Content-Type: text/html
Running Head: Marketers' Perceptions of the Interactivity Forms
An Exploratory Study of Marketers' Perceptions of the Interactivity Forms
as a Marketing Communication Tool
By:
Jae Jin Park
Doctoral Student
Missouri School of Journalism
University of Missouri-Columbia
Columbia, MO 65211
Telephone: 573) 446-6033
E-mail: [log in to unmask]
A manuscript submitted to the Advertising Division of AEJMC for possible presentation at the convention to be held in Washington, D.C., August 5 - 8, 2001.
Running Head: Marketers' Perceptions of the Interactivity Forms
An Exploratory Study of Marketers' Perceptions of the Interactivity Forms
as a Marketing Communication Tool
Abstract
Using a national survey of Korean firms' webmasters, this study focused on identifying Korean marketers' perceptions of the interactivity forms (e.g., comment, e-mail, chat with webmaster, bulletin board, and survey) in terms of the extent of use, marketing cost reduction, informativeness, credibility, barriers, and prediction of future use. It is hoped that this exploratory study helps marketers understand the present and the future uses of the interactivity forms.
Marketers' Perceptions of the Interactivity Forms
Introduction
The Internet has brought enormous changes in marketing and become an important marketing tool (Hill and White, 2000). Any marketer's dream is to increase communication with customers and build positive interactive relationships (Blattberg and Deighton, 1991). This dream is becoming a reality with the development of new technology, especially the Internet (Blattberg and Deighton, 1991).
The Internet has existed since the 1960's and has been available to the public since the early 1990's (Maddox and Mehta, 1997; Ha and James, 1998). Although it is in its infancy, it has dramatically changed the way firms do business (Korgaonkar and Wolin, 1999) and the way marketers communicate with customers (Coupey, 1999). While traditional mass media allow marketers to communicate with consumers in a one-to-many pattern, the Internet allows them to communicate in many-to-one, many-to-many, and one-to-one patterns (Hoffman and Novak, 1996).
The most remarkable feature of the Internet is its interactivity. The concept of interactivity stems from the sociological tradition (Downes and McMillan, 2000) that emphasizes communication between people (Cook, 1994). However, the Internet that allows two-way communication made scholars reconsider the definition of interactivity in a computer-mediated environment. Because the concept of computer-mediated interactivity is still in its infancy, it was defined in different ways by many scholars (e.g., Rafaeli, 1988; Steuer, 1992; Rogers, 1995). For example, from a business perspective, it can be interpreted as facilities through which marketers and customers can directly communicate without the limitations of distance and time (Ghose and Dou, 1998). Business web sites are constructed with many interactive marketing forms. The roles of those forms are to provide product / service / company information, support customer service, elicit either quantitative (on-line structured surveys
) or qualitative (open-ended e-mail or comment) customer response, and sell products or services directly (Berthon et. al., 1996; Ha and James, 1998; Vattyam and Lubbers, 1999). These forms can be divided into two categories: higher and lower dimensions of interactivity. The former includes forms (e.g., comment, e-mail, chat with webmaster, bulletin board, and survey) that consumers can directly communicate with marketers and control contents, and the latter includes forms (e.g., product information and dealer locator) that supply information that marketers control (Ha and James, 1998).
As Hoffman and Novak (1997) indicated, in the interactive environment, customers can control what information they receive from web sites or firms, which is not possible in the traditional mass media. Hoffman and Novak (1997) also asserted that:
[these power shifts] hold important implications for consumer participation in the marketing process. For example, consumers may collaborate not only in idea generation and product design, but also in the marketing communication effort itself (p.51).
While most scholars and marketers consider interactivity to be an important marketing communication tool (Bush et. al., 1998), little research has been conducted to identify marketers' perceptions of the highest level of interactivity, defined as the reciprocal communication dimension of interactivity suggested by Ha and James (1998).
This study focuses on Korean marketers' perceptions of the reciprocal communication forms (e.g., comment, e-mail, chat with webmaster, bulletin board, and survey) of interactivity. This study has four objectives. The first is to identify to what extent Korean marketers use each form. The second is to identify Korean marketers' perceived benefits of each form. The third is to find out the potential barriers to using each form. The fourth is to identify Korean marketers' predictions on the future of each form.
