-established touch taxonomy applies effectively to situations in which
customers interact with products physically. But such direct touch is not
possible in digital and online shopping contexts. Instead, online consumers
might use their hands to explore their purchase options through touchscreen
devices. In this sense, the expanded uses of touchscreen technology suggest
the need for an equivalently expanded taxonomy that can account for situ-
ations in which the consumer cannot physically access a product, but touch
remains integral to the interactive purchase process. That is, online consumers
cannot touch or collect information about products through haptic feed-
back, but a haptic system still may facilitate their purchases. Direct interaction
gets replaced by indirect interaction, such that consumers use their hands
 37 THE ROLE OF TOUCH, TOUCHSCREENS, AND HAPTIC … 877

to navigate e-commerce websites on touchscreen devices. The ease of use

of touchscreen technology and its widespread applications with electronic
devices (e.g., smartphones, tablets) has dramatically increased this type of
interactivity. Because touchscreen technology provides an effective way for
consumers to interact with products and companies through e-commerce,
mobile commerce, and social media platforms, the next section shifts focus to
detail how touch, touchscreens, and haptic technology influence consumers’
shopping in the digital world.

5 Digital Touch in Interactive Marketing

This section starts with a review of research into how touchscreen devices (e.g.,
smartphones), as relatively new, interactive interfaces, enhance consumers’
interactivity with digital platforms, which affects their decision-making and
purchases. E-commerce accounts for a substantial amount of consumer
purchases, to the extent that it has replaced a lot of in-person shopping, so
it is essential to understand the impact of touchscreen and haptic technology
on consumers in this digital era.

6 Consumers Interact
with Products Through Touchscreens
Touchscreen technology has been available for decades in self-checkout
machines at grocery stores, point-of-sale terminals for vending machines,
ATMs at banks, airport check-in kiosks, and GPS devices (Zhu & Meyer,
2017). But affordable touchscreens embedded in personal devices, such as
the iPhone (launched in 2007) and iPad (launched in 2010), enabled new
communication practices with significant commercial and social value. By
2027, the number of smartphone users worldwide is expected to reach 7.69
billion (Statista, 2021). Such widespread adoption of smartphones and tablets
and their prevalent uses for online and mobile shopping have reshaped how
consumers interact with products, brands, and companies, in that consumers
actively use their fingers to interact, by zooming in and out on product photos
or tapping, dragging, sliding, swiping, pinching, and rotating product infor-
mation displayed on digital pages. The intuitive interface of touchscreens
makes them easy to use; in turn, businesses have new opportunities to engage
with consumers. As noted previously, restaurants such as McDonald’s and KFC
have adopted touchscreen technologies to enable customers to review menu
items and place orders (Kelso, 2019). Hotels, airlines, and conference orga-
nizers also use touchscreens to allow clients or participants to check-in on their
own.
Although the tactile effects of such indirect, non-product touches likely
differ from those derived from direct touches, they still rely on the haptic
system that underpins physical touch. The use of touch for touchscreen inter-
faces extends the knowledge regarding the traditional interactive function of
878 Y. ZHU

touch, such as feeling the surface of a material. On a touchscreen, the function

of touch is not to evaluate the material of a product per se. Instead, touching
by fingers replaces mediating tools (e.g., mouse, physical keyboard) that can be
used to complete pre-purchase (e.g., information search) and purchase tasks.
Consumers’ interaction and involvement in these tasks might increase when
their body (fingers) gets integrated into the shopping process. Unlike product
touch as part of the purchase process, which has been widely explored (Argo
et al., 2006; Krishna & Morrin, 2008), non-product touching has received
only relatively recent scholarly attention. Academic knowledge pertaining to
touchscreens thus is scarce compared with that involved in a direct touch, and
scholars continue to seek a greater understanding of how touchscreen tech-
nologies influence consumer behavior by drawing on theoretical foundations
in previous touch literature.

6.1 Direct Touch Through Touchscreens vs. Indirect Touch Through

a Mouse
Consumers historically have used keyboards or a mouse to navigate online
stores, but with the advent of touchscreen technology, they can use their
fingers to perform related tasks on tablets or smartphones. This newer
approach may generate different shopping experiences, prompting a stream of
research into the distinct psychological drivers of individual decision-making
across the interactive interfaces of touchscreens versus a keyboard/mouse.
Building on Peck and Shu’s (2009) research findings that physical touch
increases consumers’ psychological ownership, Brasel and Gips (2014) show
that touch-based devices generate stronger endowment effects than traditional
computers because the digital touch can also elicit psychological ownership.
Zhu and Meyer (2017) reveal that touchscreen users prefer hedonic over util-
itarian products; computer users instead prefer utilitarian products, seemingly
because a touchscreen device tends to evoke an experiential thinking style,
whereas a desktop encourages a more rational thinking style. Chung et al.
(2018) indicate that touchscreens also tend to lead to more positive affect,
engage consumers more, and increase purchase intentions.
A seminal work by Melumad and Pham (2020) shows that touchscreen
devices such as smartphones can provide a stronger psychological comfort
and more haptic pleasure than computers. They coin this effect from touch-
screen technology as a pacifying technology. An additional study (Melumad &
Meyer, 2020) identifies an interesting phenomenon such that consumers are
more self-disclosing in the content they create on their smartphones than on
computers. Recent research also shows that the touchscreen interface polarizes
consumer evaluations compared to a keyboard and mouse such that the touch-
screen increases consumers’ evaluation of products toward which they have a
prior positive attitude and decreases evaluations of products toward which they
have a prior negative attitude (Wang et al., 2020).
 37 THE ROLE OF TOUCH, TOUCHSCREENS, AND HAPTIC … 879

Hattula et al. (2022) find that a touchscreen interface increases consumers’

confidence more than a keyboard and mouse, and this effect is driven
by consumers’ imaginations in which they physically touch the products.
However, another study found the opposite effect for confidence across
touchscreens and computers, such that consumers using a computer are over-
confident about their estimation of a product’s size compared to those using a
touchscreen device such as a smartphone (Chung & Karampela, 2021). Future
studies should further investigate such discrepancies in research findings and
explore the underlying processes that result in these differences.

6.2 Touchscreen Gestures

Additional research on touchscreens categorizes different touch gestures
as informational touch (e.g., zoom in) or navigational touch (e.g., scroll
and swipe), and establishes empirical evidence that informational touch has
significant positive effects on the duration of consumers’ time spent on a
smartphone app, but navigational touch does not (Shi & Kalyanam, 2018).
Thus, marketers might need to promote informational touch, such as zoom
gestures, to increase the likelihood that consumers remain on a particular app
during their browsing process.
Recent research on swiping, a commonly used touchscreen gesture, has
illustrated that a product’s display orientation (left to right or right to left)
affects consumers’ evaluation through a swiping gesture (Van Kerckhove &
Pandelaere, 2018). For example, consumers are more likely to swipe to the
right (vs. left) if a displayed product is oriented rightward (vs. leftward), and
their product evaluation is also higher when swiping to the right than swiping
to the left. More research is called for to better understand how touchscreen
gestures might affect consumers’ interactions with products on e-commerce
and mobile commerce platforms.

7 Sensory Compensation for the Lack

of Physical Touch in the Digital World
The sensation obtained through touch is essential to consumers’ informed
decisions but is also largely absent in e-commerce and other digital channels.
Because engaging their haptic senses is not possible, consumers turn to infor-
mation gleaned from other senses (e.g., text, visual input) to derive tactile
cues (Krishna, 2011). Therefore, online retailers and e-commerce platforms
have increased the information on haptic feedback to facilitate online shopping
processes. To understand these compensation mechanisms during consumers’
interactions with e-commerce platforms, this chapter proposes three pathways
that marketers and scholars may take: (1) using other senses as proxies for
touch, such as providing tactile information in writing or presenting pictures
with textual cues (Ghosh & Sarkar, 2016); (2) showing actors’ or other
consumers’ hands interacting with products in photos or videos to proxy for
880 Y. ZHU

touch; and (3) relying on haptic technology to mimic touch feelings through
digital devices (e.g., smart gloves).

7.1 Textual and Visual Haptic Information

Online businesses provide descriptions of tactile information in advertisements
and web pages, using words (e.g., soft, smooth cashmere), images, and videos.
Such practices are supported by research that indicates that consumers can
obtain partial touch information from tactile descriptions in text or visual illus-
trations (Peck & Childers, 2003b). For example, consumers report positive
attitudes toward brochures that include neutral or positive tactile information;
their purchase intentions for museum memberships are higher when touch
information is present than when it is not (Peck & Wiggins, 2006). Moreover,
consumers are more likely to purchase clothes online if textual information
describes the feeling of the clothing (Rodrigues et al., 2017). With an applica-
tion of the stimulus-organism-response framework, Silva et al. (2021) illustrate
that displaying textual information about a garment (e.g., soft, pleasant feel)
has a strong influence on consumers’ haptic imagery and purchase intentions.
Lv et al. (2020) also find that effectively communicating haptic information
to consumers, by including text that asks them to imagine the feeling of touch
together with images, improves their willingness to make hotel reservations
online.

7.2 Vicarious Tactile Experience

To compensate for the absence of physical touch, online retailers and adver-
tisers frequently show people interacting with a product, using their hands
(e.g., touching, grabbing, pressing) in product images or videos (e.g., Amazon
product presentation videos). In studies of this commonly used business prac-
tice, sensory researchers refer to it as a vicarious tactile experience (Liu et al.,
2018). If consumers see someone’s hand touch a smooth silk scarf in an
advertisement, they likely have a vicarious experience of such smoothness
themselves. Liu et al. (2018) also manipulate this vicarious tactile experience
and confirm that when consumers see an image of other people physically
touching a product, their purchase intentions and preferences are higher than
those of people who do not see such imagery. With fMRI data, they identify
the source of these heightened purchase intentions due to the vicarious tactile
experience, namely, neural activities in mirror neuron systems and the lateral
occipital complex.
Marketing scholars have extended this stream of research with a new
concept, vicarious touch, which refers to the phenomenon of observing phys-
ical contact between a hand and an object in a digital format. Across eight
experiments, Luangrath et al. (2022) establish that vicarious touch affects
product evaluations by evoking a feeling of psychological ownership, driven
by the sense of owning the observed virtual hand. The underlying mechanism
 37 THE ROLE OF TOUCH, TOUCHSCREENS, AND HAPTIC … 881

seemingly involves consumers perceiving the virtual hand as part of their own
body (Moseley et al., 2008; Slater et al., 2009) and observing others’ hands
touching an object also increases purchase intentions (Liu et al., 2018).

7.3 Haptic Technology and Smart Gloves

Haptic technology can generate an experience of touch by exerting vibra-
tions, forces, and motions on a person’s skin (Culbertson et al., 2018).
The increasing penetration of smart wearables (e.g., Apple Watch, Fitbit)
that feature haptic technology provides many consumers with a new form of
interaction with products. The tactile stimuli that consumers sense through
smart wearables include vibrations, textures, materials, softness/hardness,
pressure, and curvature (Pacchierotti et al., 2017). Research on this type of
touch is nascent though; since the introduction of haptic technologies, an
emerging body of research has started to consider how tactile stimuli, such
as vibrations on the skin delivered by smartphones or wearables, might affect
consumer behavior (Hadi & Valenzuela, 2019; Mulcahy & Riedel, 2021).
In a pioneering study, Hadi and Valenzuela (2019) find that haptic feed-
back from vibrotactile message alerts accompanying text messages can enhance
consumers’ performance on tasks, such as physical exercise. The force driving
this effect is a sense of social presence. That is, the vibrotactile alert serves as
a social presence cue and simulates being nudged by another person, which
then motivates people to perform tasks better.
In addition, sensory engineers have developed smart tactile gloves. These
novel, technology-mediated interaction devices feature built-in sensors that
allow for tactile sensing (Ozioko & Dahiya, 2022). Commercial smart gloves
can provide tactile and kinesthetic feedback and estimate motions of the hand
and finger (see Caeiro-Rodríguez et al., 2021). They also provide haptic feed-
back to users through heat and mechanical vibration (Kim et al., 2020). In
digital settings, smart gloves can mimic consumers’ haptic experiences in the
physical world. Their two-way communication capabilities allow consumers
to interact with products and shopping environments online. For example,
consumers can assess the softness of cashmere sweaters or the roughness
of denim jeans in a virtual setting. Such haptic information arguably could
engage consumers more in their online shopping, leading to positive experi-
ences, increased purchases, greater satisfaction, and decreased product returns.
Consumers also might be less likely to leave negative reviews.
Smart gloves promise haptic interactions through virtual reality (VR) and
augmented reality (AR) technologies too. The notion of shopping, with a
sense of physical presence, in a virtual mall at Metaverse appears plausible for
the near future. Such technological advancements allow consumers to interact
with products and merchants in new and unexpected ways; they also offer
great research opportunities for scholars and business opportunities for prac-
titioners. Continued research is needed to specify how the tactile stimuli from
882 Y. ZHU

smart gloves influence consumers’ judgments and decision-making during

their interactions with products and people in the digital world.

8 General Discussion
Interactive marketing has shifted from passive, one-way broadcasting and
direct marketing to a multidimensional ecosystem that enables consumers to
interact with products, merchants, and e-commerce platforms in various ways
(Wang, 2021). Accompanying such changes, the forms of interaction between
consumers and sellers also have evolved, from communicating in-person at
stores with physical touches, to e-commerce or social media platforms, and to
real-time conversations in live streaming sessions through touchscreen devices.
Research on touch and haptic effects accordingly has proceeded in multiple
stages that coincide with such changes in interactive marketing. The following
recommendations for continued research thus are organized according to
these stages: from physical touch to digital touch to multisensory approaches.

9 Future Research
on Touch in the Physical World
Early touch studies compared the presence or absence of physical touch in
retail and direct marketing settings and identified individual traits related to
touch (e.g., NFT scale); later studies also explored various dimensions of touch
(e.g., temperature, weight, quality of the texture), interpersonal touch, and
multisensory input that combines touch with other senses (e.g., visual, voice).
Marketing literature has consistently confirmed that consumers rely on touch
to interact with products and service providers and that haptic and tactile feed-
back affects their behavior, but the underlying mechanisms that explain these
effects remain somewhat uncertain. Instead of demonstrating touch-related
phenomena, researchers should endeavor to specify why such phenomena
appear and their relevance for business practice. In this effort, scholars might
explore tactile effects from psychological (e.g., cognitive, emotion), physio-
logical (e.g., touch receptors in the skin), and neuroscience (e.g., link between
tactile effect and brain regions) perspectives. For example, consumers use their
sense of touch daily and have formed memories of touch experiences. A neuro-
scientific approach (e.g., fMRI) might test the varying impacts of existing
memories of touch on consumers’ intentions to touch the products and the
impacts of new memories formed while touching products on their subsequent
decisions.
Furthermore, current research mainly focuses on how consumers interact
with products or service providers through physical touch or mental imagery.
However, they also interact with shopping environments, such as retail stores,
through skin receptors that sense the temperature of a store or the hardness
of a floor. Investigations of these sorts of interactions with the environment
 37 THE ROLE OF TOUCH, TOUCHSCREENS, AND HAPTIC … 883

through a sense of touch could inform efforts to design shopping environ-

ments that encourage stronger consumer interactions and engagement. In
addition, post-COVID-19 era consumers might be more reluctant to touch
potentially contaminated products or come in close enough proximity to
employees to allow for any interpersonal touch. Researchers should explore
such perceptions and motivations to clarify the potential effects on businesses
that incorporate touch elements into the designs of their shopping environ-
ment. Future research is also encouraged to expand the haptic literature by
further examining the kinesthetic feedback of products. For example, kines-
thetic feedback can be used to collect information about consumers’ driving
experience, such as the tension exerted on the body when riding on bumpy
roads and the force on the feet from the pedals. New knowledge on kinesthetic
feedback will greatly benefit businesses and academia alike.

10 Future Research on Digital Touch

When using a touchscreen device to shop online, consumers cannot touch
the product, yet touch remains an active part of their information search and
facilitates their purchases. Although the functionality of touch as an evalua-
tion tool has received some academic attention (e.g., Krishna et al., 2010;
Peck & Childers, 2003a, 2003b), non-product touching remains an under-
explored research area. Mental simulation theory appears applicable to both
physical and digital touch in that touch effects may stem from the imagination
of physical touch because consumers can create mental simulations of haptic
effects that generate a sense of psychological ownership (Peck et al., 2013).
Advanced technological devices, such as VR goggles and smart gloves, also
evoke strong mental simulation, so research is needed to specify these types of
haptic effects on virtual shopping behaviors. Such insights can produce prac-
tical recommendations for businesses to incorporate touch and other senses to
facilitate consumers’ interactions with products in AR- or VR-enabled envi-
ronments (e.g., Metaverse). Virtual shopping promises to change consumers’
experiences dramatically, assuming it can integrate tactile effects and enable
consumers to “touch and feel” virtual products. Important future research
questions include the following, for example: Does touching virtual prod-
ucts, using virtual hands and smart gloves, generate the same haptic effect
as touching physical products in the real world? How does virtual haptic feed-
back affect consumers’ purchases online? Are there spillover effects of virtual
touch on the physical world?

11 The Power of Touch Across

Physical and Digital Worlds
A multidisciplinary lens is required to comprehend tactile effects across the
physical and digital worlds. In particular, studies should adopt various perspec-
tives to understand how new technologies developed by computer scientists
884 Y. ZHU

and engineers (e.g., touchless touchscreens) influence consumers and their

interactions with products. For example, neuroscientists might investigate
tactile information and memory by examining consumers’ brain activity;
psychologists could explore emotional, social, and individual outcomes while
consumers are interacting with products or service providers. Marketing
scholars then could integrate these interdisciplinary findings to clarify (1)
how consumers interact with products, people, and the shopping envi-
ronment through touch; (2) how physical and technology-mediated touch
affect product evaluations and purchase decisions over the course of various
interactive processes; (3) how multisensory approaches influence consumers’
interactions with products online and offline; and (4) how physical and digital
touch, along with VR, AR, and artificial intelligence, are likely to change the
future of interactive marketing.
Although omnichannel and multichannel marketing appears in cutting-
edge interactive marketing research, studies of touch and haptic effects do
not reflect this research trend. Most investigations focus on a single channel,
either offline or online. Therefore, future studies should adopt omnichannel
perspectives on the tactile effects that consumers experience across channels.
By examining haptic or tactile influences on a particular consumer’s behavior
across physical stores, e-commerce, social media platforms, and Metaverse,
researchers in interactive marketing could establish a more comprehensive
understanding of the role of touch in different interactive settings and provide
more insights for practitioners to incorporate touch in their businesses.

Acknowledgements The author thanks the financial support from the Social Sciences
and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) (Insight Grant 435-2018-1507).

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 CHAPTER 38

It’s Fun to Play: Emoji Usage in Interactive

Marketing Communication

Ruijuan Wu

1 Introduction
Emojis, Japanese-born characters, are defined as “digital images that are added
to messages in electronic communication to express a particular idea or feel-
ing” (Vidal et al., 2016). As an important visual symbol in computer-mediated
communication, emojis can be categorized as human-face emojis (e.g., yellow-
face emojis, , , , and red-face emojis, , , ) and non-human-face
emojis (e.g., plants, animals, objects, gestures, body parts, and symbols; ,
, , , ) (Jaeger et al., 2018a). As ubiquitous characters, emojis tran-
scend linguistic borders and are gaining worldwide popularity. In 2015, an
emoji named “Face with tears of Joy” ( ) won the “Word of the Year”
chosen by the Oxford English Dictionary. Emojis have been widely adopted
by smartphone users, for input methods, and on social networks (Ai et al.,
2017; Miller et al., 2015; Tian et al., 2017; Zhou et al., 2017). Overall,
92% of internet users reported that they use emojis in their communications
(Grabowski, 2016). Based on an analysis of 680 million tweets, emojipedia
(2020) found that 19.04% of tweets contained at least one emoji.
Emojis are especially useful in interactive communication because emojis
are usually used in conversational contexts. For example, in Li and Yang’s
(2018) research, 47.8% of high-frequency emojis in WeChat were used
as important interaction devices with pragmatic functions such as turning

R. Wu (B)
Tianjin University of Technology, Tianjin, China
e-mail: jennie0212@sina.com

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 893

Switzerland AG 2023
C. L. Wang (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Interactive Marketing,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14961-0_38
894 R. WU

taking/giving, as backchannel devices, and for enhancing or lessening illo-

cutionary force. In communication, emojis aid personal expression and reduce
ambiguity of discourse (Kaye et al., 2016). In business practice, emojis can be
used in marketing activities to enhance communication (Huang et al., 2021;
Wang, 2021). For example, Pepsi, Dove, Burger King, and Taco Bell employ
emojis in their advertising. Domino’s successfully uses emojis in its marketing
communication by allowing people to order pizza by sending pizza emojis
on Twitter. IKEA developed 100 emojis, and Coca-Cola launched 30 emojis.
Starbucks has its Starbucks emoji, and KFC has a K-emoji.
The popularity of emojis has attracted attention among researchers (Tang &
Hew, 2018). Various topics include emoji semantics analysis (Barbieri et al.,
2016; Kaye et al., 2016; Wijeratne et al., 2016), emoji sentiment analysis (Hu
et al., 2017; Jaeger et al., 2018a, 2018b; Moussa, 2019; Novak et al., 2015;
Tauch & Kanjo, 2016; Wu & Li, 2021; Wu et al., 2019; Wu, Hu, & Li, 2021;
Wu, Wu, & Wang, 2021), emoji usage intention (Gesselman et al., 2019; Hu
et al., 2017; Tang & Hew, 2018; Vidal et al., 2020), and demographic differ-
ence in emoji use (Barbieri & Camacho-Collados, 2018; Chen et al., 2018;
Guntuku et al., 2019; Jones et al., 2020; Thompson & Voyer, 2014). In
interactive marketing, emoji usage has been found to influence consumers’
response. For example, emojis in advertisements lead consumers to experience
higher positive emotion which in turn enhances consumers’ purchase intention
(Das et al., 2019). Consumers perceive employees who use emojis as higher
warmth and are more satisfied with service (Li et al., 2019; Luangrath et al.,
2017). Emojis in celebrity brands and corporate brands increase consumer
engagement, such as increasing the number of likes and retweets (McShane
et al., 2021). Despite there are studies related to emojis, research on emojis
usage in interactive marketing is limited. Thus, based on the extant litera-
ture, this chapter seeks to summarize emojis usage in interactive marketing
and provides a comprehensive review of emoji usage in interactive marketing.
Specifically, this chapter will address the following key research questions:

RQ1: What are the functions of emojis in interactive marketing? What

are the roles of emojis in sender–receiver interactive communica-
tion? What are the roles of emojis in consumer-brand interactive
marketing? How emojis are used as the measurement by brands for
monitoring consumers’ attitude and emotion.
RQ2: Which factors influence people who use emojis?
RQ3: How emojis influence recipients’ responses?

2 Method
This chapter utilized content analysis. The current chapter searched papers
from three primary databases and conference proceedings and did not impose
any hypotheses.
 38 IT’S FUN TO PLAY: EMOJI USAGE IN INTERACTIVE … 895

2.1 Databases and Conference Proceedings

This chapter would like to review the extant relevant literature and summarize
and classify the findings of the key studies by conducting a literature search in
three main databases (EBSCO, Emerald, and Elsevier) and using conference
proceedings. When searching for papers, the keywords included “emoji” and
“communication” (or “interactive communication” or “computer-mediated
communication”). Up to October 1, 2021, the author identified 131 papers
(103 journal papers and 28 conference papers). After screening, this chapter
excluded papers that were not English and not full-text and kept 81 papers.
Finally, when considering the eligibility of the papers, this chapter used 44
papers mostly related to topics of our studies in the current chapter (see Table
1). The criteria for selecting the analyzed papers included the following: (1)
English, (2) full-text, and (3) relating to the topics of the present chapter.

2.2 Content Analysis

The author adopted content analysis in this chapter. According to the three
questions the author addressed, the present chapter classified the papers into
three categories: (1) emoji functions; (2) antecedents of emoji usage; and (3)
the effect of emojis. Some papers only examined one question, whereas others
included two or three questions in this chapter. Thus, the specific paper may
be classified into one, two, or three categories.

3 Findings
3.1 Emoji Functions
In this section, this chapter seeks to describe the functions of emojis from
the following three aspects (see Table 2). Emojis are useful in interac-
tive communication, which is defined as two-way communication between
senders and receivers and between consumers and brands. Emojis help senders
and receivers with bidirectional connecting, and they help brands facilitate
consumer participation and engagement.

3.1.1 Emojis in Sender–Receiver Interactive Communication

On the sender side, emojis work as the nonverbal cues, and they help senders
express their emotions and aid textual comprehension (Yang et al., 2021).
To be specific, emojis help convey emotion, reduce ambiguity, enrich state-
ments, and more (Garcia et al., 2022; Kaye et al., 2016; Li & Yang, 2018;
Lu et al., 2018). From the perspective of the receiver, emojis, especially facial
emojis, produce neural responses that are similar to the ones the human face
produces (Gantiva et al., 2019). Liao et al. (2021) found that the pattern of
ERP responses to processing pain emoji expression and processing pain facial
expressions was similar. Kaye et al. (2021) further noted that, for the recipient,
the processing efficiency between faces and emojis was similar.
896 R. WU
Table 1 Summary of studies
Study
An et al. (2018)
Boutet et al. (2021)
Chan & Leung (2019)
Coyle and Carmichael (2019)
da Cruz et al. (2021)
Das et al. (2019)
Gantiva et al. (2019)
Gantiva et al. (2021)
Garcia et al. (2022)
Gesselman et al. (2019)
Hu et al. (2017)
Jaeger et al. (2018a)
Context
Empirical study, 6821
WeChat chatting messages
Experiment
Empirical survey (N = 234)
Experiment (N = 179)
Two-stage study (N = 132)
One experiment and one
online study
An ERP experiment (N =
30)
One empirical study
An online rating task
Two studies
Experiment
Empirical study (N = 1,084)
Research question
To examine how age,
gender, and relationship
type influence people’s
emoji use
How emojis influence
emotion interpretation,
social attribution, and
information processing
How the number, position,
and type of emojis influence
awareness of a message
How emoji usage between
responder and discloser
influence perceived
responsiveness, impression,
and reflected appraisal
Using product-specific
emojis to measure children’s
emotional responses to
probiotic fermented milk
The effect of adding emojis
in advertisements on
consumers’ purchasing
intentions
Whether human and emoji
faces have similar cortical
processing
The effects of different
valence of emojis on facial
muscle activity, skin
conductance, heart rate, and
affect
How the winking face ( )
influences the
comprehension of sarcasm
How emoji use between
potential partners influences
connection
People’s intentions in using
emojis
To explore people’s
interpretations of facial
emojis
(continued)
 38
Table 1 (continued)
Study
Jaeger et al. (2018b)
Jaeger et al. (2021)
Jones et al. (2020)
Kaye et al. (2016)
Kaye et al. (2021)
Kejriwal et al. (2021)
Koch et al. (2022)
Li and Yang (2018)
Li et al. (2019)
Liao et al. (2021)
Lu et al. (2018)
Marengo et al. (2017)
McShane et al. (2021)
IT’S FUN TO PLAY: EMOJI USAGE IN INTERACTIVE …
Context
Eight studies (N = 1,121)
Qualitative description
Empirical study (N = 299)
Empirical study (N = 92)
Two experiments
Empirical study based on
4,057,871 tweets
Empirical study based on
309,229 WhatsApp messages
Empirical study using WeChat
messages
Four experiments
ERP study
Empirical study (GitHub)
Empirical study (N = 234)
One field study (top brand
tweet) and two experiments
897
Research question
To compare emojis with
emotional words when
measuring emotional
responses to food/beverage
stimuli
To summarize the
advantages of using emojis
in questionnaires
To explore the gender
difference in emoji
familiarity, emoji use, and
emoji valence
The functions of emoticon
use
How stimuli (word vs. face
vs. emoji) and valence
(positive vs. neutral vs.
negative) influence
information processing
To examine the language
and culture difference in
emoji use
To explore the age and
gender differences in
language, emoji, and
emoticon use
The pragmatic functions of
emojis
How employee use of
emoticons influences
perceived warmth, perceived
competence, service
evaluation, and real behavior
To explore the neural
responses to painful facial
and emoji expressions
How GitHub users use
emojis
Using emojis to assess
personality
How emojis influence brand
engagement
(continued)
898 R. WU
Table 1 (continued)
Study Context
Miller et al. (2015) Online survey
Moussa (2019) Retrieving 720 consumer
tweets from 18 brands
Pfeifer et al. (2022) Two experiments
Robus et al. (2020) Eye-tracking experiment (N
= 44)
Rodrigues et al. (2017) Two experiments (N = 451),
romantic partners
Schouteten et al. (2018) Empirical study (N = 149)
Shiha and Ayvaz (2017) Empirical study, two events
from Twitter
Sick et al. (2020) Empirical study (N = 96)
Smith and Rose (2020) Three experiments
Tang and Hew (2018) Content analysis
Tang and Hew (2019) Content analysis
Tian et al. (2017) Empirical study (21,000
Facebook posts)
Vidal et al. (2020) Empirical study (N = 119)
Völker and Mannheim (2021) One experiment
Research question
To explore emoji meaning
across different platforms
Using an emoji-based
metric to measure
consumers’ emotions
toward a brand
How happy and upset
emojis influence perceived
sender emotion and text
processing
The effects of emoji
position and emotional
valence on eye movement
How adding emojis to text
messages influences
perceptions of relationships
Using emojis to measure
children’s responses to a
biscuit
The effects of emojis on
overall sentiment score
Using emojis to measure
children’s food-elicited
emotion
The effect of smiley-face
emojis on relationship
strength
Review communication
functions and user
motivations for using
emoticons, emojis, and
stickers
Review theories explaining
the use of emojis,
emoticons, and stickers
To explore the emoji
sentiment in Facebook posts
Using emojis in open-ended
questionnaires
How the presence of emojis
influences recipients’
interpretations of messages
(continued)
 38
Table 1 (continued)
Study
Willoughby and Liu (2018)
Wu, Chen, and Li (2021)
Wu et al. (2022)
Yang et al. (2021)
Zhou, Hentschel, and Kumar
(2017)
Table 2 Emoji functions
Aspects
Emojis in sender–receiver
interactive communication
Emojis in brand–consumer
interactive communication
Emojis used as the measurement
IT’S FUN TO PLAY: EMOJI USAGE IN INTERACTIVE … 899
Context Research question
Experiment (N = 426) The effect of messages
(narrative vs. nonnarrative)
and the use of emojis (three
emojis vs. one emoji vs. no
emoji) on message
processing and message
attention
One eye-tracking experiment How the position of the
and three laboratory angry emoji influences the
experiments perception of the sender’s
anger
Two experiments How the emoji meaning
multipleness influences
helpfulness perception
ERP study To examine the effect of
emojis on the processing of
subsequent words
A qualitative study based on How Chinese people use
WeChat use emojis in their WeChat
communication
Main functions
Emotional function Expressing sentiment
Strengthening sentiment
Weakening sentiment
Establishing emotional tone
Building social relationships
Semantic function Substituting textual messaging
Influencing semantic processing
The top brands developed branded emojis to attract
consumers
Emojis lead to positive consumer responses, such as
memory accuracy, engagement, positive affect, and high
purchase intention
Emojis are used to measure participants’ emotional
expression and conceptual associations in food-related,
personality-related, and brand-related questionnaires
900 R. WU

Emotional functions of emojis. Emojis themselves can express many kinds of

concrete emotions, such as happiness ( ) (Jaeger et al., 2018a), anger
( ) (Wu, Chen, & Li, 2021), sadness ( ), fear ( ), surprise ( ),
disappointment ( ), dissatisfaction ( ), embarrassment ( ), and more.
When adding emojis after textual content, emojis have many functions.
Expressing sentiment. Expressing sentiment is the original function of emojis
in interactive communication. In Hu et al.’s study (2017), the five emojis
(“angry face” , “pensive face” , “crying face” , “smiling face with
smiling eyes” , and “loudly crying face” ) are listed as the top five emojis
for expressing emotion. When people want to express happiness, friendliness,
or to bless or greet someone, they add emojis to text (Zhou et al., 2017). For
example, “Good job! You are … .” Here, “the thumbs up” emoji expresses
appreciation, supports the textual message, and does not add new meaning to
the text.
Strengthening sentiment. When emojis make the message more expressive,
emojis strengthen the sentiment of the message. For example, in the following
statement “So happy; I got an A in the exam ,” the words express happiness,
and the emoji expresses a high level of happiness. Shiha and Ayvaz (2017)
found that, when adding emoji characters to the events, the emoji characters
improved the overall sentiment scores of the events. Duplicated emojis (e.g.,
, ) are also used to strengthen sentiments (Tauch & Kanjo,
2016).
Weakening sentiment. Emojis can be used to lighten the mood (Kaye et al.,
2016). People use emojis to relieve boredom and make communication less
serious and less formal, livelier, or easier. The “smiling face with smiling eyes”
, “crying face” , and “smiling face with sunglasses” are typically used
for this purpose (Hu et al., 2017).
Establishing emotional tone. In Kaye et al.’s study (2016), establishing
emotional tone is one of the two emoticon emotional functions. People added
positive or negative emojis after neutral statements, and the combination of
emoji and text help establish two very different emotional tones. For example,
“These pants really caught people’s eyeballs” is a neutral message. However,
“smiling face with smiling eyes” or “angry face” added at the end of the
message conveys various sentiments. Sometimes, emojis can convey sentiments
(such as humor, sarcasm, or irony), which are hard to express on the basis
of the text (Garcia et al., 2022). The positive emojis (“Face savoring food”
, “smiling face with sunglasses” , “smiling face with victory hands” ,
and “face with hand over mouth” ) are often selected to express humor,
whereas the neutral emojis (“neutral face” , “expressionless face” , and
“the winking face” ) are used to communicate sarcasm (Garcia et al., 2022;
Hu et al., 2017). In addition, emojis can reverse sentiment. Here, positive
emojis are used to express negative emotions. For example, “the thumbs up”
was originally designed for appreciation. However, is the top three emoji
for expressing anger (Tian et al., 2017).
 38 IT’S FUN TO PLAY: EMOJI USAGE IN INTERACTIVE … 901

Building social relationships. Emojis can make recipients feel more engaged.
They help express closeness and intimacy to the senders (Hu et al., 2017;
Tang & Hew, 2019). Using emojis for social purposes is one of the main
reasons people use emojis (Tang & Hew, 2019). The “smiling face with heart-
eyes” , “smiling face with smiling eyes” , and “smiling face with victory
hands” are frequently used to express intimacy (Hu et al., 2017). Also,
some emojis can be used to express congratulations ( , , ), praise
( , ), and appreciation ( ), which are relevant to mutual interaction
and building relationships.
Semantic functions of emojis . Emojis can convey semantic meanings (Yang
et al., 2021). The semantic content of emojis functions the same way words
do (Weissman & Tanner, 2018). The current chapter summarized that emojis’
semantic functions include two aspects: substituting textual message and
influencing semantic processing.
Substituting textual message. Emojis can replace words or behaviors
(Marengo et al., 2017). First, in some cases, people can use emojis to describe
the message and make the content more vivid. For example, “Do you want to
have .” The beer emoji denotes the beverage. Second, people use emojis
to replace behavior. For example, people send the hug emoji to express
that they really want to hug somebody. Third, when people have nothing
to say or want to end an embarrassing conversation, they use emojis (Zhou,
Hentschel, & Kumar, 2017).
Influencing semantic processing. First, because emojis can visually display
information, in some cases, emojis can be used to emphasize the textual
content. For example, the symbol emojis, such as “backhand index pointing
down” , “backhand index pointing” , attract people’s attention and
remind people to take notice of the text. Second, emojis can reduce the ambi-
guity of a text. Emojis help message recipients understand the real intent
that message senders have, and they decrease misinterpretations. When people
are hard to understand, whether someone is being serious or just making
a joke, emojis work to clear these issues up. In addition, when emojis are
added to ambiguous or neutral texts, emojis influence textual processing signif-
icantly. Pfeifer et al. (2022) found that, when happy or upset emojis are
added after a neutral text message, emojis influence textual processing in
emoji-valence-specific ways.

3.1.2 Emojis in Consumer–Brand Communication

In marketing practice, marketers use emojis or images to communicate and
interact with consumers (Barreto & Ramalho, 2019). Top brands (e.g., Ikea,
Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Starbucks, Versace) have developed their branded emojis to
reach and attract the attention of their consumers. Researchers have investi-
gated the effects of emojis on consumers’ responses. In general, emojis are
preferred by consumers, and emojis lead to positive emotional and behav-
ioral responses. For example, Chan and Leung (2019) found that compared
902 R. WU

to brand slogans without emojis, brand slogans with one or two emojis led
to more memory accuracy. Das et al. (2019) observed that, when emojis are
used in hedonic product advertisements, consumers experience higher posi-
tive affect and higher purchase intentions. McShane et al. (2021) used a
field study and experiments and noted that the presence of emojis in brand
tweets increased consumer engagement, and more emojis led to more likes
and content sharing. However, emoji usage can lead to negative outcomes.
Li et al. (2019) found that consumers perceived service employees who use
emojis as warmer and less competent than those who did not use them. This
perception in turn influenced consumers’ service evaluation and real behaviors.

