The Palgrave Handbook of Interactive Marketing

With the advent and increasing proliferation of rich media, interactive content and ubiquitous access to the Internet, interactive marketing has grown significantly over the last couple of decades. Evolving from direct marketing, interactive marketing has now emerged from the periphery and begun to assume a more central, strategic role in marketing decision-making. Despite its growing importance, there is little evidence for the synthesis of various themes and subthemes that constitute research scholarship in the domain. This chapter, by employing the features of bibliometric analysis based on keywords, aims to develop and present the landscape of the thematic evolution of various research subthemes in the area of interactive marketing. Specifically, using bibliometric analysis methods, the focus is on identifying the most influential studies, authors, affiliations and countries in the field of interactive marketing. It then tries to identify the major themes and subthemes that comprise the research scholarship on the topic and finally how these subthemes have evolved over time.

Interactivity has become a crucial aspect of marketing. It allows companies to connect with their customers, often resulting in positive outcomes. Based on a literature review, this chapter discusses ten of the most pioneering tools used in interactive marketing. First it will be explained how each tool relates to the three dimensions of interactivity (active control, two-way communication, synchronicity), and insights in what dimensions are the driving forces behind each interactive marketing tool are provided. Second, results showing that research on the ten interactive marketing tools generally finds positive effects on diverse outcome variables, such as enjoyment, urges, and behavioral intentions, are discussed together with conflicting outcomes (e.g., the effect on cognition) and the potential negative effects of the tools (e.g., privacy concerns and intrusiveness). It concludes with the recommendation for marketers and researchers to collaborate and actively try out (innovative) interactive marketing tools while closely monitoring their effects.

The most noticeable impact on interactive marketing was the evolution of digital channels. In the domain of contemporary interactive marketing, digital marketing is a remarkable area with its specific focus on interactivity. Focusing on the digital marketing domain as a subset of interactive marketing, this chapter first synthesizes the literature on digital marketing to provide a comprehensive review of the domain. At the same time, it aims to identify the dominant themes of five eras by reviewing 30 years (1990–2020) of research divided into five distinct periods. Then, it investigates the connection between practical and theoretical focuses of the digital marketing research domain while comparing the practical and theoretical evolvement in each era. The analysis reveals that digital marketing has evolved from business-oriented to consumer-oriented. In addition, theory and practice followed each other very closely and acted as triggers for each other in different periods. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the dominant themes of the last era to shed light on future research and give an insight into what is ahead in digital marketing.

There has been enormous research on digital marketing and its capabilities in interactive marketing. But digital marketing does not always mean interactive marketing, hence these two types of marketing differ. This chapter aims to (i) investigate the new concept of interactive digital marketing (IDM) to clearly distinguish it from the two combined terms and (ii) identify the mechanisms of IDM and its significance in companies’ digital transformation. To do so, this chapter incorporates the theoretical and practical aspects stemming from the latest results in related literature to understand IDM and takes an extensive look at its mechanisms that help companies to better embrace the current interactive marketing environment. The six identified IDM mechanisms are mobile marketing, online PR, social media marketing, interactive display advertising, online partnership and email marketing. The chapter will then further explore these mechanisms through a case study of a New Zealand-based company, NZ Post and the way IDM mechanisms have been applied through their digital transformation project. The chapter identifies important implications for both researchers and practitioners in interactive marketing to improve their understanding and value to business through effective selection and deployment of IDM mechanisms in digital transformation.

The diffusion of innovative technologies in interactive marketing platforms has empowered consumers by providing a more active role in controlling their experience. As a result, consumers’ perception of control has become a key factor to understand the psychological processing of marketing messages. This chapter addresses the changing role of consumers in the interactive marketing process from reactive to proactive in interactive marketing process, by providing a theoretical overview of perceived control and associated psychological processes in interactive marketing. A theoretical framework for examining the role of perceived control in interactive marketing is outlined, focusing on (1) defining perceived control in the interactive marketing context; (2) the relationship between interactivity and perceived control; (3) the effects of perceived control on consumers’ affective, cognitive, and behavioral responses; and (4) possible moderating factors of the effects of perceived control, such as dispositional factors, motivation, and personalization. Based on this framework, future research directions and managerial implications in interactive marketing are discussed.

This chapter synthesizes existing research from a number of fields including marketing, management, and general business regarding the impact of brand characteristics on WOM using the “Five As” model for brand-knowledge structures (i.e., awareness, associations, attitude, attachment, and activity). Next, the chapter provides an overview of the evolving interactive marketing environmental elements such as new technologies (e.g., AI, AR, VR), platform revolution (e.g., social shopping sites, virtual brand communities), and participatory culture (e.g., digital influencers, virtual influencers). Lastly, this chapter provides future research questions on how these interactive marketing environmental factors may moderate the relationships between brand characteristics and electronic WOM. Overall, this chapter identifies the important gaps in the branding and WOM literatures and contributes to the knowledge advancement and practical implications to the field of interactive marketing.