Korean Internet market has dramatically grown up in a decade. According to ACNielsen-Ratings.com, five of the ten World Wide Web sites that netizens visit the most are Korean web sites (Kim, 2001). In addition, the Korean Internet Information Center identified that Korean Internet users reached approximately 19 million (Lee, 2001). It means that one of 2.5 Korean people use the Internet. With regard to the degree of firms' website adoption, a research found that 86 percent of the Korean 1,000 firms have their own websites (Chae, 2000). Because Korea is already one of the countries that use the Internet the most, it is very important to identify how Korean marketers perceive and use the reciprocal communication forms (e.g., comment, e-mail, chat with webmaster, bulletin board, and survey) of interactivity. This exploratory study should help marketers understand the present and the future uses of the reciprocal communication forms of interactivity.
Conceptualization
Interactivity and its dimensions
The development of technologies, especially computer, made scholars reconsider the definition of interactivity. The concept of interactivity has a long history while "senders and receivers, creators and audiences, and developers and users"(p.163) exist, but just the tools are new in the computer-mediated environment (Downes and McMillan, 2000).
The concept of interactivity stems from the sociological communication tradition (Downes and McMillan, 2000). For example, Cook (1994) argued that interactivity is communicating not with machines but with other people. By the same token, Jesen (1998, p.188) asserted that interactivity is "the relationship between two or more people who, in a given situation, mutually adapt their behavior and action to each other." He also emphasized that the sociological interactivity needs to consider specific social systems and situations, where they are in close physical proximity, and symbolic interaction.
According to the mental model theory of human-technology interaction, person-to-person interactions can be applied to person-to-computer interactions (Rice and Williams, 1984). The theory identified that "humans, no matter their level of experience, develop images that lead to a conceptual representation of a device which is used in interacting with that device" (Borgman, 1982, as cited in Rice and Williams, 1984, p.65).
Since the 1980's, scholars have begun to investigate the nature of computer-mediated interactivity (Walther and Burgoon, 1992). Interactivity, in the computer-mediated perspective, "is a multidimensional concept" (Ghose and Dou, 1998, p.30).
Scholars have defined interactivity in many ways. For examples, Rafaeli (1988, p.111) defined interactivity as "an expression of the extent that in a given series of communication exchange, any third (or later) transmission (or message) is related to the degree to which previous exchanges referred to even earlier transmissions." Steuer (1992) defined interactivity as the extent to which participants can manipulate the form and content of a medium in real time. Ha and James (1998) asserted that Steuer's definition cannot be adopted to the Internet, arguing that
if an individual visitor writes a message to the Webmaster, he will not be considered interacting with the web site, because he does not modify the form or content of a web site (p.460)
Rogers (1995, p.314) interpreted interactivity as "the degree to which participants in a communication process can exchange roles in, and have control over, their mutual discourse."
In the business perspective, Bezjian-Avery et. al. (1998, p.23) interpreted interactivity as communication between marketers and customers, "eliciting information from both parties, and attempting to align interests and possibilities." As Figure 1 indicates, in contrast to traditional mass media, the outstanding features of interactivity in the business perspective are that consumers can control contents in the medium as can firms and that the direction of communication is two-way (Hoffman and Novak, 1996).
Interactivity changed roles of customers from passive media receivers to active
participants (Hoffman and Novak, 1997).
[Insert figure 1 here]
As mentioned above, there exist broad definitions of interactivity. Until now,
nobody knows what the single definition of interactivity is. To better understand and
define interactivity, it would be helpful to examine different dimensions of interactivity. As can be seen from table 1, researchers adopt different dimensions to define interactivity. From a business perspective, Ha and James (1998) identified five interactive dimensions that satisfy different communication needs. Ha and James (1998, p.465) defined each dimension as follows: 1) playfulness as "the presence of curiosity arousal devices and games," 2) choice as "the presence of choice of color, speed,
language and other aspects of non-informational alternative," 3) connectedness as
"connected information about the product, the company, third-party information, and other content" that visitors might be interested in, 4) information collection as the
presence of monitoring devices to check visitors' information or numbers, and finally 5) reciprocal communication as the presence of response devices through which visitors can
communicate with marketers.