3.1.3 Emojis Used as the Measurement

Because emojis convey emotional and semantic meanings, it is possible to
include them in the open-ended questionnaires and facilitate participants’
emotional expression and conceptual associations (Vidal et al., 2020). Thus,
researchers used emojis in their questionnaires to measure consumer responses.
The advantages of emoji questionnaires include that emoji can enhance
ecological validity; emojis are more familiar to consumers; and emojis are more
suitable to cross-cultural research (Jaeger et al., 2021).
Food-related measure. Jaeger et al. (2018b) compared emojis with
emotional words in food/beverage measures and found that emojis were more
discriminative. Vidal et al. (2020) used emojis in open-ended questions to
describe food, and they noted that emojis can convey many meanings, such as
the hedonic reactions to food and the emotional and conceptual associations
with food. Emojis can be used as a tool for measuring children’s emotions
about food (Schouteten et al., 2018; Sick et al., 2020) and help predict
actual food choice. da Cruz et al. (2021) used the product-specific emoji list
to evaluate children’s overall liking of the probiotic fermented milk. Jaeger
et al. (2021) summarized that emoji questionnaires are suitable for replacing
emotional words, especially for measuring consumers’ responses to foods and
beverages. They also pointed out that, in the Scopus database, more than 20
papers used emoji questionnaires to measure food contexts between 2017 and
2020.
Personality-related measure. Marengo et al. (2017) used emojis to measure
personality traits and found emojis were correlated with three personality traits:
agreeableness, extroversion, and emotional stability.
Brand-related measure. Moussa (2019) developed an emoji-based metric to
monitor consumers’ emotions toward brands on social media.

3.2 Factors Influencing How People Use Emojis

Many factors can influence people’s emoji usage (An et al., 2018). Demo-
graphic variables, such as age and gender, are most frequently examined.
Age. Overall, 95% of young people born after 1996 reported that they used
emojis in their daily communication (Perrault et al., 2020). An et al. (2018)
 38 IT’S FUN TO PLAY: EMOJI USAGE IN INTERACTIVE … 903

analyzed WeChat messages and observed that, compared to people who were
16–25, 36–50, and >50, people of 26–35 had the lowest emoji usage inten-
tion. In comparison with people who were in the 26–35 and 36–50 group,
people who were in the 16–25 group rated significantly different scores for
the same emoji. They also found that young people preferred more multiple-
meaning emojis (such as and ), whereas elder people preferred positive
emojis (such as and ).
Gender. Jones et al. (2020) provided evidence that women use more emojis
in communication and give emojis higher familiarity ratings than men; women
perceived negative and neutral emojis as more negative than men did. Koch
et al. (2022) also found that female participants used emojis more often, and
they used more different emojis. However, in An et al.’s study (2018), they
noted no significant difference in using frequency and emoji types between
men and women.
Language and country. Emoji usage is greatly different in different coun-
tries. Kejriwal, Wang, and Wang (2021) analyzed 4,057,871 tweets and found
that language and country influence emoji usage. Some emojis preferred in
a specific country are less popular in other countries. For example, they note
how the “red heart” emoji ( ) is more popular in Brazil than in the Philip-
pines and Myanmar. Although some emojis are frequently used, their relative
popularity varies, depending on the country. For another example, the “face
with tears of joy” emoji ( ) is one of the most popular emojis in many
countries, although its usage pattern is different across countries.
Relationship types. An et al. (2018) discovered that relationship types can
influence emoji usage. In their research, they classified two types of rela-
tionships: primary groups vs. secondary groups and same generation vs.
cross-generation. Primary groups are small, intimate, informal, and enduring,
such as families, whereas secondary groups are large, less personal, formal, and
temporary, such as colleagues (Thoits, 2011). People of the same generation
have similar cultural backgrounds and ages, whereas people in cross-generation
groups have different ages and cultural backgrounds. An et al. (2018)
observed that when communicating with people in secondary groups or cross-
generation, they used simple and positive meaning emojis; when chatting with
people in primary groups or the same generation, they used more complex
meaning emojis.

3.3 The Effects of Emojis on People’s Responses in Interactions

This section seeks to summarize how emojis influence people’s responses in
their interactions. This section includes (1) the effect of the use of emojis
(presence vs. absence); (2) the effect of the position of emojis; (3) the effect
of the repetition of emojis; (4) the effect of the meaning of emojis; and (5)
the effect of the type of emojis. Table 3 summarizes the main findings.
904 R. WU

Table 3 The effects of emojis

Emoji usage pattern The main findings

The use of emojis The presence of emojis influences perception (the perceived
interest in the relationship, personalization perception, perceived
responsiveness, service evaluation, and uncertainty perception),
emotion (higher positive affect), and behavioral intention
(purchase intention and engagement)
The position of emojis Emojis in the front of the sentence influence eye movements
and playfulness; emojis in the middle of the sentence influence
position salience perception and sentiment-strengthening
perception; emojis at the end of the sentence influence the
awareness of the message
The repetition of emojis In general, there was no significant difference between
duplicating the use of emojis and the single use of emojis
The meaning of emojis Some emojis have multiple and complex meanings, and they
convey different emotions
The type of emojis Extant literature examines the effects of emoji valence (positive
vs. negative vs. neutral) and the effect of facial vs. non-facial
emojis

3.3.1 The Use of Emojis

Compared with text messages with no emojis, adding emojis to text messages
influences people’s perceptions, emotions, and behavioral intentions.
Perception. Rodrigues et al. (2017) examined the role of emojis in text
messages exchanged between romantic partners. They found that, when
emojis were added to positive emotion text messages, there was no signifi-
cant difference in the perception of relationships between text messages and
text messages with emojis; however, when emojis were added to the negative
emotion text message, emojis helped soften the negative tone of the message,
and the message was perceived as more positive, which in turn enhanced
the perceived interest in the relationship. Willoughby and Liu (2018) found
that messages with no emojis led to the most elaboration and credibility;
messages with only one emoji led to the most personalization perception.
Chan and Leung (2019) stated that using facial emojis was preferable when
the content was generic. Slogans with one or two emojis led to more memory
accuracy than slogans without emojis. Coyle and Carmichael (2019) found
that for positive event interactions, when disclosers and responders both used
emojis, it led to increased perceived responsiveness, positive impressions for
the responder, and positive reflected appraisal. Li et al. (2019) found that
consumers perceived service employees who used emojis as warmer and less
competent than those who did not use them. This perception in turn influ-
enced consumers’ service evaluation and real behaviors. Völker and Mannheim
(2021) explored that, in WhatsApp messages, compared to the absence of
emojis, the presence of emojis significantly influenced the self-revelations of
 38 IT’S FUN TO PLAY: EMOJI USAGE IN INTERACTIVE … 905

the sender. Recipients can use emojis to infer the person behind the message
and reduce uncertainty (Tang & Hew, 2019).
Emotion. Das et al. (2019) noted that, when emojis were used in hedonic
product advertisements, consumers experienced higher positive affect. Smith
and Rose (2020) found that, compared to the absence of emojis, smiley-
face emojis elicited positive affection and increased perceptions of relationship
strength.
Behavioral intention. Das et al. (2019) remarked that, when emojis
were used in hedonic product advertisements, consumers experienced higher
purchase intentions. Furthermore, McShane et al. (2021) observed that the
presence of emojis in brand tweets increased consumers’ engagement, and
more emojis led to more likes and content sharing.
In general, emojis can complete but not replace or overpower the meaning
of text messages (Tang & Hew, 2019). Emojis are more suitable for
emotional/social purposes rather than task-related purposes (Derks et al.,
2007). Excessive emoji usage can produce an adverse effect because the sender
of emojis may be believed as insincere and want to hide their true feelings
(Yoo, 2007).

3.3.2 The Position of Emojis

Emojis are usually at the end of a sentence. For example, Lu et al. (2018)
found that, in 66.77% of emoji sentences in issue comments, the emojis were
at the end of the sentence. When emojis were put at the end of the sentence,
emojis provided important cues to understand textual information and influ-
ence the awareness of the message (Chan & Leung, 2019). However, emojis
can be put in different positions of the sentence: in front of the sentence, in
the middle of the sentence, or at the end of the sentence.
Robus et al. (2020) examined the effect of emoji position (sentence-initial
vs. sentence-final) in neutral narrative sentences on eye movements. They
found that sentence-final emojis led to longer fixations on emojis and longer
sentence reading times, whereas sentence-initial emojis led to more fixations
on emojis. Wu, Chen, and Li (2021) examined the effects of the position of
emojis in online consumer reviews on consumers’ perceptions of a sender’s
affection and found that, compared with the angry emoji at the end of a
sentence, having the angry emoji at the middle of a sentence led to a stronger
perception of anger. The effect was mediated by the position salience percep-
tion and the sentiment-strengthening perception of the emoji. McShane et al.
(2021) found that locating emojis before the related text rather than after
the related text in brand tweets increased playfulness, which in turn increased
consumer engagement.

3.3.3 The Repetition of Emojis

Duplicate emojis (e.g., ) are often used to express stronger sentiment
(Hu et al., 2017; Moussa, 2019; Tauch & Kanjo, 2016). For example, the
use of the three “grin face” ( ) expresses a stronger sentiment than one
906 R. WU

“grin face” ( ). Tauch and Kanjo (2016) found the number of emojis signif-
icantly influenced the total sentiment score. However, when the number of
emojis was extremely high, the sentiment score and the number of emojis were
not related. Hu et al. (2017) provided inconsistent findings with Tauch and
Kanjo (2016) and found that, in terms of sentiment score, there was no signif-
icant difference between duplicating the use of emojis and the single use of
emojis, and the sentiment enhancements of emoji duplications were relatively
small. Moussa (2019) even pointed out that, when expressing the feelings for
a brand, one single emoji was good enough.

3.3.4 The Meaning of Emojis

Some emojis are associated with only a single meaning (such as = anger, =
fear), whereas some emojis have multiple and more than single meanings
(such as = sly, smug, mischievous, and suggestive). In Jaeger et al. (2018a),
they investigated 33 commonly used emojis and pointed out that some emojis
have multiple meanings and can convey different emotions. An et al. (2018)
also pointed out that some emojis express simple meanings, whereas others
express complex meanings. People interpret human-face emojis in diverse ways
across different communication platforms. For within-platform communica-
tion in which people use the same devices, there is a discrepancy between the
sender’s and receiver’s interpretations of the same emoji. For cross-platform
communication in which people use different devices, individuals may construe
the same emoji as having different meanings. For example, the “grinning face
with smiling eyes” emoji ( ) rendered by Google Nexus phones was described
as “blissfully happy,” whereas the same emoji ( ) rendered by the Apple
iPhone was described as “ready to fight” (Miller et al., 2015). Wu et al. (2022)
proposed “emoji meaning multipleness,” which can be defined as the extent to
which a specific emoji is imbued with several meanings that may be different
from the originally designed meaning. They also examined how emoji meaning
(simple vs. multiple) influenced helpfulness perception.

3.3.5 The Type of Emojis

Emojis include human-face emojis and non-human-face emojis (Jaeger et al.,
2018a). According to emotional valence, emojis include positive, neutral, and
negative emojis. The extant literature mainly examined the effect of different
valences of emojis on consumer responses. For example, Kaye et al. (2021)
compared the processing accuracy and speed between positive emoji and
neutral emojis and found that participants processed positive emojis more
accurately and quicker than neutral emojis. Boutet et al. (2021) found that
emojis significantly influenced the interpretation of senders’ emotional states
and warmth perceptions. Specifically, negative emojis led people to infer that
the sender’s emotion was more negative, regardless of the text valence. Posi-
tive emojis led to more warmth perceptions of senders. Pfeifer et al. (2022)
compared the effects of two types of emojis (upset emojis vs. happy emojis) on
perceived sender emotion and found that each upset emoji conveys senders’
 38 IT’S FUN TO PLAY: EMOJI USAGE IN INTERACTIVE … 907

specific emotional information, whereas happy emojis convey overall positive

emotion. Gantiva et al. (2021) explored how different types of emoji faces
(happy vs. neutral vs. angry) influenced physiological and affective responses
and noted that happy emoji faces increased zygomatic muscle activity and
elicited arousal, and angry emoji faces increased corrugator muscle activity.
In addition, Chan and Leung (2019) classified emojis into business-specific
emojis, content-specific emojis, and facial emojis and found that, when they
asked participants to select emojis for the commercial slogans, business-specific
and content-specific emojis were preferred over facial emojis.

4 Discussion
This chapter systematically reviewed emoji use in people’s communication
from three aspects: the functions of using emojis, the factors influencing using
emojis, and the effects of emoji usage on recipients’ responses. In this chapter,
emoji functions are related to emojis themselves, and reflect people’s inten-
tions of using emojis; while emoji effects are about how emoji usage pattern
influence consumers’ response.
First, the present chapter summarized emoji functions from three perspec-
tives: (1) emojis in sender–receiver communication, (2) emojis in brand–
consumer communication, and (3) emojis used as measurement. When emojis
are used in sender–receiver communication, emojis convey emotional and
semantic functions (Yang et al., 2021). Regarding emotional function, emojis
are used as indicators for expressing sentiment (Garcia et al., 2022; Hu et al.,
2017; Kaye et al., 2016; Zhou et al., 2017), strengthening sentiment (Shiha &
Ayvaz, 2017; Tauch & Kanjo, 2016), weakening sentiment (Hu et al., 2017;
Kaye et al., 2016), establishing emotional tone (Garcia et al., 2022; Hu et al.,
2017; Tian et al., 2017), and building social relationships (Hu et al., 2017;
Tang & Hew, 2019). Regarding emojis’ semantic functions, they can substi-
tute for textual messages (Marengo et al., 2017; Zhou et al., 2017) and
influence semantic processing (Pfeifer et al., 2022). When brands use emojis in
their communication with consumers, some brands develop their own emojis
to attract consumers, and others use emojis to elicit positive responses (such as
engagement and positive affect). Because emojis facilitate people’s emotional
expression and conceptual association (Vidal et al., 2020), researchers use
emojis in questionnaires to measure food-related, personality-related, and
brand-related responses.
Second, among factors influencing emoji usage, this chapter examined the
demographic variables. This chapter summarized the age differences (An et al.,
2018; Perrault et al., 2020), gender differences (An et al., 2018; Jones et al.,
2020; Koch et al., 2022), and language and culture differences (Kejriwal,
Wang, & Wang, 2021) in emoji use. Moreover, An et al. (2018) examined
the effects of relationship types on emoji usage.
Third, this chapter summarized the effects of emojis from five aspects: (1)
The presence of emojis. Compared with the absence of emojis, the presence
908 R. WU

of emojis influenced perception, such as the perceived interest in the relation-

ship (Rodrigues et al., 2017), perceived responsiveness (Coyle & Carmichael,
2019), and warmth and competence perception (Li et al., 2019). The presence
of emojis also led to higher positive affect (Smith & Rose, 2020), engagement
(McShane et al., 2021), and higher purchase intention (Das et al., 2019);
(2) The position of emojis. Emojis in different positions of the sentence
elicit various recipients’ responses. Sentence-initial emojis influence eye move-
ments and playfulness (McShane et al., 2021; Robus et al., 2020), whereas
sentence-middle emojis influence position salience perception and sentiment-
strengthening perceptions (Wu, Chen, & Li, 2021), and sentence-final emojis
influence awareness of the message (Chan & Leung, 2019); (3) the repeti-
tion of the emojis. Although duplicate emojis can express stronger emotion,
there is no significant sentiment score difference between duplicate emojis and
a single emoji; (4) the meaning of emojis. Some emojis have multiple and
complex meanings, and they convey different emotions (Wu et al., 2022), and
some emojis are associated with the primary single meaning; and (5) the type
of emojis. The extant literature has mainly examined the effects of different
valence of emojis (positive vs. negative vs. neutral).
Fourth, this chapter systematically summarizes emojis usage in interactive
marketing, and supplements emojis literature. This chapter organizes the study
of emojis in the literature, hopes to become the basis of emojis research and
hopes to inspire future emojis research efforts.
Fifth, in marketing practice, brands continuously take measures to enhance
consumers’ engagement, participation, and interaction. This chapter has found
emojis play emotional functions which are effective in interaction, and emojis
have positive effects on consumers’ emotional and behavioral responses. Thus,
emojis can be strategically used by brands as an easy-to-use tool in interac-
tive marketing. Further, the effects of emojis on consumers’ responses depend
on product category, emoji location, emoji meaning, etc. For example, for
hedonic products, emojis are more effective when they are used in advertising.
Emojis before the text elicit more playfulness perception. Single-meaning
emojis increase helpfulness perception. Therefore, brands should employ
emojis in situations where they are a good fit.

5 Limitations and Directions

for Future Research
The studies the author reviewed in this chapter were mainly from the area of
marketing, human–computer interaction, and communication. The databases
of the studies extracted were mainly EBSCO, Emerald, and Elsevier. The limi-
tations of our search mean our reviewed studies cannot cover all disciplines
and all relevant literature. It is more desirable to review more related works in
other disciplines, such as images and graphics.
Although the present chapter has summarized three aspects of the use of
emojis, this chapter did not review the mechanism and boundary conditions,
 38 IT’S FUN TO PLAY: EMOJI USAGE IN INTERACTIVE … 909

which are behind the effect of the use of emojis. Future studies could extend
the research to more deeply explore why and how emojis influence recipients’
responses.
There were some inconsistent findings in the extant literature. For example,
as regarding the gender difference in emoji usage, Jones et al. (2020) found
that women use more emojis than men, whereas An et al. (2018) pointed
out there was no significant difference in use frequency between men and
women. Future studies could further examine the relationship between gender
and emoji usage.

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 PART VIII

A Necessary Evil? Unintended Consequences

of Interactive Marketing
 CHAPTER 39

Consumer Incivility in Virtual Spaces:

Implications for Interactive Marketing Research
and Practice

Denitsa Dineva

1 Introduction
The evolution of interactive marketing has been fueled by the introduction and
participative nature of Web 2.0 (Barwise & Farley, 2005). Its bi-directional
nature has contributed to the proliferation of consumer engagement, partic-
ipation, and interactive behaviors on social media networks (SMNs) (Wang,
2021). The positive consequences of these behaviors such as the co-creation
of value are well researched (e.g., Hollebeek et al., 2014). Nonetheless, the
global and interactive nature of SMNs has brought about a dark side that
is less well understood, which is referred to here as “consumer incivility”.
Consumer incivility represents a set of undesirable behaviors and hostile inter-
personal interactions between consumers on SMNs who use profanity, disagree
with, provoke, mock, and harass one another as well as direct this incivility
towards brands (Breitsohl et al., 2018; Dineva et al., 2017), with the former
exemplified in Fig. 1. In the current virtual environment where a continu-
ously increasing number of consumers visit and interact on SMNs (Statista,
2022), these uncivil behaviors have become a commonplace with the majority
of Internet users having seen or experienced some form of incivility (Pew
Research Center, 2021). Moreover, with interactive marketing encouraging
multi-user communications, consumers have become more actively involved
in SMNs leading to more opportunities for incivility (Anderson et al., 2014;

D. Dineva (B)
Cardiff University, Cardiff, Wales, UK
e-mail: DinevaD@cardiff.ac.uk

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 917

Switzerland AG 2023
C. L. Wang (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Interactive Marketing,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14961-0_39
918 D. DINEVA

Su et al., 2018). Therefore, it is important to provide a holistic account of this

phenomenon by drawing on existing multidisciplinary research in order to
advance interactive marketing research and practice. This represents the focus
of the present chapter.
This chapter begins by providing a historical overview of conventionally
researched uncivil online behaviors including a discussion on the mechanisms
that contribute to the occurrence of such behaviors. Then, the chapter moves
onto its focal point of reviewing research on emerging forms of incivility in
a consumerism context and outlining their distinguishing characteristics and
features. The causes and impact of consumer incivility are then discussed,
followed by reviewing research into the strategies and actors put forward
as suited to managing incivility. The chapter concludes with addressing the

Fig. 1 Incivility excerpt

 39 CONSUMER INCIVILITY IN VIRTUAL SPACES … 919

implications of the reviewed research for interactive marketing scholars and

practitioners.

2 Literature Review: A Historical

Overview of Incivility Research
Consumer incivility and its forms have originally been researched in offline,
in-person service contexts whereby consumers intentionally or unintentionally,
overtly or covertly, disrupt otherwise functional service encounters (Harris &
Reynolds, 2003, 2004). Examples of prominent in-person uncivil consumer
behaviors investigated in past research refer to shoplifting, verbal abuse,
and vandalism among others (Fombelle et al., 2020). Such misbehaviors
are suggested to originate in elements pertinent to the service environment
(e.g., impulse versus planned), are directed at other consumers or frontline
employees, and are motivated by situational inhibitors in the service provision,
personality traits, and (non-)/economic factors (for a review see Fisk et al.,
2010).
The proliferation of interactive marketing and its bi-directional nature,
however, have caused uncivil behaviors traditionally associated with offline
settings to transcend to SMNs, whereby hyper-interactivity and multi-user
dialog are a commonplace (Izogo & Mpinganjira, 2020; Su et al., 2018).
In turn, this has provided grounds for an increased occurrence of online inci-
vility, which attracted the attention of scholars who put forward two main
mechanisms that contribute to the formation of online incivility: the online
disinhibition effect and deindividuation. First, Suler (2004, 2016) proposed
that individuals say and do things online that they would not typically say
and do in-person, which he coined the online disinhibition effect. The author
argued that this effect is largely due to dissociative anonymity, which enables
individuals to separate their online actions from their in-person lifestyle and
identity. In this process of dissociation, the online self becomes a compartmen-
talized self, and this is especially pronounced in the case of toxic disinhibition
(e.g., online incivility). When misbehaving on SMNs, individuals can avert
responsibility for their uncivil behaviors or hostile expressions, because of
a temporary suspension of morality that is inherent to in-person interac-
tions. Suler (2004) further adds that invisibility and asynchronicity can further
contribute to toxic disinhibition. Invisibility encourages individuals to interact
or behave in ways they would not normally do in real-world encounters (Yun
et al., 2020), while asynchronicity, which refers to non-real time interac-
tion, means that individuals who disinhibit do not have to cope with others’
reactions immediately like they would in face-to-face settings.
Deindividuation is a secondary contributor to one’s engagement in uncivil
behaviors as a result of losing one’s sense of personal responsibility and indi-
viduality on SMNs (Valkenburg & Peter, 2011). In virtual spaces, partial
anonymity may cause individuals to lose their self-awareness from personal
to the group (Silke, 2003), which in turn results in individuals abandoning
920 D. DINEVA

their sense of personal responsibility and detaching oneself from their actions
or communications online (Freestone & Mitchell, 2004; Harris & Dumas,
2009). Moreover, deindividuation can amplify the influence of group behav-
iors and norms on SMNs, which can in turn reinforce the learning and
replication of uncivil behaviors (DeHue et al., 2008).
Aside the mechanisms that drive online incivility, research differenti-
ated between three groups of uncivil behaviors and conceptualized these as
flaming , trolling, and cyber-bullying /harassment. Flaming is a deviant online
behavior that involves the expression of strong emotions such as swearing,
insults, and name-calling in a hostile manner and has been widely researched
(e.g., Lee, 2005). Moreover, flaming represents offensive communications
whereby the sender’s intent is to violate norms, while both the receiver and any
third-party observers perceive the message as a violation, which can range from
mildly to highly inappropriate (O’Sullivan & Flanagin, 2003). According to
scholars, flaming is a commonly used linguistic tactic that individuals employ
to provoke emotional arousal and a sense of offensiveness in others (Jay &
Janschewitz, 2008; Kwon & Cho, 2017). Thus, flaming can be categorized as
intentional with the purpose to disinhibit, insult and/or provoke other indi-
viduals in online spaces. Flaming is a misbehavior typical to online gaming
communities and football forums and is reinforced by the largely anonymous
nature of these virtual spaces (Alonzo & Aiken, 2004).
Trolling has received significant attention in interdisciplinary research and
is characterized as a deliberate behavior aimed at aggravating and disrupting
others, but with no instrumental purpose (Buckels et al., 2014; Golf-Papez &
Veer, 2017; Hardaker, 2010). The distinctive characteristic of this inten-
tional uncivil behavior is the element of deception i.e., apparent outward
sincerity by the sender of the message, the message is designed to attract
flames and waste the other users’ time by provoking futile arguments (Herring
et al., 2002). More specifically, Hardaker (2010) identified four fundamental
characteristics central to trolling behavior: deception (i.e., falsely portraying
themselves), aggression (i.e., annoy and emotionally provoke others), disrup-
tion (i.e., meaningless distraction aimed at attention-seeking), and success (i.e.,
success in deceiving, aggravating, and disrupting the people they troll). While
trolling is prevalent across all digital media, in recent years SMNs have encour-
aged the amplification of this uncivil behavior that can be targeted at anyone
and produces harmful consequences for those who are its targets (Forbes,
2020).
Cyber-bullying consists of repetition and power imbalance between the
victim and the cyber-bully (Langos, 2012). Cyber-bullying often involves a
pre-existing relationship between the cyber-bully and the victim, and this form
of incivility is targeted and intentional (Steffgen et al., 2011). Studies on cyber-
bullying consistently demonstrate that individuals are more likely to engage
in it online than in-person, which makes it a specialized online misbehavior
(Slonje et al., 2013). According to Lowry et al. (2016), cyber-bullying consists
of two other sub-forms i.e., cyber-stalking and harassment, but these are not
 39 CONSUMER INCIVILITY IN VIRTUAL SPACES … 921

always clearly distinguished. Compared with cyber-stalking, online harassment

has received more attention in research and is said to range from mild to
severe including sustained, aggressive abuse, name-calling and belittling, deri-
sive comments, and is especially prevalent in the political realm (Pew Research
Center, 2021).
While some of these conventional uncivil behaviors remain a commonplace
on SMNs, in recent years they have evolved into new forms and begun to
take place in relation to consumption topics, brands and their practices, and
corresponding consumerism discourse (e.g., Dineva et al., 2017). This is a
direct result of brands and businesses establishing their presence on SMNs
in order to take advantage of the benefits of interactive marketing (Gensler
et al., 2013). These benefits, however, have simultaneously brought about
challenges relating to the causes and consequences of emerging consumers’
online misbehaviors and their appropriate management, research on which is
reviewed in the next part of this chapter.

3 Consumer Incivility on SMNs

Research into key areas pertinent to consumer incivility on SMNs is discussed
here and summarized in Fig. 2.

3.1 Forms of Consumer Incivility

Several prominent forms of consumer incivility have been identified by inter-
active marketing researchers in recent years, as summarized in Table 1 with
real-world examples provided alongside. These are: consumer conflicts (Breit-
sohl et al., 2018; Dineva et al., 2017), malicious word-of-mouth (WOM)
(Hornik et al., 2019), firestorms (Hauser et al., 2017; Herhausen et al., 2019),
anti-brand communities (Romani et al., 2015), fake news sharing (Talwar
et al., 2019), and brand trolling (Dineva & Breitsohl, 2022; Golf-Papez &
Veer, 2017).

Fig. 2 A Framework of Consumer Incivility on SMNs

922 D. DINEVA

Table 1 Uncivil consumer behaviors and examples

Form of uncivil behavior Description and purpose Example

Consumer conflict A two-way exchange aimed at Consumer 1: “Thank you for

expressing divergent opinions continuing to run services
between multiple consumers through out the pandemic and
often in a hostile manner help key workers to work. Great
work by the whole team!” [sic]
Consumer 2: “I’d prefer to
thank the individuals working
than a company who wouldn’t
give a damn. (thumbs up
emoji)”
Malicious nWOM The spreading of undesirable “How is this essential? Non
but often essential should mean vital to
unjustified/unsupported life? Stay home, stay safe and
information about a brand on make pizzas from home!!!
SMNs Shame on you” [sic]
Firestorms The accumulation of incivility Costa Coffee renaming its cup
in response to brand sizes after a video showing
misconduct/practice that large hot drinks fitting into
transforms into a social media regular-sized cups
scandal Tesco’s Tweet “it’s sleepy time
so we’re off to hit the hay! See
you at 8am for more
#TescoTweets ” released
automatically amid a horsemeat
scandal
Anti-brand communities Consumer-hosted anti-brand “I HATE Man Utd” Facebook
groups on SMNs to express community
mutual hate or discontent 409,087 followers https://
towards a brand www.facebook.com/ihatem
anutd
“Apple Sucks”. Reddit
community
10.7 members
https://www.reddit.com/r/
applesucks/
Fake news sharing The deliberate sharing of The Pizza Gate conspiracy
disingenuous information about theory
a brand/business on SMNs Misinformation about
COVID-19 origin and vaccines

(continued)

Consumer conflict. Consumer conflict is an emerging consumer-to-

consumer (C2C) phenomenon that has recently received attention by
researchers (for review see Chandrasapth et al., 2021) and has been conceptual-
ized as one consumer verbally attacking another who reciprocates the hostility
(Breitsohl et al., 2018; Dineva et al., 2017). A distinguishing feature of this
 39 CONSUMER INCIVILITY IN VIRTUAL SPACES … 923

Table 1 (continued)

Form of uncivil behavior Description and purpose Example

Brand trolling Aggravating or disturbing other Consumer: “Why can’t people

consumers or brands with no
apparent purpose
just leave animals alone and let
them live their lives in peace
Every animal has a purpose for
being on Earth; we do not own
them. Why can’t we all live
together in
peace and respect each other.”
[sic]
Troll: “Can’t leave them alone
because they taste so good!! And
most animals are owned…”
[sic]

form of consumer incivility entails a two-way exchange and represents the

outcome of different SMN users harassing one another in relation to a brand
or a consumption activity/topic. The stream of research into consumer conflict
broadly divides consumer conflict based on the type of online consump-
tion community (e.g., Facebook fan page) in which it occurs: brand- versus
consumer-hosted. While the majority of scholars have focused on examining
consumer conflict in business-/brand-hosted social media communities and
the impact it has on commercial outcomes such as brand perceptions and
consumer-brand relationships (e.g., Dineva et al., 2017, 2019; Luedicke et al.,
2017), others have also investigated conflict in consumer-hosted communi-
ties (e.g., forums) (e.g., Matzat & Rooks, 2014; Sibai et al., 2014) and the
consequences of it for the community’s practices, continuation, and well-being
(Dessart et al., 2015).
Motivations behind engaging in this form of online incivility range from
hostile to non-hostile ones (Breitsohl et al., 2018). While the former refers to
strong language, high emotional intensity, and adverse consequences for the
brand such as loss of credibility, the latter largely involves humor and construc-
tive criticism. Research findings further suggest that consumer conflicts can
revolve around disagreements related to others (i.e., the consequences of
consumption on the environment) or related to the self (i.e., consuming to
benefit the self solely) (Dineva et al., 2020). Moreover, scholars have demon-
strated that consumer conflicts can be the byproduct of consumer complaining
behaviors on SMNs and can thus be damaging to the brand’s service recovery
provision (Bacile et al., 2018).
Malicious nWOM . In contrast to consumer conflicts, negative word-of-
mouth (nWOM) is a consumer-to-brand behavior (C2B) that involves the
spreading of undesirable information about a brand on SMNs (Bi et al.,
2019) and has been well researched by customer engagement scholars across
924 D. DINEVA

disciplines. NWOM can be genuine, for example, as a result of consumer

dissatisfaction with a product or brand misconduct (Rodríguez-Torrico et al.,
2021), or more malicious in nature where it is largely unjustified or unsup-
ported (Hornik et al., 2019). In the context of consumer incivility, the latter
applies and nWOM often involves trash-talking (Hickman & Ward, 2007) and
badmouthing (Ilhan et al., 2018) brands on social media. Hickman and Ward
(2007) were among the first to show that the strength of one’s identification
with a preferred brand leads to a sense of outrage and thus the spreading of
malicious nWOM towards oppositional or rival brands. Consequently, Ilhan
et al. (2018) demonstrated that brand supporters navigate across SMNs,
attack rival brands through badmouthing them, while rival brand supporters
defend their preferred brand. Colliander and Wien (2013) further identified six
distinct defensive behaviors that consumers adopt in order to counter negative
information about a brand they support that range from milder to more severe
including advocating, justifying, trivializing, stalling, vouching, and doubting.
Firestorms . Some authors propose that firestorms represent the accumula-
tion of social conflict in SMNs (Hauser et al., 2017), while others consider
this negative online phenomenon to be the amalgamation of nWOM (Hansen
et al., 2018; Herhausen et al., 2019). Despite these different interpretations
of the “firestorm” phenomenon, this aggregate hostile behavior has been
first defined in academic work as “the sudden discharge of large quanti-
ties of messages containing negative WOM and complaint behavior against
a person, company, or group in social media networks” (Pfeffer et al., 2014,
p. 118). Extant research into social media firestorms has focused on inves-
tigating the individual-level motivations of consumers for contributing to
firestorms e.g., brand sabotage (Kähr et al., 2016), as well as collaborative
brand attacks (Rauschnabel et al., 2016), how to effectively detect and manage
these (Hauser et al., 2017; Herhausen et al., 2019) and their consequences
(Hansen et al., 2018). Research agrees that online firestorms are a highly
undesirable social media phenomenon that should be managed. On the one
hand, Hansen et al. (2018) found that 58% of brands suffer from a decrease in
short-term brand perceptions, and 40% experience long-term negative effects
as a consequence of firestorms. Using agent-based modeling, Hauser et al.
(2017) put forward that the effectiveness of collaborating and accommodating
strategies, as well as competitive and assertive conflict management styles,
depend on various contingencies (e.g., community members’ characteristics
and credibility, openness towards others’ opinions) and these should be taken
into account when managing online firestorms. On the other hand, through
text mining, Herhausen et al. (2019) proposed that high- and low-arousal
emotions, structural tie strength, and linguistic style match (between sender
and brand community) all influence the emergence of a firestorm. The authors
further argued that the brand’s response to firestorms must be tailored to
the intensity of the emotional arousal as well as accommodating distinct firm
responses over time to limit the virality of potential online firestorms.
 39 CONSUMER INCIVILITY IN VIRTUAL SPACES … 925

Anti-brand communities . The notion of anti-brand activism is not new.

Researchers have long examined anti-brand activism, including boycotting,
culture jamming, online activism, and several other forms of active resis-
tance (Romani et al., 2015). Engagement in anti-brand activities revolves
around individuals’ disapproval of brands, and symbolizes negative percep-
tions associated with corporations (Iyer & Muncy, 2009). In more recent
years, however, anti-brand activism has started to take the form of anti-
brand communities based on SMNs (Popp et al., 2016). In their conceptual
framework of customer deviance, Fombelle et al. (2020) identified online
anti-brand communities as a prominent uncivil online behavior increasingly
adopted by consumers as a consequence of the interactive and empowering
nature of social media. In other words, consumers who feel empowered estab-
lish anti-brand collectives that criticize, parody, and expose the actions and
intentions of brands (Fournier & Avery, 2011). Importantly, as these commu-
nities are embedded in the wider anti-branding activism movement (Holt,
2002), anti-brand communities are ultimately groups of consumers who hold
negative feelings toward a brand and join together to voice their disapproval
of corporate actions with top global corporate brands being frequent targets
(Osuna-Ramírez et al., 2019). Such communities can be characterized by
brand hate and passionate negative emotions (Zarantonello et al., 2016),
displaying an increased refusal of brand hegemony (Cromie & Ewing, 2009)
and market domination (Holt, 2002).
Fake news sharing . The origin of fake news sharing lies in gossiping as a
deviant in-person behavior. Specifically in evolutionary psychology, gossiping
has been described as behaviors people adopt to influence others (Guerin,
2003). The sharing of misinformation has acquired more attention in the
interactive age of Web 2.0 (Dewan & Ramaprasad, 2014). According to
Talwar et al. (2019), online gossiping and sharing of fake news have a lot
in common since both involve the sharing of misinformation. In turn, others
showed that there has been a rise in instances of sharing malicious fake news
on SMNs, which represents a key challenge for the society, particularly as
62% of individuals rely on social media for obtaining news (Gottfried &
Shearer, 2016). Fake news sharing is often associated with economic and polit-
ical issues—for instance, a large percentage of people recalled believing the
fake news they saw during the US Presidential election in 2016 (Allcott &
Gentzkow, 2017). Tacchini et al. (2017) further added that the volume and
speed of information being shared on SMNs make it virtually impossible to
detect its credibility quickly, thereby providing a thriving environment for fake
news and misinformation. Regarding the mechanisms that facilitate fake news
on SMNs, Talwar et al. (2019) suggested that online trust, self-disclosure, fear
of missing out, and social media fatigue contribute to the intentional sharing
of fake news. The study’s findings also indicated that online trust has a negative
association with authenticating news before sharing.
Brand trolling . Lastly, brand trolling represents a specialized form of
Internet trolling associated with aggravating or disturbing other consumers’
926 D. DINEVA

and brands’ online communications (Golf-Papez & Veer, 2017). In SMNs,

two notable studies provide an account of the main characteristics and
behavioral types of such trolling. Cruz et al. (2018) suggested that trolling
represents the intersection of three social practices: learning (i.e., it starts
with gaining knowledge about the community’s ethos and context), assimila-
tion (i.e., continues with acquiring skills to appear as a genuine community
member) and ends with transgression (i.e., identifying an opportunity to
troll and crafting a message that generates the desired adverse reaction). In
addition, Sanfilippo et al. (2018) differentiated between four distinct types
of trolling (i.e., serious trolling, serious non-trolling, humorous trolling and
humorous non-trolling) based on several dimensions including provocation,
intentionality, pseudo-sincerity and repetition, among others. Importantly,
studies have shown that this uncivil behavior can also be directed towards
a brand and in consumption settings, and particularly towards brands that
consumers are detached from or dislike (Dineva & Breitsohl, 2022). Brand
trolling thus causes disturbance to effective customer-brand engagement on
SMNs and can be particularly damaging to brands.