The advent of the internet and other technological innovations has brought transformational changes in the retailing environment. Looking into the growing competition and increased customer awareness, retailers are now forced to innovate and bring in new technologies that can provide ease to the customers and enhance customer experience. The current chapter provides an overview of some recent technological innovations in the retailing industry, such as smart mirrors, checkout-free stores, chatbots, facial recognition-based shopping, etc. The chapter sheds new insights on researchers in understanding the recent technological innovations in the retail environment. Furthermore, the chapter offers several insights to retailers by making them understand the benefits of various technological innovations prevalent in the retail scenario. The retailers can use the technologies to stay ahead of their competition as it is the need of the hour, or else they may fall into the trap of marketing myopia.

The chapter discusses the role of artificial intelligence (AI)-powered chatbot’s service quality dimensions in developing customer-brand relationship and their impact on electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM) (i.e. response) in improving interactive marketing. The chapter explains the relationships by considering the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) theory and confirms its applicability of it in the context of service by chatbots. The findings have confirmed that chatbot service quality dimensions (i.e. assurance, reliability, interactivity, understandability, and responsiveness) play a critical role in building a relationship with customers, and customer-brand relationship encourages customers to involve in e-WOM that ultimately improves interactive marketing. The chapter offers critical insights to the businesses to enjoy the benefits of AI in the field of interactive marketing and offer numerous theoretical and practical contributions. The chapter contends that user experience can be enhanced by considering the elements of chatbot service quality dimensions.

Marketers are now employing artificial intelligence (AI) to improve the customer experience, turning it into the key to enterprises’ future success. Smart speakers also known as voice assistant, are voice recognition programs powered in the Internet of things by AI technology designed to promote customer interaction, engagement, and voice-based conversations. This chapter proposes a new framework for consumers in regards to interactive experiences with smart devices. The optimal scenario of the synergistic experience between a customer and a smart device is explored under the framework of Internet of Thing (IoT) by observing the interactive occurrences among interpersonal orientation, objects’ orientation, and social orientation. Specifically, this chapter first discusses AI technology advancement optimization of the customer experience. Then, explored the interaction experience between customers and intelligent objects in the context of IoT, can be classified into four different types of experience combination attributes: self-extension, self-restriction, self-expansion, and self-reduction. Second, the proposed model is validated by an experiment, explore the levels of interaction experience between customers and smart speaker devices influences on customer engagement. Finally, the chapter also discusses user types and parasocial interaction interfere with the interactive experience levels of users and smart speaker devices and customer engagement.

The development of artificial intelligence has triggered important changes in society, in the business world and in consumers’ everyday lives. Many of the daily human activities are nowadays performed with the help of AI, having major implications on the interaction between consumers and companies. Therefore, the marketing strategies of companies have to be adjusted in order to include AI. This chapter presents a conceptual approach on the types of AI and their impact on the marketing strategies of companies. The authors focus mainly on two differentiation criteria of AI, namely the physical or virtual presence of AI and the social relations between consumers and AI. On the one hand, there are personal AI assistants, which are permanently involved in consumers’ daily life and external voice assistants or service robots, which interact with consumers during the acquisition of products or services. As for the two categories of AI, the exchange of data and attachment are different, so the authors focus on the main challenges for each category by analyzing the implications they have on the marketing strategies of companies. On the other hand, there are also AI devices with a physical presence or AI devices with virtual presence which interact with the consumers by voice. The physical presence and the friendliness of the voice may impact the interaction in different ways.

Chatbots, also known as conversational agents, are automated computer programs powered by natural language processing designed to engage consumers in interactive, one-on-one, personalized text- or voice-based conversations. Focusing on text-based, anthropomorphic social chatbots that can be easily implemented on various digital platforms, this chapter synthesizes the literature on computer-mediated communication and human–computer interaction to provide a comprehensive review of the pivotal factors that can enhance chatbots’ perceived humanness and the key considerations in consumer–chatbot interaction and relationship. Specifically, this chapter first discusses the research findings on the persuasiveness of computer-controlled chatbots in relation to human-controlled avatars. Then, the chapter delves into the various anthropomorphic cues used in chatbot design and messaging, including human identity cues, verbal, and non-verbal cues. Strategies and examples for chatbots to communicate humility in order to mitigate consumers’ frustration when chatbots fail to meet consumers’ expectations are also provided. The chapter next addresses some of the most widely studied mediators of chatbot anthropomorphism—social presence and parasocial interaction—and the under-researched role of emotion in consumer–chatbot interactions. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the “uncanny valley” effect pertaining to people’s feelings of eeriness toward highly human-like chatbots.