[Insert Table 1 here]
Ha and James (1998) asserted that reciprocal communication can be considered as the highest level of interactivity because it provides direct and two-way communication between marketers and customers. Information collection is next, and the others are viewed as lower levels of interactivity.
Similarly, based on the degree of "receiver control" and "communication direction," McMillan (2000, p.72) identified four models of interactivity, including packaged content, rich content, virtual transaction, and virtual community. He asserted that the virtual community type (e.g., chat room and bulletin board) is the highest level of interactivity in which roles of senders and receivers are changeable and ambiguous. The perceived purpose of the virtual community "is to exchange information and build understanding among participants" (McMillan, 2000, p.73).
This study adopted the dimensions of Ha and James (1998), defining reciprocal communication as the highest level of interactivity. According to many researchers (e.g., Berthon, et. al., 1996; Emerick, 1996; Marrelli, 1996; Ghose and Dou,1998; McMillan, 2000), these dimensions of interactivity can be categorized into various marketing functions. Based on the previous research, this study categorized the dimension of reciprocal communication into five forms: comment, e-mail, chat with webmaster, bulletin board, and survey.
Previous research
Because little previous research has been done about marketers' perception of the reciprocal communication dimension of interactivity, it is helpful to examine literature about practitioners' perceptions of the new technology as a marketing or communication tool.
Adoption of interactivity
In the new marketing era (e.g., relation marketing, one-to-one marketing, and database marketing), because business becomes "a game with customers, rather than a game against competitors" (Haeckel, 1998, p.69), an increasing number of companies are interested in interactivity and adopt it as a marketing tool. Paul (1996) argued that Fortune 500 firms adopted interactivity as a marketing tool to communicate with customers and business partners. In 1998, Bush et. al. conducted a mail survey with 288 advertising agencies and client organizations and found that 78 percent of the respondents adopted interactivity as a marketing tool. Through a content analysis, Vattyam and Lubbers (1999) identified that 83 % of the top 100 Fortune 500 companies had their own web sites, an increase of 20% over previous research (Liu, 1997) that analyzed Fortune 500 companies.
In terms of the reciprocal communication dimension of interactivity, Ainscough and Luckett (1996, p.44) identified that 16 percent of 44 business web sites had "a customer service tool" through which customer can communicate with marketers directly. Ha and James (1998, p.470), through a content analysis of 110 business home pages, found that "the most prevalent dimension of interactivity in business web sites was reciprocal communication (61.2%)". Vattyam and Lubbers (1999) revealed a similar result that 60 percent of 100 business home pages adopted feedback and comment functions. They also asserted that many business web sites did not have functions for reciprocal communication with customers, and customers were asked to call or send a fax for their queries.
Perceived benefits
As Flanagin (2000) pointed out, marketers confront uncertainty about effectiveness and cost in adopting interactivity, and to justify the uncertainty, marketers perceive intended benefits from the adoption of interactivity. Researchers (e.g., Hoffman et. al., 1995; Paul, 1996; Schumann and Thorson, 1999; Hill and White, 2000) identified such perceived benefits of interactivity as direct communication with customers, reaching new customers, increasing information flow, global opportunity, promotion, distribution, direct sales, and so on. Kim (2000) conducted a survey with practitioners in advertising agencies and client organizations in Korea. He found that practitioners perceived the Internet as a good tool to construct a consumer database, build relationships with consumers, and improve corporate image.
In the reciprocal communication dimension, marketers may perceive such benefits as cost reduction for marketing activity, credible customer opinion, and valuable information for marketing.
In terms of cost reduction, Potter asserted that "ten times as many units [sold] with 1/10 the advertising budget" (as cited in Hoffman et. al., 1995, p.2). According to Paul (1996), through a direct communication with customers, marketers can recognize customers' trends, wants, and needs sooner, eliminating promotion costs and minimizing the expenses required to launch new products. In the same context, Hoffman and Novak (1997) argued that because customers can directly suggest their ideas or opinions about product or advertising, customers can participate in the marketing process in the interactive environment.
Paul (1996) also asserted that customer responses through the reciprocal communication functions (e.g., survey, comment, feedback, and chat with webmaster) "tend to be more accurate and honest than that obtained from traditional focus groups, personal or telephone interviews" (p.36).