3.2 Causes and Impact of Consumer Incivility

Causes of uncivil consumer behaviors on SMNs can be differentiated based
on whether these are directed towards the brand, towards other consumers
who support the same brand or towards consumers of rival brands. Husemann
and Luedicke (2013) conducted a conceptual synthesis of studies investigating
incivility in a consumption context and distinguished between three sources
of incivility: emancipatory, authenticity-protecting, and ideology-advocating.
Emancipatory incivility refers to consumer resistance and anti-consumption
practices and has been well studied in past research (e.g., Giesler, 2007;
Thompson & Arsel, 2004). This source of incivility may include consumer
discontent towards, activism against, and avoidance of the brand, which in turn
impede hostility, because consumers who favor a certain brand refuse to accept
negative information from another consumer expressing their discontent or
complaining about their favored brand (Ahluwalia et al., 2000).
Authenticity-protecting refers to incivility whereby consumers engage in
hostile exchanges due to oppositional claims to ownership of the same
consumption object, activity, or simply using different criteria to evaluate
the appropriateness of a consumption process (Arsel & Thompson, 2010;
Kozinets, 2001). This source of incivility may involve consumers contesting
particular behaviors, practices, and expertise (de Valck, 2007) and/or chal-
lenging the approach (idealist or pragmatist) that should be adopted in
the decision-making processes in a virtual space (Hemetsberger, 2006). For
example, differences in opinions, value systems, and personal norms regarding
a brand/consumption topic, which may relate to the symbolic (what a brand
stands for) as well as functional aspects of a brand (what it enables a consumer
to do) represent common sources of this form of incivility. Moreover, incivility
 39 CONSUMER INCIVILITY IN VIRTUAL SPACES … 927

between consumers who support the same brand can occur and particularly
between core (i.e., highly involved consumers) and peripheral (i.e., loosely
connected) consumers due to their differing degrees of involvement with the
brand (Chalmers Thomas et al., 2013). Sources of authenticity-protecting
incivility can further be both temporary events (e.g., a scandal related to a
corporate brand owner or celebrity endorser) or constant conditions (e.g., a
carefully nurtured, long-term brand image) (Ewing et al., 2013).
The final source of incivility, ideology-advocating, takes place when
consumers defend their own personal consumption ideology against non-
consumers of the brand. Such sources stem from brand rivalry and oppo-
sitional loyalty (Ewing et al., 2013), or brand hate (Hegner et al., 2017),
all of which are produced by consumer dissent towards the perceived moral
superiority of their preferred brand over its rival. As a consequence, incivility
occurs between consumers based on cultural and/or social meanings of the
brand, opposing consumer ideologies, and their righteous/ridiculed consump-
tion practices relating to the brand they support (Muniz & O’Guinn, 2001).
Furthermore, research found that the strength of social identification with
a brand leads to a sense of outrage and feelings of pleasure at the misfor-
tune (i.e., Schadenfreude) of its rival and those who support it (Hickman &
Ward, 2007). Similarly, a number of studies demonstrate a strong relation-
ship between a positively differentiated group identity and active engagement
in trash-talking about rival brand community members (Beal et al., 2001).
Colliander and Wien (2013) further confirmed that trash talk causes identity-
related incivility between supporters of rival brands and represents a key driver
of defensive behaviors that consumers adopt in order to counter negative
information about their preferred brand.
While some uncivil consumer behaviors may have a humorous (Breitsohl
et al., 2018) or constructive (Husemann et al., 2015) orientation, the majority
of evidence points to largely negative consequences of these. Research has
attributed this to the scope and nature of SMNs. The hyper-interactive nature
of SMNs leads to an accelerated impact of consumer incivility due to the speed
and extent at which hostility spreads. Consumer incivility on SMNs can spread
with a rapid, broad scale that it is almost unstoppable (Huang & Chou, 2010),
and therefore the consequences can be profound and directly or indirectly
affect all community users and not just their victims or targets (Pew Research
Center, 2021). Moreover, consumer incivility causes significant disruption on
SMNs because it spreads faster than non-offensive communications and thus
reaches more users (Song et al., 2020). As a byproduct, more users are likely
to engage in hostile interactions due to a “contagiousness effect” (Kwon &
Gruzd, 2017).
The consequences of consumer incivility online can be broadly categorized
into social and commercial. On the one hand, uncivil consumer behaviors
disrupt otherwise constructive engagement on social media and distracts users
from engaging in meaningful interactions with like-minded supporters of a
brand (Jiang et al., 2018; Phillips, 2011). Incivility can thus cause consumers
928 D. DINEVA

to temporarily disengage or permanently discontinue their use of social media

after being harassed directly or witnessing others being harassed (Camacho
et al., 2018). As a result, social media users disengage from interacting with
other consumers as well as the brand (Chalmers Thomas et al., 2013). Some
forms of consumer incivility can be even more detrimental and cause the same
emotional and psychological outcomes as face-to-face forms of harassment
such as depression, social anxiety, and low levels of self-esteem (Nicol, 2012).
Scholars have further recognized that due to the increased volume and scale as
well as a number of bystanders on SMNs, consumer incivility can cause greater
emotional and psychological damage compared with conventional in-person
uncivil behaviors (Gillespie, 2006).
On the other hand, brands can suffer significantly in the presence of
consumer incivility by experiencing a loss in credibility if they fail to effectively
deal with it. Consumers’ incivility towards brands motivated by anger or hatred
can be particularly damaging to consumer-brand relationships (Kähr et al.,
2016), which in turn weaken the brand image strength (Cova & D’Antone,
2016) and impact profits (Koku et al., 1997). Scholars have demonstrated
that individuals respond negatively to hostile interactions directed at them,
their views and brands they support (Phillips & Smith, 2004), which can
increase the volume of consumer incivility. Importantly, when consumer inci-
vility targets an individual’s ideological beliefs, it may influence the formation
of negative attitudes about the topic/brand at hand. For brands, this is
especially detrimental since they are unable to effectively communicate promo-
tional messages that facilitate constructive interactions between the members
of their social media communities. Moreover, research has confirmed that
if unmanaged some forms of consumer incivility (e.g., nWOM) accumulate
and can be harmful to the brand’s reputation and result in financial losses
(Hauser et al., 2017; Pfeffer et al., 2014). When incivility occurs in response
to consumer complaining behaviors, it can adversely influence brands’ service
recovery efforts and further impact the perceptions of observing consumers
towards the brand (Bacile et al., 2018). In sum, empirical research shows that
consumer incivility can negatively impact consumers’ attitudes towards the
consumption and adoption of products, which in turn harms brands (Hansen
et al., 2018).

3.3 Consumer Incivility Management

There are three governance mechanisms/actors identified in past research as
suitable to moderating consumer incivility on SMNs: individual users, brands,
and platforms (Dineva, 2022; Dineva & Breitsohl, 2022).
First, a stream of research into social media communities created and
governed by individual users recommended that the management of online
incivility is done at the micro-level whereby individual instances of incivility
are independently addressed by community users when they occur (e.g., Huse-
mann et al., 2015). This perspective on incivility management scholars deem
 39 CONSUMER INCIVILITY IN VIRTUAL SPACES … 929

is suited to smaller, close-knit communities whereby moderation depends on

volunteer moderators, regular users who are familiar with one another as well
as a history of interactions that provide the familiarity and trust necessary for a
moderator to arbitrate between aggrieved parties (Gillespie, 2017). Within this
incivility management perspective, two main actions have been put forward
when incivility occurs: a democratic versus autocratic approach (Husemann
et al., 2015). A democratic approach to incivility management highlights that
an incivility incident has violated the social norms, gives those involved the
opportunity to justify their misconduct and further elaborates on the existing
rules of community engagement. In contrast, an autocratic approach is utilized
when the uncivil act becomes highly dysfunctional and ultimately leads to the
exclusion or removal of community members.
A second approach to incivility management is adopted by the busi-
nesses/brands who host communities on SMNs since they are perceived as
having the main responsibility over ensuring civil engagement on their pages
(Dineva et al., 2017, 2020). This, in turn, has encouraged the development
of a second (middle-level) perspective on incivility management and several
studies discuss a range of moderation practices that are used by brands to
manage incivility (e.g., Hauser et al., 2017; Homburg et al., 2015; Dineva
et al., 2017). These practices range in their style and orientation from passive
to active and from cooperative to authoritative. Passive incivility management
generally refers to avoiding the uncivil interactions (Hauser et al., 2017) and
observing without participating (Homburg et al., 2015). In contrast, active
management consists of a range of verbalized moderator practices that address
the incivility incident, which can be grouped into cooperative versus author-
itative approaches. More cooperative strategies involve a degree of positive
reinforcement and are aimed at encouraging desirable community behaviors
and interactions, whereas authoritative management tends to be more assertive
and is used to address more severe and harmful uncivil behaviors (Matzat &
Rooks, 2014). Examples of cooperative strategies involve bolstering (i.e.,
affirming a brand supporter), informing/educating, while more authoritative
strategies include asserting (i.e., disagreeing with the aggressor), pacifying (i.e.,
requesting a change in behavior), and censoring content (Dineva et al., 2020).
Third, researchers have put forward social media platforms (e.g., Facebook,
Instagram, Twitter) as a necessary factor in moderating incivility due to the
increased prevalence of large-scale, multimillion follower social media commu-
nities and new content and users added at an unstoppable pace (Lampe et al.,
2014). This macro-level approach to consumer incivility management involves
social media platforms (as opposed to brands or individual users) adopting
more proactive moderation mechanisms to limit, minimize, or eliminate the
factors and circumstances that facilitate uncivil behaviors (e.g., reporting inci-
vility, filtering offensive comments) (Gov.uk, 2020). A recent example of
such moderation approach was adopted by Spotify introducing new guide-
lines on automatic and proactive management that prevents the spread of
misinformation (The Guardian, 2022).
930 D. DINEVA

4 General Discussion and Concluding Remarks

Three broad theoretical implications can be drawn from existing research
into consumer incivility on SMNs discussed here that inform future avenues
for interactive marketing research and practice. First, the topic of consumer
incivility has thus far received some attention by several research disciplines
that have focused on conceptualizing the wide range of uncivil behav-
iors taking place on SMNs together with tentatively understanding their
antecedents and consequences (e.g., Chandrasapth et al., 2021; Fombelle
et al., 2020). Notwithstanding these contributions, marketing research
into uncivil consumer interactions and behaviors remains incomplete and
disjointed. While multidisciplinary scholars have utilized a range of terms to
investigate different adverse phenomena on SMNs (e.g., Su et al., 2018),
a consistent approach to studying and conceptualizing these is required to
be adopted by interactive marketing researchers, given that interactivity is at
the heart of such misbehaviors. It is thus recommended that a more holistic
approach to studying online misbehaviors is necessary, for example, through
conducting systematic literature reviews or meta-analyses, to better understand
how these interactive misbehaviors relate to one another (e.g., one uncivil
behavior produces or is the outcome of another), and where they overlap and
diverge. This will in turn inform both researchers and practitioners about more
effective overarching approaches to the management of online incivility.
Second and relatedly, due to the disjointed nature of research into the
different forms of consumer incivility, findings relating to their direct conse-
quences remain extant and inconsistent. Generally, few marketing studies are
concerned with the commercial outcomes of online incivility such as brand
equity and reputation (e.g., Kähr et al., 2016), while even fewer focus on
examining their social consequences such as the well-being of social media
users and their engagement on SMNs (e.g., Camacho et al., 2018). As such,
research into policy, legislation, and governance implications encompassing
online incivility and its management is important, but currently lacking. Future
interdisciplinary research is needed, for example by the interactive marketing
and CSR disciplines, given that this is where misbehaviors and governance
topics naturally intersect. In a similar vein, because some uncivil behaviors
transcend the boundaries of SMNs and have significant adverse consequences
for individuals’ real lives, a multidisciplinary approach to studying these is
recommended. For example, combining interactive marketing and sociology
lenses can help to better understand how the consequences of such undesirable
online human behaviors can be minimized and tackled by the introduction of
appropriate policies.
Third, current knowledge into the management of incivility on SMNs
focuses on three actors: individual users, brands, and platforms. While some
actors appear to be more appropriate for dealing with certain forms of incivility
(e.g., individual users to report incivility; brands to manage brand trolling;
platforms to tackle misinformation), understanding the combined efforts of
 39 CONSUMER INCIVILITY IN VIRTUAL SPACES … 931

platforms, brands, and individual users to manage online incivility is needed

from an interactive marketing perspective. This is because the hyper-interactive
nature of SMNs means that not only active users, but also observers can get
involved in incivility incidents and help moderate these. Future research should
thus systematically investigate the instances in which individual users versus
brands versus platforms are better suited to managing incivility.
The research discussed in this chapter also raises important implications for
marketing and brand managers practicing on SMNs. Incivility can occur in
multiple forms and has been shown to have diverse social and commercial
outcomes. From a social perspective, consumer incivility can increase hostility,
decrease consumer well-being, cause mental distress, and contribute to feel-
ings of social isolation. Commercially, the outcomes of consumer incivility
undermine consumer-brand identification and relationships, thus impacting
consumers’ passive and active engagement on SMNs, which can further lead
to brands’ diminishing reputation and financial gains. It is therefore an imper-
ative for social media brand and marketing managers to adopt corporate digital
responsibility (CDR) principles that represent a set of shared values and norms
guiding a brand’s operations and communications with respect to digital tech-
nology and data (Lobschat et al., 2021). Such CDR is no longer a desirable
condition for brands, but a core principle that should be inclusive of guidelines
that ensure the constructive and civil engagement on SMNs.

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 CHAPTER 40

The Dark Side of Gamification in Interactive

Marketing

Chitrakshi Bhutani and Abhishek Behl

1 Introduction
There is no denying that playing games improve concentration and cogni-
tive abilities. Research has also shown that gamers exhibit better processing
and decision-making skills than non-gamers (Egenfeldt-Nielsen et al., 2013;
Reynaldo et al., 2021). Games engage players through gameplay, but many
also entertain by transporting them to a virtual environment called a game
world (Bayliss, 2017). In reality, gameplay is an interaction between the player
and the game world (Isbister, 2006). Generally, any game would have an
objective that the designers have crafted for the users (players) to achieve with
the available resources. Resources refer to lives, points, power-ups, boosters,
quests, and gaming nomenclature. Players use these resources and the informa-
tion about the missions (objectives) to be accomplished by fictitious characters,
sometimes called avatars (Bayliss, 2017). Game designers use these elements
to facilitate players in accomplishing their objectives in the game; and reward
them with badges, level-ups, points, and tickets to pursue more significant
goals or missions in the game (Sicart, 2008).

C. Bhutani
Fortune Institute of International Business, Delhi, India
A. Behl (B)
Management Development Institute, Gurgaon, India
e-mail: abhishek.behl@mdi.ac.in

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 939

Switzerland AG 2023
C. L. Wang (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Interactive Marketing,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14961-0_40
940 C. BHUTANI AND A. BEHL

The fundamental elements of a gamified application, namely the “game

mechanics,” are the mechanisms agents use to interact with the gaming envi-
ronment (Deterding et al., 2011; Zainuddin et al., 2020). There have been
several definitions of game mechanics proposed by researchers and designers
(Jarvinen, 2018; Zainuddin et al., 2020) that can be applied in various situa-
tions. Gamification includes the game mechanics of digital points, badges, or
leaderboards (Deterding et al., 2011; Hamari & Koivisto, 2015; Zainuddin
et al., 2020). There is an extensive body of research supporting games as
teaching tools (Dikcius & Urbonavicius, 2020). Toda et al. (2019) developed
a model for client-focused gamification in educational settings. Gamifica-
tion has become one of the most popular trends in electronic markets and
commerce; understanding it from the perspective of service marketing could
enable the application of proven models in such areas to the development
of gamified services (Bandara & Ioras, 2016; Gulinna & Lee, 2020), which
demonstrates a gap concerning e-Learning using gamified elements. Gamifi-
cation may enable social marketers to leverage consumers’ intrinsic motivation
to play games (Beça et al., 2020) to spur intrinsic motivation in non-game
behavior such as exercise (Beça et al., 2020). In contrast to extrinsic motiva-
tion, which stems from external rewards or punishments, intrinsic motivation,
or motivation derived from intrinsic benefits of the task itself (Beça et al.,
2020), has been found to predict the maintenance of behavior change signifi-
cantly. In contrast, extrinsic motivation has been shown to diminish behavioral
maintenance.
For instance, in education, gamification is considered a strategic approach
to enhance a student’s content knowledge and overall learning experience.
The extensive use of video game design features in course components, such
as point scoring and competition with others, is done to ensure learners’ enjoy-
ment (Dikcius et al., 2021). However, the strategic imperative is to increase
engagement by captivating their attention and motivating them to continue
learning. Points, badges, and leaderboards (PBL) approaches are common in
learning environments (Toda et al., 2017). In a similar vein, marketers in
today’s digital or online marketing environments seek ways to interact with
their target audiences and increase their engagement with a product or service.
Gamification is gradually becoming their go-to solution (Yang et al., 2017).
Email and content marketing, e-commerce marketing (Behl et al., 2020),
social media marketing (Aydin, 2015), online advertising (Mishra & Malhotra,
2021; Terlutter & Capella, 2013), and customer relationship management
(Hwang & Choi, 2020) all incorporate gamified features. Gamification has
been shown to boost brand recall, enhance social media engagement, and
increase email open rates, click-through rates, website traffic, and lead conver-
sions when used effectively in online marketing (Atchison, 2021).
The dark side of gamification is as follows. In other words, gamifica-
tion is not virtuous or immoral in all domains and tasks (Bandara & Ioras,
2016; Gulinna & Lee, 2020). Since gamification is often used to motivate
users, gamification does not add any value if there is sufficient motivation
 40 THE DARK SIDE OF GAMIFICATION IN INTERACTIVE MARKETING 941

already (e.g., meeting friends) (Jarvinen, 2018; Zainuddin et al., 2020). Some
applications require utmost speed, usability, and urgency (e.g., paramedics
or firefighters), and adding gamified elements could have disastrous effects.
Additionally, there is the issue of gamification clashing with ethics (e.g.,
casinos, gambling, game addiction) (Jarvinen, 2018; Zainuddin et al., 2020).
This is the gray area the authors will address in this chapter. Gamifica-
tion is being used by several businesses to improve their online marketing
efforts (Hsu et al., 2017; Yang et al., 2017). They achieve this goal by
incorporating a variety of game-like aspects into their promotional activities
like Rewards (random rewards, fixed rewards, time-bound rewards); Social
(competitions, guilds/teams, social networking); Achievement (challenges,
progressions/levels, certificates, quests, battles); Free spirited (customization,
creativity tools/objects, choices, unlockables); and, Player (points, badges,
leaderboards, prizes, virtual currency, lottery) to name a few (Marczewski,
2017).
The above discussion clarifies the meaning of gamification, its usage, and
its importance in online marketing (Jarvinen, 2018; Zainuddin et al., 2020).
Therefore, the main objective of this study is to explore the dark side
of using gamification in online marketing (Hsu et al., 2017; Yang et al.,
2017). The discussion of the dark side revolves around three key themes:
Design-based challenges in gamification, Challenges in adopting gamified
marketing solutions (pre-implementation, during implementation, and post-
implementation), and User-based issues leading to lesser or no impact of
gamification in the context of online marketing (Hsu et al., 2017; Yang et al.,
2017). Moreover, the description of many game-related terminologies sets
the tone for further reading. Now, let’s dive more profound into gamifi-
cation in email and content marketing, customer relationship management,
e-commerce, and social media marketing with industry examples (Hsu et al.,
2017; Yang et al., 2017).

1.1 Gamification in Email and Content Marketing

Email marketing is a popular channel used by marketers to interact with
their target audience. Every email sent to a potential or current consumer
might be considered email marketing in the broadest sense. It entails sending
advertisements, soliciting business, purchases, and offering discounts. Despite
the growing popularity of email marketing, it has some pitfalls too. Today’s
consumers live in an information-rich world, where they are exposed to
discounts, offers, and deals on a wide range of products and services from
several brands and companies. And marketers consider email as a preferred
medium to interact with their customers. According to a study conducted by
McKinsey & Co in 2015, email marketing is 40% more effective than social
media marketing. Yet, marketers are figuring out ways to increase open rate,
click-through rates, and conversions; and reduce the unsubscribe rate of the
emails sent to their potential or existing customers (Aufreiter et al., 2015).
942 C. BHUTANI AND A. BEHL

To keep the interest of consumers intact and reap the benefits of email
marketing, marketers can employ gamification in email content to engage
users. The use of gamification in the email content might not ensure direct
sales or conversion, but it may indirectly affect the sales. One of the most chal-
lenging tasks for an email marketer is to expand their mailing list consistently.
Lead magnets, freebies, and discounts don’t always work, and many people
join up just for the rewards, then unsubscribe or ignore emails. Gamification
can save the day by stimulating awards in the discounts. It can induce a desire
in a user to win prizes, following the call-to-action in the email content. In the
event of an important announcement or a special day sale, quizzes and riddles
can be used to build up anticipation and excitement.
The fun component of this game will come in helpful if your objective
is to make your email stand out among the rest. Commonly used gamified
email content comprises tests, contests, quests, interactive images, spot the
difference and so on to increase user engagement, which further enhances
brand recall. Despite the fact that gamification is built on motivation and the
desire to earn a prize, gamers are frequently drawn in for the only purpose of
amusement.

1.2 Gamification in Customer Relationship Management

Effective customer relationship management (CRM) systems help provide
better customer service and enrich customer data. However, salespersons
are often reluctant to use CRM (customer relationship management) soft-
ware. This is because updating customer information on the CRM portal is
demanding and offers no real incentive to the salespeople. Gamification may
help save the day by incorporating games into tedious tasks like entering and
updating lead information; orders/revenue booked information, sales conver-
sions, etc. Integrating game design in the CRM systems may entice salespeople
to complete the mundane tasks like updating lead information in systems by
not realizing they are feeding information to the system. Any incomplete
activity of the salesperson regarding customer data update will appear as a
prompt to play a game. For example, CRM software Compass uses quests to
get the salesperson on the task “Complete your five pending quests to compete
with others on the leader board.” Such prompt ensures data entry and fosters
a sense of competition among the sales team to keep their quests updated and
secure top ranks on the leaderboard.
Gamification can also be used to get referrals from existing customers. It is
an effective strategy to promote the brand through word-of-mouth referrals.
This benefits the marketers: promote the brand, acquire new customers with
the least cost, and create brand loyalists. Starbucks has developed a loyalty
program that encourages customers to stick with its brand. They reward loyalty
points to users who get others on board in the form of stars, in-app currency,
and bonus points. And as a result of these simple incentives, their consumers
are likely to recommend the app to their friends.
 40 THE DARK SIDE OF GAMIFICATION IN INTERACTIVE MARKETING 943

1.3 Gamification in E-commerce

As shopping became online, many of the fun, participatory, and social aspects
of shopping vanished. It does, however, open a whole new universe of exciting
and engaging activities that may make buying even more addictive than
before. E-commerce companies like Amazon and eBay extensively use game-
like elements or gamification to nurture brand loyalty and boost customer
lifetime value. E-commerce gamification ties tasks, goals, and rewards with a
branded experience. It encourages participation, creates engaging experiences,
and fosters a sense of ownership over a brand’s products, all of which help
engage and retain customers. The underlying principle is to increase the user’s
time on the website and ultimately increase conversions.
Psychology is at the heart of gamification, and companies like eBay effec-
tively use it to stimulate a customer’s sense of ownership and possession. Every
time a user purchases on the website, they are rewarded with stars, feedback,
and the opportunity to compete against other shoppers browsing the site in
real time. Even if users have to pay eBay to make a purchase, winning bids
gives them a sense of power.
Woot.com is another excellent example. Users visit the e-commerce site
at 11:59 p.m. and refresh the page to unlock the product on sale for that
day, which is only available to a limited number of buyers. Woot employs
gamification in this way to build a strong desire among its visitors to return to
the website and increase conversion rates. By presenting a single product at a
specific discount price every day, it gives the impression of exclusivity.
Amazon.com, the world’s largest e-commerce retailer, employs gamified
rewards to keep customers interested on its site and tempt them to make
purchases by redeeming rewards earned through gameplay. Amazon.com uses
various methods to increase interaction, including a spinning wheel, scratch
cards, and quizzes.

1.4 Gamification and Social Media Marketing

Likes, comments, and shares on a company’s post and marketing content are
social media engagement indicators. It aids in brand recognition and gener-
ates buzz in the social media environment for businesses. On the other hand,
customers find it difficult to ingest marketing information and remember it
due to the diversity of social media marketing campaigns run by many compa-
nies. As a result, companies are starting to use gamified marketing to improve
their social media game.
Twitter polls, for example, are a common game design tool. Users are
also rewarded for rating, liking, commenting on, or contributing content to
a social media campaign. Creating a social media treasure hunt and posting
trivia questions on social media are also used by companies.
M&M exploited gamification in a very straightforward way on social media.
They invited users to find a ‘Where’s Wally’-style photo on their social media
944 C. BHUTANI AND A. BEHL

sites. Over 25,000 likes, 10,000 comments, and 6,000 shares were gener-
ated by a single post. Apart from this, LinkedIn has turned the process of
constructing your profile into a game with its progress bar. You can see your
“profile strength,” which encourages users to complete all of their tasks when
you’re on your profile.
Because gamification is context-dependent, misusing game design in
marketing campaigns can hurt user experience and motivation. Surprisingly,
the game industry has prompted marketers to use comparable elements in their
online marketing campaigns. However, when using the appropriate design
aspects in a specific situation, attention should be given. With explanations
of frequently used terminology in the game vocabulary and real-world exam-
ples, a strong foundation of what gamification is and how it is employed in
allied marketing functions is built in the introduction section.
This chapter aims to unfold the “Dark Side of Gamification in Online
Marketing.” The bright side encapsulates gamification in online marketing
to boost customer engagement and loyalty (Hsu et al., 2017; Robson et al.,
2016; Yang et al., 2017). Academic literature has extensively highlighted the
positives, giving very little attention to the dark side. On the flip side, gami-
fication does have a dark side, and its use may not yield the desired results
(“Gamification is a dark pattern,” 2020). It is now an opportune time to study
the negative effects of incorporating gamification in online marketing.
The first section of this chapter describes an introduction to the game world
and gamification in marketing and allied marketing functions. The second
section includes a literature review on the dark side of gamification in online
marketing and the TCCM framework (Theories, contexts, characteristics, and
methods) used in the dark side. The third section includes critical dimen-
sions of the dark side of gamification in online marketing and the developed
conceptual framework. This section answers the following questions: (a) What
are the design-based issues in gamification? (b) What are the challenges in
adopting gamified marketing solutions? And (c) What are the user-based issues
in gamification? In addition, a unified framework has been given for a better
understanding of the critical dimensions of the dark side of gamification in
online marketing. Forth section includes a detailed future research agenda.

2 Literature Review
The dark side of gamification is not just limited to the online contexts; it
prevails in the offline contexts. Since the term’s inception, gamification has
spawned a plethora of research in the field of education. However, there
is a scarcity of primary and secondary research investigating the negative
consequences of gamification on learners and studies examining the gami-
fication design associated with those adverse effects. Kwon and Özpolat
(2021) conducted an experimental study on the student’s content knowl-
edge, learning, and perception of the course under the conditions of gamified
course assessments (Kwon & Özpolat, 2021). Based on this assumption,
 40 THE DARK SIDE OF GAMIFICATION IN INTERACTIVE MARKETING 945

the authors want to answer the following research question: “What are the
negative impacts of gamification when applied to educational contexts?” The
authors intend to answer this issue by examining the negative consequences of
gamification and the gamified learning designs that relate to it.
Apart from this, the well-being of the frontline employees is often a cause
of concern in the organizational context. Owing to this reason, firms use
gamification to enhance employee engagement and performance. It leads to
improvement in performance, thereby leading to a competitive advantage of
the firm. However, research has shown contrasting effects of the gamified
treatment to solve this problem. This chapter seeks to answer the research
topic of how academics interpreted the negative consequences of gamification
and to discover what we know about the dark side.
Several reviewed literature evaluations state that there are evident restric-
tions and potentially harmful side effects to be aware of (Table 1).
The literature on the dark side of gamification has been captured in the
workplace, learning, education, online communities, and mobile applications
dedicated to learning and health management. Most studies have identified
unintended outcomes of using gamified services related to the end-user expe-
rience. The end-user refers to the party for whom the gamified ecosystem has
been developed. Studies have failed to shine a light on the issues prevailing in
the backend. Although some studies addressing the dark side have scratched
the surface by mentioning discrepancies in gamified systems, some have
identified challenges in the adoption stages. Both design-based issues and
implementation challenges of the gamified solutions in online marketing serve
as factors affecting the user’s experience with interactive technologies. That
said, the focus of the next section is on looking backward into challenges
and issues in gamified systems, not just focused on the end-user but other
stakeholders also.
Several of the reviewed literature evaluations state that there are evident
restrictions and potentially harmful side effects to be aware of. However, only
a few studies have made a step ahead in concretizing the ethics of gamification,
and there are evident ethical and practical problems that remain unaddressed.
Nonetheless, several researchers are aware of the negative consequences and
potential side effects. Following that, this chapter will describe a few of the
available research pathways concerning the negative consequences of gamifi-
cation. To begin, the authors may assume that where gamification is used,
there are also similar challenges that have been seen with games. As a result,
the issues with cheating found in all single-player, multiplayer, and online
multiplayer games are present in gamified solutions.

2.1 Key Dimensions of the Dark Side of Gamification in Online

Marketing
This section will discuss the three critical dimensions of the dark side
of applying gamification in online marketing: design-based challenges in
946 C. BHUTANI AND A. BEHL

Table 1 A review of literature on the dark side of gamification through the TCCM
framework (Singh & Dhir, 2019) (Source Developed by authors)

Studies Theories Context Characteristics Methods

Andrade Flow theory Online Addiction, undesired Literature-based

et al. (2016) learning competition, and conceptualization
off-task behavior
Hyrynsalmi NA General Competition over Literature review
et al. (2017) collaboration, less
challenging, loss of
productivity
Toda et al. NA Education Indifference, loss of Literature review
(2017) performance,
undesired behavior,
declining effects
Leclercq Equity theory Online brand Customer Experimental
et al. (2018) community experience, survey
dis-engagement, fear
of losing
Trang and Flow theory Language Loss of Experimental
Weiger learning self-consciousness, survey
(2019) application action-awareness
merging, the threat
of information
disclosure
Leclercq Social exchange Online brand Member experience, Experimental
et al. (2020) theory, Justice community community survey
theories participation
Hammedi NA Workplace Dis-engagement, Managerial
et al. (2021) well-being, loss of interviews,
performance experimental
survey
Kwon and Self-determination Course Content knowledge, Experimental
Özpolat theory assessment student’s perceptions survey
(2021)
Yang and Li Person-Environment Health Privacy invasion, Descriptive
(2021) fit management social overload, Survey
gamification
overload

gamification, challenges in adopting gamified marketing solutions: pre-

implementation, during implementation, and post-implementation and user-
based issues leading to lesser or no impact of gamification (Fig. 1).

2.2 Design-Based Challenges in Gamification

Gamification is only useful when it prompts specific action to pursue a goal.
Gartner, aware of the similar implication, published a survey in 2012, claiming
 40 THE DARK SIDE OF GAMIFICATION IN INTERACTIVE MARKETING 947

Fig. 1 Critical
dimensions of the dark
side of gamification in
online marketing (Source
Developed by authors)

that 80% of gamified apps will fail to meet their objectives (Myers, 2012).
According to the report, the failure of these applications is due to poor design,
which includes worthless points and badges. Businesses use gamification in
instances where it isn’t even required. Thus, superficial game mechanics are to
blame for gamification’s failure in online marketing (Myers, 2012).

2.3 Lack of Planning and Strategy

One-size-fits-all is a myth. Marketers segment their customers based on geog-
raphy, demographics, psychographics, and lifestyles because they know this
fact. To ensure long-term viability, strategic segmentation is essential to cater
to the needs of various groups of customers. Unfortunately, game designers
use a uniform marketing strategy for all customers. This is why gamification
attempts are certain to fail—playing a specific game on an e-commerce website
while shopping may motivate one individual while doing nothing for the other.
Gamification, like any other form of entertainment, must take into account the
personalities of its users. For example, Farmville and World of Warcraft appeal
to two quite different types of gamers.
It is equally critical for marketers to assess the reasons for their marketing
strategies’ success. Whether the rise in revenue is attributable to a strong
marketing strategy or the use of gamification must be thoroughly investigated.
It’s plausible that marketers are incentivizing customers to play games, but
the actual reason for their success is their effective marketing. In a nutshell,
so many business gamification projects fail to identify success factors and, as a
result, fail to encourage desired behaviors.

2.4 Bad Processes

Game elements are applied to business processes to make it a more engaging
and fun activity. In the context of online marketing, business processes include
948 C. BHUTANI AND A. BEHL

the mechanism of asking for customer referrals, requesting feedback, signing

up for an email newsletter, and downloading the mobile application, to name
a few. Digital marketers often struggle to get these tasks done by customers.
Sometimes, the process is mundane, and hence, customers abandon the task
without completing it. It is also plausible that there are discrepancies in the
system. Marketers have since long resorted to gamifying such processes to get
the customer engaged in providing referrals, feedback, and mobile-app use
without ensuring the efficiency of their processes in terms of goal clarity and
procedures.
As a result, gamifying bad goals can be as harmful as disregarding them
entirely. If a sales team’s closing procedure is inefficient, rewarding employees
to follow those steps would just dig a bigger hole. Apps for business gami-
fication should be linked to specific business processes. Game mechanics will
make the process more fun and encourage success if it works. However, if the
process fails, companies will be rewarding people to execute inefficiently.

2.5 Poor Design

Marketers have a commonly held assumption that gamifying everything and
everything will interest customers. If it’s only about persuading internet
customers to complete a task, the tech-savvy have smartphones on which they
may play games, listen to music, and watch movies. As a result, successful
game design feature implementation comes into play. Many companies would
engage an in-house design team to create a gamified system.
Such businesses do not put in the effort to understand their customers’
motivations. “Which game element would motivate a consumer to complete
a specific task?” Do we require a mystery aspect for extra purchases on the
internet, such as a scratch card or virtual currency (reward points) that would
entice our customers? Game designers must find answers to such questions in
consultation with marketing professionals.

2.6 Unrealistic Expectations

Gamification, in general, and game mechanics, in particular, are based on the
motivation principle. A customer’s desire to execute a specific activity on a
company’s website or mobile application or respond to an email marketing
campaign is fueled by motivation. Most of the time, intrinsic requirements are
the driving force behind specific behaviors. On the other hand, marketers have
begun to use gamification to create external stimuli or extrinsic motivation
to get customers to complete particular tasks. Extrinsic motivation comprises
rewards-based marketing. For example, the “Spin the Wheel” game offered by
e-commerce retailer Amazon on its website is an excellent example of reward-
based marketing. They provide discounts based on the game results. Extrinsic
motivation triggers customers to purchase by utilizing discounts received by
 40 THE DARK SIDE OF GAMIFICATION IN INTERACTIVE MARKETING 949

playing games. However, marketers have some unrealistic expectations of

gamified approach to marketing.
It’s crucial to remember those game mechanisms are best at getting people
to start doing things, not for keeping them going. That’s because the influence
of any gaming mechanic will wear off after a while. When done correctly,
however, people will see the value of the new behavior and continue it on
their intrinsic desire by the time the extrinsic motivator has worn off.
Many online learning platforms, such as Kahoot.com, use game principles
to encourage healthy competition among students. Academics use their plat-
form to motivate students to learn by gamifying educational components such
as quizzes. PBL (points, badges, and leaderboards) is a popular strategy, as
covered in earlier sections of the chapter, because it instills a sense of competi-
tion. Many firms execute the bare minimum points, badges, and levels instead
of leveraging scientific game design ideas and applying them to commer-
cial objectives. Many organizations get trapped in the PBL fallacy, thereby
disregarding the more subtle and more significant game design components,
such as balancing competition and collaboration or developing a viable game
economy. Competition is not always a motivator; it can also become a barrier
to non-performance. Marketers fail to create a blend of collaboration elements
along with competition.