Nowadays the online customer experience is shaped by relationships that are built using interactive technologies. Users can not only interact with other users or with the firm, but also with artificial-intelligence-powered agents such as virtual assistants, chatbots, or service robots. Consequently, interactive marketing goes a step further, despite the fact that any digital social interaction is based on three communication tools: text, sound, and image. This chapter, after reviewing the meaning and dimensionality of the emotion, explores interactive marketing experiences through text, sound, and image to finally, focus on virtual assistants and the role of anthropomorphic characteristics in the transmission of emotions. The contribution of this chapter is to provide an overview of the current state of research on the transmission of emotions through online interactive tools offering a variety of theories, studies, advances, and areas to be explored to serve as a starting point for researchers and practitioners.

Recent years have seen a swift embracement of augmented reality (AR) as an interactive marketing tool, which has been accelerated even more rapidly by the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the general attitude toward the technology as well as the factors that inhibit or facilitate its adoption from both, the consumers, and practitioners, remain elusive. This prevents marketers from fully exploiting the potential related to AR marketing. This chapter (1) draws on current literature to conceptualize consumer experience in AR marketing and (2) complements these findings with a practitioner perspective by conducting interviews with small retailers. The results of the present chapter indicate that, from the consumer perspective, AR can give rise to diverse cognitive, affective, and social-psychological outcomes, which can translate into behavioral outcomes, including purchase intentions, word-of-mouth intentions, and brand engagement. From the practitioner’s perspective, initial interview results reveal that advancements toward an easy integration of AR within existing IT infrastructures, as well as efficient ways to create virtual product replicas are crucial for the adoption of AR by small retailers. Based on the combined observations from literature and the conducted interviews, a comprehensive framework of interactive AR marketing is provided, and a way forward is discussed by addressing the emergent trends of AR as an interactive marketing technology.

Technological advancements have changed the traditional e-commerce marketing environment to an interactive v-commerce metaverse marketing environment. The chapter outlines the recent v-commerce tools for interactive marketing in fashion metaverse. To enhance interactive marketing in terms of size and fitting in v-commerce, mobile 3D body scanning has a substantial influence on consumers. This empowers them to view fitting and size prior to any kind of purchase. This helps reduce the hassle of online product returns. In fashion metaverse, fashion buyers use mobile device for scanning to acquire personalised, highly detailed 3D body avatar and body dimensions along with interactive features of augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality. This provides rich visual information of product in fashion metaverse along with right size and fit viewing with sensory interaction. Consumers can experience in online shopping environment, realistic and engaging distinct features with enhanced functionality, interactivity, convenience, and time efficient. Moreover, the chapter concluded the practicability of v-commerce tools (mobile body scanners, VR, AR, and MR) with four main elements such as immersive technology, interactivity, attractiveness, and accuracy that have the potential to enhance the virtual interactive marketing. Further, v-commerce tools and metaverse environment have been evaluated with AIDA marketing framework to outline the effectiveness of interactive marketing strategy for consumers’ and retailers’ benefit. Thus, the v-commerce has a potential in benefiting retailers with mass customisation, virtual size recommendation, efficient inventory management, and designing of interactive marketing and retailing strategies.

Social media influencers have become an integral part of most brands’ interactive marketing strategy for the past 15 years. Leveraging their unique content and substantial follower base, brands benefit from innovative forms of consumer engagement above and beyond more traditional firm-driven approaches. Alongside the numerous human influencers, a new opinion leader—virtual influencers—entered the stage with early examples launched in 2016. Virtual influencers are computer-generated characters or avatars designed and maintained by experts and digital agencies that help brands appeal to and reach desirable target groups effectively through their digital personalities. Despite their potential impact, little is known to date about these virtual opinion leaders. The purpose of this chapter is to offer a detailed presentation of virtual influencers within their ecosystem, taking into consideration their human influencer counterparts as well as consumer perceptions. Building on an extensive review of the literature and exploratory interviews with a group of young consumers, we make specific recommendations for brands as to how to incorporate virtual influencers into their interactive marketing strategy. This chapter is concluded by offering avenues for future research to help scholars and practitioners interested in pursuing this area and boost their understanding of this innovative and promising digital entity.