Uncertainty
In depth interviews with 13 public relations practitioners, a participant revealed skepticism of adoption of interactivity as a communication tool, saying that:
Well, a lot of people still question the validity of the web site. Do we really need it, and this is an expense we don't really need to have? (Hill and White, 2000, p.43).
Although the adoption of interactivity as a marketing tool has dramatically increased, not all the firms adopted it for perceived benefits or advantages. Social pressure (Flanagin, 2000) and demonstration of competitiveness (Hill and White, 2000) also contributed to the adoption of interactivity.
Marketers not only considered interactivity as an important marketing tool, but also perceived uncertainty because interactivity is in its infancy (Bush, et. al., 1998). Specifically, researchers and practitioners identified such barriers as security, privacy, difficulty in reaching a target market, uncertainty about effectiveness of advertising, and high cost (e.g., Paul, 1996; Bush et. al., 1998; Meyer, 1999). For example, it was proved that print ads (Sundar et. al., 1997) and a traditional media type (Bezjian-Avery et. al., 1998) are more effective than on-line ads in terms of memory. Ducoffe (1996) asserted that on-line ads are ranked as the fifth valuable source of advertising, following TV, newspaper, magazine, direct mail, and radio.
Through a survey, Bush et. al. (1998) demonstrated that practitioners had uncertain perceptions about interactivity in terms of effectiveness, competitiveness, media waste reduction, and marketing campaigns. Similarly, Kim (2000) identified that 40.6 percent of respondents surveyed were not using the Internet as a marketing tool. This finding implies that many practitioners still have uncertain perceptions about the Internet as a strategic communication tool (Kim, 2000).
In addition, Bush et. al. (1998, p.25) identified practitioners' predictions of the future of Internet marketing such as "a major source of product information," "an integral part of marketing," "continued growth and acceptance," and "a supplement to other media." Kim (2000) reported that Korean marketers positively predicted that they will use web sites more actively in the future.
Research questions
As described previously, because little research to support hypotheses has been conducted on the interactivity forms in the computer-mediated environments, this study was designed to identify the following research questions:
RQ1: To what extent are interactivity forms (e.g., comment, e-mail, bulletin board, survey, and chat with webmaster) adopted as marketing communication tools?
RQ2: How do marketers perceive the interactivity forms as tools to communicate with consumers?
RQ3: How do marketers consider the interactivity forms in terms of the reduction of marketing activity expenses?
RQ4: How do marketers perceive customer responses through the interactivity forms in terms of credibility and informativeness?
RQ5: What are the marketers' perceived barriers or uncertainties to using the interactivity forms?
RQ6: What do marketers foresee the future use of the interactivity forms?
Methodology
Operationalization of the interactivity forms
E-mail This form is defined as a form through which visitors can suggest their opinions about products, a corporation, or the web site and then send e-mail to a webmaster, customer service, or product manager. For instance, The Ford site (http://www.ford.com) allows visitors to send e-mail to customer service and/or marketing representatives.
Comment In this study, comment form identifies a form in which visitors can fill out their opinions about products, a corporation, or the web site. This form has almost the same function as e-mail in that visitors can suggest any opinion about products, a corporation, or the web site. Although these two forms are similar in their functions, because they are separately used in the business web sites, this study analyzed these two forms separately. For instance, The P&G site (http://www.pg.com) has both comment and e-mail forms while The LG Household and Health Care site (http://www.lgcare.com) has a comment form.
Chat with webmaster This form enables visitors to ask inquiries or suggest their opinions in real time by oral or written format. For example, The Armani Exchange site (http://armaniexchange.com) has a chat function of written format while The LG Household and Health Care site (http://www.lgcare.com) has a voice chat
function. This form is very convenient for visitors because it solves their inquiries by directly communicating with the webmaster in real time.
Bulletin board This form is used as an information source and forum between visitors and marketers or between visitors themselves. In this study, Q&A (Questions and Answers) form is also included in this category because it has similar functions as a bulletin board in that it allows visitors to write their questions on the board and allows marketers or other visitors to answer to the questions on the board. For instance, our visit to The LG Household and Health Care site (http://www.lgcare.com) showed that it had Q&A form through which marketers and visitors can communicate with each other. Although most business web sites adopt FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions), because visitors cannot directly send their opinions to the webmaster or communicate with the webmaster through this form, this study excluded FAQs.