3 Challenges in Adopting Gamified

Marketing Solutions: Pre-Implementation,
During Implementation, and Post-Implementation
3.1 Pre-Implementation Challenges
3.1.1 Lack of a Clear Definition
Companies face today’s dynamic business environment issues that can jeop-
ardize their success and growth strategy. Most of the time, managers fail to
recognize the problem and instead focus on improving various procedures
other than those that are genuinely required. When the problem to be solved
is not clearly defined, or when an irrelevant business challenge is recognized,
any solution strategy will fail. Therefore, marketing managers must clearly
define the problem they aim to tackle through the use of gamification to
ensure a smooth implementation of gamification. For example, the company’s
problem could be increasing online sales by a certain amount that is feasible
and measurable.
A desk analysis of what the company is doing now to target the proper
target audience, strategies utilized to improve sales, or existing customer rela-
tionship management status is also part of defining the problem. For example,
you might discover that the organization has targeted the wrong audience,
resulting in low online sales.
950 C. BHUTANI AND A. BEHL

3.1.2 Lack of a Goal or Desired Outcomes

All of the goals and outcomes that corporations seek to attain must be
subjected to a detailed cost–benefit analysis during the pre-implementation
stage. Marketers must be able to precisely outline the goals they wish to
achieve with the help of gamification. Due to a lack of defined goals or measur-
able outcomes, marketers may be unable to enjoy the benefits of gamified
solutions due to a poor selection of game mechanics and game elements.
For example, suppose a firm wishes to enhance online sales by cross-selling
and up-selling through its e-commerce websites. In that case, clearly defined
sales targets and a cost–benefit analysis of using a gamified solution should be
considered. Even if the company employs gamification, it might not get good
results in the absence of a goal or desired outcomes.

3.1.3 Lack of Buy-In from Stakeholders

Stakeholders are those inside an organization whose consent is required to
obtain the necessary backing for gamification deployment. Top management,
functional heads, middle-level managers (marketing, information systems,
customer service), and so on are examples of stakeholders. Financial aid,
technical assistance, consumer data and analytics, and game design are all possi-
bilities. Failure of gamification efforts could be caused by a lack of buy-in from
stakeholders to collaborate.

3.1.4 Make v/s Buy Decisions

Customer engagement and loyalty can be increased by including gaming
aspects into the marketing mix. It’s easier said than done because the game
designers must create a reliable system to keep the show running smoothly.
It is necessary to have organizational capabilities in terms of sound financial
assistance, technological capabilities, in-house gaming expertise, information
systems, and digital marketing talents. Building an in-house team can be a
challenge for businesses because it requires significant acquiring and training
resources. If the firm is uncertain about any of the above, it can outsource
gamification design services.

3.2 During Implementation Challenges

3.2.1 Test Marketing or A/B Testing
It’s crucial to check what kind of solution is functioning and what isn’t
throughout the implementation stage. A/B testing is a test marketing method
for the gamified solution. As a result, marketers do A/B tests at two levels:
input and output. The sort of audience to be targeted is defined at the input
level. The demographics, buying history, and personality attributes of the
potential or existing customers are used to target them. The type of reward
offered to a specific audience category is determined at the output level.
Marketers build such permutations and combinations to test the efficacy of
the gamified product on the market. It is tested on a small number of people
 40 THE DARK SIDE OF GAMIFICATION IN INTERACTIVE MARKETING 951

in the beginning. After the marketers find the solution viable, the project
is launched fully. Although A/B testing may be done manually, customer
data platforms and other specialized BI tools make it easier, faster, and more
effective.

3.2.2 Technology Equipping

Games are complicated artifacts, and game engineering is a difficult process
that involves expertise in design, psychology, and programming, to mention a
few. The developer team must be able to balance all of the above.
Another difficult aspect of gamification deployment is integrating game
design into all key business processes and platforms related to customer
management. Customers’ data may be synchronized with the platform that
Users utilize to interact with the company’s products as part of this integra-
tion. If a customer visits an e-commerce shopping website to make purchases,
the games should be tailored to their preferences. Put another way, using
gamified features like a wheel of fortune, quizzes, and quests to incentivize
shoppers should be done using big data analytics. The absence of sophisticated
technology might hinder the path to engagement through gamification.
To stay relevant, the game should be continuously updated. A team of
software and system developers should continuously be watching out for a
requirement for updating. Marketers do not want the customers to play an
outdated game.

3.3 Post-Implementation Challenges

3.3.1 UX/UI Design
The success of any mobile application, e-commerce website, or interactive
marketing platform is marked by its user experience and user interface design.
A great user experience is defined by the customer’s response to online
gamified marketing. If the customer interaction with the gamified product
is positive, it is said to have a positive UX. The markers of a great UX are
entertainment, engagement, and interaction.
Human interaction should be the focus of the user interface. As customers
connect with online gamified platforms, designers should develop a narra-
tive in which gamified elements stand out while consistently evoking the
company’s values. Customers should have a good time while utilizing the
gamified service and achieving specific goals simultaneously. However, to
improve user interface design, it is necessary to signpost and highlight gami-
fication in online marketing scenarios. Designers use banners, advertisements,
and alerts to encourage customers to use gamified affordances. It’s always a
challenge for game designers to improve the user experience and user interface
while maintaining a consistent brand image in the minds of their customers.
952 C. BHUTANI AND A. BEHL

3.3.2 Cyber-Security and Data Privacy

Cyber assaults and data security have become a hot topic in the gaming busi-
ness. The use of games in online marketing environments also raises data
security and privacy concerns. Because the players in online marketing are a
company’s current or potential consumers, any breach of privacy, i.e., personal
information, would jeopardize the customer’s trust in the organization.

3.4 User-Based Issues Leading to Lesser or No Impact of Gamification

There are two sides to every coin, and the buzzword gamification is no
exception. The bright side of gamification entails the positive effects of incor-
porating game mechanics in a non-gaming or online marketing context.
There’s a reason why gamification-enabled websites and applications retain
their customers.
For example, Nike + , a fitness app, is a masterpiece in gamification imple-
mentation. Nike + uses a sophisticated system of progress bars, badges, and
leaderboards to track the user’s physical activity and encourage them to beat
their records. It also offers tools that allow users to share their progress
on social media. Users can demonstrate their sense of belonging to Nike’s
community and urge others to join the league in this way, resulting in
increased Nike + sales (Kuo, 2015).
There’s a reason we get hooked on video games. The users keep returning
for excitement and engagement. On the flip side, research also shows that poor
gamification design implementation can reduce users’ motivation, leading to
adverse outcomes. Some of the dark side outcomes of incorporating game
mechanics into online marketing are discussed below:

3.5 Undesired Competition

Game designers tend to foster competition among app users in online
marketing, such as gamified fitness or learning apps. They do it to excite
consumers and assist them in progressing through their quests. Users, on the
other hand, sometimes react negatively to it. They believe that competition
in gamified apps is meaningless and that it demotivates them rather than posi-
tively affecting their motivation levels (Andrade et al., 2016; Hyrynsalmi et al.,
2017).

3.5.1 Dis-Engagement
A gamified system’s poor design can also have a negative impact on the
customer experience, leading to disengagement. According to research, users
who did not receive notifications due to problems in the system were not
able to achieve badges. The gamified application was not well received by
users, who claimed that it was a waste of time and that it was not entertaining
(Leclercq et al., 2018, 2020). They also claimed that the exercises were too
difficult and became frustrated.
 40 THE DARK SIDE OF GAMIFICATION IN INTERACTIVE MARKETING 953

3.5.2 Loss of Performance

The game world has its own set of regulations, and players who do not observe
them may be penalized. Similarly, when marketers use gamification in online
marketing, online engagement includes game-like constraints. According to
research, people cannot comprehend the game due to the design’s intricacies.
As a result, they don’t always want to be penalized by the system, and thereby,
they don’t consistently achieve the end goal. This problem emerges from tasks
and situations where gamification degrades or hampers performance lowering
the marketer’s ROI (Hammedi et al., 2021; Hyrynsalmi et al., 2017; Toda
et al., 2017; Yang & Li, 2021).

3.5.3 Undesired/Off-Task Behavior

The use of game mechanics in non-gaming contexts may not always yield
the desired results. It’s more precisely referred to as undesirable behavior.
For example, a marketer may gamify marketing content to engage users and
raise brand awareness. It’s possible that the user interacts with the information
and has a great experience but that they lack a thorough understanding of
the marketing communication or content. Incorporating gamified components
into branding aims to raise brand recognition and improve user understanding
of the brand through content. If this does not occur, the goal of gamification
will be defeated (Andrade et al., 2016; Toda et al., 2017).

3.5.4 Declining Effects

Declining Effects are related to the gradual loss of motivation and engage-
ment due to the deployed gamification. In the gamification literature, fading
or declining effects have been widely noted as negative consequences of gami-
fied marketing. Users have reported strong motivation levels in their contact
with gamified marketing content in the early stages. Their initial enthusiasm
wanes when game designers concentrate on isolating game designs in a specific
environment. Owing to this reason, blind use of the PBL approach has been
criticized in the literature. According to exploratory research on the topic,
many game design elements should be used rather than using similar game
design characteristics in every component of online marketing initiatives. Addi-
tionally, game designers should consider what form of design feature will drive
users (Todd et al., 2017; Yang & Li, 2021).

3.5.5 Threat of Information Disclosure

The dark side of gamification literature sheds light on the relationship between
gamified service motivational experiences and information disclosure, demon-
strating that if a gamified service conveys social comparison experiences, it
can definitely lead to higher information disclosure. Users may become so
engrossed in gamified apps that they are more willing to divulge private
information to companies, jeopardizing their privacy. Increased loss of self-
consciousness (i.e., when concerns about oneself drift out of the focus of the
user’s attention) is responsible for this effect. For instance, service providers
954 C. BHUTANI AND A. BEHL

Fig. 2 Framework on challenges in the implementation of gamified marketing

solutions (Source Developed by authors)

who augment their services with social comparison features (e.g., leader boards
and ranks) make an effort to actively convey their data privacy policies to
prevent users from disclosing personal information while the full attention of
users is concentrated on the task at hand (Trang & Weiger, 2019; Yang & Li,
2021) (Fig. 2).

4 Discussion
Marketers are now embracing game-based learning to improve client engage-
ment in their online marketing operations. With real-life examples, gamifica-
tion in marketing and related marketing functions has been described. The
chapter starts with an introduction to the virtual gaming environment, some-
times known as the game world. The game world comprises game mechanics,
game components, and set goals and objectives that players attempt to fulfill
using the resources at their disposal.
In addition, the TCCM framework is used to conduct a literature review to
investigate the negative aspects of gamification. A literature survey on the dark
side of gamification demonstrates unforeseen consequences of utilizing game
concepts in non-gaming contexts. Though marketers anticipate gamification
to improve user experience and engagement, it may have a detrimental impact
on consumers in various ways. Some of the essential features revealed through
a literature analysis utilizing the TCCM framework include unwanted compe-
tition, disengagement, poor involvement, loss of performance/productivity,
 40 THE DARK SIDE OF GAMIFICATION IN INTERACTIVE MARKETING 955

diminishing or fading impacts, off-task behavior, and the possibility of infor-

mation leakage. The dark side traits described above are prevalent in contexts
such as education, learning, mobile applications, online communities, and the
workplace, to mention a few (Vashisht, 2021; Ravoniarison & Benito, 2019).
In a favorable light, SDT examines the influence of gamification. The theo-
retical basis for investigating gamification is confined to theories of motivation,
such as self-determination theory. The components from flow theory are
extensively employed to examine the negative impact of gamification. Surpris-
ingly, using theory to explain a phenomenon has been completely overlooked
in some investigations (Hammedi et al., 2021; Hyrynsalmi et al., 2017; Toda
et al., 2017). Interestingly, theories of justice and equity have recently entered
the marketing lexicon and are being used to uncover the dark side of gami-
fication (Leclercq et al., 2018, 2020). With growing concern over the ethics
of using gamification in online environments, Thorpe and Roper (2019) used
constructs of theories of ethics to propose a model for controlling the nega-
tive aspects of gamification. Scholars can build this stream of research using
equity theory and justice theories and draw an ethical perspective on the
phenomenon.
Experimental research seems primed for studying the dark side outcomes
of using gamification. Most of these studies have covered only the user-
based issues; and largely ignored the root cause of the problem, i.e., strategic
planning, defining goals and objectives, stakeholder buy-in, and analysis of
organizational capabilities in the pre-implementation stage of adopting gami-
fied solutions to product promotions (Noorbehbahni et al., 2019; Wang et al.,
2021). Future work could observe the organizational dilemmas of employing
gamification using participatory action research (PAR), i.e., the role of orga-
nizational capabilities on the success or failure of gamification projects in an
organization. In addition, qualitative interpretivist methods such as manage-
rial interviews could help bring a nuanced understanding of the issues in the
backend that hinder the success of gamification projects, thereby leading to
user-based issues.
Serious games provide a new tool for social marketers can be used to
capture the attention of target audiences and urge them to change or retain
their behavior. This concept encourages the dark side of using gamification
in online marketing. The discussion of the dark side revolves around three
key themes: Design-based challenges in gamification, Challenges in adopting
gamified marketing solutions (pre-implementation, during implementation,
and post-implementation), and User-based issues leading to lesser or no
impact of gamification in the context of online marketing. The originality of
the work lies in providing a framework describing the dark side of gamification
in online marketing.
We know that serious games can help social marketers raise
teenagers’ understanding of alcohol and improve attitudes about binge
drinking while preserving behavioral intentions to drink in moderation (Whit-
taker et al., 2021). This lack of perceived customer value may be attributed
956 C. BHUTANI AND A. BEHL

to poor insights into what consumers want in creating serious games. There
have been few empirical studies of serious games aimed at teenage alcohol
intake, too far (Mulcahy et al., 2020). No published study gives a complete
user-oriented strategy for ensuring that serious games are built with teenagers’
preferences. The current study hopes to contribute to social marketing
expertise by addressing this vacuum.
Several researchers (see Deterding et al., 2011) have proposed that the
demonstrated behavioral impact of gamification is due to the creation of posi-
tive value for consumers through more motivating and rewarding experiences
provided by game design elements. This extra value in a social marketing
setting may overcome the inherent unfavorable exchange of many social
marketing behaviors (Binney et al., 2003; Rothschild, 1999). At the same
time, there is strong evidence for gamification’s behavioral influence. Hamari
et al. claim that understanding how gamification delivers the hypothesized
motivating experience is still lacking. They notably emphasize methodolog-
ical flaws widespread in many gamification studies, such as research that lacks
comparison groups or validated measures and consists of brief treatments and
single time-point evaluations. According to Hamari et al., the existing litera-
ture cannot rule out the likelihood of a novelty effect (short-term behavioral
effects owing to the novelty of exposure).
The utilization of advanced technology like big data and artificial intelli-
gence, in conjunction with sound corporate information systems, are prereq-
uisites for the success of such gamification models. A future study might
benefit from developing a “gamification model” that models “game compo-
nents” (prizes, awards, challenges, certifications); “interactions” (conversa-
tions, purchases, referrals, session time/length, engagement rate); and “gamer
profile” (personality type, demographics, behavior aspects) (Mulcahy et al.,
2020).
Real-time simulation of the gamification model’ (Game elements interac-
tions gamer profile) in conjunction with managerial interviews and exper-
imental research can aid in the generation of novel insights that can be
useful to managers during the test marketing stage and full-fledged launch
of the gamified product (Deterding et al., 2011). Extensive study in the
early stages gives less room for user-related concerns after implementation.
According to research, gamification’s efficacy as a behavior modification
technique originates from game mechanics’ ability to tap into the natural
motivating appeal of commercial entertainment games (Mitchell et al., 2017).
It is argued that gamification adds value to behavior by boosting the satis-
faction consumers have when executing the behavior, hence raising intrinsic
motivation (Huotari & Hamari, 2017a, 2017b). This viewpoint is founded
on Self-Determination Theory and stems from research into the potential
for game aspects to provide intrinsic motivational pull in digital games for
amusement (Mitchell et al., 2017).
 40 THE DARK SIDE OF GAMIFICATION IN INTERACTIVE MARKETING 957

5 Managerial Implications
This study practically contributes to social marketing by providing this frame-
work. First, the article includes a list of game properties that helps social
marketing academics and practitioners decide what to include in their game
design. This is a significant addition since it may save social marketers time
and money when bidding on projects for their programmers’ conception and
design of serious games. This study assessed the design preferences of three
unique serious games created for an alcohol social marketing program. The
choices and opinions of participants gathered in this study can help create
and grow these three serious games in the future. The reconstruction of the
tested serious games may enhance the user experience and maybe the behav-
ioral consequences. The design of less or more favored game attributes may
be prioritized. This study of three serious games, for example, low desire
for prizes, points, and accomplishments, contradicts earlier research findings.
This might imply that more complicated and improved designs of these game
features are necessary to increase consumer preferences.

6 Conclusion
Scholars frequently concentrate on capturing the positive aspects of gamifi-
cation. Without question, using gamification in online marketing increases
customer engagement. As a result, marketers turn to immersive and interac-
tive technology such as gamification. It has become a go-to option since it
is widely utilized in e-commerce websites, online brand communities, mobile
applications, and social media platforms, to mention a few. Every coin has
two sides: head and tail, and gamification is no exception. Incorporating game
aspects into non-gaming environments may not always result in the intended
amount of output. Lack of sound design or adhering to the bare minimum
of PBL-points, badges, and leaderboards without sufficient consumer research
may not deliver excellent outcomes.
Companies invest extensively in gamified marketing activities to improve
user experience and accomplish their desired goals. Organizational competen-
cies in terms of good financial aid, in-house team of experienced designers,
analysts, marketers, and stakeholder buy-in are crucial antecedents to gamifi-
cation project success. Once the gamified solution is built, it must be updated
on a regular basis, and continual attempts at test marketing must be made to
determine the project’s feasibility. Implementing gamified solutions presents
several problems, and organizations who fail to address such concerns in a
timely manner are frequently confronted with user-based issues connected to
gamified product use. Competence and autonomy need satisfaction have been
positively associated with intrinsic motivation in the digital gaming context,
and both SDT and CET are widely accepted as theoretical bases for explaining
the behavioral effects of digital games, and thus conceptually, the behavioral
effects of gamification.
958 C. BHUTANI AND A. BEHL

Studies have demonstrated the ability of gamification to increase intrinsic

motivation through needs satisfaction through the use of a variety of
autonomy-supporting game features, such as avatar customization, and
competence-supportive game features, such as variable difficulty and perfor-
mance indicators. On this premise, it is hypothesized that for a mechanically
rich gamification product.
However, gamification initiatives may fail if the objectives (sales, conver-
sions, visits, click-through rates, session time, engagement) are not met owing
to poor user experience. Marketers must focus their efforts on personalizing
affordances based on a player’s personality type, engagement with the system,
and game-related decisions. To target the correct audience with the proper set
of gamified solutions, it is also necessary to optimize company processes and
clearly define corporate goals.

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 CHAPTER 41

Ethical Considerations in Gamified Interactive

Marketing Praxis

Samaan Al-Msallam, Nannan Xi, and Juho Hamari

1 Introduction
From board games to video games, from the 3D environment to metaverse;
technologies, practices and culture from gaming have been increasingly gami-
fying contemporary reality. Gamification refers to both the general ludic turn
where games, play, and gamefulness are becoming more prominent aspects
of culture, and practice; gamification also refers to the intentional pursuit of
design for affording similar experiences as games do such as in the context of
designing products, services, organizational structures or interactive marketing
(Hamari, 2019). The premise behind attempting to gamify is often related
to the expected effect of gamification to increase individuals’ and consumers’
positive psychology when it comes to e.g. intrinsic motivation, engagement,
playfulness, and creativity. Through this added value, vendors expect that
gamified interactive marketing efforts lead to better business performance
(Xi & Hamari, 2020). As such, gamification has also become commonplace
in contemporary marketing praxis, and especially, on its interactive wing
such as in relation to e.g. efforts such as facilitating information delivery
(Hsieh & Yang, 2020; Lee, 2019), accelerating service transformation (Kao &
Chueh, 2022; Shi et al., 2017), increasing customer engagement (Eisingerich

S. Al-Msallam (B) · N. Xi · J. Hamari

Tampere University, Tampere, Finland
e-mail: samaan.almasalm@tuni.fi
N. Xi
University of Vaasa, Vaasa, Finland

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 963

Switzerland AG 2023
C. L. Wang (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Interactive Marketing,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14961-0_41
964 S. AL-MSALLAM ET AL.

et al., 2019; Hollebeek et al., 2021; Wang, 2021; Xi & Hamari, 2019), and
enhancing brand management (Nobre & Ferreira, 2017; Xi & Hamari, 2020).
Some of the successful international and well-known gamification marketing
campaigns include the Chanel Coco Game Center, Alipay Ant Forest, Nike +
Run Club, and Samsung Nation.
However, as gamification commonly, either more or less directly, is related
to attempts at affecting consumers’ psychological states and continued engage-
ment, a critical reflection of the ethical ramifications of gamification is
crucial. Hazards such as manipulation, exploitation, psychological distress, and
conflicts with cultural norms are considered as potential challenges that should
be observed. Nevertheless, there is a current lack of examination of gami-
fication’s ethical implications in the marketing context. For example, game
elements such as points, badges, and rewards have been widely embedded
into promotion campaigns which would easily induce and lure consumers into
making irrational and unstainable decisions, and induce compulsive consump-
tion; in customer loyalty programmes, level-up-related game mechanisms
may often lead to excess competition and extra social pressure; addition-
ally, privacy risk and information overload are ubiquitous in gamified online
platforms, communities, and services (Hass et al., 2021; Seo et al., 2021;
Trang & Weiger, 2019). Such risks and concerns in gamified marketing prac-
tices would have negative effects on the long- term business sustainability
(Algashami et al., 2019), and might be detrimental to consumer wellbeing,
business ecosystems, environment, and sustainable development in the long
run (Ghassemlou et al., 2018; Shahri et al., 2014; Yang & Li, 2021;).
Moreover, empirical evidence regarding the negative outcomes of gamifica-
tion can hardly be found in the existing literature, especially in relation to the
ethical considerations of gamified marketing. More importantly, there is a lack
of in-depth understanding and comprehensive discussion on how consumers
may perceive physiological risk and ethical aspects in marketing activi-
ties involving e.g. information searching, alternatives evaluation, consump-
tion decision, and post-purchase evaluation, where gamification mechanisms,
design principles, and technologies have been embedded. Accordingly, this
chapter expands the discussion on the ethical aspects of using gamification
in interactive marketing. More specifically, through exploring ethical concerns
related to the use of gamification in the marketing practices and shedding
light on the factors influencing ethical consumer judgement on gamifica-
tion practices, this chapter enriches the academic knowledge about the ethics
of gamification as an interactive marketing tool, and gives more rigorous
conclusions that help academic researchers understand how consumers inter-
pret the gamified experience from an ethical perspective. In addition, this
chapter helps marketers and gamification designers, as well as policymakers,
in monitoring the ethical aspects during the stages of designing and imple-
menting gamification, which will further increase consumers’ trust and nudge
sustainability.
 41 ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS IN GAMIFIED INTERACTIVE MARKETING PRAXIS 965

2 The Ethics of Gamification

2.1 Concept
Like other marketing tools which are subject to criticism and ethical examina-
tion such as loyalty programmes, advertising, distribution, and sales techniques
(Drumwright & Murphy, 2009; Vermillion, 2002), gamification, touted as one
of the effective interactive marketing techniques for engaging consumers, is
naturally vulnerable to ethical failings (Hyrynsalmi et al., 2017; Jacobs, 2020;
Kim & Werbach, 2016; Kwon & Özpolat, 2021; Thorpe & Roper, 2019).
Ethics is a domain of treatise of principles, theories, and world-views according
to which virtue can be assessed (Vitell, 1986). Individual morals are deter-
mined through a set of values and rules that regulate and direct the behaviour
of individuals and groups to distinguish between right and wrong, and how
individuals act towards others in different situations (Esmer & Arıbaş, 2022;
Tsalikis & Fritzsche, 2013; Vitell, 1986). As stated above, one of the ultimate
goals of applying ethical principles in this context is to increase granularity
and diversity of perspective on what can be considered ethical and unethical
in gamification practices (Li et al., 2021; Tsalikis & Fritzsche, 2013). When
examining the ethics of gamification, it is important to avoid reductionist
approaches which focus on one single measure of ethics or one ethical aspect.
Therefore, it is necessary to discuss the ethics of gamification from a more
comprehensive perspective by emphasizing the following three main tenets.
First, there is no single dimension along which right or wrong in gamification
practice can be defined (Kim & Werbach., 2016). Encouraging sustainable
consumption, directing consumers to work as a team, replacing virtual prizes
and badges with donations to non-profit organizations, and increasing public
knowledge of consumers; all these and similar objectives are more virtuous if
the mechanics of gamification are designed around them than merely seeking
to attract consumers and increase sales. For instance, marketers might use a
challenge-based gamification design in the form of a quiz to increase consumer
engagement (Noorbehbahani et al., 2019). However, the means and purposes
might differ, and while some might design the gamified quiz to provide
consumers with useful questions and answers to improve their knowledge of
significant issues (e.g. sustainability issues), such a design may be considered
more ethical and acceptable compared with other designs that involve quizzes
with questions that explore consumers’ purchase habits and then use the resul-
tant data to track the consumer and send programmatic advertising. By this
point, absolute or general judgments on whether or not gamification practices
are ethical (or as we prefer to call it, “prejudice to the gamification”) may
lack accuracy and credibility, and do not consider the context in which the
gamification practice was used.
Secondly, as one of the effective persuasive technologies, gamification
has been believed to influence and change the attitudes and behaviours
of consumers in interactive marketing practices (Jacobs, 2020; Thorpe &
Roper, 2019; Vashisht, 2021), Accordingly, there are mainly two ethical
966 S. AL-MSALLAM ET AL.

orientations in gamified interactive marketing: namely, the ethics of tech-

nology and the ethics of marketing. The former involves issues include e.g.
data privacy, manipulation, and autonomy (Berdichevsky & Neuenschwander,
1999; Jacobs, 2020); the latter is often related to the purpose of using gami-
fication such as for achieving unethical and unsustainable marketing goals;
such goals may include marketing environmentally harmful, poor quality and
shoddy products, and targeting vulnerable consumers (Hass et al., 2021;
Tsalikis & Fritzsche, 2013). The major point here is that seeing the ethics
of gamification only from the marketing side will likely lead to partial or inac-
curate judgments. In such cases, the ethical dilemmas related to the means
involved in gamification design will not be considered; instead, the focus will
be on examination only of whether the benefits are good or evil.
Thirdly, moral judgement in relation to different gamification practices are
affected by many overlapping factors (Khaled, 2015; Oravec, 2020; Shahri
et al., 2014; Thorpe & Roper, 2019), such as politics, customs, traditions,
and the differences between cultures. Moreover, consumers’ ethical beliefs,
and the impact of prior experiences with gamification will lead to differing
ethical judgments for consumers towards gamification. This chapter focuses
particularly on examining consumers’ perspectives towards the ethics of gami-
fication, and what factors could impact their ethical judgement. The following
section will examine the most prominent ethical concerns related to the misuse
of gamification practice.

2.2 Major Ethical Concerns Towards Gamification

With the widespread use of gamification in the interactive marketing field
(Thorpe & Roper, 2019), marketing researchers and ethicists started to sound
the alarm towards several ethical impacts that gamification might cause (Kim &
Werbach, 2016; Thorpe & Roper, 2019). Although these endeavours are
still in their first stages and need more empirical investigation, this book
chapter consolidates these previous scant efforts, and present in more detail
four ethical concerns related to using gamification as an interactive marketing
tool. Respectively, these concerns mainly include manipulation, exploitation,
psychological distress, and conflict with cultural norms. Here, the goal is not
to criticize gamification per se, but rather to point out the risks and adverse
outcomes associated with using gamification for marketing purposes, when not
taking the moral caveats into serious consideration.

2.2.1 Manipulation
One of the common ethical criticisms of gamification is that it manipulates
consumers by using mechanics and designs that are not clearly or partially
known regarding how they work. When companies avoid disclosing sufficient
information on how game mechanics and design principles attract consumers
and what is the ultimate goal of the company of using such mechanisms, that
might easily make consumers feel like they are being manipulated. (Hyrynsalmi
 41 ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS IN GAMIFIED INTERACTIVE MARKETING PRAXIS 967

et al., 2017; Kim & Werbach, 2016; Li et al., 2021; Thorpe & Roper, 2019).
More specifically, a gamification design developer stimulates the consumer’s
intrinsic and extrinsic motivations by using game elements within a well-
defined design for use in a digital entity such as a website or app, aiming
to increase consumer interaction. However, this process takes place in an
ambiguous way for the consumer, which is further complicated when devel-
oping gamification designs are based on an immersive experience, in order to
make a lasting impression on consumers about the brand.
This point leads us to expand our discussion beyond the ambiguous oper-
ations and algorithms that most gamification designs contain. In the case of
the gamification provider creating an environment that leads users to choose
an option that serves their interests while excluding or marginalizing auto-
matic and rational decisions, this is also considered as manipulation (Birtchnell
et al., 2020). For example, transforming the purchase process into a search for
collecting points, badges, or earning prizes, leads to distracting the consumer’s
attention away from evaluating the important aspects of the product, such as
quality, price fairness, warranty, etc. Another point related to manipulation is
that the gamified experience might involve vague psychological methods, in
an attempt to modify or transform a consumer’s thoughts towards predeter-
mined goals. Accordingly, this chapter’s questions revolve around the morality
of such a combination, since it is not entirely known how these psychological
methods work at the level of the subconscious, or whether they have negative
effects on consumers in the long term.
One example of this type of incorporating game elements with psycholog-
ical techniques is the Adidas Running app “Run for the Ocean” campaign,
which challenged users to run and raise money to fight plastic waste. Adidas
used the challenge in this app as a strong core motivator. However, when
taking a closer look, it can be seen that the gamification mechanic of chal-
lenge involved the psychological concept that “the losers participate in the
challenge more persistently to continue and repeat the challenge than those
who win” (Oravec, 2020; Vansteenkiste & Deci, 2003). In the case of the
Adidas Running app, the striking result was that the participants continued in
both cases—profit and loss—with the winners enjoying the feeling of victory,
and the losers continuing to strive for a win. To be fair, it is still unknown
whether the developers of this application deliberately exploited this psycho-
logical concept in order to achieve marketing goals or not. But certainly,
there are ethical questions related to manipulation that must be raised in such
cases. Such as whether it is ethical to achieve marketing goals by using vague
psychological methods and whether marketers are fully aware of the long-term
impact of integrating psychological concepts with game elements on consumer
wellbeing?
968 S. AL-MSALLAM ET AL.

2.2.2 Exploitation
Exploitation occurs when there is an imbalance between the two parties in a
particular relationship (Wertheimer, 1999). A closer look at the use of gami-
fication in the field of marketing shows us that the mutual benefits between
gamification providers and the consumer can be unequal (Hammedi, 2021;
Kim, 2015). In most gamification designs, the user only gets virtual prizes in
the form of badges, stars, or even a simple discount; while the gamification
provider usually gets greater benefits such as increased sales and market share
that arise from increased user interaction. In addition, exploitation can also be
observed in two ways. First, where the user is not given enough information
about the gamification experience that he or she will participate in. Second,
where the user is not allowed to give or withhold consent after acquiring that
information (Trang & Weiger, 2019).
Moreover, the risk of exploitation rises when the increase in benefits of one
party to the relationship leads to harm to the other party (Brennan et al., 2021;
Wertheimer, 1999). Such a high level of exploitation is likely to occur in gami-
fication if the company does not take ethical warnings seriously. For example,
the McDonald’s fast-food company used gamification techniques based on the
popular game “Monopoly”. This campaign achieved a resounding success for
McDonald’s by increasing consumers’ demand for buying fast food, thereby
contributing to sales. However, the question remains whether McDonald’s
considered whether the consumers would be conscious of possible dietary and
health consequences? Another case in this context can be illustrated by China’s
second-largest e-commerce platform “Pingduoduo”, which employs game-like
elements such as sweepstakes, prizes, and even a game involving watering a
virtual tree, so as to continuously motivate its users to possibly partake in
excessive purchase behaviour.
In addition, the attempts to reward consumers for thinking a certain way
or completing a task according to the designer’s criteria can be considered
as unethical practice and could include it under the category of exploitation
because one of the parties to the relationship seeks to monitor and control
the thoughts of the other party (Wertheimer, 1999). A prominent example
of this concern can be noted in the service personal finance management
provider “Robinhood” which provides consumer empowerment on one hand,
while on the other hand, it has been criticized for “luring ” inexperienced
consumers with gamification into making irrational investment decisions. On
a critical note, gamification experiences are often not designed to meet every-
one’s needs. With this in mind, it is expected that exposing the potential
consumer to gamified experiences that do not fit his or her needs will result
in either physical and/or psychological harm, as well as directing the user
to perform tasks that he or she may not want to do, which reduces the
consumer’s autonomy in a way that Naomi Jacobs (2020) warned that persua-
sive technology design must consider the experience, interests, and needs of
potential users. Jacobs’s representative example of a diet app called “MyFit-
nessPal” (a calorie-counting app that allows users to track their daily food
 41 ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS IN GAMIFIED INTERACTIVE MARKETING PRAXIS 969

intake) uses gamification features like providing feedback on the number of

calories needed, and rewarding users with trophies and badges; and after
detailed discussion, Jacobs noticed that: “…It became clear that the design of a
diet app like MyFitnessPal is not informed by the experiences of users who struggle
with body image problems and eating disorders”.

2.2.3 Psychological distress

Psychological distress refers to psychological and emotional damage which
causes negative experiences or undermines the ability of the individual to lead
a fulfilled life (Echeburúa et al., 2003; Wheatley et al., 2021). Such psycho-
logical distress might happen because of a negative event that caused a new
situation that the user cannot address (Echeburúa et al., 2003; Ghassemlou
et al., 2020). The competitive settings of extreme goal-setting may lead to
negative emotions such as frustration, fear, and anger, and these negative
emotions might be caused by a frequent loss in gamified tasks, and can last for
long periods and have cumulative effects (Kim & Werbach, 2016; Mullins &
Sabherwal, 2018; Nicholson, 2015; Ravoniarison & Benito, 2019). The loss
can relate to (fear of) losing out such as not obtaining a prize or winning over
other competitors and can also extend to the dissatisfaction that may result
from a failure to fulfil the user’s prior expectations (Fornell, 1992). In this
vein, such negative emotions might have several effects on the consumer’s
cognitive level, like a lack of control over life and future, difficulty in making
decisions, or a deep feeling of helplessness. Also, the person may become
indifferent on the behavioural level and find it difficult to return to daily life
(Echeburúa et al., 2003; Li et al., 2021).
As an example of this discussion, the Nike company offered a product called
The Nike + FuelBand, an activity tracker worn on the wrist and compatible
with mobile devices. This product allows the user to track their physical activity
and the amount of energy burned. Gamification mechanisms support the Nike
+ FuelBand to change the user’s tracked movements into NikeFuel points,
and such points can uncover achievements, be shared with friends, and start a
competition with others. The FuelBand and the idea itself look exciting and
beneficial to the user’s health. However, the ethical question that must be
asked here is whether Nike take into account the negative emotions that might
be caused by a repeated inability of the user to overcome the challenge (which
is represented here in the amount of energy that the user intends to burn
daily), or the user’s concerns about not staying at the advanced levels, or users
constant preoccupation with monitoring their performance and the results of
others, etc.
At the same time, addiction represents a more serious problem that may
be caused by companies’ apps that are supported by gamification tech-
niques. In game-related literature, many studies have investigated the addictive
behaviours of players in video games (Miller, 2013; Mathews, 2019; Stock-
dale & Coyne, 2018). Similarly, gamification sharing the same game mech-
anisms and elements as video games, might easily lead to addiction-related
970 S. AL-MSALLAM ET AL.

issues especially in the contexts providing highly immersive and challenging

experience (Andrade et al., 2016; Nyström, 2021; Ravoniarison & Benito,
2019; Thorpe & Roper, 2019; Yamakami, 2013). Another issue related to
the possibility of becoming addicted comes from the fear of the hyper-use of
gamified services as a way to diminish boredom and keep the mind stimulated
by getting so much entertainment offered by the services. Cognitive psycholo-
gists have warned that there is a relationship between “addiction to stimulation
and novelty” through the sustained pursuit of entertainment on one hand,
and decreased creativity, ability to focus on solving problems, and performing
tasks that require deep thinking on the other hand (Mann & Cadman, 2014;
Ravoniarison & Benito, 2019; Seaward, 2020).

