Steven Bellman

Predictors of online buying behavior

Consumers worldwide can shop online 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Some market sectors, including insurance, financial services, computer hardware and software, travel, books, music, video, flowers, and automobiles, are experiencing rapid growth in online sales. For example, in Jan. 1999, Dell Computer Corp. was selling an average of

Consumer buying behavior on the Internet: Findings from panel data

14 million of equipment online per day, and Amazon.com has become the third largest bookseller in the U.S., despite being in business only since 1995. With projections that the Internet will generate consumer and business-to-business sales in excess of

Cognitive Lock-In and the Power Law of Practice

294 billion by 2002, online retailing raises many questions about how to market on the Net.

Defaults, Framing and Privacy: Why Opting In-Opting Out

Presents the findings from a panel data on consumer buying behavior on the Internet. Advantages and disadvantages of panel data for survey research; Demographics of online consumers; Dollar amount that consumers are spending online; Total online spending projections in the United States.

Emotional branding pays off: how brands meet share of requirements through bonding, companionship, and love

The authors suggest that learning is an important factor in electronic environments and that efficiency resulting from learning can be modeled with the power law of practice. They show that most Web sites can be characterized by decreasing visit times and that generally those sites with the fastest learning curves show the highest rates of purchasing.

The residual impact of avoided television advertising

Differences in opt-in and opt-out responses are an important element of the current public debate concerning on-line privacy and more generally for permission marketing. We explored the issue empirically. Using two on-line experiments we show that the default has a major role in determining revealed preferences for further contact with a Web site. We then explore the origins of these differences showing that both framing and defaults have separate and additive effects in affecting the construction of preferences.

A Comparison of Three Interactive Television AD Formats

ABSTRACT Emotional branding is defined here as the consumers attachment of a strong, specific, usage-relevant emotion—such as Bonding, Companionship, or Love—to the brand. The present large-scale survey of buyers of frequently purchased consumer products finds that, for such products, full-strength emotional branding is attained among, at most, only about 25 per cent of the brands buyers but that, if attained, it pays off massively in terms of personal share of purchases. Emotional branding may well be more widely effective for high involvement, positively motivated products (not surveyed here). It seems that advertising can generate the expectancy of strong, specific, emotional attachment, but very favorable brand usage experience must follow if this approach is to be successful. In general, the traditional benefit-based “USP” advertising strategy seems less risky with lesser though more widespread effectiveness.

The Website Schema

This study reports the results of a laboratory experiment that compared the effects of partial exposure associated with six major avoidance modes, including DVR (digital video recorder) ad skipping, against each other and against full-attention exposures as controls. The most common form of avoidance, ignoring advertisements (cognitive avoidance), has effects equal to fast-forwarding. Prior exposure increases effectiveness of recall as partial exposures, including fast forwarding, can act as reminder ads, but prior exposure also increases avoidance. Doubling the message of an ad in its sound track increases effectiveness and is the only way to counteract the effects of cognitive avoidance.

Pooling Hair Samples to Increase DNA Yield for PCR

ABSTRACT This study explores the effects of interacting with three current interactive television (iTV) ad formats, using an Australian audience panel. Interaction with iTV ads has positive effects on awareness and net positive thoughts, which increase purchase intentions compared with the influence of regular ads. The telescopic format represents the best format, likely because it makes the most of the entertaining possibilities of iTV by offering additional long-form video; its superior performance cannot be explained readily by self-selection effects. The results suggest that the effectiveness of iTV ads should be measured by their interaction rate rather than the much smaller response rate, and iTV advertisers should consider ways to maximize interaction and response rates.

Getting the Balance Right

ABSTRACT The website schema is conceptualized as the consumer’s set of beliefs about information locations, and routes to those locations, on a website. A meta-analysis of three studies, one of them with a student sample and two with consumer samples, provides evidence that congruence between a consumer’s website schema and the actual structure of a particular site is associated with the site being rated easier to navigate, a more favorable attitude toward brands advertised on the site, and higher quality brand decisions. These studies provide evidence of the importance of the website schema for understanding consumer response to websites.