Study on Consumer Attitudes Toward Email and Postal Direct Mail
Posted by Hendry Lee on 02/2/07 in Survey and Trends
Journal of Interactive Advertising has published an academic paper studying email and postal direct marketing. If you enjoy reading scientific studies, this paper is a good read.
Here are the hypotheses drawn from this study:
- Consumers are likely to find spam more intrusive than direct mail.
- Ad intrusiveness caused by a) spam; b) postal direct mail negatively correlates with attitudes toward the advertising technique.
- The level of perceived loss of control by consumers will be greater for spam than direct mail.
- Perceived loss of control mediates the relationship between ad intrusiveness caused by spam and ad irritation.
- Consumers are likely to experience a higher level of advertising irritation from spam than direct mail communications.
- The degree of advertising irritation caused by a) spam; b) postal direct mail is negatively correlated with attitudes toward the advertising technique.
For methods of measurements, refer to the paper for details.
Dave | Reply
It seems odd that postal advertising is perceived as less irritating than spam. I personally feel the other way. With spam I can ignore it, delete it, block the sender or unsubscribe with little required effort.
Postal mail however is much harder to unsubscribe from. I also hate the fact that energy and resources have been used to make print and deliver something to me that I then throw away without reading only to require more energy and resources for it to be taken away and disposed of or recycled.