2.2.4 Conflict with cultural norms

Gamification also requires consumers to stick to particular rules and game
mechanics. However, such mechanics and rules might be inconsistent with
the local cultural values of consumers, which may lead them to interpret
gamification practices as being socially and culturally incompatible (Khaled,
2015). In addition, a constant exposure to gamified products and services will
shove individuals to prioritize the values promoted by gamification over their
cultural context. In other words, culture gives the individuals rules for how to
treat others (Hofstede et al., 2005; Maitner & Summerville, 2022) and being
exposed to conflicting rules through gamification can have potentially harmful
results on existing local cultural values in the long term (Khaled, 2015; van
Roy & Zaman, 2018).
As an example, in Scandinavian cultures, the prevailing values in society
emphasize and encourage social equality, acting for the benefit of other people,
viewing others as moral equals, and pursuing common goals. In these cultures,
it is undesirable for the individual to frantically strive to stand out from their
peers, or simply to stand out at all (Khaled, 2015; Nishimura et al., 2008).
Moreover, in such egalitarian cultures, the companies’ rationale for providing
products and services supported by gamification designs that focus on compe-
tition, excellence, and achievement is constantly questioned (Khaled, 2015).
In the same regard, some types of gamification designs might support clas-
sifications based on differences between individuals according to attributes
such as skill and experience, which may be considered as a negative aspect
(Khaled, 2015; Morschheuser et al., 2019; Papoutsoglou, 2020;). Moreover,
in challenge-based gamification, for instance, designers (intentionally or unin-
tentionally) tend to support an individual ethos rather than a team ethos, and
competition rather than cooperation and sacrifice. As what can be noted from
these observations, designing gamification experiences without considering the
different cultural contexts in which potential consumers belong can conflict
with prevailing cultural norms in regard to what each individual in society
deserves, and how one communicates with others in the society.
 41 ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS IN GAMIFIED INTERACTIVE MARKETING PRAXIS 971

3 Gamification and Consumer

Ethical Decision-Making
Marketing researchers and ethicists have sought to know and understand how
the consumers make moral judgments (Al-Khatib et al., 2004; Carlson et al.,
2009; Escadas et al., 2020; Al-Msallam & Abdelhadi, 2022; Ferrell & Ferrell,
2021; Hunt & Vitell, 1986; Jones, 1991; Jones & Middleton, 2007; Rest,
1986). In the previous section, the authors discussed several ethical concerns
that might be related to using gamification as an interactive marketing tool.
However, the question remains as to how consumers judge their gamified
experience from an ethical perspective? To answer this question, this chapter
looks more closely at the ethical theories and models that have investigated
the ethical decision-making process (Sect. 3.1). Based on these theories and
models, the authors infer and further argue (from a conceptual point of
view) the factors that may affect the consumer’s ethical judgement towards
gamification (Sect. 3.2).

3.1 Consumers’ Ethical Decision-Making Frameworks

Decision-making involving moral assessment is defined as “the process by
which people use their principles and values to determine whether a particular
issue or situation is right or wrong” (Carlson et al., 2009). Traditionally, the
ethical decision-making process includes four stages (Rest, 1986). It begins
when individuals recognize if the situation they are exposed to contradicts
one or more of their moral rules. In the context of gamification, the ethical
recognition is reached when a potential consumer recognizes the ethical issues
of gamification design. After an ethical issue is acknowledged, individuals
make a judgement and choose between possible alternatives based on their
moral correctness—this stage is called ethical judgement. In our case, based
on ethical considerations, the alternatives might be to continue or leave the
existing gamified experience, or perhaps to engage in another gamified expe-
rience consisting of a more ethical design. Such a meditation process might
involve, for instance, evaluating the impact of potential risk on oneself and on
others, the extent of the conflicts with cultural norms, data gathering policy,
etc. The next stage is called ethical intentions and represents the individual’s
intent through which he/she will carry out his/her ethical judgement. At this
point, the consumer must demonstrate their intent to adopt the option that
he/she considers to be more ethical. Finally, the individual engages in ethical
behaviour that is supported by one or more moral standards. Ultimately, the
consumer engages in an ethical gamification experience (whether the existing
experience or another alternative), or he/she quits engaging in the gamified
experience (Bayer et al., 2019; Schwartz, 2016).
Along with Rest’s model, Hunt and Vitell’s (1993) model has gained
wide acceptance among marketing researchers in the field of ethics. Hunt
972 S. AL-MSALLAM ET AL.

and Vitell adopt the normative ethics approach and consider that individ-
uals have different moral philosophies in assessing ethical issues. These moral
philosophies are divided into two parts: deontological and teleological. Indi-
viduals who adopt a deontological ethical philosophy judge the morality of
any behaviour based on its appropriateness to rules or standards, regardless
of the correctness or wrongness of the consequences of the action (Kant,
1785/2008). In contrast, individuals who adopt a teleological ethical philos-
ophy examine the result of the action, and for them, the morally correct action
is the one that produces a good result (Mill 1861/1979).
Based on the observations of previous models of the ethical decision-
making process, Jones (1991) concluded that previous models focus only on
including personal and organizational factors, without regard to the role that
the characteristics of the moral situation itself can play in the ethical decision-
making process. According to Jones (1991), previous models must consider
the possible differences between the ethical issues involved. Consequently, the
individual’s ethical decision about a particular ethical issue will differ from
one situation to another, according to the characteristics or dimensions of the
moral intensity of that situation. Thus, issues with a low level of moral inten-
sity will lead to an increase in the individual’s belief that their decisions are
considered to be moral, and vice versa.
Overall, several marketing inquiries have used the above-described models
as a reference point to explore other influencing factors in the consumer ethical
decision-making process. Nevertheless, limiting the research to the factors
included in these models would neglect the impact of the context (gamifica-
tion in our case) (Bayer et al., 2019). In addition to the previously mentioned
factors in models of ethical-decisions making, this chapter adds factors related
to gamified experience, which the authors argue impacts the consumer ethical
judgement process.

3.2 Factors Influencing Consumer Ethical Judgement Towards

Gamification
3.2.1 Previous Experience with Gamification
Consumer experience with gamification includes dealing with the conse-
quences of engaging with gamification, a comparison with personal and
societal ethical standards, and feelings that arise such as guilt or pride (Ward,
2010; Whittaker et al., 2021; Williams, 2006). With this, consumers who
have previously been exposed to one or more gamification experiences will be
able to make more accurate ethical judgments than those who have not been
exposed to a similar experience (Williams, 2006). More precisely, consumers
who have had a previous positive experience with gamification based on, for
example, winning attractive prizes, spending time filled with joy with others,
increasing feelings of pride in a certain achievement, etc., are likely to reflect
this positive experience on their perceptions of the gamification ethics, in a
way that mitigates negative judgments on any potential ethical implications;
 41 ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS IN GAMIFIED INTERACTIVE MARKETING PRAXIS 973

and vice versa in case where the consumer experience was negative, such as
exposure to manipulation, or any form of exploitation and deception by the
provider of the gamification (Seo et al., 2021; Versteeg, 2013).
The accumulation of consumer experience with diverse designs of gami-
fication and in different contexts will necessarily lead to the formation of a
more comprehensive ethical conception of gamification (Hass et al., 2021;
Ward, 2010). However, it is worth noting that ethical judgments resulting
from previous experience with gamification are subject to change or modifica-
tion (either positively or negatively), every time the consumer is exposed to a
new gamification experience (Ward, 2010).

3.2.2 Gamification Design Type

Gamification designs vary from each other, based on, for example, the game
elements that are used in these designs like points, stars, leader boards, etc.
(Hamari et al., 2014), or the game mechanics adopted in these designs like
challenges, cooperation, feedback, etc. (Hunter & Werbach, 2012). With this
in mind, this chapter joins the previous studies which have discussed that
the consumer’s ethical judgement might differ according to the gamifica-
tion design being used (Shahri et al., 2014; Toda et al., 2017). Some types
of gamification might easily lead to ethical issues than others. For example,
designs that encourage collaboration between participants, increase the feeling
of autonomy, or provide valuable add-value to the participants might be
looked at by consumers as ethical designs, or at least as having fewer ethical
issues compared with designs that pose a conflict with local cultural values, or
exploit consumer efforts without meaningful feedback.
One may argue that the ethical judgement of gamification designs is not
always clear and simple (Kim & Werbach, 2016). Particularly, some gami-
fied designs might have both ethical and unethical aspects simultaneously.
Assuming that gamification designs support consumer autonomy, but without
providing a transparent policy about consumer data privacy (Hass et al., 2021).
In such cases, other factors related to gamified experiences like previous expe-
rience, individual attributes, cultural and ethical norms, etc., could outweigh
and justify a particular aspect over another (i.e. ethical aspects or unethical
aspects).

3.2.3 The Ethical Perspective of the Consumer

To figure out the role of personal ethical perspectives on ethical judgement,
by applying Hunt and Vitell’s (1993) model to the gamification context, it
may be inferred that those consumers who consider themselves to belong
to the deontology view will form their ethical decisions towards gamification
according to an adherence to ethical principles, and a “right” gamification
design is identified based on confirming or denying the ethical principles
involved, regardless of the ultimate outcome (Sparks & Pan, 2010; Arora &
Razavian, 2021). For example, let us assume that a sports company developed
a health fitness app using gamification mechanics like feedback and reward
974 S. AL-MSALLAM ET AL.

to help their consumers do more sport, track how many calories they burn
daily, eat healthy food, etc. It is likely that the sports company will have
access to and also track consumers’ daily activity, the food type they buy,
and other personal information, in order to achieve such outcomes. Following
the deontology theory and the idea that it is wrong to track people’s activi-
ties and personal life details, consumers will judge such gamified fitness apps
as unethical practices. On the contrary, the teleological ethical view focuses
on the consequences of gamification, and the use of gamification by compa-
nies to promote and encourage, for instance, healthy practices or sustainable
consumption behaviours may be considered an ethical practice from the
perspective of consumers who belong to the teleological ethical school, even
if these gamification practices include unethical issues like manipulation or a
lack of data privacy.

3.2.4 Moral Intensity

The impact of moral intensity on ethical judgement has been confirmed
through several studies (Barnett, 2001; Paramita et al., 2022). These studies
depend on Jones’s (1991) model, which consists of several components. This
chapter considers four of these components; first is the magnitude of conse-
quences, which represents the extent to which the consumer is aware of
the severity of the ethical implications caused by gamification. For example,
suppose consumers evaluate the striving to obtain their personal information
by a company providing a gamified experience as a violation of their privacy
(Trang & Weiger, 2019). In that case, it is likely they will judge the gamified
experience as an unethical practice. The second component is related to the
probability of effect, when consumers perceive that the ethical concerns that
gamification might cause will actually occur and cause harm, then consumers
might judge their use of gamification as an unethical marketing tool. For
example, if a famous alcohol company uses gamification to offer discounts and
rewards, which in turn will boost sales, then consumers might tend to adopt
a judgement towards gamification as unethical practice because they consider
that the probability of adverse effects would be high based on the idea that
consuming too much alcohol will cause health damage. The third compo-
nent is temporal immediacy, and refers to the length of time between the time
taken engaging in gamification and the actual occurrence of ethical concerns.
To illustrate: suppose the consumers perceive that this period will be long and
there are no immediate negative consequences. In that case, they are likely to
consider gamification as an ethical marketing practice, and vice versa. The last
component in the Jones model is the concentration of effect. According to this
component, consumer ethical judgement depends on the number of people
affected by the negative outcomes expected to occur from participating in
the gamification experience. For example, suppose the consumers’ participa-
tion in the gamification experience leads to psychological or physical harm to
the people around them, whether they are competitors, family members, or
 41 ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS IN GAMIFIED INTERACTIVE MARKETING PRAXIS 975

colleagues in the workplace. In that case, the consumer may be inclined to

judge the practice of gamification as unethical.

3.2.5 Social Environment

Societies consist of a set of systems, mores, customs and norms that control,
to a large extent, the behaviour of individuals who belong to these societies
(Bommer et al., 1987; Moffett, 2019; Tsalikis & Fritzsche, 2013). Accord-
ingly, any behaviour carried out by individuals should be congruent with the
general opinion prevailing in the society about the rightness or wrongness of
this behaviour. Otherwise, this behaviour is considered to be unethical (Nill &
Schibrowsky, 2005). The consumer’s ethical judgement towards gamification
does not stray too far from this rule. Khaled (2015) points out that successful
gamification experiments largely depended on a high level of social acceptance.
This social acceptance is represented by the degree of harmony of the gamifi-
cation design with the values recognized in society. From this perspective, can
be identified that the more the consumer realizes that behaviours driven by
gamification are to some extent compatible with the moral values of society,
the more positive his/her judgement on the ethics of gamification, and the
opposite is true for gamification designs that are incompatible with societal
moral values (Khaled, 2015; Kim & Werbach, 2016).

4 Monitoring of Gamification
in Marketing Practice
To achieve marketing goals through gamification, companies should build a
trusting relationship with target consumers, based on their perceptions that
the company uses ethical means in their marketing campaign. With this in
mind, this chapter identifies recommendations to help marketers, gamifica-
tion designers, and policymakers to monitor the use of gamification in the
marketing context and reduce the related ethical issues.
Marketers should establish a marketing strategy which includes gamification
mechanics, based on the principle of minimizing any potential unethical impli-
cations for their target consumers. In all of the gamified experience stages,
collaboration with gamification designers is crucial to ensure that the gami-
fication designs will use an ethical means to reach the desired marketing
goals. Communication with the consumers is also important after the gami-
fied product or service takes its place in the target market. At this point,
consumers in the target market are usually classified into two categories
(Jones & Middleton, 2007). The first category includes those consumers
who might worry about using gamified products or services, which can be
attributable to a negative perception that such products or services might have
unethical implications. The second category includes consumers who cannot
accurately infer the harms that may be associated with their use of gamified
products or services, and which will eventually put them at risk due not to
976 S. AL-MSALLAM ET AL.

taking the prudent precaution of reducing the possibility of unethical conse-

quences. To deal with both categories of consumers, marketers should make
an effort to maintain a transparent and honest policy with consumers. This
is done by providing the consumer who may be interested in being involved
in the gamified experience with detailed information about, for example, the
company’s goals of adding gamification to its products or services, the levels
that the consumer will pass through, the expected time to complete the tasks,
the benefits that may be obtained, and information regarding the consumer’s
data in relation to e.g. how the data will be used and who has access to
it. In addition, providing such information is accompanied by allowing the
consumer to express his/her opinion about their involvement in the gami-
fied tasks, by giving or withholding their consent. Marketers should be aware
that providing informed consent will increase consumers’ trust in the compa-
ny’s operations in the long run (Chadwick & Gallagher, 2016; Kolb, 2007).
From this perspective, marketers have to go further and challenge the common
belief that any regulation of gamification practice will impede or threaten
innovation, and might decrease consumers interaction, whether that regula-
tion takes the form of legislation by policymakers or internal ethical codes
within the company, such a challenge should be strengthened by providing
an enabling environment at the company level, in order to encourage dealing
with regulation and ethics as part of gamification innovations, and not as an
obstacle.
In addition to communicating with gamification designers and consumers,
marketers are recommended to inform the company’s stakeholders of any
potential unethical harm to the consumers and society that might be caused
by using gamification. Furthermore, stakeholders must be aware of the ethical
liability and the consequences that the company should bear if actual harm
happens to the consumers or society. Such consequences will not be limited
to declining sales and loss of trust in the company businesses, but can also be
extended to the stakeholders themselves through accountability to authorities
and non-governmental organizations that defend consumer rights.
Marketers should also look to benefit from the ethical problems that have
been experienced in the past which are directly or indirectly related to the
use of gamification in marketing, and try to use this knowledge to develop
ethical gamification designs and support innovation. The authors emphasize
that marketers who use gamification should not prioritize growth over what
is good for consumers and society, in order to maintain a competitive advan-
tage in highly competitive markets. Ensuring the use of gamification designs to
deliver an added value to consumers while avoiding any kind of exploitation or
deception will contribute to achieving the company’s sustainability, and conse-
quently increase consumer trust and society’s acceptance of the company’s
business.
Ethical Principles Should Guide Gamification designers while developing the
gamification design, and they should be keen to monitor all of the design steps and
 41 ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS IN GAMIFIED INTERACTIVE MARKETING PRAXIS 977

implementation stages through an ethical lens. Such ethical principles can inte-
grate the company’s ethical policy, the designer’s ethical philosophy, and also
the prevailing ethical values in society. It has become increasingly clear that
companies give gamification designers a space for selecting what kind of gami-
fication mechanics and game elements they want to use, in order to increase
the appeal of the final design. With this, designers should not use this space
to make designs without ethical controls, and instead, they need to be more
driven by an intrinsic motivation to use such freedom to ensure that gamifica-
tion design is kept within an ethical range. Designers should spend more time
thinking about any potential negative impacts on consumers due to their use
of gamified products or services, and especially the development of gamifica-
tion technology. In addition, designers need to recognize that ignoring ethical
aspects during the design of gamified products or services (which may occur
for many unacceptable reasons such as thinking that other employees have to
be responsible for ethical aspects, for fear of the possibility of stifling creativity,
or having a lack of sufficient knowledge of ethics philosophy, etc.), might have
huge ramifications for their work such as legal accountability, losing their job,
and a negative societal view of their role. From this standpoint, companies
have a responsibility to raise ethical awareness among designers who work in
the gamification field, in a similar way that many universities integrated ethics
into programming and computer science courses (Fiesler et al., 2020). Compa-
nies can do this by providing seminars, workshops, and courses concerning
contemporary ethical matters, in order to develop designers’ abilities to follow
ethical principles and detect any potential ethical issues related to gamification
design. At the same time, designers should keep a balance when developing
their gamification designs between satisfying the desired marketing outcomes
of the company, and the ethical principles that need to be followed, and they
should be keen to monitor and correct any potential unethical implications
through feedback from marketers, consumers, and academic researchers.
Policymakers should become more involved in the process of regulating the use
of gamification, in order to avoid or at least reduce any potential ethical impli-
cations. By taking a closer look at the current marketing efforts, noted that
companies have added gamification tools to almost every marketing campaign
in various forms, starting from basic gamification tools like rewards and points,
to advanced gamification designs which use advanced technology and complex
algorithms to attract consumers and increase their interaction. Nevertheless,
policymakers still ignore this rapid change in the marketing tools that directly
and indirectly affect consumers. In addition, there is a clear gap between poli-
cymakers and those who develop and use gamification designs (i.e. marketers
and gamification designers). All of these aspects create a need to set policies
and to regulate the progress that has been achieved in gamification design.
Overall, policymakers need to lend more interest to gamification and raise
interventions for the design process and use. This does not mean that policy-
makers should be experts in gamification, however, they need to think, ask,
978 S. AL-MSALLAM ET AL.

and try to understand how they can prevent unethical practices in gamifica-
tion, and what is the role of political decision-makers to monitor and regulate
the increasing sophistication of gamification designs, with an aim to limit
potential ethical dilemmas. Policymaker intervention in the gamification field
might take different forms. One such form could be creating a collaboration
between all concerned parties, and more precisely with marketing managers
and gamification designers to work together to avoid and minimize the poten-
tial ethical concerns of gamification, while taking advantage of its benefits. In
this regard, the presence of gamification designers and company representa-
tives in the work teams of political decision-makers will help to develop policies
that control gamification in an ethical manner without either restricting or
ignoring its benefits (Schneier, 2020). Another form of intervention might be
in the form of encouraging companies to adopt a more transparency policy
with consumers who the gamification practices might target, so as to ensure
that consumers are well informed about the gamification process and company
goals, and at the same time, the privacy policy that the company implements
to protect consumer data.

5 Conclusion and Contribution

This chapter provides a narrative examination of some of the possible ethical
considerations related to gamification pursuit related to setting goals for
consumers, monitoring their progress and rewarding for their consumption
decisions. The chapter extends the current exposure of gamification to ethical
treatise in the extant literature. In terms of its research contribution, this
chapter bridges the research gap regarding the dark side and potential nega-
tive outcomes of gamification regarding marketing performance and societal
impact. The majority of the current literature has investigated and discussed
the positive effects of gamification on consumer experience and marketing
performance. However, there is a lack of discussion on gamification from
the perspectives of sustainable aspects such as individual wellbeing, long-
term effect, and harmonious society. To address such shortcomings and by
conducting a comprehensive literature review, our findings have documented
four prominent ethical concerns that companies should consider before and
during using gamification as a marketing tool: manipulation; exploitation;
psychological distress; and conflict with cultural norms. Additionally, a closer
examination of the models of ethical decision-making reveals that these models
have studied several factors that might impact the consumer ethical judgement
process, but neglected the impact of the context, (i.e., gamification context).
This chapter also provided a contributions to the marketers, gamification
designers, and policymakers (see Sect. 4). The findings demonstrated that
companies aiming to develop ethical principles for gamification practice should
understand how consumers form their ethical judgments, and what factors
influence it. Five affected factors were documented in this regard: previous
 41 ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS IN GAMIFIED INTERACTIVE MARKETING PRAXIS 979

experience with gamification; gamification design type; the ethical perspec-

tive of the consumer; moral intensity; and social environment. The findings
underscore that gamification designers should be aware that users involved in
gamification might be vulnerable to adverse psychological effects. Particularly,
social pressure, depression, low self-esteem, and other psychological distress
might accompany the user’s failure in achieving their desired achievements.
Designers need to be careful when selecting the game elements and mechanics
they want to involve in the gamified design. For example, designs built on a
base of hyper-competition between users without considering their cognitive
levels and skills might cause unfavourable comparisons, which can develop, in
some cases, to cause severe psychological damage.
There is recognized unclarity regarding what users know about the fate
of their data when using gamified apps, which presents a need for compa-
nies to adopt a transparent policy to clarify the objectives of data collection.
This involves a commitment to maintain a balance between profiting from
consumers attracted by using gamification designs, and managing their data
in a way that respects privacy rules. Maintaining this balance remains a chal-
lenge. However, it will provide companies with a competitive advantage over
competitors who do not follow clear standards of user data privacy. The
authors further recommend that respect for cultural differences and fostering
consideration for cultural diversity should be a priority for companies when
developing gamification mechanics as an interactive marketing tool. Notably,
game elements and designs appropriate for a particular culture may not be
suitable in another. In this context, policymakers are urged to play a firm
and sustained role in preserving local cultural values by considering new
propositions through which to regulate and monitor gamification use.
When a company decides to adopt a new interactive marketing tool like
gamification, it is recognized that marketers will face several challenges and
demands. Considering ethical principles is one of these demands, and how it
is managed might reflect on the whole company’s business prosperity. From
this standpoint, examining and studying the ethics of gamification will help
marketers understand the ethical concerns related to using gamification in the
marketing field, especially with regard to the rapid developments that are being
made in gamification technology.

6 Limitations and Future Research Directions

This chapter contains a number of limitations, but simultaneously, new paths
for future research. More specifically, this chapter mainly focuses on four
ethical concerns related to using gamification technology in a marketing
context, and it is acknowledged that gamification might be vulnerable to other
ethical dilemmas. In addition, while this chapter examined five factors that
affect the consumer’s ethical judgement towards gamification, the authors
understand that there are other factors that might be important that this
chapter may have overlooked. Furthermore, consumers, employees, designers,
980 S. AL-MSALLAM ET AL.

and owners have varied goals and ethical perspectives towards gamification;
this chapter mainly highlighted the consumer perspective.
Together with the findings, these limitations pave the way for future
research on the ethics of gamification. Regarding ethical concerns related
to using gamification in a marketing context, future research might examine
other ethical concerns, such as physical harm, data security, negative impact
on mental health, negative impact on vulnerable groups, and lack of account-
ability. In this chapter, we have mainly discussed the ethical concerns from
identified “bad”, i.e., the dark side of factors that could take both posi-
tive and negative values. Accordingly, to cover the gamification ethics topic
from its various aspects, we should also consider the positive consequences
of gamification and posit different results paths in a more comprehensive
perspective, since ethics and moral virtues are not limited to bad issues. In the
same manner, future research could investigate other factors that might affect
ethical decision-making like self-concept, demographics, personal environ-
ment, corporate culture, and legal environment. It would also be interesting
and valuable if future research conducted an empirical study across various
cultures to investigate how gamified experiences affect the ethical judgement
process, and what kinds of ethical implications might be involved in such expe-
rience, with an aim to understand the differences between cultures with respect
to their ethical judgement processes towards gamification practices. Moreover,
future research examining other parties’ (e.g. marketers, designers, and stake-
holders) perspectives about ethical issues related to gamification will provide
a more holistic and diverse picture of the topic. Furthermore, examining how
ethical consumer judgments on gamification practice impact future consumer
behaviour and other marketing outcomes like brand image, word of mouth,
and customer loyalty will help us to better understand the consumer journey
that is driven by gamification from an ethical perspective.

Acknowledgements This work has been supported by: Institute of International

Education; Finnish National Agency for Education; Liikesivistysrahasto under Grant
No. 210301 (Project name: GAMETH | Gamified Services Towards Sustainable Ends
with Ethical Means); Academy of Finland Flagship Programme under Grant No.
337653 (Project name: UNITE | Forest-Human-Machine Interplay).

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 CHAPTER 42

Value Co-creation or Value Co-destruction?

the Role of Negative Emotions
in Consumer-Firm Interaction in the Social
Media Platform

Moreno Frau, Luca Frigau, Francesca Cabiddu,

and Francesco Mola

1 Introduction
The popularity of the Internet and social media has enabled users to provide
quick feedback and evaluations by posting their comments online. In addi-
tion, users can also post reviews and opinions on specialized social media to
which firms and other users can respond (Ho-Dac et al., 2013). Consequently,
social interactions are characterized by an enormous number of user-generated
content (UGC), allowing users to create dynamic social networks (Ho et al.,
2020). Furthermore, companies can strengthen their performance and rela-
tionship with customers by analyzing and learning from their interactions
(Hamzah et al., 2021). This phenomenon has drawn the interest of the
interactive marketing academy too. Wang (2021, p. 1) defines interactive
marketing as “the bi-directional value creation and mutual-influence marketing
process through active customer connection, engagement, participation and
interaction.“
Although social media platforms have emerged as dominant digital
communication channels (Qin, 2020), there is scant knowledge on how the

M. Frau (B)
Corvinus University of Budapest, Budapest, Hungary
e-mail: moreno.frau@uni-corvinus.hu
L. Frigau · F. Cabiddu · F. Mola
University of Cagliari, Cagliari, Italy

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 987

Switzerland AG 2023
C. L. Wang (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Interactive Marketing,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14961-0_42
988 M. FRAU ET AL.

customer-firm interaction in social media could lead to understanding adverse

outcomes (e.g., value co-destruction, negative word-of-mouth, and brand
detachments). Several existing studies only focus on social media features
and how the differences from traditional media are challenging interactive
marketing strategies (He et al., 2021). However, recent studies on interactive
marketing acknowledge that the interaction among actors sometimes leads to
value co-destruction (VCD) rather than value co-creation (VCC) (Cabiddu
et al., 2019; Echeverri et al., 2012; Kashif & Zarkada, 2015; Plé, 2017). VCD
is defined as “an interactional process between service systems that results
in a decline in at least one of the system’s well-being” (Plé & Chumpitaz
Cáceres, 2010, p. 431). Therefore, this chapter focuses on customer value.
Woodruff (1997) defines it as assessing the product’s features, performance,
and consequences and whether they positively achieve the customer’s goals in
the circumstances they need them. Existing VCD studies have mainly focused
on offline settings (Nangpiire et al., 2021), while a few studies address VCD
in the online context (Frau et al., 2018). However, these studies neglect the
emotions involved in awkward interaction (Camilleri & Neuhofer, 2017) and
the importance of UGC online (Muda & Hamzah, 2021). A few studies
on VCD in the online context mainly analyze emotions using qualitative
techniques (Jmour & Hmida, 2017).
On the one hand, these studies allow the valuable exploration of a largely
unobserved phenomenon. Nevertheless, on the other hand, they bring the
researcher’s subjectivity in classifying the emotions. Thus, data mining to
analyze the valuable latent knowledge extracted from the UGC available in
social media is a fundamental prerequisite to better understanding customer
emotions (Rasool & Pathania, 2021).
In this theoretical context, fundamental questions such as “How do
customers’ negative emotions lead to social media VCD?” remain unanswered.
Therefore, the present chapter highlights the role of negative emotions in
complex customer-firm interaction and classifies emotions automatically and
objectively through an algorithm. This chapter, first, allows the portrayal of
customers’ negative emotions such as anger, dissatisfaction, disgust, fear, and
sadness by handling UGC; second, it detects their value co-destructing effects
in the customer-firm interaction. Therefore, this chapter employs an explana-
tory sequential mixed design (Creswell & Clark, 2017). The originality of this
chapter lies in analyzing the periods marked by structural changes in the nega-
tive comments distribution to understand how negative emotions affect the
customer-firm interaction, which, in turn, leads to VCD. 22,955 comments
posted by the firm and the users were collected from the Huawei Mobile US
Facebook page from September 2011 to January 2017.
This chapter makes two main contributions to the interactive marketing
academic debate on VCD. First, it contributes to understanding the emotions
that shape VCD in the social media context. Second, it empirically shows
the relationships between emotions (anger, dissatisfaction, disgust, fear, and
sadness), typology of problematic interaction (e.g., conflicts), and the VCD
process.
 42 VALUE CO-CREATION OR VALUE CO-DESTRUCTION? … 989

2 Consumer-Firm Social Interaction

and the Role of Customers’ Emotions
The notion of social interaction plays a crucial role in the growing number
of studies on interactive marketing. Social interaction consists of practices in
which two or more users have reciprocal actions and influences over time
(Cabiddu et al., 2019; Plé & Chumpitaz Cáceres, 2010). Therefore, inter-
action is characterized by a two-way communication process with mutual
influences in social and business spheres (Steuer, 1992). Social interaction also
focuses on customer proactivity and openness to a customer value creation
process and customer participation in monitoring and adapting the social
environment in actual time (Steuer, 1992).
Interaction between customers and firms is essential to initiate VCC since
only interacting with the involved actors can create collaborative value (Echev-
erri & Skålén, 2011; Lombardo & Cabiddu, 2017; Makkonen & Olkkonen,
2017). A few pioneering interactive marketing studies explored social inter-
action, emotions, and VCD in the online context in the past decades.
Concerning consumer-firm interaction, social media platforms are hubs of
brand communities that collect users who help to create content and share
brand information by, for example, tagging friends. Therefore, social media
platforms create opportunities for both firms and customers to share and
spread brand-related information (Wang, 2021). In addition, users can express
their opinions on various products and services (e.g., restaurants and tech-
nological devices). These opinions are reviews to which the firm can usually
reply, and the other users can indicate whether the reviews were valuable (e.g.,
TripAdvisor) (Ho-Dac et al., 2013). Other social media also allow businesses
to write reviews about their customers, thus allowing a peer consumer-firm
interaction process among the users (Sthapit & Jiménez-Barreto, 2018). Also,
social media allows real interaction among firms and customers. Websites and
mobile apps stimulate users to rapidly create and share content with friends,
family, and acquaintances (Izogo & Mpinganjira, 2020). Thus, interactivity is
by far the core feature of social media. However, they cannot avoid having
built-in features that users can use to interact with firms and other users in
a dyadic, triad, or multi-sided connection making stronger firm-consumers
relationships (Lim & Childs, 2020). Interaction-driven social media such as
Facebook offer a wide range of tools for interaction. For example, users can
give a like or forward a post. Also, with the function @, users can link, add
or tag friends for specific content, create a fan page, and use hashtags for the
cross-referencing of content sharing a theme (Wang, 2021).
Users can also express and share feelings via emojis linked with the primary
human emotions. For example, an emoji contest in WeChat fostered its
members to be creative by making emojis and voting for their preferred
emojis created by other users. Similarly, a soft drink company launched
a global social media campaign using its own branded emoji. Such social
media campaign created a common-recognized company language by inviting
990 M. FRAU ET AL.

consumers worldwide to share their favorite emojis (Wang, 2021). In such

online environments, interactions are potentially unlimited, contrary to what
occurs in social media such as TripAdvisor and Airbnb, where the interactions
are limited to one per user (Jmour & Hmida, 2017).
Moreover, users are different regarding what they are looking for on
various social media platforms. For instance, users may search for informa-
tion using a platform for social and enjoyment purposes or co-creation value
with firms (Pelletier et al., 2020). However, social media does not provide the
only opportunity for positive customer-firm interaction. Social media often
disseminate negative information or even fake news, which may trigger brand
community backfire (Elsharnouby et al., 2021; Liao & Wang, 2020). Here,
social media agility may play a game-changing role in customer engagement
moving tip the balance toward VCC (Gligor & Bozkurt, 2021; Manser Payne
et al., 2021). Hence, the interactive value formation supported by the social
media results in a complete range of outputs: VCC, VCD, as well as value no-
creation (VNC), or rather, customers’ experience of a product or service is in
line with their expectations (Makkonen & Olkkonen, 2017; Sthapit & Björk,
2018; Tang et al., 2014).
In this complex network of interactions, users, and value formation
outcomes (e.g., VCC, VCD and VNC), some interactive marketing studies
about the VCD drivers in the online context find that trust and distrust are
critical emotions in the review system (Sigala, 2017). Thus, when written by
reliable users (e.g., customers who frequently provide reviews), unfavorable
reviews can destroy value by scattering negative electronic word-of-mouth
(Muda & Hamzah, 2021). Moreover, because of social media’s rapidity, the
traditional negative word-of-mouth is becoming even more dangerous with
its evolution in word-of-click. It occurs when users negatively contribute to
community advising against firms’ posts, e.g., clicking on the “angry” emoji
(Xue, 2019). Another driver of VCD is the firms’ lack of emotions, such
as empathy, expressed by poor customer service (Sthapit & Jiménez-Barreto,
2018). This shortcoming destroys customer value in terms of losses of their
resources (e.g., time and money) (Sthapit & Jiménez-Barreto, 2018), while
companies find their value destroyed by the customers’ misbehavior in terms
of tangible and intangible resources (e.g., company reputation).
Moreover, firms’ misbehavior and negative customer experiences could
trigger emotions such as anger, betrayal, dissatisfaction, frustration, disap-
pointment, and hostility (Jmour & Hmida, 2017). These emotions lead to
a broad range of VCD social practices, such as expressing feelings, evalu-
ating, interacting, and discouraging (Camilleri & Neuhofer, 2017). Finally,
other studies on deviant behaviors found that users may have multiple social
interactions involving the firm and its customers and company fake profiles,
anti-brand organizations, and hackers (Frau et al., 2018).
Overall, this interactive marketing stream of research identifies four primary
problematic social interactions associated with VCD. The first, misbehavior, is
 42 VALUE CO-CREATION OR VALUE CO-DESTRUCTION? … 991

defined as the intentional, candid, or covert actions of users that disrupt func-
tional interaction by violating the accepted norms of conduct (Echeverri et al.,
2012; Kashif & Zarkada, 2015). Some examples from social media include
unexpected booking cancelations, scams, cheating, making insults, lacking
transparency, and providing false information (Frau et al., 2018; Jmour &
Hmida, 2017). The second, known as contradictory interaction, occurs when
the users involved in a business relationship have divergent opinions that effec-
tively mar their interaction (e.g., structural tension) (Vartiainen & Tuunanen,
2016). The third, defined as conflictual interaction, results from divergent
opinions. However, such interaction leads to actual conflicts between users
(Vafeas et al., 2016). Finally, the fourth, negative interaction, refers to the
interaction found disagreeable by one or more users (Nam et al., 2018; Smith,
2013). In this classification, some interactive marketing researchers consider
problematic social interaction determinants for VCD (Echeverri & Skålén,
2011) or value diminution (Vafeas et al., 2016). This view is endorsed by other
researchers who maintain that misbehavior and contradictory, conflictual, and
negative interaction trigger and encourage misuse of resources (Kashif &
Zarkada, 2015), which acts as an input for VCD. On the other hand, some
researchers debate that contradictions and conflicts might be a source of VCC
(Fyrberg Yngfalk, 2013; Laamanen & Skålén, 2014). For instance, Fyrberg
Yngfalk (2013) suggests that “contradictory resource integration and inter-
actions are fundamental for value to be co-created” because they start a
process of “new interpretations and meaning creation” for innovative solu-
tions. Consistent with the previous studies, Laamanen and Skålén (2014)
suggested that conflicts encourage innovation and creativity because conflicts
are an inherent feature of human interaction which is “neither positive nor
negative.” In contrast, studies on contradictory interaction show that VCC
and VCD impact interactive value formation (Vartiainen & Tuunanen, 2016).
In conclusion, recent interactive marketing studies highlighted that interaction
episodes gathered into a relationship combined with neutral social interaction
can drive VNC (Makkonen & Olkkonen, 2017; Tang et al., 2014).
Summing up, interactive marketing literature acknowledges the customer–
firm social interaction as intrinsic to the interactive value formation in the
social media context. At the same time, it is vague as to how it can be charac-
terized as a source of VCC, VNC, or VCD. An in-depth understanding of the
emotions involved in the social interaction process may dilute the ambiguity.
Which, so far, has received poor academic attention (Plé, 2017). In this debate,
the present study aims to fill the gap in the interactive marketing literature on
the role of negative emotions associated with the customer–firm interaction in
the social media setting.

