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The use of direct mail in American political campaigns is examined. Direct mail has the capacity to attract and retain the loyalty of targeted groups, more so than other mediums. The planning of a direct mail campaign and deficiencies in current direct mail strategies are also examined.

This paper aims to investigate how direct mail consumption contributes to brand relationship quality. Store flyers and other direct mailings continue to play a significant role in many companies’ communication strategies. Research on this topic predominantly investigates driving store traffic and sales. Less is known regarding the consumer side, such as the value that consumers may derive from the consumption of direct mailings and the effects of such a value on brand relationship quality. To address this limitation, this paper tests a causal model of the contribution of direct mail value to brand commitment, drawing on a value framework that integrates social theory of engagement regimes and literature on experiential customer value.

The empirical work of this paper is based on a rigorous four-study mixed methods design, involving qualitative study, confirmatory factor analysis and partial least squares structural modeling.

The authors develop two second-order formatively designed scales – familiar value and planned value scales – that illustrate the role of engagement regimes in consumer behavior. Although both types of value contribute equally to direct mail attachment, they exert contrasting effects on other mediational consumer responses, such as reading and gratitude. Finally, the proposed theoretical model appears to be robust in predicting customers’ brand commitment.

This study provides new insights into the research on consumer value and brand relational communication.

This study is the first to consider consumer benefits from the social perspective of engagement regimes.

Investigates customer attitudes towards the direct marketing strategies employed by banks in relation to how attitudes toward the marketing media used and response channels influence the customer’s intention to purchase. Marketing media include mail promotion, telephone, and e‐mail promotions. Response channels include mail order, telephone and e‐mail orders. A total of 153 customers of bank services and products completed a survey questionnaire on their attitudes. Research indicates that customers generally evince a negative attitude toward banks using direct marketing strategies. They have mixed feelings about response channels, and low intention to purchase as an outcome of direct marketing. Purchase intention is significantly influenced by attitudes toward direct marketing media rather than response channels. Attaching promotions to communications a customer is expecting to receive can strengthen purchase intention. No demographic differences indicate that attitudes may have a stronger association with purchase intention. Revealed dilemmas faced by bank managers, marketers and researchers.

This article reports on research that examined internet adoption by 225 Australian wineries. Findings indicate that this new technology has been widely embraced by the industry and that numerous perceived benefits, especially associated with e‐mail marketing, are being achieved. The study found that many wineries collected e‐mail addresses for marketing purposes, whilst many engage in a high degree of direct marketing using the e‐mail medium to distribute newsletters. Smaller wineries appear to be the main proponents in using the Internet, the study concluding that this group achieved the highest proportion of Web sales. A link was established between small wineries that had a high use of e‐mail permission marketing and increased web sales.

Given the growing number of firms that use direct mail, it is important to develop methods to improve response rates. Better selection methods are useful for this improvement; determining the important characteristics of the mailing and constructing an optimal design is another way to improve the response. In this paper we focus on the latter. A framework is presented to obtain the optimal direct mail design. We propose and compare two ways of data collection, one in an experimental setting and one in a field‐experimental setting. Both approaches are illustrated with an empirical application for a charity institution, referring to the development of an optimal design of an envelope and a letter.

The aim of this study is to analyze over time the evolution of associated costs of direct marketing in Spain and offer operational conclusions for the optimization of marketing budgets intended for the establishment of contact and/a relationship with the customer.

This study analyses and compares the relationship between advertising messages sent through direct mail, electronic mail, telemarketing and short cell‐phone messages (SMS), over five years. In the context of a loyalty program, and by means of a historical analysis, an alternating media marketing test is presented: a total of 10,000 contacts per medium studied per year were made.

The relationship that exists between the cost per contact and the cost per effective response for each one of the above mentioned direct and interactive media.

A series of operational conclusions can be extracted for direct media planning and its marketing budget optimization with regard to choice of medium according to expected response and choice of medium according to cost per response.

The relevance of this work is based on the relative lack of information in Spain over the cost of communications channelled through direct media. Besides, the inclusion of advertising by SMS in this work is particularly relevant due to the fact that the novelty of this media channel means that it has only been analyzed independently by very few existing studies.

Focuses on the growth and future direction of direct marketing from the point of view of “user” companies. Describes the most significant findings from a recent empirical study of consumer reactions to being directly targeted. Highlights important consumer concerns with regard to privacy and ethical issues. Given that the long‐term success and prosperity of the industry will be closely related to its image among consumers, guidelines are developed for companies using direct marketing as to how they can positively promote industry growth and reduce consumer concerns in the future. Briefly describes the self‐regulatory bodies and codes of practice relevant to direct marketers within the UK.

This special “Anbar Abstracts” issue of the Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing is split into seven sections covering abstracts under the following headings: Marketing strategy; Customer service; Sales management; Promotion; Product management; Marketing research/customer behavior; Sundry.

To assist the social entrepreneur with direct marketing decision, the authors examine the relationship between the risks and costs associated with direct marketing for non‐profit organizations. This is done by developing and presenting a framework centered on two uncertainty factors – the cost to implement a direct marketing solution and control over (e.g. ability to manage) resources. A transaction cost analysis (economic) argument is used to rationalize the importance for entrepreneurs to effectively manage these two uncertainty factors when implementing a direct marketing program. This is illustrated using a perceptual mapping of each direct marketing channel relative to the two uncertainty dimensions.

The paper is organized by first presenting a brief description of each direct marketing strategy relative to its use by entrepreneurs in a non‐profit business environment. These strategies include: online, direct mail, catalogue, direct response, telephone marketing, and personal selling. Each strategy is then compared via their placement on a perceptual map using the two uncertainty dimensions: cost of implementation and control over direct marketing resources.

With the increasing prevalence of social entrepreneurship where the goal is to maximize returns given limited resources, this framework can become a critical tool to help nonprofit business owners first assess and then reduce the risks and uncertainties of their direct marketing strategies.

The conceptual framework presented is the one of few that addresses the issue of risk management among direct marketing strategies in social entrepreneurship. This can provide the basis for further research in this area to empirically validate and operationalized this framework.