Online retailing during the COVID-19 pandemic: consumer preferences for marketing actions with consumer self-benefits versus other-benefit components

ABSTRACT

In the present study, we investigate, from a consumer perspective, the importance of different types of marketing actions frequently used by online apparel retailers to serve different beneficiaries during the COVID-19 pandemic. The results of a Maximum Difference Scaling experiment among German consumers recruited from an online panel (n = 503) reveal that marketing actions with other-benefit components, such as corporate social responsibility initiatives, have the potential to outperform traditional sales promotion methods, such as price discounts. By deploying latent class analysis, two consumer segments can be distinguished according to their preferences: those valuing marketing actions with other-benefits and those preferring marketing campaigns with mere self-benefits. Finally, combinations of marketing actions with maximum reach are identified, from which recommendations for action by retailers are offered.

KEYWORDS:

• Corporate social responsibility
• self-benefit
• other-benefit
• online marketing
• marketing effectiveness
• COVID-19

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. The list of the top 100 German ecommerce retailers has been extracted from a study by the EHI Retail Institute (2019); it ranks German online retailers by revenue in 2018.

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.

Notes on contributors

Timo Schreiner

Timo Schreiner is an external PhD candidate at the Chair of Marketing & Innovation at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. His research interests include online marketing, multichannel marketing, personalisation in advertising, corporate social responsibility, and the application of data science with a special focus on data analysis.

Daniel Baier

Daniel Baier is Professor of Marketing & Innovation at the University of Bayreuth. He completed his dissertation and habilitation in business administration at the University of Karlsruhe and was Professor of Marketing and Innovation Management at Brandenburg University of Technology Cottbus-Senftenberg. His research interests are in market-oriented design and the pricing of products and services as well as the theory, methods, and applications of data science with a special focus on data analysis. He has published in the Journal of Business Economics, Journal of Econometrics, Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Sustainability, and Technological Forecasting and Social Change, among others.