Prof. Dr. Christian Barrot

In recent years, the emergence of highly successful digital multi-brand retailers has facilitated an omnichannel distribution strategy to become the norm for brands. Rather than relying solely on these multi-brand retailers, it is necessary for companies’ omnichannel strategy to establish strong brand-owned direct-to-consumer (D2C) webstores. To help D2C brands make decisions regarding distribution channel choices, this paper investigates the circumstances under which customers prefer brands’ D2C webstores over digital multi-brand retailers and how these circumstances vary across phases of the customer journey. The results from an extensive experimental study demonstrate that, depending on the customer journey, brands’ D2C webstores can compete with digital multi-brand retailers, particularly in product categories characterized by deep assortments, the need for extensive product information, exclusive products, or a high degree of personalization.

In recent years, service providers have identified the proactive postsales service (PPS) as a viable measure for preempting service failures and their negative consequences. Due to the high costs associated with PPSs, companies are looking for ways to increase their efficiency. To understand how companies can increase their revenues and lower their costs, this study investigates how cross-selling activities and different media types affect the impact of a PPS on inbound service calls and customer churn. Based on a large-scale field experiment in the telecommunications industry, as well as a controlled lab experiment, the results demonstrate the overall effectiveness of the PPS and indicate two mediating effects. While the effect of cross-selling on customer churn and service calls is mediated by the customers’ uncertainty regarding the company’s motives, it is the customers’ perception of privacy invasion that mediates the influence of the contact medium on the effectiveness of the PPS. Our finding that PPS contacts have to be clear in their message and should not be perceived as invasive is an indication of the importance of service-(post)sales ambidexterity.

Rewarding existing customers for the recruitment of new ones has become an increasingly popular acquisition tool for companies. However, when a company rewards the recruitment of a new customer, managers are unaware of whether the rewarded referral was actually necessary or whether “reward-scrounging” has occurred because the referral receiver would have converted anyway. As a consequence, companies risk overestimating the effectiveness of their referral programs, which is why gaining insights into how and when reward-scrounging occurs is crucial. In this study, we employ a large data set from the telecommunications industry to analyze the drivers of reward-scrounging. The results indicate that reward-scrounging reduces the effectiveness of referral reward programs over time and that its likelihood depends on both the referral sender's network position and the company's marketing activities. The findings are used to develop managerial means to alleviate the negative effects of reward-scrounging.

Geographic proximity has become increasingly relevant due to the growing number of marketing services that use consumers’ geographic locations, thus increasing the importance of gaining insights from this information. In five studies (both field and experimental), the authors analyze the effect of geographic proximity on social influence and demonstrate that not only social proximity but also perceived homophily can trigger social influence. They find that this effect holds under alternative representations of geographic distance and is confirmed for a range of different services and even for physical goods. Furthermore, the authors show that geographic proximity has a relative effect because the social influence of a closer sender is stronger than that of a more distant sender, regardless of the absolute distances. They present managerially relevant conditions under which the influence of geographic proximity not only is comparable to other types of information such as age or gender but also provides sufficient informational value for customers to offset differences among alternatives (e.g., due to higher prices) in trade-off decisions.

Seeding strategies have strong influences on the success of viral marketing campaigns, but previous studies using computer simulations and analytical models have produced conflicting recommendations about the optimal seeding strategy. This study compares four seeding strategies in two complementary small-scale field experiments, as well as in one real-life viral marketing campaign involving more than 200,000 customers of a mobile phone service provider. The empirical results show that the best seeding strategies can be up to eight times more successful than other seeding strategies. Seeding to well-connected people is the most successful approach because these attractive seeding points are more likely to participate in viral marketing campaigns. This finding contradicts a common assumption in other studies. Well-connected people also actively use their greater reach but do not have more influence on their peers than do less well-connected people.