3 Methods
This chapter adopted the explanatory sequential mixed method research
design to analyze the role of negative emotions in the process of social media
992 M. FRAU ET AL.

VCD (Creswell & Clark, 2017). This method includes collecting, analyzing,
and integrating quantitative and qualitative techniques in one study. The
authors use quantitative and qualitative methods because a single method
might be insufficient to explore the research problem. This chapter adopts
a mixed method because of the complementarity of the quantitative analysis,
which provides a general understanding of the research problem. In contrast,
the qualitative analysis can study the customer–firm interaction (Creswell &
Clark, 2017). In the present study, the mixed methods approach is helpful
because quantitative methods categorize comments into positive, neutral and
negative, identify peaks of negative comments, and classify the peaks into
homogeneous groups of topics in which the primary user’s emotions are iden-
tified. However, they did not detail the topics discussed during the peaks, the
type of social interaction characterizing those peaks, and what factors cause
VCD. The qualitative analysis explores the topics above and finds associations
between emotions, types of social interaction, and VCD.
The authors first collected data and analyzed it from the Huawei US Face-
book page. Then, The authors collected and analyzed qualitative data to help
explain and investigate the quantitative results (see Table 1).
This chapter focused on Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd., a Chinese
company of ICT and telecommunications that globally develops systems,
network solutions, and technological products. It is one of the leading brands
in the mobile and telecommunications industry. Huawei’s mission is to provide
cutting-edge technology to consumers worldwide and to develop an increas-
ingly “connected” world by providing extraordinary experiences for people.
The authors selected Huawei for its fast market development. The analysis
was restricted to the US Huawei Facebook page for the greatest number of
likes and followers compared with the other English-language pages of the
company. The preferred social platform was Facebook because it is the most
popular worldwide, ranked first by the number of monthly active users (2,910
million in January 2022).

3.1 Data Pre-processing

The quantitative dataset consists of 29,945 postings and comments on the
Huawei US Facebook page from September 2011 to January 2017. The time
covered by this chapter is tied with the quantity of data downloadable, which
Facebook determines. Therefore, the exact number may vary depending on
the traffic on Facebook.
Quantitative data cleaning. First, a data cleaning process involved the
removal of 3,125 comments from external pages and their replies because
this chapter considered the dyadic interaction between Huawei Mobile and its
customers exclusively. Then, from the remaining 26,820, the authors consid-
ered only 22,955 firm and users’ comments for the analysis. Successively, the
authors removed articles, conjunctions, prepositions and numbers that were
not significant for the analysis.
 42 VALUE CO-CREATION OR VALUE CO-DESTRUCTION? … 993

Table 1 Visual model for the mixed methods explanatory sequential design study

Study stage Procedure Product

• Comments posted on the • Text data processed with

Quantitative Huawei US Facebook page (n = statistical techniques
data collection
29,945) • Just firm–customer interactions
• Data cleaning (n = 22,955) were considered, stop words
“tm 0.7–3” R package was used

• Sentiment analysis • Comments classified as positive

Quantitative • Topic Analysis or negative
data analysis
• Sentiment characterization • Comments grouped according
• R quantitative software to the topic
• Detection of emotions

• Purposely selected peaks of • Negative comments peaks (n =

Connecting negative comments based on 4)
Quantitative and
Qualitative stage
their distributions • Qualitative datasets
• Pinpoint qualitative datasets

• Comments grouped by negative • Text data

QUALITATIVE comments peaks and the related
data collection
topics

• Coding and thematic analysis • Codes and themes;

QUALITATIVE • Cross-thematic analysis • List of topics for each peak
data analysis
• NVivo 10 qualitative software

• Research purpose • A comprehensive quantitative

Integration of the • Data collection and qualitative research question
Quantitative and
Qualitative results
• Findings • Qualitative datasets determined
• Interpretation and explanation of by quantitative analysis
the quantitative and qualitative • Results represented by a
results conjoined
qualitative-quantitative
perspective
• Discussion;
• Implications;
• Future research
994 M. FRAU ET AL.

3.2 Data Analysis

Quantitative analysis: The text-mining-based algorithm. The algorithm
proposed in this chapter consists of four main parts, which can (1) detect
the negative comments; (2) pinpoint the periods characterized by significant
peaks of negative comments; (3) cluster the identified periods by topics; and
(4) characterize each topic with emotions. First, the algorithm classifies the
users’ positive, neutral, and negative comments by running a Sentiment Anal-
ysis. Next, the algorithm constructs a document-term matrix (DTM) from
the original comments. Then, the algorithm runs a logistic regression model
on an external database and fits the DTM generated from the study dataset.
Finally, the algorithm performs a ROC analysis to define two thresholds. The
first threshold separates positive from neutral and negative comments, ensuring
that 75% of positive comments are correctly classified. The second threshold
separates positive and neutral comments from the negative, guaranteeing that
75% of negative comments are correctly allocated. This step creates three
groups of comments (positive, neutral, and negative) in line with the liter-
ature, which states that social interaction may trigger VCC, VNC, and VCD
(Makkonen & Olkkonen, 2017; Tang et al., 2014). Second, the algorithm uses
empirical fluctuation tests to identify the time intervals in which the distribu-
tion of negative comments shows structural changes. The algorithm recognizes
these ranges by testing when the distribution of negative comments differs
from a regression model with a null slope. Third, the authors clustered the
negative comments posted during the time intervals using a topic analysis.
Lastly, the algorithm characterized the clusters with appropriate emotions by
using a lexicon consisting of words and their respective negative emotions. The
authors run the analyses using the statistical language program “R” version
3.4.4.
Qualitative analysis. Once quantitative data analysis has identified the peaks
of negative comments and these are clustered into homogeneous subgroups
based on the topic of the interaction, the authors created a qualitative dataset
for each by selecting the negative comments. Finally, the authors uploaded the
selected comments into NVivo 10 for the thematic qualitative data analysis
(Bazeley & Jackson, 2013; Cabiddu et al., 2018).
The authors performed a two-phase coding process for every identified
peak. All the comments were inductively coded based on the studies by
Miles and Huberman (1994). The first coding phase observed descriptive and
interpretative codes. Descriptive codes need little or no data interpretation,
whereas interpretative ones indicate the researcher’s understanding of the data
(Miles & Huberman, 1994). The first phase gives a former collection of struc-
tured codes (e.g., software freezes, the device is fragile, network issues, the
device is ugly, and supply problems), which formed the basis for the second
coding phase. The authors sought thematic codes in the second coding phase
(Miles & Huberman, 1994). The second phase helped identify and explain
the topics discussed during the peaks of negative comments. For example, in
 42 VALUE CO-CREATION OR VALUE CO-DESTRUCTION? … 995

the first peak, topics such as “the company copies the competitors,” “business
partner’s selection is disapproved,” and “poor quality” were highlighted. The
overall qualitative analysis served to deepen the quantitative ones.

4 Results
4.1 Negative Emotions in Peaks of Adverse Social Media Comments
The inputs of the developed algorithm are the users’ comments as elucidated
from the quantitative data cleaning stage. First, the algorithm constructed a
DTM from those comments. Then a logistic regression model was run on the
database “sentiment140,” which consists of 1,578,627 records already clas-
sified as either positive or negative. Finally, the algorithm applied the model
to the collected data, and it calculated the probability of positivity of each
comment. The probability ranged from 0 (totally negative comment) to 1
(totally positive comment). Successively, the ROC analysis set the probability
thresholds that maximize the correct classifications: the comments with a like-
lihood of their positivity lower than 0.4636 were set as negative, while those
with a probability of positivity higher than 0.5575 as positive. Finally, the
comments with a chance between 0.4636 and 0.5575 are considered neutrals.
Subsequently, the algorithm used the empirical fluctuation tests to pinpoint
the structural changes in the distribution of negative comments. Throughout
the analysis, the algorithm recognized sub-periods in which the distribution of
the negative comments demonstrates structural changes to a flat trend (Fig. 1).
The algorithm could identify four periods (Fig. 2): from June 23 to August
11, 2013; from October 23 to November 17, 2015; from August 30 to
September 23, 2016; and from December 26, 2016, to January 30, 2017.

Fig. 1 The empirical fluctuation process is expressed in relative terms. The contin-
uous line exceeding the boundaries (dashed lines) identifies the significant negative
comments peaks
996 M. FRAU ET AL.

40
No. of negative comments

30

20

10

0
2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
Time

Fig. 2 The negative comments distribution. The solid black line is the relative cubic
smoothing spline. The polygons indicate the four periods characterized by statistically
significant (p < 0.05) structural changes from a flat trend

Then, the algorithm performed an LDA to cluster the negative comments

of each period into homogeneous topics. The search for such groups was to
group negative comments based on users’ words associated with the primary
emotions, such as anger, dissatisfaction, disgust, fear, and sadness. The identi-
fied topics have been characterized by words that have frequently appeared in
comments (e.g., broken, malfunction, breakdown, and defected).
Finally, the algorithm calculates the probability that each of the five consid-
ered emotions characterizes the topics. The authors used the lexicon in
the vocabulary “nrc” contained in the “tidytext 0.1.9” R package (Silge &
Robinson, 2016). This vocabulary consists of 13,901 words associated with
positive and negative emotions. Since this study aims solely to analyze negative
comments, this chapter exclusively considers the negative emotions.
In the fourth and last step, the algorithm characterized the periods through
negative emotions. In particular, given the negative emotions that described
the words included in the comments within the period, the algorithm summa-
rized them by computing the relative frequency table conditioned to topics
(Tables 2, 4, 6, and 8).

4.2 The Link Between Customers’ Negative Emotions and VCD

The quantitative analysis identified the four peaks of negative comments
characterized by significant deviations from the trend. The combination of
quantitative and qualitative analyses revealed that these peaks are associated
with three of the four problematic interactions identified in the literature
(misbehavior, contradictory, conflictual, and negative interaction). However,
 42 VALUE CO-CREATION OR VALUE CO-DESTRUCTION? … 997

Table 2 The number of comments (%) and emotions percentage distribution of the
three topics identified in the first period (from June 23, 2013, to August 11, 2013)

No. (%) Topic Anger Dissatisfaction Disgust Fear Sadness

166 (46) (1) The company 20.8 13.2 26.4 13.2 26.4
copies the competitors
66 (18) (2) Business partners’ 21.0 24.2 30.6 10.5 13.7
selection disapproval
133 (36) (3) Poor quality 25.3 14.0 32.1 14.3 14.3
(software freezes,
updates unavailable)
Weighted average 22.4 15.5 29.2 13.1 19.7

there is not enough evidence in the four peaks to classify one of them as
customers’ misbehavior.
The authors found most of the comments (365 negative comments) within
the first peak (Table 2). The weighted average shows that the first period is
characterized by a high percentage of disgust (29.2%) followed by anger and
sadness, 22.4% and 19.7%, respectively. However, some deviations from the
average can explain through a qualitative analysis of the topics. Given the qual-
itative coding process, the authors could label the topics of the first period
as follows: the company copies the competitors; business partners’ selection
disapproval; poor quality.
When accusing the company of copying its competitors, the customers
feel similar disgust and sadness (26.4%) and anger (20.8%), whereas the other
two emotions are lower than 14%. Customers express their dissent firmly and
normally use offensive or rude expressions (Table 3). On the other hand,
the company rarely responds to the accusation of copying. Its interactions are
limited to comments such as, “Hi [user name]. It has come to our attention that
you have posted a false comment. We will not allow such proven false statements
that you’ve also openly encouraged others to make. Regards, Huawei US.” Such
responses do not curb the proliferation of coping accusations, and it allows the
users to continue to comment. It implies that the company has not mitigated
disgust, sadness, and anger, and they are free to influence the customer VCD
process. When disapproving of Huawei’s new business partners (second
topic), users appear to be even more hostile and, therefore, more conflictual.
Here, the most representative emotion remains disgust (30.6%). However,
dissatisfaction (24.2%) and anger (21.0%) play a stronger influence. In partic-
ular, customers used more aggressive language dictated by high levels of
dissatisfaction and anger. Once again, the company provided weak responses,
replicating the customer VCD mechanisms shown previously: “Some retailers
are placing it [the mobile] on Sim Free which is close to what the PAYG [pay
as you go] price would be anyway.” In the third topic too, the users strongly
yet cheerfully express their disappointment regarding the poor quality of the
998 M. FRAU ET AL.

devices, lamenting software issues, and unavailability of updates. Here, the

comments are characterized by a mix of emotions composed of disgust (32.1%)
and anger (25.3%). Both the emotions have a higher percentage compared
with the first peak. In conclusion, the joint analysis of the customer–firm
interaction can help categorize the interactions in the first peak as conflictual.
Although disgust, anger, and sadness did not lead users to more dangerous
forms of VCD interaction, such as misbehavior, these three emotions facilitate
customer VCD because conflicts can alienate the company from consumers
and break their trust relationship.
Table 4 illustrates the emotion distribution of the second peak (52
comments). The weighted averages show a period of negative comments not
only characterized mainly by dissatisfaction (30.9%) but also influenced by fear
(21.2%) and disgust (18.0%), which plays a minor role. Based on the quali-
tative analysis, the second peak has been triggered by the following topics of
conversation: disapproval of the new product functions, shipment/distribution
problems, and disapproval of the device’s appearance. These topics marred the
customer–firm interaction, thus triggering customer VCD.

Table 3 Summary of the first peak of problematic interaction

Topic Quote example (emotion) Kind of interaction

(1) The company copies the
competitors
(2) Business partners’ selection
disapproval
(3) Poor quality (software
freezes, updates unavailable)
“Just a shame the top looks like Conflictual interactions
an iPhone.” (Disgust)
“It’s quite sad… it’s like those
who buy knockoff Louis Vuitton
because it’s similar.” (Sadness)
"Terrible bastardized iPhone
clone." (Anger)
“Does it matter what phone it is?
If it’s on Vodafone it won’t
work…” (Disgust)
“Don’t ever get a contract with
Vodafone, worst customer service
ever.” (Dissatisfaction)
“I hate Vodafone! Treat you like
crap!” (Anger)
“I brought a [product name] and
it’s terrible—the OTA upgraded to
Ice Cream Sandwich, which is
buggy as hell, and then have
dropped all support for it. AVOID
HUAWEI.” (Disgust)
“I got one… It was very quick…
But… so many software
problems… After 36 h I hated it
so much that I took it back.
Don’t touch this phone.” (Anger)
 42 VALUE CO-CREATION OR VALUE CO-DESTRUCTION? … 999

Table 4 The number of comments (%) and emotions percentage distribution of the
three topics identified in the second period (from October 23, 2015, to November
17, 2015)

No. (%) Topic Anger Dissatisfaction Disgust Fear Sadness

21 (40) (1) Disapproval of the 17.0 24.5 17.0 24.5 17.0

new product functions
16 (31) (2) 17.2 44.8 6.9 10.3 20.7
Shipment/distribution
problems
15 (29) (3) Disapproval of the 12.5 25.0 31.3 28.1 3.1
device’s appearance
Weighted average 15.8 30.9 18.0 21.2 14.1

The customers’ disapproval of the new product functionality has trig-

gered dissatisfaction and fear among Facebook users. Both emotions similarly
contribute to customer VCD (24.5%). VCD is manifested by the customers’
use of impolite expressions (Table 5), while the firm avoids directly facing
the criticisms. Huawei reacted only to customers’ technical requests: “Hi
[customer name], yes the Huawei Watch runs Android Wear and is compat-
ible for Android 4.3 + and even Apple iOS 8.2 + !.” It suggests that users
were free to make negative comments about the new product functionality,
and emotions such as dissatisfaction and fear could easily influence customer
VCD. The second topic, shipment/distribution problems, led to dissatisfac-
tion among the customers (44.8%), the highest percentage detected in the four
peaks. Shipment and distribution problems almost doubled the dissatisfaction
felt in topics 1 and 3. The topic of shipment and distribution also differs from
the other two because sadness assumed greater importance, reaching 20.7%.
However, the authors observed the lowest value for disgust (6.9%). Despite
the customers’ aggressive comments, the company responded with valuable
information on the distribution issues: “Hi [customer name], please PM us
your order number, and we will get back to you with the shipment details.“ The
firm’s responses appeased customers’ dissatisfaction and sadness, thus reducing
customer VCD’s impact.
Similarly, while the customers heavily disliked and disapproved of the
appearance of the new device, the firm was partially able to reply to the
customers’ criticism, partly limiting emotions such as disgust (31.3%), fear
(28.1%), and dissatisfaction (25.0%). Finally, even in the second peak, the
overall interaction can be traced back to the conflictual category; the company
marginalized customer VCD by handling their emotions through its replies
(e.g., topics 1 and 2). Therefore, the analysis classifies the interactions in the
second peak as contradictory. Nevertheless, even if the contradictory interac-
tions can be considered mildly problematic, emotions such as dissatisfaction,
disgust, and fear can start and amplify the erosion of the relationships between
1000 M. FRAU ET AL.

Table 5 Summary of the second peak of problematic interaction

Topic Quote example (emotion) Kind of interaction

(1) Disapproval of the new
product functions
(2) Shipment/distribution
problems
(3) Disapproval of the device’s “Fugly” (Disgust)
appearance
“What a pity, it’s so limited [the Contradictory interactions
smartwatch] with functions
when using iPhone. I was just
about to purchase until I
realized I can’t even get SMS.”
(Dissatisfaction)
“If I was going to buy a
smartwatch, I would not get the
Huawei which is like a flat tire
and annoying.” (Fear)
“I was promised my [product
name] would ship late last week.
No one can tell if it will shipped
today. What’s wrong with your
distribution system???”
(Dissatisfaction)
“I was told mine [product
name] would ship late this week.
If there is no shipment by then
I’ll be very upset….” (Sadness)
“That thing is ugly as hell. It
looks like my grandpa’s old
watch.” (Fear)
“Crappy off-brand junk”
(Dissatisfaction)

Table 6 The number of comments (%) and emotions percentage distribution of the
three topics identified in the third period (from August 30, 2016, to September 23,
2016)

No. (%) Topic Anger Dissatisfaction Disgust Fear Sadness

13 (21) (1) Problems with 11.6 18.6 20.9 20.9 27.9

the two lenses system
30 (48) (2) Disagreement 20.0 15.0 15.0 30.0 20.0
between users about
the headphone jack
connection
19 (31) (3) Poor quality 23.1 17.3 17.3 19.2 23.1
(screen brakes easily)
Weighted average 19.2 16.5 17.0 24.8 22.6
 42 VALUE CO-CREATION OR VALUE CO-DESTRUCTION? … 1001

the company and its customers. Indeed, from the firm’s perspective, ignoring
this mix of customers’ emotions can trigger VCD because divergent opinions
can spoil customer–firm interaction.
The third period classifies 62 negative comments (Table 6). Based on the
weighted averages, the third peak is distinguished by fear (24.8%), followed
by sadness (22.6%), and anger (19.2%). Here, the topics of conversation are
as follows: problems with the two lenses system, disagreement between users
about the headphone jack connection, and poor quality (screen breaks easily).
In topic 1, customers’ comments are focused on the issues faced when
using the dual-lens system. The users mainly displayed their sadness (27.9%)
because they thought they could use one lens at a time. This topic is also char-
acterized by disgust and fear (20.9%, see Table 7). The firm did not provide
any explanation on its Facebook page; some users even explicitly asked for
clarifications: “Just trying to get a response from Huawei. It’s a shame because
the camera on the phone is actually exceptionally good.” Despite the lack of
responses from the company, the customers maintained polite language in
their requests. Instead, during the disagreement between users about the
headphone jack connection, the interactions are among the users. They are
strongly characterized by fear (30.0%), the most prevalent emotion in this peak
(weighted average 24.8%), and sadness and anger, both with 20.0%. Except for
a few sporadic uses of imprecations, the users’ conversations were easy. Users
made fun of each other, but, at the same time, their fear of losing a jack port
for listening to music was evident. Finally, in topic 3, the screen breaks easily,
the fear significantly decreased at 19.2%, whereas sadness and anger prevailed
at 23.1% each, which are the highest in this topic. Even if anger is significant,
the interactions are kept respectful. In turn, the firm provided helpful informa-
tion that alleviated customers’ fear: “[…] After you are a Gold Member, please
contact our Technical Support hotline at [telephone numbers] in order to book
in your phone for the free screen replacement.” In this peak, the interactions did
not result in misbehavior or conflictual or contradictory interactions. There-
fore, the interactions have been classified under the broad category of negative
interactions. From the firm’s perspective, ignoring customers’ emotions such
as fear, sadness, and anger can trigger VCD. Customers could feel neglected
when providing feedback to the firm about the problems detected in the
devices, and they could stop giving valuable pieces of information. Therefore,
even if the negative interactions have a low customer VCD impact, the firm
has to confront them and handle the emotional mix before they could evolve
into more dangerous kinds of interaction.
The last peak concerns 91 negative comments (Table 8). As indicated by
the weighted averages, this period is characterized by dissatisfaction (29.3%),
sadness (22.8%), and anger (19.7%). The fourth and the second peaks share
dissatisfaction as the most represented element in the emotions mix, both
amount to nearly 30%. However, these peaks defer in the other two most
1002 M. FRAU ET AL.

Table 7 Summary of the third peak of problematic interaction

Topic Quote example (emotion) Kind of interaction

(1) Problems with the two lenses
system
(2) Disagreement between users
about the headphone jack
connection
(3) Poor quality (screen breaks
easily)
“Did you make a phone with one Negative interactions
color lens and another black and
white lens? You do realize EVERY
ANDROID PHONE IN THE
WORLD has the ability to change
a color picture into black and
white. Another totally useless
feature. I feel sorry for the
gullible morons that get sucked in
by these features.” (Sadness)
“Soon as I put my camera on my
phone gets so hot that it burns.”
(Fear)
“Shame they forgot to mention
the [product name] is only a
single lens!” (Disgust)
“3.5 mm jacks have been around
for years because they work well.
Why try to change what isn’t
broken…” (Fear)
“I don’t get it, surely all phones
have a headphone hole! what the
fuck?” (Anger)
“You don’t need to throw away
your beloved headphones with
normal mobile phones.” (Sadness)
“[…] my phone screen [product
name] cracked yesterday. I want
to fix it. I couldn’t find any
service center here searching for
support area. Can someone help
me? Regret getting my phone,
really do!” (Sadness)
“[product name] front screen
smashed on my 2 phones 3
months old. Why are these
[product name] so fragile? I’m
not happy at all! I’m pissed that
my wife and I have to use these
crap-looking phones. IF
HUAWEI DONT RESPOND TO
ME, I WILL POST THIS
EVERYWHERE.” (Anger)

(continued)
 42 VALUE CO-CREATION OR VALUE CO-DESTRUCTION? … 1003

Table 7 (continued)

Topic Quote example (emotion) Kind of interaction

“Still wouldn’t buy a Huawei.

Very poorly made and very
unreliable.” (Fear)

Table 8 The number of comments (%) and emotions percentage distribution of the
three topics identified in the fourth period (from December 26, 2016, to January 30,
2017)

No. (%) Topic Anger Dissatisfaction Disgust Fear Sadness

27 (30) (1) Limited compatibility 18.2 42.4 12.1 9.1 18.2

with network carriers
29 (32) (2) Poor quality 18.0 23.0 13.1 18.0 27.9
(overheats, battery)
35 (38) (3) Disapproval of screen 22.2 24.4 11.1 20.0 22.2
features and shape
Weighted average 19.7 29.3 12.0 16.1 22.8

representative emotions. In the fourth peak, the three main topics of conver-
sation are limited compatibility with network carriers, poor quality, and
disapproval of screen features and shape.
When users discussed the devices’ limited compatibility with network
carriers, the authors detected a high percentage of dissatisfaction (42.4%),
which mainly characterizes the topic. The authors also detected an equal level
of anger and sadness (18.2%). Users were hostile in expressing feelings about
the device compatibility limitations with some network carriers (Table 9). For
their part, the company promptly reacted by apologizing to the customer:
“Hello, [customer name] We are very sorry to hear that you are having issues
with your phone […]” and providing information: “Please contact our Tech-
nical Support hotline at [telephone number].” Sometimes the company even
suggested an alternative device to solve the network problems: “We do have
the perfect device for Verizon’s network. The [product name]is the perfect device
for you. It’s a powerful unlocked CDMA/GSM device that will work on all major
US networks.” The company efficiently managed the customer VCD process
and showed the most proactive reaction to the users’ negative comments
and emotions. Poor quality is observed in the first and third peaks; now,
it is expressed in terms of device overheating and battery issues. Sadness is
the emotion with the highest value (27.9%) in this topic. Among the other
four emotions, dissatisfaction alone exceeds the threshold of 20%, obtaining
a value equal to 23.0%. The dialect used in this conversation is offensive,
and contrary to what the authors observed, the company response was less
1004 M. FRAU ET AL.

punctual. Expressing their disapproval of the features and the shape of the
screen, the users mostly felt dissatisfaction (24.4%), anger (22.2%), and sadness
(22.2%). These emotions led to embitterment in the customers’ comments,
while the firm provided more detail about the device screen buttons and func-
tionalities to calm its customers: “Hello [user name]! The Buttons on the device
would be the Volume button on the side of the device. You would have three soft-
touch buttons on the front of the phone. You will also be given a keyboard on the
device that is a touch screen.” In the fourth peak, emotions such as dissatis-
faction, sadness, and anger played an essential role in ruining the interaction
between the firm and customers resulting in VCD. Nevertheless, at this peak,
the firm provided some precise answers, especially in topic 1, in which they
also suggested some solutions to overcome the device’s limited compatibility
with network carriers. With all these efforts, the firm can stem the negative
comments, which helps categorize the interaction as contradictory instead of
conflictual.
The authors observed that the peaks of negative comments consist of several
topics of conversation among users involving the company. The customers
appear not to discuss the same topic over time except for “Poor quality,”
repeated in three peaks. However, it regarded various aspects of different
devices (e.g., overheating, updates unavailability, screen fragility, and software
freezing). Each topic shows a mix of emotions, which contributes to char-
acterizing the peak. Given the conjoint quantitative and qualitative analyses,
the authors detected three kinds of interaction: conflictual (peak 1), contra-
dictory (peaks 2 and 4), and negative (peak 3). The degree of customer VCD
depended not only on the emotion mix felt by the customers and on the
percentage of emotions included in the mix but also on the firm’s reaction
(gauged through its responses), as observed in peaks 2 and 4.
In conclusion, even if the qualitative analysis could not detect customers’
misbehavior in a particular topic, some comments across the four peaks can
be classified as misbehavior. For example, customers very often insult the
company without providing any explanation by using several bad words:
“Crap phone,” “Your phone suck,” and “More shit we don’t need!!”. The
authors detected dangerous customers’ behavior when customers insulted the
company because of its origins: “Communist China phone,” “Another Chinese
junk?,” “Cheap Chinese iPhone no thaaaanks,” “Cheap Chinese copy crap,” “The
Chinese release another poor quality copy of a western world idea.“ The company
tried in vain to react but could not stop the users’ misbehavior: “Hi [customer
name], we’d really like to hear why you wouldn’t buy a phone that was made
in China? Thanks.” Such users’ comments sometimes triggered heated inter-
action with other users who defended Huawei. In these conversations, the
company had a marginal role. Therefore, although customers’ misbehavior and
the related emotions are not linked to a specific topic, it needs to be identified
and managed by the company since it can lead to a hazardous customer VCD
process.
 42 VALUE CO-CREATION OR VALUE CO-DESTRUCTION? … 1005

Table 9 Summary of the fourth peak of problematic interaction

Topic Quote example (emotion) Kind of interaction

(1) Limited compatibility with
network carriers
(2) Poor quality (overheats,
battery)
(3) Disapproval of screen
features and shape
“Bought a [product name] from Contradictory interaction
them. Disappointed to find it
out that it’s only a single sim.”
(Dissatisfaction)
“Unfortunately, Verizon is a
CDMA network and the devices
only work on GSM networks
(AT&T, T-Mobile).” (Sadness)
“Why is it only available on
Three? The network with the
worst coverage in the US. Why
would you associate your
flagship with the least popular
network?” (Anger)
“But why so thin? Millimeters
on two either side wouldn’t
make any difference to the feel
of it, but would make a big
difference to the battery
life…:/” (Sadness)
“Overheating and powering
down while using the camera.
Poor battery life. Poor sound.
First and last Huawei I will
EVER own.” (Dissatisfaction)
“Screen is too small. Nope! Not
for me.” (Dissatisfaction)
“Why it’s so fucking smooth??
cracked my phone as soon as I
walked out of the store!”
(Anger)

5 Discussion
Building on earlier studies on interactive marketing theory, the present
chapter contributes to VCD literature in the social media context. First,
using a text-mining algorithm and an in-depth qualitative analysis, this chapter
contributes to understanding the emotions that shape customer VCD in the
social media context. Second, it empirically demonstrates the relationship
between emotions (anger, dissatisfaction, disgust, fear, and sadness), typology
of problematic interaction (e.g., conflicts), and the customer VCD process.
1006 M. FRAU ET AL.

5.1 Customers’ Emotions and Social Interaction

Researchers in interactive marketing have earlier explored the role of emotions
in the VCD process (Jmour & Hmida, 2017; Nam et al., 2018), mainly
using qualitative methods, which imply researchers’ subjectivity in the classifi-
cation of emotions. However, the algorithm in this chapter helps objectively
analyze customers’ comments, offering a deep understanding of the impact of
emotions on customer VCD. In particular, the algorithm helps in detecting
the comments and objectively differentiating them into three types: positive,
neutral, and negative (Ho-Dac et al., 2013; Tang et al., 2014); highlighting
the periods characterized by significant peaks of negative comments; clus-
tering the identified periods by topics; characterizing each topic with emotions.
Thus, this chapter contributes to previous interactive marketing literature by
mining UGC (Muda & Hamzah, 2021) to analyze the valuable latent knowl-
edge available in social media to understand negative customer emotions. The
results may help the firms build better interactive marketing strategies for
preventing customer VCD (Rasool & Pathania, 2021).

5.2 Emotions, Typology of Problematic Interaction, and VCD Process

Earlier studies on interactive marketing have considerably deepened our under-
standing of VCD by explaining the problematic social interaction as customer
misbehavior (Echeverri et al., 2012; Kashif & Zarkada, 2015); contradictory
interactions; conflictual interactions (Vafeas et al., 2016); and generically as
negative interactions (Smith, 2013). This field of literature has elucidated
the link between customers’ problematic interactions and the customer VCD
process. On the other hand, the role of emotions in such interactions is
ambiguous, and their effects on VCD (Plé, 2017). The present study links
emotions with different kinds of problematic interactions through qualita-
tive analysis. Also, it explains the customer VCD outcomes (e.g., conflictual
interactions are associated with disgust, anger, and sadness, which destroy
customer value in terms of broken trust relationships). Therefore, this chapter
sheds light on the customer VCD process by integrating and complementing
previous interactive marketing literature on customer–firm interactions and
customers’ emotions (Echeverri et al., 2012; Kashif & Zarkada, 2015; Nam
et al., 2018; Vafeas et al., 2016).

5.3 Managerial Implication: Preventing VCD from Happening

As Wang (2021) claimed, “when combined with social media, interactive
marketing is particularly effective in developing a more tailored and personal-
ized approach that allows customers to dive in and enjoy the interactive process
on a deeper level.” Therefore, practitioners who desire to prevent VCD on
their social media platforms might find it interesting that destructive inter-
actions between a firm and its customers are bound tightly by the negative
 42 VALUE CO-CREATION OR VALUE CO-DESTRUCTION? … 1007

emotions felt by the customers when posting their comments. However, our
analysis shows that emotions are volatile because the mix of emotions differs
among the peaks. Moreover, although the peaks are linked with a kind of
interaction (e.g., negative, conflictual or contradictory), the same type of inter-
action can consist of a different emotional mix. In addition, a passive attitude
to customers’ negative comments allows their emotions to influence the VCD
process freely.
On the other hand, our analysis demonstrates that VCD can be marginal-
ized, reduced, and almost nullified through the company’s responses to the
customers. It suggests that social media managers should not expect patterns
of emotions that they can handle with standardized reactions. Conversely, a
social media manager who thoroughly analyzes the customer–firm interac-
tion and proactively deals with the customers’ emotions by providing suitable
responses can efficiently avoid VCD.
However, it is not easy to make such an accurate analysis for a response
strategy, especially with the constantly growing number of interactions faced
by social media managers nowadays. In this scenario, our algorithm is a useful
managerial tool that helps in monitoring the massive amount of positive,
neutral, and negative comments posted by the customers on firms’ social
media every day. Indeed, our algorithm can quickly identify the trend of
negative comments so that social media managers can act before the nega-
tive comments turn into a peak. Furthermore, the algorithm automatically
detects the related customers’ emotions, which the social media managers can
examine to understand what is increasing the negative comments. In turn,
examining the emotions, with the help of a specialist, may also support the
social media managers in designing response strategies that are tailor-made for
the customers’ mix of emotions. This approach can help mitigate the prob-
lematic interaction between the firm and customers and move the company
from a dangerous situation of VCD to a neutral position of VNC. The most
successful response strategies could potentially transform problematic interac-
tions into positive ones. It is conceivable that the firm could reach VCC from
a VCD starting point in such cases. Thus, avoiding and contrasting VCD in
social media is essential for better interactive marketing and better relationships
between customers and companies.

6 Conclusion, Limitation, and Future Research

Interactive marketing research has openly recognized that social interaction
between the firm and its customers is a fundamental element of VCC and VCD
(Lombardo & Cabiddu, 2017; Makkonen & Olkkonen, 2017). This chapter
provides new understanding of the phenomenon of VCD by objectively identi-
fying emotions in the negative comments made on social media and associating
these emotions with different kinds of problematic social interaction. It allows
interactive marketing researchers and practitioners to detect the customers’
emotional reactions to a problem with a firm in an interactional context in
1008 M. FRAU ET AL.

which both are experiencing VCD. Hence, VCD manifests itself through
comments depicting anger, dissatisfaction, disgust, fear, or sadness, which start
an unfruitful interaction process with the firm and among customers. It implies
that VCD is not a random phenomenon; on the contrary, it is a predictable
consequence of actors’ interactions and the related emotion mix. To conclude,
VCD in the social media context can be understood as an exchange of nega-
tive comments. Customers’ mix of emotions and firm responses determine the
magnitude of customer value destruction.
Despite the combined use of quantitative and qualitative methods, this
chapter has limitations, which suggest opportunities for further theoretical
and empirical research. For instance, this study has run the algorithm on data
collected only on Facebook without considering other critical online environ-
ments (e.g., Instagram, Twitter, or LinkedIn). Therefore, future research may
extend their analysis to a broader range of social media contexts to identify
differences in the customers’ mix of emotions and the firms’ reply strategy
due to platform characteristics.
The choice of a manufacturer ICT and telecommunication company as
the study’s empirical setting provides a partial view of the VCD process in
the broader multisector economic field. Still, future research may involve a
more significant number and a wide variety of companies. Such data sources
plurality may enrich the dataset, which, in turn, enables the algorithm to iden-
tify the emotions accurately. Thus, a more pluralistic approach to the research
design and the inclusion of the service setting may provide more holistic
perspectives, richer insights, and concrete implications for specific contexts.
In conclusion, the authors focused on the role of negative emotions in inter-
actions and the related consequences of the VCD process. Similarly, future
research may extend our study by analyzing positive emotions and their effects
on customer–firm interaction and VCC.

Acknowledgements The first author thanks the CIAS (Corvinus Institute for
Advanced Studies) for funding his previous position as visiting research fellow, during
which he wrote this chapter.

