Purpose - In 2009, U.S. coupons set a new record of 367 billion coupons distributed. Yet, while coupon distribution is on the rise, redemption rates remain below 1%. This article shows how recognizing context variables, such as proximity, weather, part of town and financial incentives interplay to determine a coupon campaigns' success. Design/methodology/approach - The paper reports an empirical study conducted in cooperation with a restaurant chain: 9.880 Subway coupons were distributed under different experimental context conditions. Redemption behavior was analyzed with the help of logistic regressions. Findings - We found that even though proximity drives coupon redemption, city center campaigns seem to be much more sensitive to distance than suburban areas. The further away the distribution place from the restaurant the less does the amount of monetary incentive determine the motivation to redeem. Practical implications - When designing a coupon campaign for a company, coupon distribution should not follow a 'one-is-good-for-all-strategy' even for one marketer within one product category. Instead each coupon strategy should carefully consider contextual influence. Originality - This article is the first to our knowledge that systematically investigates the impact of context variables on coupon redemption. We focus on context variables that electronic marketing channels will be able to easily incorporate into personalized mobile marketing campaigns.

In direct marketing, understanding the response behavior of consumers to marketing initiatives is a pre-requisite for marketers before implementing targeting strategies to reach potential as well as existing consumers in the future. Consumer response can either be in terms of the incidence or timing of purchases, category/ brand choice of purchases made as well as the volume or purchase amounts in each category. Direct marketers seek to explore how past consumer response behavior as well as their targeting actions affects current response patterns. However, considerable heterogeneity is also prevalent in consumer responses and the possible sources of this heterogeneity need to be investigated. With the knowledge of consumer response and the corresponding heterogeneity, direct marketers can devise targeting strategies to attract potential new consumers as well as retain existing consumers. In the first essay of my dissertation (Chapter 2), I model the response behavior of donors in non-profit charity fund-raising in terms of their timing and volume of donations. I show that past donations (both the incidence and volume) and solicitation for alternative causes by non-profits matter in donor responses and the heterogeneity in donation behavior can be explained in terms of individual and community level donor characteristics. I also provide a heuristic approach to target new donors by using a classification scheme for donors in terms of the frequency and amount of donations and then characterize each donor portfolio with corresponding donor characteristics. In the second essay (Chapter 3), I propose a more structural approach in the targeting of customers by direct marketers in the context of customized retail couponing. First I model customer purchase in a retail setting where brand choice decisions in a product category depend on pricing, in-store promotions, coupon targeting as well as the face values of those coupons. Then using a utility function specification for the retailer which implements a trade-off between net revenue (revenue – coupon face value) and information gain, I propose a Bayesian decision theoretic approach to determine optimal customized coupon face values. The optimization algorithm is sequential where past as well as future customer responses affect targeted coupon face values and the direct marketer tries to determine the trade-off through natural experimentation. / text

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