Celebrity endorsement is undoubtedly an investment that can produce both good returns and bad losses. However, compared to the knowledge about human being agents, little is known about virtual celebrities. Therefore, this chapter aimed to examine (1) the perceptions of virtual celebrities and (2) the effect that a virtual figure can have as an endorser of a certain product. Two studies were implemented to achieve these purposes. The first study found that viewer perception of the virtual figures was a combination of both the positive and negative sentiments. The perceived authenticity of the figures played an important part in this impression. In addition, the second study found that the sentiments dedicated to the figures could have some impact on customers’ overall satisfaction with the products endorsed by these figures.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. Implications of these findings, as well as directions for future studies, were discussed.

Interactive marketing has greatly benefited from advances in immersive technologies, like virtual reality, as they provide consumers with marketing experiences that transcend the constraints associated with more traditional media. Consumers’ feelings of being “there” in a mediated environment further increase the effectiveness of the immersive experience, making the concept of “presence” a central process of interest to researchers and practitioners in interactive marketing. In this chapter, the authors conduct a systematic review of presence within the interactive marketing literature, focusing on its conceptual development and empirical outcomes. This review revealed key components in a theoretical framework of presence, including its technological antecedents (e.g., sensory breadth), associated subdimensions (e.g., ecological validity), and cognitive processes (e.g., self-location and action possibilities). This review also suggests that the cognitive processes associated with presence are relatively understudied, including the impact of presence on consumers’ positive and negative affective responses toward the system, marketing content, and self-perception, as well as inconsistent findings concerning memory and the influence of presence on behavioral outcomes. These suggestions provide valuable insights given the importance of cognitive and affective responses in driving evaluations of marketing messages, facilitating future research investigating presence within interactive marketing.

Customer-brand engagement is considered to be an important perspective in interactive marketing. However, there has been limited analysis of social media itself 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. Therefore, this chapter examines the effectiveness of customer-brand engagement on Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok through data mining. The findings reveal 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. More importantly, this chapter shows 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. As a result, this chapter fills a gap in the limited analysis of customer-brand engagement on social media platforms, and provides managerial insights for brand and marketing practitioners who have difficulty coordinating their efforts on different social media platforms.

This chapter proposes five social media categories, overviews category representatives and their user profiles, and summarizes five interactive marketing features. 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 technology of big data, VR, AR, and artificial intelligence.

The current dynamic and interactive business environment pressure businesses and academics to focus on developing better interactive marketing strategies to remain competitive. Customers are actively engaged on social networking sites (SNSs) to make purchase decisions; thus, enhancing customers’ interaction experience with a brand on SNSs is crucial. Despite the growth of SNSs, empirical studies on the understanding of drivers of customer engagement and its impact on consumer trust and purchase intention of fabric handicrafts are scarce. Guided by the Stimulus-Organism-Response (S-O-R) Model and Social Exchange Theory, this chapter investigates the role of customer involvement and practical and social benefits of the fabric handicraft page that could influence customer engagement which, in turn, could affect customers’ trust and purchase intention of fabric handicrafts. Self-administered questionnaires were distributed via a link sent through instant messaging on SNS, (i.e. Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Twitter), based on selected fabric handicraft brands in Malaysia. The results show that customer involvement and social benefits influenced customer engagement, while customer trust was essential in influencing purchase intention. The practical and theoretical implications, as well as suggestions for further research, are discussed.

The emergence of the Chinese-developed social media TikTok and Douyin has drawn the attention of academics and encouraged them to investigate its suitability in different functions, including but not limited to interactive marketing. This chapter extends the academic discussion to interactive marketing. Supported by the previous studies of Douyin, this chapter reveals how interactive marketing can be practiced under the specific mechanism provided by Douyin. Based on empirical data and case studies derived from interviews, the findings illustrate that the mechanism of Douyin in terms of interactive marketing could be operated and sustained by the pool of creative laborers who are highly influenced by the Douyin community and happy in seeking immaterial rewards. The findings shed light on the live streaming e-commerce industry, as well as the mechanism of interactive marketing in social media platforms in contemporary China.

Businesses have recently adopted collaborative online shopping (COS) technologies to provide the same level of service to customers as they do in-store. Individuals’ interactions during COS create experiences through specific touchpoints in the joint customer journey. These COS technologies have created a new environment for shopping interactivities, and it is necessary to pay close attention to various aspects of these interactions. The chapter sheds insights on understanding two forms of interactions during COS: (1) interpersonal interactions and (2) interactions with the collaborative online shopping platform (COSP).By reviewing the related literature, this chapter found that the interactive experience of shoppers during COS can be enhanced in two ways. First, by improving the interactive touchpoints of COSPs. Using functional affordances, which can be the features of COSPs, including switching control of mouse navigation, live annotation, and communication, can enrich the interactive experience of the shoppers (e.g., reciprocity can be facilitated through switching control). Second, enhancing the interactive experience by improving the interpersonal interactions between shoppers and their companions through increasing the social presence and flow, decreasing the relational uncertainty, selecting a competent companion, and considering the appropriate shopping group structure (i.e., co-buyer, buyer-advisor, and buyer-store companion) for different shopping scenarios.