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 Glossary

Chapter 2
Augmented reality (AR): Projection of computer generated content into
real world providing a composite view.
Bibliographic (document) coupling: Clustering of documents/articles
based on bibliographic data such as citations, co-citations, co-words, etc.
Bibliographic data: Overarching term to describe various metrics and data
pertaining to the research articles documents such as citations, co-citations,
and various performance metric etc.
Bibliometric analysis: Analysis of scholarly documents based on their bibli-
ographic data.
Centrality: A measure that represents the degree of interactions one network
has with other networks in the analysis.
Customer engagement: Interactions between customers and businesses
primarily targeted at building relationships.
Customer interactions: Episodes of interactions between customers and
businesses.
Density: A measure representing the strength of internal ties in a network
being analysed.
g-index: A bibliometric impact metric to measure productivity and citation
impact of an author or publication; g-index = n means n articles getting at
least n2 citations.
h-index: A bibliometric impact metric to measure productivity and citation
impact of an author or publication; h-index = n means articles getting at
least n citations.
Information and communication technologies (ICT): Infrastructure and
technologies that combinedly enable and represent the modern digital and
electronic communication.
Interactive: Bi-directional communication and engagement.
Keyword: Word describing the main idea or subject of something.
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive 1013
license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023
C. L. Wang (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Interactive Marketing,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14961-0
1014 GLOSSARY

m-index: A bibliometric impact metric to measure productivity and citation

impact of an author or publication; m-index = h-index divided by number
of years author has been active.
Multi-country publications (MCP): Publications with author affiliations
from more than one country.
Performance analysis: Analysis of bibliographic data in order to find patterns
in publication outputs, significant contributors and analysis of network of
bibliographic metrics such as citations, co-citations, etc.
Research scholarship: An overarching term for field of scholarly research in
a specified domain.
Rich media: Digital communication term that refers to advanced multimedia
feature that encourage viewers to interact and engage with content.
Savvy customers: Informed customers.
Single country publications (SCP): Publications with author affiliations
from only one country.
Strategic diagrams: Two dimensional diagrams to visualize external linkages
between and maturity of research themes.
Thematic evolution: Represents evolution of major themes of research in a
domain.
Thematic mapping: Visualization of evolution of various themes and
subthemes in a research domain.
Ubiquitous: Available everywhere, at every time; very common.
Virtual reality (VR): Projection of real-life objects into digital world.
Visualization: Visual representation of data.

Chapter 3
Augmented reality: A live image of reality, accompanied by a virtual,
computer-simulated, layer.
Chatbot: An artificial intelligent computer program that communicates with
users in a natural language.
Interactive advertising screen: A digital screen with commercial content
meant for consumers to interact with.
Interactivity: The degree to which two or more communication parties can
act on each other, on the communication medium, and on the messages
and the degree to which such influences are synchronized.
Location-based messaging: Software which uses peoples’ geographic data to
automatically send messages.
Virtual reality: A computer simulated environment, which places the user in
a virtual experience.
 GLOSSARY 1015

Chapter 4
Bibliometric analysis: Cross science of quantitative analysis of all knowledge
carriers (e.g., published journal papers, books, or other scientific articles),
with mathematical and statistical methods.
Co-creation: A two-way, open and dialectical process of interaction, collabo-
ration and knowledge sharing between a firm and its stakeholders, whereby
the participating parties engage in a dialogue to jointly define and solve
problems.
Co-word analysis: A technique to analyze the co-occurrences of key words,
as well as identify relationships and interactions between the topics
researched and emerging research trends.
Customer reviews: A review of a product or service made by a customer who
has purchased and used, or had experience with, the product or service.
Digital marketing (DM): Marketing that uses Internet and online based
digital technologies to promote products and services.
E-services: Services which make use of information and communication
technologies.
E-wom (Electronic word of mouth): Any positive or negative statement
made by potential, actual or former customers about a product or company
which is made available to multiples of people and/or institutions and is
spread over the Internet.
Interactive marketing: Marketing strategy that uses two-way communication
channels to allow consumers to connect with a company directly.
Personalization: Tailoring a service or a product to accommodate specific
individuals.
Science mapping: Data visualization method that provides information on
the cognitive structure of a research domain and its evolution over time.
Search engine: Software system that is designed to carry out web searches.

Chapter 5
Digital marketing: It is the application of data, ICT-based technology (e.g.,
artificial intelligence), platforms (e.g. social networks), media and devices
to extend the scope of marketing within both physical and virtual spaces,
for the purpose of improving customer relationships by empowering,
informing, influencing and engaging consumers.
Digital transformation: It is the process of applying state-of-the-art tech-
nologies to create new and disruptive processes, culture and customer expe-
rience to trigger strategic responses from businesses to address changing
business and market requirements.
IDM mechanisms: The mechanisms are applied in Interactive Digital
Marketing, which include search engine marketing, content marketing,
social media marketing, mobile marketing, online PR, display advertising,
email marketing and online partnership.
1016 GLOSSARY

Interactive digital marketing (IDM): It is the bi-directional value creation

and mutual-influence marketing process through applying digital media,
data and technologies.
Social media marketing: It is one of the mechanisms of IDM that provides
online platform to share information and exchange ideas among users
without any restriction in time, place and medium.

Chapter 6
Affective responses: Consumers’ effects, such as attitude, preference, mood,
and feelings.
Behavioral responses: Consumers’ behaviors or behavioral intentions, such
as purchase intention, and intention to search.
Cognitive responses: Consumers’ cognitions, such as attention, memory,
beliefs, and thought.
Desire for control: Individual differences in general desire for having control
over the events in one’s life.
Interactivity: The extent to which users can participate in modifying the form
and content of a mediated environment in real-time.
Locus of control: People’s general expectancies about the causes of
rewards and punishments. Specifically, internal locus of control refers to
people’s expectancy that their actions will produce predictable outcomes.
Conversely, external locus of control refers to people’s expectancy that
outcomes are due to external variables such as fate, luck, or powerful others.
Motivation: There are two fundamental motivational orientations: The utili-
tarian motivational orientation involves consumers engaging in shopping in
order to obtain needed products, services, or information with little or no
inherent satisfaction derived from the shopping activity itself; The hedonic
motivational orientation refers to consumers engaging in consumption to
derive inherent satisfaction from the shopping activity itself.
Perceived control: Consumers’ perception of their ability to rule, alter,
or manipulate marketing messages and interfaces, enabled by interactive
marketing technologies, such as Internet websites, mobile apps, self-service
technologies, etc.
Personalization: The provision of personally relevant content, products, and
services based on individual users’ unique characteristics and needs.

Chapter 7
AI: Programs, algorithms, systems, and machines that demonstrate intelli-
gence with the ability to process large amounts of data and recognize
patterns in the data, and learn from experience, adjust to new inputs, and
perform human-like tasks.
AR: An interactive experience of a real-world environment where the objects
that reside in the real world are enhanced by computer-generated perceptual
 GLOSSARY 1017

information, typically using sensors and object recognition capabilities from

input devices such as cameras.
Digital influencers: Individuals who have established credibility with large
social media audiences because of their knowledge and expertise on partic-
ular topics, and thereby exert a significant influence on their followers’ and
peer consumers’ decisions.
Social shopping sites: Online shopping platforms that allow for customer-
to-customer interactions and influence.
Virtual brand communities: Specialized, non-geographically bound online
communities based on social communications and relationships among a
brand’s consumers.
Virtual influencer: A computer-generated fictional character that is used in
social media marketing as a substitute for a human “influencer.”
VR: A simulated experience that typically uses a wearable device such as
headsets to generate realistic images, sounds, and other sensations that to
immerse users in virtual, often entertaining 3-D worlds.
Word-of-mouth: Informal communications directed at other consumers
about the ownership, usage, or characteristics of particular goods and
services or their sellers.

Chapter 8
Baby Boomers: Any person born between 1946 and 1964 (ages 57–75) in
the year 2021.
Chatbot: Is a virtual assistant that is capable of having meaningful conversa-
tions with the users.
Digital marketing: A component of marketing that involves the use of
internet and other media’s of digital communication to connect with the
potential customers.
Drone: Is a flying robot that can be remotely controlled using a software
controlled flight plan in its system.
E-commerce: The activity of buying and selling of products or services on
the internet.
Interactive retailing: It is a way used by retailers to engage their clients
and make them think of their retail stores experiences rather than just the
particular products.
Marketing myopia: The inward looking and short-sighted approach of
management, which focuses on short-term objectives and not adapting
according to customer needs and market changes.
Millennials: Any person born between 1981 and 1996 (ages 25–40) in the
year 2021.
Mobile commerce: Activity that involves the usage of wireless devices like
mobiles and tablets to buy and sell products online.
New retail: A business model of integrated retail that converge online,
offline, logistics and information to enhance the experience of customers.
1018 GLOSSARY

Omni-channel retailing: A business model in which all the operating chan-

nels of an organisation are integrated to provide a unified experience to its
customers.
Physical showrooms for online purchases: Physical showrooms for online
purchases are kind of offline stores that are offered by online retailers to
provide information to their customers.
Social commerce: A subset of e-commerce that involves social media
networking sites like Instagram, Facebook to promote, buy and sell prod-
ucts and services.
Virtual world: Virtual world or Virtual reality (VR) is a simulated environ-
ment which is created with the help of computer or other media, wherein,
the users can feel their presence.

Chapter 9
Chatbot: The interactive messaging service powered by AI.
Customer-brand relationship: The relationship between a brand and a
customer is one-of-a-kind, and it may benefit both parties.
e-WOM: Sharing information about product or service through internet,
social media, and mobile.
Stimuli: Anything that triggers to perform any action.
Virtual agents: A software program that provides automated service or
direction to humans by using predefined rules.

Chapter 10
Customer engagement: The level of the customer’s participation and
connection with a firm’s offerings or activities.
Customer experience: The customer experience is comprised of multiple
interactions across touchpoints involving the customer’s cognitive, affective,
emotional, social, and sensory elements. It takes place throughout many
interactions relevant to a core service offering.
Interaction experience: The interactive experience between people and intel-
ligent objects.
Paratelic: These individuals are sense-oriented and feel more excited and
happier with their increasing emotional involvement.
Smart objects: Smart objects communicate high amounts of connectivity,
networks, and data and include smartwatches, smart speakers, smart TVs,
robotic vacuum cleaners, smart cars, and smart home appliances.
Telic: These individuals are goal-oriented and delightfully relaxed when tasks
given to them are completed.
 GLOSSARY 1019

Chapter 11
Anthropomorphism: Tendency of attributing human-like characteristics to
AI and robots.
Artificial intelligence: Simulation of human intelligence and behavior
attributed to machines and devices.
Chatbots: AI systems that have the ability to interact with the consumers by
text.
Consumer-AI interactions: Communication between consumers and AI.
Intelligent voice assistants: AI systems that have the ability to interact with
consumers by voice.
Personal AI assistants: AI with physical presence that take over some of the
consumers’ daily activities.
Personal voice assistants: Software agents installed on a personal device that
have the ability to interact with the consumer by voice.
Service robots: Robots with physical presence that take over different service
tasks from human employees.

Chapter 12
Algorithm aversion: People’s reluctance to use algorithms that they know to
be superior but imperfect.
Anthropomorphism: The degree to which non-human entities can project
human-like characteristics, behaviors, emotions, and intentions.
Chatbot: Automated computer programs powered by natural language
processing to engage consumers in one-on-one, text- or voice-based
conversations.
Empathetic intelligence: The ability of computer to recognize and under-
stand people’s emotional expressions and respond with proper emotions.
Uncanny Valley Effect: Feelings of eeriness toward highly anthropomorphic
objects.

Chapter 13
Online consumer reviews (OCRs): Are a type of text-based communication
tool which enable users to share their purchase experience, evaluating the
products with positive, negative or neutral information.
Online review valence: Refers to affective response direction-positive, nega-
tive or neutral- of the review.
Perceived humanity: The level of anthropomorphism or human likeness
referring to the virtual assistant.
Perceived social interactivity: Refers to the feeling of being able to commu-
nicate in a bidirectional way with another human or a robot. This concept is
common in the research of human–computer interaction and human–robot
interaction.
1020 GLOSSARY

Perceived social presence: Refers to the perception of human warmth. This

concept is usually applied to digital interactive environments where human
warmth is associated with certain characteristics of the interaction.

Chapter 14
Augmented reality: Enhancement or modification of the perceived (i.e.,
physical) world via technologically mediated sensory stimuli and informa-
tion (i.e., visual, touch, scent, sound, smell).
Gamification: The use of principles by which a system or service becomes
more gameful. From a marketing perspective, the goal of gamification is
to afford services in a way to enhance consumers’ experienced value of the
core service.
Interactive AR marketing: A strategic concept that incorporates digital
content into users’ perceptions to attain organizational goals and consumer
benefits.
Interactivity: The technological ability to perform modifications with virtual
content in real-time.
Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R): A theoretical model that specifies
that different environmental conditions serve as stimuli (S) that affect the
internal evaluation processes of consumers (O), leading to a response (R).
Virtual reality: Artificial environment which digitally duplicates or substitutes
the perceived (physical) reality via technology.
Vividness: The representational (i.e., visual) richness of a medium.

Chapter 15
3D Body scanning apps: Have a potential to deliver more than 100 digital
body dimensions in a minute and a personalise 3D body avatar by capturing
2D image utilising camera-based smart devices. The mobile scanners can
calculate parameters such as distances, girths, heights, width, surface area,
body fat percentage, and circumferences by identifying body landmarks
through artificial intelligence.
Augmented reality: Is an interactive technology which allows operators to
view the real environment, with virtual objects add up or blended with the
real environment.
Metaverse: ‘Meta’ means virtual and abstract, and ‘verse’ means universe.
The idea of a metaverse verves beyond commerce and entertainment to
produce a real virtual non-natural community in which digital operators
or avatars become human users and interconnect socially and economically
with each other in an immersive three-dimensional virtual and multi-user
online atmosphere.
Mixed reality: User interface is a compelling concept for improving a user’s
experience by integrating computer-generated knowledge into a real-world
situation, combining AR and VR for virtual commerce environment.
 GLOSSARY 1021

Virtual commerce: Encompasses e-commerce structures, such as electronic

product catalogues and electronic payment, and combines immersive tech-
nology to generate metaverse environment for commercial endeavours.
Virtual reality: Is formally defined as ’the illusion of participation in a
synthetic environment rather than external observation of such an environ-
ment. VR is an immersive, multisensory experience’.

Chapter 16
Chatbot: A form of AI able to simulate and process humanlike conversations
in natural language.
Digital ecosystem: A complex interconnected network comprised of different
stakeholders, including—but not limited to—brands, consumers, influ-
encers, followers, digital agencies, and social media platforms.
Influencer marketing: Is a form of social media marketing that builds on
endorsements and promotions of products and services made by influencers
in their domain of interest and expertise shared via posts or blogs on social
media platforms made available to followers.
Metaverse: Enabled by AR and VR technology, refers to a fully online and
persistent 3D universe representing a network of virtual worlds and spaces
where people can work, play and socialize.
Parasocial interactions: Feeling of companionship or illusion of friendship
with celebrities or media figures.
Robot: Machine that is controlled by a computer.
Social media influencer: Individuals who gained popularity due to their
social media presence and shared content, including Instafamous opinion
leaders, bloggers, Tik Tokers and YouTubers.
Virtual influencer: Entirely artificial and computer-generated images or
avatars developed and maintained by specialist experts and digital agen-
cies. Their appearance can embrace a range of human-like, animal-like,
cartoon-like or completely random or alien characteristics.

Chapter 17
Affective perception: The feelings that viewers or customers have of a
celebrity.
Celebrity authenticity: The necessary qualities that can help a celebrity figure
be recognized as authentic, for example, credibility, rarity, and stability or
consistency.
Cognitive perception: The thoughts that viewers or customers have of a
celebrity.
Rhythm games: Video games in which players can indulge themselves with
songs and modules performed by virtual characters.
Satisfaction: The contentment that customers have with the features of the
games and with the games themselves in general.
1022 GLOSSARY

Virtual celebrities: Publicly known figures created by computer technology

in a virtual 3D form. They may be totally fictional characters or representa-
tives of real-life characters (either dead or alive).

Chapter 18
Embodiment: The ensemble of sensations that arise in conjunction with
being inside, having, and controlling a body, especially in relation to virtual
reality applications.
Interactivity: The extent to which users can participate in modifying the
form and content of a mediated environment in real time. Interactivity is
influenced by three factors: speed (response rate), range (number of action
options), and mapping (predictable control and changes).
Presence: The sense of “being there” in the mediated environment.
Systematic review: A review of a clearly formulated question that uses
systematic and explicit methods to identify, select, and critically appraise
relevant research, and to collect and analyze data from the studies that are
included in the review.
Transportation: It describes the psychological sense of immersion experi-
enced by the reader of a narrative story.

Chapter 19
Brand content differentiation: Brands use different social media content on
multiple social media platforms.
Customer engagement: Customers’ psychological process arising from the
combination of intrinsic motivations, psychological mind states, customer
activities, and contributions to firms.
Customer-brand engagement: Brand-related cognitive, emotional, and
behavioral activities that are positively evaluated by customers during or
in relation to customer or brand interactions.
Data mining: The process of extracting high-quality information from a
collection of documents and identifying predictive patterns through a series
of analytical tools.
Informational content of brands: Brands provide customers with
resourceful information about brand activities and products.
Interactive marketing: A marketing process of two-way value creation and
influence through active customer connection, engagement, and interac-
tion.
Social media platform: A web-based communication platform in which
participants have uniquely identifiable profiles, publicly express connections,
and consume, produce, and interact with user-generated content.
 GLOSSARY 1023

Chapter 20
Content sharing: A category of social media that allows users to share
content (texts, images, or videos) with an audience connected to their
accounts or the public.
Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs): Online
virtual gaming systems that allow a vast user community, with usually
millions of players, to play simultaneously in their own chosen avatars and
characters to interact with each other and gain rewards.
Social knowledge: A category of social media that enables users, alone or
together, to collect or contribute knowledge shared by others.
Social media: A group of online applications, build on Web 2.0, that allows
the creation and exchange of User Generated Contents.
Social networking: A category of social media that allows users to connect
and interact with other users and build/maintain personal, social, and
business relationships.
Social shopping: A category of social media that allows users to shop online
and interact with fellow shoppers to enhance shopping experiences.
Virtual world: A category of social media with a holistic, immersive, and
encompassing 360º setting simulated by computer software, which allows
users to experience an avatar.

Chapter 21
Customer engagement: Is defined as customers’ willingness to actively
engage in and connect with a primary item, such as a brand, organisation,
community, or other such entity.
Customer involvement: Is defined as a cognitive, emotive, or motivational
concept that indicates a state of mind or a sense of personal significance but
is not considered behaviour.
Customer trust: Refers to a belief that consumer has towards particular prod-
ucts, services or companies’ offerings or promises that has specific qualities
to meet customer expectations.
Practical benefits: Are defined as ‘informational and instrumental benefits
that are often achievable through companies’ websites; the community can
become a channel for customer feedback and questions, which leads to
informational benefits.
Purchase intention: Is a willingness of a peon to purchase a product or
consumer service.
Social networking site (SNS): Web-based services which allow customers to
create a public or semi-public profile, communicate with others, and also
view and keep their list of connections within the system—in particular,
Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, and Twitter.
1024 GLOSSARY

Chapter 22
Creative labor: The laborers who offer their creativity and independent
creation for the exchange of capital.
Douyin celebrities: Referred to as wanghong in Chinese, these are commu-
nity members and known individual figures who are popular on a social
media platform such as Douyin.
Douyin: Together with its sister application TikTok, Douyin is the Chinese-
made video uploading platform serving social networking and entertaining
functions. Users can upload a short-duration video for value exchange,
interaction, and even collaboration.
Interactive marketing: The bidirectional communication between users
(customers) and producers (merchants). This phenomenon may be
attributed by the advancement of technologies, for instance, the invention
of social media tools like Douyin.
Live streaming e-commerce: The live electronic commerce hosted by the
seller in a live streaming online platform. One or multiple master(s) of cere-
monies will lead the live show and facilitate the interaction between the
audience and the sellers, so as to enhance the opportunity of transaction
after negotiation.

Chapter 23
Collaborative online shopping (COS): Refers to an activity in which indi-
vidual shops concurrently with one or more remotely placed shopping
partners at an online shopping website.
Live annotation: Live annotation is a feature that allows co-shopping users to
scribble notes, draw, and highlight text. The live annotation feature enables
co-shoppers to draw or write on a browser page that is visible to both users.
Shopping group structure: The structure of the shopping group shows the
individuals’ authority and contribution to the shopping task.
Switching control: It is the capability to switch the control of mouse
movement by the end-users during a co-shopping session.
Uncoupling: This is the situation when a shopper is distracted by another
person’s unexpected or sudden behavior.

Chapter 24
eWOM communication: Any online interactions between a consumer and a
brand and other consumers that are elicited by consumer-generated online
information regarding a product, service, or brand.
Organic eWOM: Organic eWOM is drawn from a genuine experience that
a social media influencer had with a product, service, or brand, and can be
either positive or negative.
 GLOSSARY 1025

Paid eWOM: This refers to eWOM shared by social media influencers or

consumers who are sponsored or hired by a brand; such eWOM is usually
positive.
Proactive eWOM strategies: Any actions taken by companies to stimulate
consumers’ positive eWOM.
Reactive eWOM strategies: Any actions taken by companies to deal with
eWOM information given by consumers.

Chapter 25
Brand-building complaint strategies: Those undertaken after the complaint
has been raised with the aim of deriving something positive from the
negative situation.
Complainants’ goals: Refer to the aims of dissatisfied consumers when
they raise a complaint (redress-seeking, revenge, catharsis, altruism, self-
presentation).
Complaint behavior: An action taken by an individual that involves commu-
nicating something negative regarding a product or service.
Complaint handling: Refers to the courses of action that a firm implements
to deal with customers’ complaints.
Observers: Individuals who happen to witness the interaction between a
brand and a customer in a public channel when the latter raises a complaint
against the former.
Prevention complaint strategies: Those implemented before the complaint
occurs with the aim of reducing or attenuating its impact on the company.
Private complaint channels: Those where the interaction involves the brand
and the complainant only and goes unnoticed by other customers.
Public complaint channels: Those where the opinions or complaints can
reach a broader number of individuals unrelated to the failure.

Chapter 26
Attractiveness: The physical and social attractiveness of the influencer.
Authenticity: An influencer being true to himself or herself.
Credibility: The judgements made by the perceiver concerning the believ-
ability of a communicator.
Disclosure: Action of revealing that a company has approached an influencer.
Expertise: The extent to which a consumer is qualified to discuss a subject.
Individual traits: Something about a person that impacts how they behave
on an ongoing basis.
Influencer: An individual who creates content on social media and has a
significant power of influence and reach that may be of interest for brands.
Opinion leaders: Individuals who exert an unequal amount of influence on
the decisions of others.
1026 GLOSSARY

Opinion leadership: The extent to which an individual is perceived to be a

model.and exerts an unequal amount of influence on others’ decisions.
Permanence: Whether the message published by the influencer remains in
the platform used or disappears after a certain time.
Quality of content: The strength of persuasion of the arguments within a
message.
Secondary reach: Reach is reach obtained through followers.
Similarity: The perceived likeness (e.g., demographic or ideological factors)
of the influencer to the follower.
Tie strength: The degree to which one is more or less involved in a given
social relationship.
Trustworthiness: The degree to which the audience perceives the influencer
to be as honest, sincere, or truthful.

Chapter 27
Follower: A social media user who has subscribed to the social media account
of an influencer.
Follower engagement: The interactive responses of a follower to the content
shared by the influencer that he/she follows on social media.
Influencer marketing: Marketing practice that consists in compensating
(financially and/or in kind) influencers for endorsing a brand or a product.
Influencer: An individual who has large followings on social media platforms
and who influences, through the content he/she creates and shares on these
platforms, the purchasing decisions of others.
Organic content: Content that influencers create and share on their social
media accounts without being compensated for doing so.
Sponsored content: Content that influencers create and share on their social
media accounts and in which they feature a brand or product in exchange
for a compensation.

Chapter 28
Attractiveness: Is conveyed by scholars to mean chicness, sexuality, likability
and familiarity.
Consumer brand engagement: The emotional interaction between the
brand and the consumer.
Credibility: The quality of being trusted and believed.
Expertise: Relates to the level of source knowledge about a topic direction.
Influencer types: Classifies influencers into distinct groups, each holding its
own characteristics.
Interactive marketing: The bi-directional value creation and mutual-
influence marketing process through active customer connection, engage-
ment, participation and interaction.
 GLOSSARY 1027

Social media influencers: Somebody who has established credibility in a

specific industry and has access to a considerable audience and can persuade
others to act based on their recommendations.
Social media marketing: Consists of companies compensating people for
posting about their product or service on a social media platform.
Social media platforms: Are sites for disseminating information over the
internet to a selected group of users.
Source credibility theory: Advocates that the effectiveness of a message is
controlled by the perceived level of attractiveness, expertise and trustwor-
thiness of the endorser.
Trustworthiness: Is the degree of consumer confidence in a brand conveyed
within a particular campaign.

Chapter 29
Customer engagement: The intensity of an individual’s participation in and
connection with an organization’s offerings or organizational activities,
which either the customer or the organization initiates.
Data use transparency: Whether companies provide customers with explana-
tions for information collection and use.
Empathy: Caring, individual attention the firm provides its customers.
Need for meaningful affiliation: Individuals’ need to belong.
Predictive analytics: The process of using current and/or historical data
with a combination of statistical techniques—including, but not limited
to, data mining, predictive modeling, and machine learning—to assess the
likelihood of a certain event happening in the future.
Self-construal: How individuals understand themselves and can be further
resolved into independent and interdependent self-construal. Independent
self-construal means that a person views themselves as an independent
entity; interdependent self-construal means that a person defines themselves
in relation to other individuals and groups.
Sense of control: Individuals’ belief about the extent to which they can
influence the environment and their outcomes.
Trust: A psychological state comprising the intention to accept vulnerability
based upon positive expectations of the intentions or behavior of another.

Chapter 30
Artificial intelligence (AI): The science and engineering of making intelli-
gent machines, especially intelligent computer programs.
Interactive marketing: The bidirectional value creation and mutual-influence
marketing process through active customer connection, engagement,
participation, and interaction.
1028 GLOSSARY

Interactive technology: Methods, tools, or devices that allow various entities

(individuals, machines, or organizations) to engage in mediated communi-
cation to facilitate the planning and consummation of exchanges between
them.
Online Behavioral Targeting (OBT): The practice of delivering relevant,
personalized messages to consumers based on the analysis of their online
behaviors and sometimes on other available metrics such as demographics
and geographic data.
Personalization: Incorporating recognizable aspects of a person to the
content information.
Recommendation systems (RS): A program which attempts to recommend
the most suitable products/services to a user and aims to provide personal-
ized services by retrieving the most relevant information and services from
the Big Data generated on open, private, social, and Internet of Things
(IoT) data islands.
Retargeting: The practice of serving ads based on prior engagement.
User orientation: The ability to provide content and service tailored to
individuals based on their preferences and behaviors.

Chapter 31
Autoencoder: It is a dimensional reduction tool as well as abstract feature
extraction.
Automatic feature extraction: A process in which a deep learning model can
learn high-level abstract features from observable inputs.
Classification model: It tries to find an abstract function to draw distinct
conclusions (labels/categories) about some input data.
Collaborative filtering (CF): Recommender systems use this dimension
reduction technique to make recommendations by collecting preferences
from other users who may share the same characteristics.
Convolutional neural network (CNN): Convolution applies filter on input
to check for pattern match. A filter can be 1D or 2D. CNN can automat-
ically learn appropriate filters to detect features. It is particularly useful for
image analysis.
Curse of dimensionality: It is difficult to yield solution estimates with only
a finite number of observations, but a large number of variables. It occurs
in analyzing high-dimensional data, with sparsity.
Customer engagement behaviors: Behaviors through which customers make
voluntary resource contributions that have a brand or firm focus but go
beyond what is fundamental to the transaction.
Customer-owned resources: Other than financial patronage, customers have
something desirable that they can contribute to the firm’s marketing func-
tions: network assets, persuasion capital, knowledge stores, and creativity.
 GLOSSARY 1029

Customer-tracking technology: Any tracking technology for understanding

the customers, from the ancient browser cookies, mobile location-tracking
services, and eye tracking to today’s EEG sensors in wearable IoT devices.
Deep Learning (DL): It is a subset of machine learning that makes use of
networks of artificial neurons to solve problems.
Federated learning: A distributed learning approach that allows model
training without sharing customer data for privacy considerations.
Fine-tuning: A process of small adjustments to a pre-trained model. The DL
technique is called transfer learning.
Generative adversarial networks (GANs): A generator and a discriminator
work in pairs and compete against each other during the training process.
Training is done when the discriminator cannot differentiate between
synthetic and genuine data.
Inference: The use of a trained model for desirable outcomes of some inputs
(unseen in the training phase).
Kansei engineering: A product design methodology for new product devel-
opment. It translates consumers’ feelings and imagination of a product into
design features. Thus, it takes into account the emotional and affective
needs of customers for product development.
Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA): A popular analysis technique in topic
modelling. It is an unsupervised approach to finding latent structures algo-
rithmically. By assuming documents consist of topics, or simply words from
a set of vocabulary. It usually works on soft-clustering textual data.
Long short-term memory (LSTM): A variant of RNN. By retaining some
memory within a processing cell of the training data, it can automatically
identify predictive features such as recency, frequency, and seasonality from
raw data.
Natural language processing (NLP): It may generally mean the processing
of language data with computer technology, but this chapter adopts a more
advanced and prevailing perspective that NLP utilizes DL to extract abstract
meaning natural language data for language-related tasks.
Pre-trained model: A model with learnt knowledge about a domain, like for
image recognition, eye tracking, or language.
Recommendation system: It utilizes computerized techniques to select and
suggest items to a customer.
Recurrent neural network (RNN): A type of artificial neural network for
analyzing sequence data; it is good for dealing with temporal problems,
such as natural language processing, waveform, and speech recognition.
Reinforcement learning (RL): In it, intelligent agents learn by interacting
with the environment so as to maximize the cumulative rewards.
Sentiment analysis (SA): It categorizes a piece of text message into polarity
(positive/negative) or classes like emotions (e.g. Joy, Surprise, Fear, Sad,
and Anger).
Social network analysis (SNA): A method developed in sociology and
communication science that tries to investigate the patterns of relations in
1030 GLOSSARY

networks through graph theory, in which networks are characterized by

nodes (the entities) and edges (the relationships).
Topic modelling: An approach to explore latent patterns in high-dimensional
co-occurrence data. It offers researchers a flexible and open framework for
soft-clustering large data sets.
Training: The process of allowing a design DL model to learn from a dataset.
Transfer learning: A DL learning method to modify a pre-trained model,
usually with additional domain data, for a similar but new task. The process
is called fine-tuning.

Chapter 32
AI/ML: Artificial Intelligence and Machine learning.
Collaborative filtering technique: Recommends the popular items amongst
the individuals with similar tastes and preferences to the target user.
Content filtering: The content of the items is analysed and mapped to the
user’s past purchases to predict future preferences.
Customer purchase journey: Encompasses prepurchase, purchase, and post-
purchase.
Customization: Is described as tailoring offers according to the customers’
stated needs.
Hybrid filtering: Is combination of content and collaborative filtering tech-
nique.
Personalization: Is the use of technology and customer information to tailor
electronic commerce interactions between a business and customers.
Personalized recommendation systems: Is defined as a system that recom-
mends appropriate products or services based on consumers’ preferences
and desires.
Recommender systems: Are the technology that presents the consumer with
a curated list of choices to reduce their mental or information load.

Chapter 33
Construal Level Theory (CLT): Is a theory in social psychology of how
psychological distance affects individuals’ thinking and behavior; it describes
the relationship between psychological distance and the extent to which
people consider an object from an abstract or more concrete perspective.
COVID-19 pandemic: Is a global pandemic caused by a severe infectious
pneumonia (COVID-19). As of February 2022, more than 423 million
confirmed cases have been reported globally, making it one of the largest
epidemics in human history.
Customer lifecycle: Is the process by which a potential customer learns about
an offering such as a product, buys it from a brand/firm, and ideally
becomes a long-term customer of the brand/firm.
 GLOSSARY 1031

ePrivacy regulation: Is the regulatory proposal on various privacy-related

topics regarding the processing of personal data and the protection of
privacy in the field of electronic communications.
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR): Is the regulation of data
protection and privacy for all European Union (EU) individuals under EU
law. The main goal of GDPR is for individuals to take back control of their
personal data, and to simplify and harmonize regulation within the EU for
international business.
Martech: Is the term “martech” refers to a combination of “marketing”
and “technology.“ It describes various technological methods that can help
achieve marketing goals and perform marketing work.
Mobile commerce: Is the commercial transaction activities carried out by
users through a mobile communication network using mobile terminal
equipment.
Phygital: Refers to the symbiosis of two words—physical and digital. The
phygital concept uses the latest knowledge and innovations in communica-
tion technologies which are then implemented in the physical environment
wherein sensors are the main equipment for generating phygital experiences
by means of the synchronization of physical and digital, thus rendering
marketing communication faster and more dynamic.

Chapter 34
Artificial intelligence: A system’s ability to interpret external data correctly,
to learn from such data, and to use those learnings to achieve specific goals
and tasks through flexible adaptation.
Chatbot: A software agent that gives access to services and information by
interacting with users in their native language via text or voice.
Customer engagement behaviour: WOM activity, recommendations,
helping other customers, blogging, referral, and purchase.
Customer engagement: The mechanics of a customer’s value addition to the
firm, either through direct or/and indirect contribution.
Customer experience: A multidimensional construct focussing on a
customer’s cognitive, emotional, behavioral, sensorial, and social responses
to a firm’s offerings during the customer’s entire purchase journey.
Interactive marketing: The bi-directional value creation and mutual-
influence marketing process through active customer connection, engage-
ment, participation, and interaction.

Chapter 35
Advergame: Interactive online games embedded with brand messages spon-
sored by companies.
Brand advocacy: To elevate a brand through word of mouth.
Chatbot: A computer program that simulates and processes human conver-
sation (either written or spoken), allowing humans to interact with digital
devices as if they were communicating with a real person.
1032 GLOSSARY

Conversational marketing: A customer-centric and dialogue-driven

approach to marketing.
Gamification: A marketing strategy that uses game elements in a non-game
context.
Interactive marketing: A two-directional value construction and mutual-
influence marketing process through lively customer association, engage-
ment, participation and interaction.
Metaverse: A simulated digital environment that uses augmented reality
(AR), virtual reality (VR) and blockchain, along with concepts from social
media, to create spaces for rich user interaction mimicking the real world.

Chapter 36
Co-creation of values: Refers to active customer participation in a business
process to create values with companies to fulfil their needs and desires.
Interaction: Refers to any customers’ activities when interacting with compa-
nies, and it has been promoted as a potentially strong instrument for
establishing successful new services as one of the most important constructs
in services marketing.
Interactivity: Involves service interaction between a customer with
employees, processes, and technology in service delivery.
Online interactivity: Can be defined as customers’ perceptions of how well
an online medium interacts with them in terms of two-way communication,
users’ control, and feedback.
Servicescape: Is the service encounter context that directly or indirectly
influences the customers’ sense of well-being.
Two-way communication: Can be defined as the ability of a system to
accommodate communication between the system and users and users and
users.

Chapter 37
A haptic system: Refers to a sensory system that actively uses hands to search
and collect information.
Autotelic NFT: Is hedonic-oriented and driven by motives of seeking fun
and joy.
Haptic technology: Refers to the technology that can generate an experience
of touch by exerting vibrations, forces, and motions to a person’s skin.
Hedonic behavior of touch: Refers to situations in which consumers touch
products only for the sensory experience, without any specific agenda.
Instrumental NFT: Is goal-oriented and driven by a utilitarian motive.
Multisensory marketing: Refers to a marketing approach that engages
consumers through simultaneously activating more than one sense.
Need for touch (NFT): Refers to a person’s motivation or preference to
touch.
 GLOSSARY 1033

Smart gloves: A novel technology-mediated interaction device with built-in

sensors allowing tactile sensing.
Vicarious touch: Refers to the phenomenon of observing a physical contact
between a hand and an object via a digital form.

Chapter 38
Computer-mediated communication: The communication that people use
for networked telecommunication systems (or non-networked computers)
to encode, transmit, and decode messages.
Content analysis: Analysis of the literature through the classification, evalua-
tion, and summary to determine the purpose, implications, or effect of the
research.
Emojis: The digital images that are added to messages in electronic commu-
nication to express a particular idea or feeling.
Human-face emojis: Emojis that are similar to human facial expressions.
Interactive communication: The two-way communication between senders
and recipients and between consumers and brands.

Chapter 39
Commercial consequences of incivility: The impact of incivility on brands’
monetary (e.g., equity) and non-monetary (e.g., reputation, credibility)
gains.
Consumer incivility: Undesirable behaviors and interpersonal interactions
between consumers on SMNs who use profanCity, disagree with, provoke,
mock, or harass one another or direct this incivility towards brands on
SMNs.
Deindividuation: The loss of self-awareness in groups and convincing oneself
of lack of responsibility over one’s communications or behaviors online.
Incivility management: The practices adopted by platforms, brands, or
individual users to moderate incivility incidents.
Online disinhibition effect: The absence of restraint one feels when commu-
nicating online compared with communicating in-person.
Social consequences of incivility: The impact of incivility on individuals’
online and offline well-being.
Social media network (SMN): An ensemble or IS artefact consisting of three
subsystems—technology, information and social.

