A STUDY OF CONSUMERS ATTITUDE TOWARDS UNSOLICITED

A Study of Consumers Attitude towards Unsolicited e-mail Advertising

Abstract

Email marketing is increasingly being recognised as an effective Internet marketing tool. Our paper reviews the email marketing literature, and compares email marketing to other forms of direct and Internet marketing, identifying its key advantages. In the light of the growth of unsolicited email or 'spam', the literature highlights the importance of obtaining recipients' permission. The literature on permission marketing focuses on the nature of permission; there is little empirical research of consumer attitudes. This study extends research in this area by exploring consumer attitudes to a permission marketing email campaign and identifying success factors. In order to explore reactions to email marketing respondents were asked to register at a music website for a customised email newsletter. After two weeks an email questionnaire was sent to respondents. Despite the considerable shortcomings of the particular campaign nearly a third of our respondents bought from the website and 41% forwarded emails to their friends.

Table of Contents

Abstract2

Chapter 01: Introduction4

Chapter 03: Methodology14

Chapter 04: Analysis and Interpretation16

Chapter 05: Conclusion24

Bibliography36

Chapter 01: Introduction

Email marketing is being increasingly recognised as a cost-effective marketing tool. Forrester (Niall 2000) describes email marketing as one of the most effective online marketing tools because of its high response rate, and expects email marketing to be worth 5 billion US dollars by 2004. eMarketer (2000) estimate that 61% of all medium and large US companies use email marketing on a regular basis. Jupiter MMXI forecast that digital marketing will exceed Internet advertising by the year 2006, (Pastore 2001). This paper explores reactions to email marketing and identifies some of the factors that affect the response rate. Email marketing can be used for acquisition or retention; this paper focuses on short-term retention. Internet offers a cost effective medium to build better relationships with customers than has been possible with the traditional marketing media. Internet technologies such as electronic mail, web sites and digital media offer companies the abilities to expand their customer reach, target specific communities and communicate as well as interact with customers in a highly customized manner. In the last few years, electronic mail has emerged as an important marketing tool to build and maintain closer relationships with customers as well as prospects.

Email marketing has become a popular choice for several companies as it greatly minimizes the costs associated with other conventional methods such as direct mailing, cataloging and telecommunication marketing. The growth in the use of email marketing has been accompanied by an enormous increase in the amount of Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE), popularly known as spam. The unprecedented amount of unsolicited messages is now recognized as a serious problem, costing the community billions of dollars very year. The problem of spam extends beyond household Internet users to the realm of companies as many precious employee hours are being wasted due to spam messages. Gartner estimates that over 50% of email messages received by an average firm constitute spam (Gartner ...