The pervasive use of digital technologies allows individual consumers to generate and obtain consumption-related information through digital media platforms, thereby catalyzing the emergence and penetration of electronic word of mouth (eWOM) in the consumer market. Although WOM marketing highlights the significance of two-way communication, the interactive nature of eWOM has often been neglected. Drawing upon academic literature and industry observation of interactive marketing and eWOM, this chapter reconceptualizes eWOM communication through the theoretical lens of interactive marketing. Focusing on the interactivity of eWOM, this chapter develops a new typology of eWOM media based on their functionality, information types, and interactivity. Furthermore, in addition to the customer-to-customer communication in eWOM, this chapter takes a managerial perspective to categorize and evaluate proactive and reactive eWOM strategies. This chapter is concluded by developing a future research agenda that has implications for potential research and the practices of interactive eWOM.

Complaint behavior in interactive channels has ceased to be a new phenomenon. Consumers are instead turning to new interactive tools to express dissatisfaction with companies that fail to meet their expectations due to the wide array of private (e.g., WhatsApp) and public (e.g., review platforms) channels presently available. While private complaint channels provide the advantage of dealing with the complaint out of the public eye, observers never become aware of the firm’s effectiveness. In contrast, while public complaint channels enable brands to demonstrate how much they care about customers, they also entail the risk of damaging the brand’s reputation if the resolution does not evolve smoothly and satisfactorily. Complainants will choose a channel to voice their demands depending on their goals (i.e., revenge vs. redress-seeking) and the benefits they associate with the respective channels. In this context, companies must decide which channels to rely on and the procedure to follow in the event of a complaint. As such, brands should not only pay attention to the types of responses that engender more favorable customer responses but also to prevention and brand-building strategies, as these have become especially salient in this interactive era and may support the implementation of an integral complaint handling strategy.

The arrival of influencers has modified marketing budgets all over the world, being used more and more often as a new marketing tool. Given the importance of the influencer phenomenon, many studies have been published about this topic in the previous years. However, there are still several areas that need further research. One of these areas is the conceptualization of influencers. The influencer phenomenon is dynamic, so what was understood as an influencer ten years ago may have evolved and changed. Additionally, classifications based on the number of followers may be easily manipulated, so there is need for an improved classification of influencers based on their potential reach. Following this criterion, the authors propose to classify influencers as mega-reach, macro-reach, medium-reach, and mini-reach influencers. Moreover, the numerous factors that may determine their influence are still not well accounted for nor organized. Finally, most studies have analyzed the success of influencers as a new marketing tool, but the way influencers collaborate with brands is very special and has also evolved recently. This chapter contributes to previous literature by proposing a renewed definition and classification of influencers that is more consistent with their origin, evolution, and progressive level of professionalization, as well as by identifying several research gaps that may guide future research.

The rise of influencers on social media has created new opportunities for brands to advertise their products. However, the novelty of the influencer phenomenon is not always well understood, because influencer marketing resembles the well-established practice of celebrity endorsement. This chapter aims to demonstrate the specificities of the influencer phenomenon as a new form of opinion leadership. It conceptualizes this phenomenon as a triadic relationship between influencers, their followers, and the brands they endorse. This chapter examines the influencer-follower, influencer-brand, and follower-brand relationships involved in this triadic interplay. Drawing on the influencer marketing literature, it discusses how and why all three actors engage in a digitally mediated dialogue. This dialogue takes the form of likes, comments, tags, and other social media interactions, and it revolves around the content that influencers create and share with their followers in which they feature brands. All in all, marketing managers should not view influencer marketing as a mere substitute for celebrity endorsement. Rather, managers should acknowledge that the interactive nature of the influencer phenomenon has the potential to trigger brand-related conversations and instant sales. This chapter notably recommends two tactical marketing tools to trigger instant sales: shoppable posts and livestream shopping sessions.