Chapter 40
Customer engagement: Customers that are highly engaged buy more,
promote more, and show more loyalty. In your customer engagement
strategy, providing a high-quality customer experience is critical (Robson
et al. 2016; Yang et al. 2017; Hsu et al. 2017).
1034 GLOSSARY

Dark side: The negative or unintended outcomes of a phenomenon is its dark

side.
Game elements: Game elements are the components that make up a game.
Game mechanics: Game mechanics are constructs of rules and feedback loops
intended to produce enjoyable gameplay.
Game world: The goal of a gaming world is to immerse the player and make
them feel as if they are in control of the game world, with their decisions
and actions impacting everything around them. It is frequently set in an
alternate fictional reality.
Gamification: Gamification is adding game mechanics into non-game envi-
ronments, like a website, online community, learning management system
or business’ intranet to increase participation.
Online marketing: The process of using web-based channels to communi-
cate a message about a company’s brand, products, or services to potential
customers is known as online marketing.
User experience: User experience is significant since it aims to meet the needs
of the user. Its goal is to provide good experiences that encourage users to
stick with a product or brand.

Chapter 41
Cultural norms: Sets of shared behaviours, beliefs, and rules governing life
among members of a society or cultural group.
Ethical perspective: The way individuals view act, behaviour, situations,
means, or their positions on it, based on what they think is right or wrong.
Exploitation: The act of taking advantage of a person or group of individuals
in order to profit from him/them in an unethical way.
Gamification Designing information systems to afford similar experiences
and motivations as games do, and consequently, attempting to affect user
behaviour.
Manipulation: The conscious and intentional misleading of a person by
another person either directly or indirectly in order to achieve a final goal.
Moral intensity: The degree to which a person feels about the implications
of a moral choice.

Chapter 42
Conflictual interaction: Is the result of divergent opinions. However, such
interaction leads to actual conflicts between users in this case.
Contradictory interaction: Occurs when the users involved in a business
relationship have divergent opinions that effectively mar their interactions
(e.g., structural tension).
Misbehavior: Is defined as the intentional, candid, or covert actions of users
that disrupt functional interactions by violating the accepted norms of
conduct.
 GLOSSARY 1035

Negative interaction: Refers to all the interactions found disagreeable by one

or more users.
Social interactions: Consist of practices in which two or more users have
reciprocal actions and influences over time.
Value co-creation: Is defined as the joint creation of value by the company
and the customer.
Value co-destruction: Is defined as an interactional process between service
systems that results in a decline in at least one of the system’s well-being.
Value no-creation: Occurs when customer experience (about a product or
service) is consistent with the expectations.
 Index
A Artificial intelligence (AI), 40, 96, 99,
Active customer participation, 838
Activity, 150, 153, 155, 174
Advanced technology, 788, 800
Advergame, 810, 819, 820, 826, 827,
831, 1031
Advertising, 29, 33–36, 631, 635
Affection, 278
Affective, 276–279, 281, 287
Affective responses, 118, 122–127, 132,
141, 399, 412, 413, 417, 418, 420,
421, 1016
Affiliate marketing, 100, 103
Affiliations, 22, 24
Algorithm, 988, 994–996, 1005–1008
Amazon, 184, 190–192, 385, 386, 390,
452, 458, 462, 467, 683, 684,
694–697
Amazon Japan, 385
Anonymity, 919
Anthropomorphism, 243, 244, 246,
257, 259, 262, 266, 1019
Anti-brand communities, 921, 922, 925
Applications, 45, 46
Apps, 47, 48, 52
AR applications, 51, 52
Arousal, 277–280, 283, 288, 291
Artificial artist, 384
Artificial celebrity, 390
Artificial characters, 379
Artificial figure, 384
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive
license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023
C. L. Wang (ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Interactive Marketing,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-14961-0
124, 130, 132, 141, 142, 150, 156,
169–172, 174, 199–201, 208–210,
219, 239, 240, 244, 255, 256, 260,
261, 264, 267, 275, 278, 282, 459,
467, 667–669, 683–689, 692, 694,
695, 697–699, 785–787, 789–791,
794–797, 799, 1015, 1016, 1018,
1019, 1027, 1031
Artificial intelligence of things (AIoT),
222
Assemblage theory, 220, 224, 227, 233
Assistants, 276, 284, 286, 289
Associations, 150, 153, 174
Asynchronicity, 919
Attachment, 150, 153, 154, 172–174
Attitude(s), 46–48, 50–58, 150, 153,
154, 161, 164, 166, 173, 174
Attractiveness, 648–651, 653, 654, 656,
657, 659, 1026
Audience, 593, 595, 596, 598,
600–602, 604, 607, 610, 612–614,
616
Augmented reality (AR), 16, 40, 45, 46,
51, 52, 57, 58, 117, 121, 124, 132,
141, 150, 156, 170, 172, 174, 302,
305, 330, 333–335, 338–342, 344,
346, 397, 401, 421, 459, 460, 463,
467, 1016, 1020
Authenticity, 596, 604, 605, 608, 614,
1025
Authenticity-protecting, 926, 927
1037
1038 INDEX
Author keywords, 17, 26, 29, 38, 39
Author-supplied keywords, 16
Autoencoder, 711, 712, 1028
Automatic feature extraction, 705, 720,
1028
Autonomy, 966, 968, 973
Avatars, 281, 282, 286, 288, 357, 358,
367, 370
Awareness, 150, 151, 153, 174
B
Banners, 45, 46, 48, 49, 55, 56, 58, 59
Basic themes, 33, 35–37, 70, 73, 74,
78, 81, 84
Behavioral intention, 415, 417
Behavioral responses, 118, 122, 126,
127, 141, 1016
Benevolence, 484
Bibliographic, 17
Bibliographic coupling, 17, 39
Bibliographic data, 17, 38
Bibliometric analysis, 17, 68
Bibliometric information, 19
Bibliometric performance analysis, 19
Bibliometrics, 16, 66, 67, 71
Bi-directional communication, 39
Bi-directional value creation, 40
Big data, 667–669, 677
BLE beacons, 760, 763, 764, 772, 774
Body scanning, 330, 333–336, 338,
342–344, 346
Brand advocacy, 827, 830, 1031
Brand–consumer, 899, 907
Brand communities, 478, 479, 485
Brand content differentiation, 434, 435,
442, 445, 446, 1022
Branded apps, 45, 47, 48, 56, 58
Branded content, 482, 494
Branded content experience, 857
Brand engagement, 644
Brand page, 475, 477, 478, 480, 482,
485, 491, 494
Brands, 150, 153, 154, 157–159,
161–164, 166–171, 174, 658, 1017
Brand trolling, 921, 923, 925, 926, 930
Brand visibility, 481
Brick and Mortar, 183, 184, 189, 192,
758
Business, 963, 964, 976, 979
Business strategy, 16
C
Causes of incivility, 926
Celebrity, 604
Celebrity endorsement, 377, 379, 631
Celebrity games, 386
Celebrity influencers, 646, 648,
651–653, 657–659
Centrality, 30, 32, 33, 35, 36, 39
Channels, 583, 586
Chatbot(s), 45, 50, 51, 58, 183, 185,
192, 194, 241, 243, 244, 276, 282,
574, 575, 786–800, 816, 818, 826,
831, 1017, 1019, 1031
Chatbot service quality, 200–203,
205–211
Citable years, 19
Citations per article, 19
Citations per publication, 19
Classification model, 715, 717, 1028
Cluster frequency, 30
Co-citation analysis, 19
Co-creation, 66, 67, 79, 82, 86, 87, 478
Co-creative, 837
Cognitive load, 735, 739
Cognitive perception, 412, 414, 415,
417, 419
Cognitive responses, 118, 122,
124–127, 141, 1016
Cohesion, 32
Co-keyword analysis, 35
Collaborative-based filtering (CF), 689,
690, 692
Collaborative filtering (CF), 711, 1028
Collaborative online shopping (COS),
519–523, 525–527, 530, 531,
534–539, 1024
Collaborative online shopping platform
(COSP), 520–522, 525–527,
529–538
Comments, 987, 988, 992, 994–999,
1001, 1003, 1004, 1006–1008
Commercial consequences, 1033
Commercial consumer incivility, 927
Commercial outcomes, 930, 931

Communication, 520, 521, 523–526,
530, 532, 536–538, 547–550,
552–554, 556, 558–562, 1024
Communication channel, 40, 788, 798
Community-style conversation, 39
Competence, 259–261, 265
Competency, 531–533
Complainant, 571, 573, 577–579,
581–584, 586, 1025
Complaint handling, 572, 580–582,
585–587, 1025
Computer-generated images (CGIs), 358
Co-navigation, 525, 526, 536
Consumer, 642
Consumer-AI interactions, 246, 247,
249, 1019
Consumer attitudes, 37
Consumer behaviour, 27, 29, 32–36,
38, 39
Consumer-brand, 894
Consumer brand engagement, 26, 644,
645, 647–649, 656, 659, 1026
Consumer conflict, 921–923
Consumer engagement, 30, 39, 228,
477
Consumer experience, 308, 309, 315,
320
Consumer incivility, 917–919, 921, 924,
927–931, 1033
Consumer involvement, 477, 489, 494
Consumer reactance, 737, 740, 741
Contemporary markets, 39
Content analysis, 894, 895, 898, 1033
Content-based filtering (CBF), 689,
691, 692, 696
Content format, 434, 435, 443, 445,
446
Content marketing, 95, 100, 101, 1015
Content(s), 494, 989
Content sharing, 467
Content type, 434, 435, 438, 439, 443,
444, 446
Context-Aware Recommendation
Systems (CARS), 689, 691, 692
Conversational marketing, 813, 818,
826, 1032
Convolutional neural network (CNN),
706, 710, 719, 1028
Co-presence, 531, 534, 535
INDEX 1039
Co-producer/co-creator, 837
Corresponding author’s country, 24
Co-shopping, 317
Coupling measures, 30
Covid-19, 755, 758, 765
Co-word analysis, 16, 19
Creative labor, 502, 506, 509, 510,
512, 1024
Credibility, 604, 607–609, 612, 614,
648, 650, 1025, 1026
Credibility-based trust, 484
CRM portal, 942
CRM software, 942
CRM systems, 942
Cross-cultural, 34–36
Cross-culture, 34
Cue, 257, 259–261, 263, 265–267
Cultural capital, 509
Curse of dimensionality, 711, 1028
Customer attitude, 480
Customer-brand engagement, 433–440,
442–446
Customer-brand relationship, 200, 201,
203–205, 207–211, 484, 1018
Customer clustering, 669
Customer connection, 15
Customer-driven content generation, 40
Customer engagement, 26, 220, 224,
226–228, 230–233, 434–438, 444,
477–486, 489–494, 785–789, 791,
796, 798, 838, 848, 1018, 1022,
1023, 1031
Customer engagement behaviour, 789,
1028, 1031
Customer experience, 52, 57, 219,
221–223, 226, 785, 786, 790,
794–796, 841, 844, 1018, 1031
Customer interactions, 16
Customer involvement, 477, 481, 482,
485, 489, 491, 492, 494, 1023
Customer lifecycle, 754
Customer loyalty, 484
Customer-owned resources, 708, 716,
1028
Customer purchase journey, 732, 737,
743, 744, 1030
Customer ratings, 739
Customer relationship, 940
Customer relationship lifecycle, 753
1040 INDEX
Customer relationship management
(CRM), 33–35, 942, 949
Customer reviews, 26, 66, 739
Customer shopping journey, 744
Customer-tracking technology, 1029
Customer trust, 477, 480, 481,
483–485, 491, 492, 494, 1023
Customer value, 786, 788
Customization, 130
Cyber-bullying, 920
D
Dark side, 945, 952, 955, 1034
Data mining, 434, 438, 988, 1022
Data use transparency, 668, 671,
674–676, 1027
Dead celebrity, 378, 384, 389
Declining themes, 33
Deep learning (DL), 1029
Deindividuation, 919, 920, 1033
Demographic-based filtering, 689, 690
Density, 35, 36
Desire for control, 127–129, 1016
Developed markets, 26
Digital, 17
Digital influencers, 150, 156, 171, 173,
174, 1017
Digitalisation, 95
Digital marketing (DM), 30, 39, 66–68,
71–79, 81–88, 93, 95–102, 110,
183, 1015, 1017
Digital media, 184
Digital technology, 35
Digital touch, 878, 882–884
Digital transformation, 94, 95, 98, 99,
103–105, 107–111, 1015
Direct marketing, 17, 34, 36
Disengagement, 952
Disruptive, 94, 99, 111, 1015
Document coupling, 16
Douyin celebrity(ies), 503, 506–512,
1024
Drones, 185, 191, 192
E Facebook, 29, 30, 32, 39, 452–455,
E-commerce, 27, 29, 30, 32–35, 38, 39,
312, 314, 331, 333, 787, 791, 795,
940, 943, 947, 948, 951
Effects, 896, 898, 901, 903–908
Email marketing, 941, 942, 948
Emails, 46, 49, 55, 56, 58, 59
Emancipatory, 926
Embodiment, 414, 419, 1022
Emerging and developing economies, 38
Emerging markets, 26
Emerging themes, 33, 71, 74, 75, 81,
84, 86
Emoji meaning, 898, 899, 906
Emoji position, 898, 905
Emojis, 893–909, 1033
Emoji type, 896, 903, 906, 908
Emotional function, 899, 900, 907, 908
Emotions, 275–283, 286–291, 576,
578, 582–584, 988–992, 994,
996–999, 1001, 1003–1008
Empathy, 256, 259, 260, 262, 265,
267, 672, 1027
Endorsements, 353, 356, 357, 362, 367
Engagement, 15, 16, 34–36, 52, 57,
261, 262, 265, 397, 402, 406, 411,
415, 549, 560, 562, 593, 597, 602,
604–606, 610, 612–614, 624, 625,
627, 630–632, 635, 636, 963–965,
1026
Engagement rate/s, 644, 648, 651–653,
657–659
Entity matching, 718
Envy, 633
ePrivacy Regulation, 776
E-tailers, 759
eWOM, 66, 149–157, 159, 160, 162,
164–168, 171–174, 200, 201, 205,
207–211, 1018
Experience, 184–187, 189–194,
550–555, 557–559, 1024
Expertise, 595, 602, 604, 608, 614,
649–651, 1025, 1026
Exploitation, 964, 966, 968, 973, 976,
978, 1034
External linkages, 32, 33, 36
F
457, 458, 460, 462–464, 466, 467
Facial recognition, 185, 190
Factors, 894, 902, 907

Fake identities, 40
Fake news sharing, 921, 922, 925
Fashion, 329–338, 341–346
Federated learning, 714, 1029
Feeling, 257, 259, 260, 262, 265, 266,
377, 378, 381–384, 1019, 1021
Female millennials, 651, 656
Filtering technique, 731, 732, 1030
Fine-tuning, 707, 713, 715, 716, 720,
721, 1029, 1030
Firestorms, 921, 922, 924
Fitting, 330, 334, 336, 338–343, 345
Flaming, 920
Flow, 535–538
Flow experience, 739
Flow state, 730, 734
Follower, 593, 595–613, 616, 623–636,
643, 646, 651–655, 657–659, 1026
Functions, 893–895, 897–901, 907
G Hybrid marketing channels, 759
Game elements, 947, 950, 1034
Game mechanics, 947, 948, 950, 952,
953, 1034
Gamers, 939
Games, 385, 387, 389, 390
Game world, 939, 1034
Gamification, 121, 123, 132, 315, 316,
319, 807–812, 814–831, 963–980,
1020, 1032, 1034
Gamified marketing, 117, 120, 121,
123, 128, 141, 142
Gamified solutions, 945, 950, 955
Gamified systems, 945
Gated recurrent unit (GRU), 706, 715
General Data Protection Regulation
(GDPR), 776
Generative adversarial networks (GANs),
716, 719, 1029
Geofencing, 754
g-index, 19, 38
Global citations, 33
Global citation scores, 30
Globally cited articles, 26, 38
Globally cited documents, 26
Global Positioning System (GPS), 754,
756, 757, 760, 761, 763, 772
INDEX 1041
Goal, 572, 573, 577–579, 583–587,
1025
Group structure, 531, 537, 1024
H
Haptic effect, 882–884
Haptic imagery, 871, 880
Haptic technology, 877, 880, 881, 1032
Harm, 964, 966, 968–970, 974–976,
978–980
Hatsune Miku, 378, 379, 381, 382,
384–389
Healthcare servicescape, 848
High involvement, 482
h-index, 19, 38
Holographic celebrity, 379
Human agents, 200, 202
Human influencers, 354–356, 360,
363–369, 371
Hybrid-based filtering (HF), 689, 691,
692
Hypercompetitive markets, 15
Hyper-interactive, 927, 931
Hyper-interactivity, 919
I
Ideology-advocating, 926, 927
Image, 275, 276, 278, 281, 282, 288,
291, 377, 378, 380–385, 390
Immersion, 330, 331, 333–335, 339,
344, 399, 401, 402, 404, 411,
1022
Immersive experience, 309, 310, 317
Immersive technologies, 304
Impact, 30, 32, 33, 39
Impactful author, 19
Impact measures, 30
Impact of incivility, 918, 927
Implementation challenges, 950
Impulse purchases, 755
Incivility management, 929, 930, 1033
India, 184
Individual traits, 607, 608
Inference, 707, 711, 1029
Influencer, 354, 356–358, 360,
363–365, 368–371, 456, 461–465,
1042 INDEX
467, 553–555, 559, 560, 593–616,
623–636, 1024–1026
Influencer marketing, 353–357, 631,
634–636, 643, 645, 646, 653, 654,
656, 658, 1026
Influencer types, 643–647, 649,
651–653, 655–659, 1026
Influential manipulating power, 501,
504
Information, 547–551, 553, 554, 556,
558–560, 562, 1024, 1025
Informational content, 442, 443, 445,
446, 1022
Information and communication
technologies (ICT), 15
Information disclosure, 953
In-game-advertising (IGA), 820, 826,
827
Innovations, 184, 191, 194
Instagram, 434, 435, 437, 438, 440,
442–446
Institutional affiliations, 38
In-store, 757, 758, 760, 763, 765, 766,
769, 775
Intellectual structures, 17, 38
Intelligent voice assistants, 243–245,
1019
Intentions, 46, 48–53, 55–57
Interact, 275, 278, 286, 288, 289, 291
Interaction, 15, 275, 276, 278,
281–283, 286, 288, 290, 331–334,
336, 337, 339–341, 345, 346,
548–554, 558–562, 645, 838,
987–992, 994, 996–999, 1001,
1004–1008, 1019, 1024, 1032,
1034, 1035
Interactional content, 442, 443
Interaction experience, 220, 221, 224,
226, 232–234, 476, 481, 489,
491–493, 1018
Interaction services, 843
Interactive, 275, 276, 278, 281, 288,
329, 330, 332–334, 336–339, 342,
344–347, 647, 1020
Interactive advertising, 120, 121, 123,
132
Interactive advertising screens, 45, 46,
54, 55, 57
Interactive AR marketing, 302–305,
307, 317, 319, 1020
Interactive communication, 893–895,
899, 900, 1033
Interactive customer experience, 475
Interactive digital marketing (IDM), 95
Interactive experience, 220, 223, 224,
226–233, 476, 477, 520–522, 524,
526, 527, 529, 530, 533, 534,
536–538, 837–841, 843, 847,
849–851, 854–856, 858, 859
Interactive marketing, 33–35, 65–67,
71, 74, 76, 77, 79, 82, 86, 87,
199–201, 203, 207, 209, 210,
433–435, 440, 444, 446, 499–502,
506, 507, 509–512, 641, 642, 648,
656, 684–687, 697, 699, 786–789,
796, 800, 807–814, 816–819, 824,
826, 827, 830, 831, 838, 844, 855,
867, 869–872, 875, 877, 882, 884,
894, 1022, 1024, 1026, 1027,
1031, 1032
Interactive marketing environment, 150,
156, 169–171, 174
Interactive marketing tools, 43, 45,
47–50, 53, 55, 56, 58, 59
Interactive screens, 55
Interactive services, 839, 843
Interactive technology, 686, 1028
Interactivity, 34, 36, 43–47, 49, 50, 52,
54, 55, 57, 58, 95, 96, 101, 102,
104, 117, 118, 120–122, 125, 132,
288, 289, 303, 310, 319, 403, 414,
422, 607, 787, 788, 795, 799,
843–846, 849, 850, 1016, 1019,
1020, 1022, 1032
Interactivity experience, 494, 839, 859
Interactivity theory, 843
International collaborations, 24
Internet, 32, 39
Internet marketing, 27, 29, 30, 39
Internet of things (IoT), 219, 220, 223
Interpersonal touch, 869, 875, 876,
882, 883
Isolated themes, 70, 71, 74, 78
J
Japan, 378, 382, 385–387, 389

Japanese, 378, 381, 386, 387, 389
Japanese-ness, 378
Joint customer journey, 519, 520, 536,
537
K Marketing communications, 27, 29, 32,
Kansei engineering, 718, 719, 1029
Keyword dynamics, 19
Keywords, 17, 19
Knowledge Graphs-based
Recommendation System (KGs),
690
Knowledge networks, 17
L Media, 547–556, 558–562, 1024, 1025
Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA),
717–719, 1029
Lead magnets, freebies, and discounts,
942
LinkedIn, 453
Live streaming, 479
Live streaming e-commerce, 506, 510,
1024
Livestream shopping, 630, 631, 634,
635
Local citations
sources of, 22
Locally cited articles, 26
Locally cited documents, 38
Locally cited sources, 19, 38
Location-based messages, 46, 53–55, 57,
58
Location-based service, 754, 760
Locus of control (LOC), 119, 127, 128,
1016
Long short-term memory (LSTM), 706,
709, 710, 719, 1029
Loss of performance, 953
Low involvement, 482
Loyal and sticky customer, 40
Luxury fashion brand, 792–795, 798
M 1016, 1034
Macro influencers, 646, 648, 651, 653,
656, 658, 659
Malicious negative word-of-mouth,
922–924
INDEX 1043
Malicious word-of-mouth, 921
Manipulation, 964, 966, 967, 973, 974,
978, 1034
Marketers, 964, 965, 967, 975–980
Marketing, 330, 331, 333, 336–340,
344–347
39
Marketing strategy, 34
Market segmentation, 669
Martech, 754, 774, 1031
Mass communication, 40
Maturity, 32, 36
Measurement, 899, 902, 907
Mechanism, 502, 506, 507, 509–512
Medium, 549, 559
Mega influencers, 646, 651–653, 658
Memory, 399, 400, 404, 412, 416, 418,
419, 422
Message, 602, 604, 606, 607, 609, 614,
616, 1026
Metaverse, 329, 330, 333–336, 341,
344–346, 370, 372, 830, 1020,
1021, 1032
Micro influencers, 646, 653
Millennials, 187, 191, 192, 645, 653,
655, 657, 659, 1017
m-index, 19, 38
Misinformation, 504
Mixed reality (MR), 329, 330, 333,
335, 341, 342, 1020
Mobile, 329–331, 335, 337, 340–346
Mobile commerce (mCommerce), 37,
183, 753, 775, 1017, 1031
Mobile devices, 753, 754, 756–758,
763–765, 773
Mobile Internet, 667, 669
Mobile marketing, 30, 35, 36, 39, 96,
100, 102, 104, 108, 109, 1015
Mobile networks, 40
Moral, 965–967, 970–972, 974, 975,
979, 1034
Motivation, 118, 129, 130, 142, 967,
Motor themes, 32, 35, 36, 70, 73, 75,
77, 79–81, 83, 84, 86, 87
Multiple country publications (MCP),
24, 38
1044 INDEX
Multisensory, 872, 882, 884, 1032
Music concerts, 379
Music events, 390
N
Nano influencers, 646, 653
Natural language processing (NLP),
707, 714, 715, 717, 718, 790, 791,
1029
Near Field Communication (NFC), 760,
762, 763, 766–768
Need for touch (NFT), 873–875, 882,
1032
Negative, 547, 548, 552–558, 560, 561,
1024
New retail, 185, 186, 1017
New Zealand, 94, 105–108
Niche subthemes, 36
Niche themes, 32, 35, 37
Norms, 964, 966, 970, 971, 973, 975,
978, 1034
NZ Post, 105–109
O
Observers, 572, 576, 577, 580–583,
585–587, 1025
Off-task behavior, 953
Omni-channel Retailing, 183, 194, 1018
Online, 329–335, 337, 338, 341–346
Online advertising, 30, 34, 39
Online behavioral targeting (OBT), 692,
1028
Online chatbots, 46, 50, 51, 56
Online consumer behaviour, 29, 30, 34,
36, 38
Online consumer reviews (OCRs), 280,
281, 288, 1019
Online disinhibition effect, 919, 1033
Online experience, 840
Online forums, 16
Online interaction, 851
Online interactivity, 840, 842–845, 847,
850–859, 1032
Online marketing, 30, 33, 34, 36, 39,
95, 110, 940, 944, 945, 947,
951–953, 1034
Online partnership, 101, 103–105, 107,
108, 1015
Online technologies, 39
Opinion leader/leadership, 354, 356,
357, 363, 366, 368, 372, 595, 596,
598, 604, 608, 609, 624, 627, 628,
634, 1026
Organic content, 629, 630, 1026
Organism, 205, 207, 209, 210
P
Parasocial interaction, 221, 226,
228–234, 262, 263, 267, 357, 365,
366, 378, 380, 386, 390
Parasocial relationships, 626, 627
Paratelic, 227–233, 1018
Perceived control, 118–133, 141, 142,
1016
Perceived interactivity, 845, 846
Perception, 257, 259, 260, 262, 377,
379–385, 389, 390, 844
Performance analysis, 16, 19, 38, 71,
74, 75, 77, 80, 85
Personal AI assistants, 241, 245, 246,
1019
Personal assistants, 282
Personalisation, 846
Personality, 256, 260, 262
Personalization, 35, 118, 121, 130, 131,
141, 142, 669, 672, 684, 687, 688,
690, 692, 694–696, 698, 846,
1028
Personalized, 754, 755, 757, 758, 762,
765, 771, 774, 775
Personalized recommendation, 729–733,
736, 737, 739, 740, 742–744,
1030
Personal voice assistants, 241, 244, 1019
Philosophy, 972, 977
Phygital, 758, 759, 769, 1031
Phygital interactive experience, 855, 856
Physical and online servicescapes,
839–841, 849, 855, 859
Physical environment, 848
Physical touch, 869, 871, 873, 877,
878, 880, 882, 883
Platform revolution, 434
Platforms, 95–100, 103, 104, 108, 111,
547, 549, 551, 553, 1015, 1016

Points, badges, and leaderboards (PBL),
940, 949, 953
Policymakers, 964, 975–979
Positive, 547, 548, 552–557, 560, 561,
1024, 1025
Post-purchase, 731, 737, 738, 743, 744
Power of influence, 596–599, 601, 613
Practical benefits, 477, 481, 483, 485,
490–492, 494, 1023
Predominant subthemes, 33
Preference, 500, 501, 507
Prepurchase, 731, 737, 738, 742–744
Presence, 398–407, 409–422, 1022
Pre-trained model, 707, 713, 715,
719–721, 1029, 1030
Privacy, 798, 799
Privacy concerns, 668, 673–676
Private (complaint) channel, 573, 579,
580, 585, 586, 1025
Prizes, 965, 967, 968, 972
Proactive, 554–556, 560, 561, 1025
Product evaluation, 871–876, 879, 880,
884
Project DIVA, 385–387
Proximity marketing, 755–761,
765–769, 771–776
Psychological benefit, 483
Psychological ownership, 871, 878, 880,
883
Psychological reactance, 730
Publication trends, 19
Public (complaint) channel, 573, 575,
580, 585, 586, 1025
Purchase, 729–732, 734, 736–744
Purchase intentions, 477, 480, 481,
484–486, 491, 492, 494, 1023
Q Savvy customers, 15, 40
QR Code, 760, 765
R Search engine optimization (SEO), 76
Reach, 596–599, 601, 613–616, 1025,
1026
Reactive, 554, 556, 557, 561, 1025
Recall, 36
Reciprocity, 524, 526, 537
INDEX 1045
Recommendation systems (RS), 684,
687–691, 695–698, 717, 1028,
1029
Recommender system, 669, 729, 730,
740, 743, 1030
Recurrent neural network (RNN), 706,
707, 710, 715, 1029
Redress, 572, 577–579, 584, 586, 587,
1025
Reinforcement learning, 707, 712, 714,
1029
Relational uncertainty, 532, 537, 538
Replika, 256, 265
Repurchase, 737, 742
Reputation, 503, 509, 511
Research landscapes, 26
Research production, 22
Research scholarship, 16
Responses, 551, 555–557, 583
Responsiveness, 846
Retargeted ads, 692, 693, 696
Retargeting, 684, 687, 692–694,
696–698, 1028
Revenge, 572, 577, 578, 584, 586, 587,
1025
Reversal theory, 227
Review, 548, 550–552, 555–559, 561,
562
Review platforms, 571, 572, 575, 586
Rewards, 942, 943, 948
Rhythm games, 384
Rich interactive media, 39
Rich media, 15
S
Sankey diagram, 24
Satisfaction, 204, 206–209, 384–387,
389, 390, 508
Science mapping, 66–69, 71
Search engine marketing, 96, 100, 101,
1015
Search engines, 66, 71, 75, 81
Self-determination theory, 668, 671,
675
Self-expansion, 224, 225
Self-extension, 224
1046 INDEX
Self-reduction, 224, 225
Self-restriction, 224, 225
Self-service technology, 117, 120, 122,
126
Semantic function, 899, 901, 907
Sender–receiver, 894, 899, 907
Sensation, 868, 871, 872, 879
Sense of community, 502
Sensory, 868, 871–873, 875, 880, 881,
1032
Sensory information, 317, 320
Sentimental interaction, 381
Sentiment analysis (SA), 715, 721, 1029
Sentiments, 378, 380–383, 386, 387,
389, 390
Service, 255, 256, 258, 259, 264
Service delivery, 848
Service interaction, 838
Service robots, 241–243, 246, 1019
Servicescape, 839, 840, 846–849, 855,
859, 1032
SERVQUAL, 201
Shopping, 183–186, 188–192, 194,
330–334, 336, 337, 339, 340, 345,
346
Shopping companion, 519, 521, 522,
525, 527, 530–535, 538
Short video, 435, 442–446
Similarity, 605, 608, 614, 1026
Single country publications (SCP), 24,
38
Size and fit, 332, 342, 346
Size and fitted, 329, 330, 333, 344
Smart gloves, 880–883, 1033
Smart mirrors, 188
Smart objects, 220, 221, 224–227, 233,
234, 1018
Smart speaker, 220, 221, 224–230, 233,
234
Social advertising, 462, 465
Social benefits, 477, 481, 483, 485,
491, 492, 494
Social capital, 511
Social Commerce, 183, 1018
Social comparison theory, 633
Social consequences, 930, 1033
Social consumer incivility, 927
Social environment, 848
Social event planning, 463, 467
Social exchange theory, 482, 492, 625
Social identity, 34, 35
Social Influence Theory, 356
Social interactions, 476
Social knowledge, 454, 455, 457, 467,
1023
Social listening, 464, 465, 467
Social media, 26, 29, 30, 33, 34, 36,
38–40, 44, 46, 49, 50, 55, 56, 59,
262, 265, 311, 313, 316, 353–356,
358, 360, 363, 365, 368, 571, 572,
574, 579, 580, 582, 584–586, 593,
595–599, 606, 609, 610, 642–648,
658, 786, 788, 789, 793, 794, 940,
941, 943, 952, 987–991,
1005–1008
Social media analytics, 464–467
Social media campaigns, 642, 643, 645,
648–650, 659
Social media influencers (SMIs), 353,
355, 369, 371, 644, 645, 651, 656,
1027
Social media marketing, 29, 30, 32,
34–36, 38, 39, 94–96, 100, 101,
103–105, 111, 1015, 1016, 1027
Social media networks, 917, 924, 1033
Social media platform, 434–438, 440,
442–446, 641, 642, 645, 646, 649,
658, 1022, 1027
Social network analysis (SNA), 717,
1029
Social networking, 452, 453, 467, 1023
Social networking sites, 26, 29, 32, 39,
475, 477, 478, 484, 571, 1023
Social outcomes, 931
Social presence, 257, 258, 262, 267
Social shopping, 452, 458, 466, 467,
1023
Social shopping sites, 150, 156, 170,
172–174, 1017
Society, 970, 975–978, 1034
Sound, 275–279, 282, 283, 286, 288,
291
Source Credibility Theory, 649–651,
654–656, 659, 1027
Sponsored content, 629–632, 635, 1026
Statistical modelling, 35
Stimuli, 205, 207, 209, 210, 1018

Stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R),
200, 205, 209, 210, 304, 305, 315,
319, 481, 491, 842, 847, 1020
Strategic diagrams, 16, 32, 35, 36
Strategy(ies), 548, 549, 554, 556–558,
560–563, 573, 580, 581, 584–587,
1025
Structural/structure equation modelling,
35, 36
Subthemes, 16, 17, 19
Supervised learning, 707
Sustainability, 964, 965, 976
Symbols, 893
Systematic review, 398, 400–402, 417,
422, 1022
T United States of America, 32, 39
Tactile effect, 868, 869, 871, 877,
882–884
Taobao, 510
Targeting, 669
Taste, 506
Technology, 183, 184, 188, 189, 191,
194, 397, 408, 410, 413, 419, 420
Telic, 227–233, 1018
Text, 275, 276, 278, 279, 288, 291,
1019
Texture, 868, 869, 872, 875, 881, 882
Thematic evolution, 16, 19, 33
Thematic map(s), 16, 68, 70, 71, 75,
79, 80
3D, 303, 308, 309, 312–314, 317, 318
Three-field analysis, 24
Tie strength, 605, 608, 609, 614, 1026
TikTok, 434, 435, 437, 438, 440,
442–446, 505
Topic modelling, 717, 1030
Total citations, 19
Touch, 867–869, 871–884, 1033
Touchpoint, 520–523, 525, 536, 537
Touchscreen, 869, 873, 875–879,
882–884
Toxic disinhibition, 919
Training, 706, 707, 714, 716, 720,
1030
Transfer learning, 707, 1029, 1030
Transportation, 404, 411, 413, 418,
1022
INDEX 1047
Trust, 256, 258–260, 262, 265
Trustworthiness, 604, 608, 614,
649–651, 655, 659, 1027
Trying-on, 331, 338, 343
Try-on, 330, 332, 337, 338, 340
Twitter, 434, 435, 437, 438, 440,
442–446
Two-way communication, 199, 203,
844, 845, 1032
Typology, 26
U
Ubiquitous, 15
Ubiquitous communication
technologies, 39
Undesired competition, 952
Unsupervised learning, 707, 711
User experience, 951, 1034
User-generated content (UGC), 987,
988, 1006
User orientation, 687, 1028
User profiling, 669
Users, 987–992, 994–999, 1001, 1003,
1004, 1034, 1035
Utilitarian products, 673
V
Valence, 277–281, 283, 288, 291, 1019
Value, 26, 500–502, 506–509, 987–991,
999, 1003, 1006, 1008, 1035
Value co-creation, 40, 838, 1032
Value creation, 15, 26, 683, 684, 686,
697, 1027
Value formation, 990, 991
Variety seeking, 673
V-commerce, 329, 330, 333–336, 341,
344, 346, 1020, 1021
Venting, 576, 578, 582, 586
Vicarious tactile, 880
Video games, 384–386, 390
Viral video advertising, 36
Virtual 3D characters, 378
Virtual artist, 382
Virtual assistants, 275–278, 281–291
Virtual brand communities, 150, 156,
171, 173, 174, 1017
1048 INDEX
Virtual celebrity, 379, 381, 384–386,
389–391, 1022
Virtual character, 379
Virtual communities, 40
Virtual environment, 303, 318
Virtual figures, 379–381, 384, 389–391
Virtual fitting, 330, 337, 338, 341, 342,
345, 346
Virtual human celebrity, 378
Virtual idol, 378, 380
Virtual influencers, 150, 156, 171, 174,
354, 355, 357–371, 1017
Virtual mirror, 305, 308, 309
Virtual performers, 380
Virtual personal assistants (VPA), 277,
282, 286, 287
Virtual reality (VR), 16, 40, 45, 46, 52,
53, 57, 58, 117, 118, 122, 124,
126, 130, 132, 141, 150, 156, 169,
172, 174, 303, 305, 330, 333, 335,
337, 341, 342, 346, 397, 399–401,
404, 413–416, 420, 421, 459, 460,
467, 1017, 1020–1022
Virtual singer, 378
Virtual singing avatar, 380
Virtual technologies, 301, 302
Virtual world, 455, 459, 466, 467, 1023
Visualization, 19
Visualize, 38
Visual representation, 30
Vividness, 303, 310, 319, 403, 404,
414, 422, 1020
Voice, 282–286, 289, 291
Voice assistants, 282, 286
Voluntary behavior, 200, 207, 208, 210
VR applications, 53, 57
W
Warmth, 532, 533, 535
Websites, 16, 32, 39, 45–48, 50, 55, 56,
59
Wi-Fi, 757, 760, 764, 772
WOM, 200, 205, 207, 311, 632, 633,
635, 672
Word cloud, 26
Word-of-mouth communication, 26
Y
YouTube, 381–383, 390, 452, 454–456,
460, 462, 467