Survey This form can establish dialogue between visitors and firms, and then firms can use such feedback to improve or develop their websites or products (Ghose and Dou, 1998). This study divided this form into two categories: site and product surveys. For instance, The P&G site (http://www.pg.com) is using its website to conduct an electronic survey to evaluate the status of its website, while the Mercedes-Benz site (http://www.mercedes-benz.com) has a survey form for its products.
Construction of questionnaire
The questionnaire was developed based on the previous research by Bush et. al. (1998), and then screened by one Korean research professional and five Korean marketers. The questionnaire broadly consists of three parts: 1) general perceptions of uses, usefulness, informativeness, and credibility of the interactivity forms (e.g., comment, e-mail, chat with webmaster, bulletin board, and survey), 2) perceptions of barriers of the interactivity forms, and finally 3) perceptions of the future use of the interactivity forms. Respondents surveyed were asked to answer only to the interactivity forms that their organizations' web sites adopt to communicate with consumers. Only one question about the perdition of future use of the interactivity forms was asked to respond to all the interactivity forms whether or not their organizations' web sites presently choose to communicate with consumers. The questionnaire consists of multiple-choice questions for RQ1 and RQ3, 5-point Likert scale (ra
nging from strongly agree to strongly disagree) questions for RQ2 and RQ4, and open-ended questions for RQ5 and RQ6. Organizations' demographic questions are also included at the end of the questionnaire.
Sample and procedure
This study adopted 18 categories of consumer-goods companies identified by Ghose and Dou (1998) and included additional categories such as telecommunication, finance, home shopping and service. Each industry has its own characteristic. Thus, this study focused on general consumer-goods companies, including "both durables (e.g., automobile) and non-durables (e.g., soft drinks)" (p.35), "because they appear to be more relevant to average consumers than are companies that produce industrial goods or specialty goods (e.g., hearing-aids)" (Ghose and Dou, 1998, p.36). Although these categories seem to be representative of consumer-goods companies, they are still judgmental samples (Ghose and Dou, 1998).
A list of consumer-goods companies was established based on the Korean Standard Industry Classification (Korea Chamber of Commerce & Industry, 2000). The survey was conducted from February to March, 2001. Four trained interviewers contacted a webmaster of the company by telephone first to ask whether or not they might respond to the survey and then sent the questionnaire by fax to webmasters who agreed to respond. A follow-up phone call was made to remind webmasters of the importance of their participation. Of a sample of 606 webmasters who agreed to complete the survey, a total of 164 questionnaires were returned, giving a response rate of 27.1 percent. Because 15 responses were invalid, 149 respondents were analyzed for this study. The respondents' profile is presented in Table 2.
[Insert Table 2 here]
Data analysis
Descriptive analyses were conducted to test RQ1, RQ2, RQ3, and RQ4. To analyze open-ended questions (RQ5 and RQ6), an instruction sheet with specific categories was constructed based on an overview of all responses. To increase inter-coder reliability, three trained coders were employed. Based on the Scott's pi index (Scott, 1955), the intercoder reliability test revealed p=.89, p=.87, and p=91 for each pair of coders. The items that were not consistent between coders were included in the categories through an exhaustive discussion. It should be noted that because samples of three forms (e.g., chat with webmaster, web site survey, and product survey) included fewer than 20 respondents, this study could not test if there were significant mean differences between the interactivity forms in terms of usefulness, informativeness, and credibility.
Results
The extent of adoption of the interactivity forms
The extent of adoption of the interactivity forms was analyzed with a multi-choice question, asking "which interactivity forms does your organization web site use for communication with consumers?" As presented in Table 3, the results demonstrated that the most commonly used form was e-mail (81.2 percent), followed by bulletin board (79.2 percent), comment (40.3 percent), product survey (11.4 percent), web site survey (10.1 percent), chat with webmaster (6.7 percent), and others (2.7 percent). Because "others" that included the Internet membership, community, and e-card took only 2.7 percent, it was eliminated for the analysis of this study.
[Insert Table 3 here]
Perceptions of the usefulness
The results showed positive responses with the following question: "how do you consider the interactivity forms as tools to gather consumers' opinions or to communicate with consumers." The results are presented in Table 4.
