<p>  </p> <p>The objective of the two essays is to understand how to enhance the targeted promotional programs. The first essay focuses on the importance of considering non-compliance to evaluate the target marketing and draw meaningful business implications. The second essay investigates the crucial impact of communication timing to improve the efficiency of promotional programs.</p> <p>The first essay, “Addressing Customer Non-compliance in Causal Studies”: Although numerous studies have examined how to reveal the causal relationship between targeting and customer’s conversion, focusing on the selection bias induced by targeting, the non-compliance issue remains sparse in the marketing literature. To fill this gap, I investigate the importance of addressing non-compliance in target program evaluation. Specifically, I propose a method to infer the causality, given the high proportion of non-compliers. I use propensity score matching and instrument variable method and show about 59% of the target message effects are nullified by non-compliance. Nevertheless, our findings suggest that firms carefully investigate whether compliance induces enough conversion to offset the marketing expense when deploying a multi-channel strategy because the level of customer awareness moderates the effect of the marketing message.</p> <p>The second essay “When Do You Talk to Your Customers? An Empirical Study of the Impacts of Communication Timing in the Prescription Delivery Service Market”: I investigate how to improve the marketing communication of the prescription delivery service that has been rapidly emerging, especially focusing on communication timing. I identify the causal relationship between the communication timing and targeting effect while controlling the potential endogeneity with the instrument method. Interestingly, my findings show contacting patients at the early prescription cycle is far more effective than at the end, despite no need for the refill, but well-awareness of the service can moderate the impact of communication timing. I also show that timing is vital for targeting effectiveness and a firm’s profitability by optimizing call allocation. Specifically, optimal timing targeting generates at least 4.3 times more conversion, inducing 6.6 times more net profits. </p>

Auditory preemption theory suggests two competing assumptions for the attention-capturing and performance-altering properties of auditory tasks. In onset preemption, attention is immediately diverted to the auditory channel. Strategic preemption involves a decision process in which the operator maintains focus on more complex auditory messages. The limitation in this process is that the human auditory, or echoic, memory store has a limit of 2 to 5 seconds, after which the message must be processed or it decays. In contrast, multiple resource theory suggests that visual and auditory tasks may be efficiently time-shared because two different pools of cognitive resources are used. Previous research regarding these competing assumptions has been limited and equivocal. Thus, the current research focused on systematically examining the effects of complexity and timing of communication interruptions on visual detection tasks. It was hypothesized that both timing and complexity levels would impact detection performance in a multi-task environment. Study 1 evaluated the impact of complexity and timing of communications occurring before malfunctions in an ongoing visual detection task. Twenty-four participants were required to complete each of the eight timing blocks that included simple or complex communications occurring simultaneously, and at 2, 5, or 8 seconds before detection events. For simple communications, participants repeated three pre-recorded words. However, for complex communications, they generated three words beginning with the same last letter of a word prompt. Results indicated that complex communications at two seconds or less occurring before a visual detection event significantly impacted response time with a 1.3 to 1.6 second delay compared to all the other timings. Detection accuracy for complex communication tasks under the simultaneous condition was significantly degraded compared to simple communications at five seconds or more prior to the task. This resulted in a 20% decline in detection accuracy. Additionally, participants' workload ratings for complex communications were significantly higher than simple communications. Study 2 examined the timing of communications occurring at the corresponding seconds after the visual detection event. Twenty-four participants were randomly assigned to the communication complexity and timing blocks as in study 1. The results did not find significant performance effects of timing or complexity of communications on detection performance. However the workload ratings for the 2 and 5 second complex communication presentations were higher compared to the same simple communication conditions. Overall, these findings support the strategic preemption assumption for well-defined, complex communications. The onset preemption assumption for simple communications was not supported. These results also suggest that the boundaries of the multiple resource theory assumption may exist up to the limits of the echoic memory store. Figures of merit for task performance under the varying levels of timing and complexity are presented. Several theoretical and practical implications are discussed.