Influencer types vary, with some more influential than others depending upon the industry context. Whilst some studies have explored the criteria of individual influencer types to engage consumer relationships, there is limited research which provides insights into sources of influence and impact for consumer brand engagement across a range of influencer types within the fashion retail industry. This chapter builds on the existing literature providing innovative insights by utilising the Source Credibility Theory to better understand what makes one influencer type more credible than another in their social media marketing campaigns for fashion brands. Ten semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of female millennial fashion consumers on Instagram to examine preferred influencers based on the 5 influencer types depicted in Campbell and Farrell (Business Horizons 63:469–479, 2020) framework. An engagement rate equation was first applied to fashion influencers’ Instagram posts to ascertain engagement rates for different influencer types. The interviews show that female millennials choose to follow influencers based on a number of the Source Credibility Theory constructs, with attractiveness, (likeability and reliability), as the most important construct, closely followed by expertise and trustworthiness. An interesting managerial implication is that whilst celebrity influencers have high follower counts and have been influential in traditional marketing advertising campaigns, their lack of online interaction with their followers means that engagement rates amongst consumers are lower—whilst in comparison, macro influencers, those with 100 k–1million followers, cost less to commission, and are much more impactful within the industry due to their higher engagement rates. Monitoring the source of credibility amongst different influencer types on social media platforms allows practitioners to expand their reach and positioning in the market more effectively.

Predictive analytics, the process of using current and/or historical data with a combination of statistical techniques to assess the likelihood of a certain event happening in the future, has become increasingly prevalent in interactive marketing. However, previous research on predictive analytics in interactive marketing has mostly assumed customers’ voluntary participation and engagement in predictive analytics, overlooking the role of customers’ psychological factors in driving customer engagement. Based on self-determination theory, this chapter provides a theoretical framework to understand customer engagement in predictive analytics. Specifically, this chapter proposes that predictive analytics positively influences customer engagement through need for meaningful affiliation, which is moderated by self-construal, and that predictive analytics negatively influences customer engagement through sense of control, which is moderated by data use transparency and trust. This chapter presents both theoretical contributions and practical implications to interactive marketing.

With the advancements of non-stop technologies in the retail sector, the relationship between consumers and retailers has become interactive. AI-driven systems have opened the door for retailers to understand consumers’ needs and predict their future behaviors. Through the lens of personalized recommendation systems and retargeted ads, this chapter explores the role of these AI-driven systems in creating value for consumers and allowing retailers to gain a competitive advantage. Empirically, the current chapter conducts a case study on the pioneer e-commerce platform Amazon to showcase how consumers' and businesses' relationships can be enhanced by AI-driven systems outcomes. In this sense, the findings theoretically contribute to the interactive marketing field by revealing a new method for creating value through approaching recommendation systems and retargeting to closely connect the marketers with the consumers. Practically, the findings show that these systems can help consumers avoid online information overload by providing informative, relevant, and accurate content. On the other hand, these systems help retailers increase their sales and also, consumer loyalty and satisfaction, and allow them to develop new products by predicting consumers’ behaviors.

This chapter reviews recent research deploying deep learning (DL) to resolve problems in interactive marketing. It takes stock of what marketers know, how and why they do that. From an engagement marketing perspective, this chapter catalogues DL application cases in (1) customer acquisition, expansion, and retention, (2) marketing communication, and (3) product innovation. By identifying challenges from technological advancement and interactive marketing needs, it characterizes eleven issues that marketers have to deal with. They include the curse of dimensionality, complex data processing, language-image nexus, and customer privacy. This chapter elucidates the DL logic and solution techniques to correspondingly address these issues. It also introduces some technical terms for communication with data scientists. They include generative adversarial networks, transfer learning, and federated learning. A wide range of typical DL models is presented, from simple classification to sophisticated language models. Marketers have to choose from them according to their application matters. This chapter concludes that DL is indispensable to fulfilling today’s customer needs for performance and interactivity. The review shall help formulate DL projects and it can act as a handy reference for exotic marketing innovations upon new technology trends, like the Metaverse. Implications and challenges will be discussed in the ending section. Hopefully, marketers will find DL easier, for implementation or outsourcing.

E-commerce has penetrated deep into the milieu of today’s generation and has overtaken traditional commerce. Compared to traditional commerce, a few aspects like the absence of physical products, salespeople, and restricted spaces make it more dependent on the technologies that support consumers to make decisions. Simultaneously, consumers are inundated with a plethora of online information, creating confusion in their minds. Recommender Agents tend to assist customers by decreasing the information overload and presenting focused and curated content known as personalized recommendations (PR). Authors consolidated previous research in the field and thematically categorized them into (1) Technology Acceptance, (2) Persuasion, (3) Attitude formation (4) Human-Recommender interaction (5) Consumer response (6) Consumer decision-making. The present chapter bridges the research gaps by consolidating the extant interactive marketing literature to develop a comprehensive model and identify future research directions by superimposing the framework of customer shopping journey. Due to the growing popularity of personalized recommendations in interactive marketing, literature has grown multifold, but the authors found that their role in purchase and post-purchase stages of customer shopping journey have received scant attention. The literature is silent in understanding the importance of personalized recommendations, offline conversions, interaction between e-commerce and product brands to create a balance between perceived risk and trust, and the role of e-commerce customer service in repeat purchase and customer loyalty.