For comment, 55 percent of the respondents indicated some levels of usefulness (e.g., useful or extremely useful), and 13.4 percent revealed some levels of non-usefulness (e.g., not useful or extremely not useful). For e-mail, respondents indicated 52.9 percent of usefulness and 6.6 percent of non-usefulness; 40 percent of usefulness and 10 percent of non-usefulness for chat with webmaster, 59.3 percent of usefulness and 9.3 percent of non-usefulness for bulletin board, 60 percent of usefulness and 26.7 percent of non-usefulness for web site survey, and finally 52.9 percent of usefulness and 17.6 percent of non-usefulness for product survey.
[Insert Table 4 here]
Perceptions of the reduction of marketing activity expenses
With the question of "do you think that marketing activity expenses are reduced by using the interactivity forms?," 27.5 percent of the respondents agreed while 72.5 percent of them disagreed (see Table 5). 46.3 percent of the former respondents indicated that they reduced advertising expenses, 39.1 percent indicated off-line survey, 7.3 percent indicated promotion, and 7.3 percent indicated others (e.g., communication expenses) (see Table 6).
[Insert Table 5 here]
[Insert Table 6 here]
Perceptions of the informativeness
When asked if the interactivity forms are informative to understand consumers or to build marketing strategies, respondents reported that interactivity forms are somewhat informative. With statements regarding the informativeness, 45 percent of respondents agreed or strongly agreed and 13.3 percent disagreed or strongly disagreed for comment; 47.9 percent agreed and 14.9 percent disagreed for e-mail, 40 percent agreed and 10 percent disagreed for chat with webmaster, 49.1 percent agreed and 13.6 percent disagreed for bulletin board, 46.7 percent agreed and 26.6 percent disagreed for web site survey, and 29.4 percent agreed and 23.5 percent disagreed for product survey (see Table 7). Bulletin board had the highest mean value of 3.53 (see Table 7) in terms of informativeness.
[Insert Table 7 here]
Perceptions of the credibility
Six statements (e.g., "the consumers' opinions through the comment form are more credible than those through off-line survey such as focus group interviews and telephone surveys) were asked to measure perceptions of the credibility of consumers' opinions through the interactivity forms. With the statements, 31.6 percent of respondents agreed or strongly agreed and 25 percent disagreed or strongly disagreed for comment; 39.7 percent agreed and 19.8 percent disagreed for e-mail, 60 percent agreed and 10 percent disagreed for chat with webmaster, 37.3 percent agreed and 16.1 percent disagreed for bulletin board, 46.7 percent agreed and 6.7 percent disagreed for web site survey, and 23.5 percent agreed and 5.9 percent disagreed for product survey (see Table 8). Chat with webmaster showed the highest mean value of 3.6 (see Table 8) with regard to credibility.
[Insert Table 8 here]
Perceived barriers
To identify barriers in using each interactivity form, an open-ended question ("what do you consider to be some of the greatest barriers/problems in using the interactivity forms as a communication tool with consumers?") was developed "because of the lack of published research in which to develop scale items" (Bush, et. al., 1998, p.23). Approximately 30 percent of respondents surveyed did not respond to the open-ended question. As previously stated, each mention was included in one of the four categories. The perceived barriers in using the interactivity forms are presented in Table 9.
The most outstanding barrier was concern about "the lacks of consumer response and credibility," having 92 mentions. The next frequently mentioned barrier was related to "reinforcing organizations' fast response" (55 mentions), followed by "need to increase staff in charge" (44 mentions), and "need to upgrade functions and introduce other systems" (41 mentions).
[Insert Table 9 here]
Prediction of future use
Two questions were selected to identity the prediction of the future use of the interactivity forms. First, a multiple-choice question, "how do you predict the use of each interactivity form in the future," was asked to identify overall perceptions of future use, and then an open-ended question was prepared to elicit responses to the previous multiple-choice question.
A majority (approximately 60 percent) of the respondents predicted that they "will use more in the future" (see Table 10). Around 30 percent of the respondents answered that the use of the forms "will be similar to the present use." Interestingly, with the prediction of "chat with webmaster" and "web site survey," around 10 percent of the respondents predicted that they "will use less in the future," which is approximately twice as high as the prediction for the other interactivity forms.