Technological breakthroughs have made it possible to collect continuous live location information through mobile devices. As such, location-based data has greatly impacted the development of contemporary proximity marketing which takes into account “closeness” between two objects and this is further applied for marketing purposes. As information regarding specific customer locations on their movements into/out of a pre-defined virtual boundary can be detected and identified, through the interactivity between mobile devices and proximity hardware, pre-programmed marketing actions will be triggered and relevant materials will be delivered to customers at the right time and in the right place. These potential customers can eventually be guided away from their original consumption intention. Such geographic location-based, interactive proximity marketing has been receiving increasing attention from both practitioners and academicians in recent years. In this chapter, the authors attempt to clarify the concept, discuss its benefits, elucidate proximity marketing technologies, and illustrate practical implications. Further, a comprehensive review of the limited extant scholarly works is conducted. Through this review, a conceptual framework is thus developed. Finally, an agenda for future research is provided to serve as a base for future studies into this crucial and yet often neglected field of proximity marketing.

The use of chatbots has grown rapidly in numerous fields in recent years. Industry and academia have both realised the importance of using the artificial intelligent-enabled chatbot technologies for enhancing customer engagement and providing excellent customer experience. However, there is little known about how customers engage with chatbots when used in the retail environment. Also, few studies examine how chatbots affect customer responses within luxury fashion industry settings. There has been little done in summarising the application of chatbots in interactive marketing and the impacts of the chatbots on customer engagement. The purpose of this chapter is to briefly introduce the definition of chatbots and the application of chatbots in the luxury retail regarding interactive marketing perceptive. This chapter proposes that chatbots in luxury retail need to have low cost, quick response, attractiveness, personalised service, intelligence, and interactive features based on our research on the current application of chatbots in luxury retail. Finally, this chapter provides an analytical summary of recent research on the themes and informs future research in the field.

Gamification marketing is on the rise and that’s a prodigious update for all industries. Incorporating appropriately designed gamified content into the digital marketing strategy could be a game-changer for a brand to establish in the competitive market. While one may ponder that adding games to a brand’s marketing toolbox sounds like a child’s play, nonetheless, it will aid the brand cut the advertising clutter, stand out and escape mediocrity. However, implementing a gamified marketing strategy takes one’s time and effort to discover the right methods that impeccably suit a specific brand. This chapter provides an overview of interactive marketing, the need to become interactive, an outline of gamification, the need to gamify and different ways of gamified interactive marketing. Also, it highlights major areas of investigation, key benefits and insights from major marketing theories of applying gamification in interactive marketing and provides a framework for organizing gamification literature. Further, this chapter highlights the major findings derived from the literature, the critical discussion points related to theory and practice, the theoretical and practical implications of gamified interactive marketing and concludes with the future of gamification to help scholars and marketers to understand, design and implement gamified interactive marketing in business practice.

Businesses should be able to distinguish themselves in the ever-growing service market by providing an interactive experience to customers to remain competitive amidst market turbulence. The interactive experience allows businesses to provide unique experiences to their customers through physical and online servicescapes, influencing consumer behavioural outcomes. However, existing research models have not fully captured critical attributes that drive the interactive experience of physical and online servicescapes for long-term business revenue growth. Therefore, similarities and differences in attributes for both contexts must be elucidated to pinpoint gaps for future investigations. Additionally, although interactive marketing scholars have devoted considerable effort to determine the effects of servicescapes on consumer behaviour, information on an up-to-date systematisation of theoretical and empirical findings remains scarce. This chapter aims to critically review the interactive experience research for physical and online servicescapes within a 10-year period (2012–2022). The review highlights the importance of this emerging area of interest by considering previous research on the interactive experience in the literature. An agenda for research was developed, serving as a foundation for future studies into this essential yet often neglected aspect of the interactive experience of online and physical environments. Also, understanding this interactive experience for both contexts is essential for practitioners to respond to consumers’ actions, behaviour, preferences, expectations, and demands quickly and appropriately.

Consumers use their sense of touch to interact with products and salespeople in direct marketing; they use touchscreen devices to interact with products and others on e-commerce and mobile commerce platforms. Understanding the role of touch in consumers’ experiences in both physical and digital realms is essential for businesses to implement effective haptic strategies and for scholars to advance knowledge in touch literature. This chapter offers an initial review of the role of touch, touchscreens, and haptic technology through an interactive marketing lens. Specifically, it proposes a conceptual framework for continued research by situating current haptic and tactile research within an interactive marketing frame. It summarizes new knowledge of three important topics in interactive marketing: technology adoption, customer behavior, and multichannel marketing. It also draws readers’ attention to the multifaceted research of touch from psychology and neuroscience perspectives. The first half of the chapter summarizes the most up-to-date research findings and theories (e.g., psychological ownership) on haptic and tactile effects that substantially affect interactions between consumers and products and between consumers and service providers. Then a summary of recent research outlines how touchscreen devices (e.g., smartphones, tablets) and haptic technology (e.g., smart wearables) influence consumers’ experiences in the digital world.

Emojis are widely used in everyday interactions. This chapter provides a systematical review of emojis in interactive marketing. First, this chapter summarized the functions of emojis from three aspects: emojis play emotional functions (expressing sentiment, strengthening sentiment, weakening sentiment, establishing emotional tone, and building social relationship) and semantic functions (substituting textual messaging and influencing sentiment processing) in sender–receiver communication, lead to positive emotional and behavioral responses (such as memory accuracy, engagement, positive affect, and high purchase intention) in brand–consumer communication, and are used to measure peoples’ emotional expressions and conceptual associations. Second, this chapter noted the factors (age, gender, language and country, relationship types) influencing using emojis. Third, this chapter examined the effects of emojis (the presence of emojis, the position of emojis, the repetition of emojis, the meanings of emojis, and the type of emojis). In summary, emojis greatly influence the interaction between the brand and consumers and connections among active consumers. Important implications, as well as limitations and future research directions, were addressed.

The interactive nature of social media networks (SMNs) has contributed to the emergence of an adverse online phenomenon: consumer incivility, that is, a set of undesirable behaviors and hostile interpersonal interactions between individuals in virtual spaces. This chapter offers an overview of this increasingly prevalent dark side of SMNs. The chapter first provides a historical overview of conventionally researched uncivil online behaviors and their inherent drivers. Then, drawing on research across several disciplines, the chapter outlines distinct emerging forms of incivility in a consumerism context and discusses their distinguishing characteristics. Research into the causes and impact of consumer incivility is then reviewed, followed by a discussion of the strategies and actors that studies have put forward as suitable for managing consumer incivility on SMNs. Based on the review of existing consumer incivility research, three future avenues are highlighted for interactive marketing researchers and initial recommendations for marketing managers are provided.

Gamification has captivated people's interests from all walks of life, including marketing managers. Incorporating game mechanics in a non-gaming context like social media marketing, email marketing, customer relationship management, e-commerce, and mobile marketing enhances customer engagement and loyalty. However, every coin has two sides, and the buzzword gamification is no exception. Marketing scholars have extensively explored the positive aspects or bright sides of using a gamified approach to marketing; hitherto, its lesser attended side or dark side deserves attention. This chapter focuses on the dark side of using gamification in interactive 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.

Gamification with various designs is becoming a mainstay of interactive marketing, used to pervasively and holistically to in value-creating marketing practices. Beyond marketing, gamification is commonly seen as a technology, the effects of which are benevolent and which is often employed for sustainable ends such as the improvement of wellbeing, health, and sustainable work. However, as gamification commonly, either more or less directly, is related to attempts at affecting customers’ psychological states and continued engagement, 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 gamification’s ethical implications in the marketing context. In this chapter, the authors explore the ethical concerns related to using gamification as an interactive marketing tool, and examine how consumers shape their ethical judgement towards gamification. The authors also suggest various ways to help marketers, designers, and policymakers to minimize the unethical consequences of gamification, and ensure that companies will use gamification to compete both ethically and responsibly.

Companies use social media as a medium of interaction to advertise and sell their products and services, while customers use the medium to seek information before buying. However, despite the proliferation of social media platforms, there is scant research on how customers sharing negative emotional messages in online brand communities can destroy value. To address the disadvantages of the previous approaches, this chapter (1) detects the negative comments; (2) pinpoints the periods characterized by significant peaks of negative comments; (3) clusters the identified periods by topics; and (4) characterizes each topic with emotions. These points allow the portrayal of customers’ negative emotions (such as anger, dissatisfaction, disgust, fear, and sadness) and detect their value co-destructing effects in the customer-firm interaction. The chapter concludes that value co-destruction in the social media context can be understood as an exchange of negative comments. Customers’ mix of emotions and the firm's responses determine the magnitude of value destruction.