[Insert Table 10 here]
There was a 30 percent non-response rate to the open-ended question. Like the analysis of perceived barriers, each mention of the open-ended question was categorized into one of the previously developed categories. Those categories and the analysis of the prediction are presented in Table 11. The most frequently mentioned reasons to use more the forms in the future were related to the category of "important source to gather various consumer opinions" (154 mentions), followed by the category of "easy use due to the development of Internet technology" (122 mentions), and the category of "good for building a relationship with consumers through two-way communication" (110 mentions).
With regard to the prediction of "will be similar to present use," the reasons that were most predominantly mentioned were related to the category of "the lack of objectivity and consumer response" (83 mentions). The next one was "cost of equipment and maintenance" (74 mentions), and the last one was "lack of technological experience" (50 mentions).
A few respondents reasoned that they will use fewer interactivity forms in the future. Eighteen mentions were related to the category of "the lack of objectivity and consumer response," 13 mentions were "cost of equipment and maintenance," and 6 mentions were "lack of technological experience."
[Insert Table 11 here]
Summary and discussion
This represents an initial step to understand how interactivity forms work in the present and will work in the future. This study investigated marketers' perceptions of the interactivity forms (e.g., comment, e-mail, bulletin board, web site survey, product survey, and chat with webmaster) in terms of the extent of use, marketing cost reduction, usefulness, informativeness, credibility, barriers, and prediction of future use. The findings of this study have important implications for marketers who wish to increase communication with consumers.
The findings showed that a majority of the organizations' web sites adopted e-mail and bulletin forms to communicate with consumers, while the other forms such as product survey, web site survey, and chat with webmaster were not popular yet.
All the forms were perceived as moderately useful tools to gather consumers' opinions. Interestingly, web site survey was evaluated as the most useful form to have consumers' opinions. However, such a result could be natural because the most common way to get consumers' responses about an organization's web site itself is through the Web.
As described previously, Paul (1996) asserted that a direct communication with consumers in the computer-mediated environment could eliminate marketing expenses such as promotion. But, those arguments are not supported in the present study. A majority of the respondents indicated that marketing activity expenses were not reduced by using the interactivity forms. Approximately only 27 percent of the respondents indicated that they reduced marketing expenses such as advertising, off-line survey, and promotion.
The findings moderately supported the previous study (Paul, 1996), asserting that consumer responses through the interactivity forms are more credible than those obtained from off-line surveys. This study found that consumer responses through the interactivity forms were perceived as somewhat informative and credible. However, marketers still worried about objectivity of consumer responses through the interactivity forms.
Of the interactivity forms, chat with webmaster was perceived as the most credible. It might be interpreted that this result was induced because of the reason that the lack of consumers' objective responses that was the most considerable barrier could be reduced by communicating with consumers in real time. Surprisingly, the findings indicated that consumers' responses through product survey were perceived much less informative and credible than those through the other interactivity forms. For example, web site survey was evaluated as twice as credible as product survey. Based on the findings, it can be assumed that less objective responses were gathered through product survey than the other interactivity forms.
Several perceived barriers were associated with using the interactivity forms. The most concerned barriers were related to lack of response and credibility. Fast response, a shortage of personnel, and upgrading functions were also mentioned as barriers.
In spite of perceived barriers, a majority of respondents surveyed predicted that the interactivity forms will be used more in the future as tools to communicate with consumers. Marketers considered the interactivity forms as important sources to gather a variety of consumers' opinions and to build a relationship with consumers. Based on the findings, it can be inferred that marketers mostly consider the quality of the content of consumer response more than costs to use the interactivity forms. While cost is a concern, it is value of consumer information that may be driving this.
As described previously, when interpreting the findings, it should be born in mind that the data for this study was collected from a judgmental sample that makes the results of this study difficult to generalize. This study might not include all categories of consumer-goods companies, and industries out of general consumer-goods industries might have different perceptions.
Finally, future studies should explore consumers as well as marketers. Which motivations make consumers use the interactivity forms? Does direct communication through the interactivity forms improve a relationship between consumers and a corporation? Which types of sites are most effective in gathering consumers' responses? This study examined perceptions of marketers in Korea. Further research is needed to examine whether or not there exist differences between countries in using the interactivity forms.
Appendix: Figures & Tables
Table 1
Previous research about dimensions of interactivity
Researcher Dimensions
Heeter (1989) Complexity of choice available, effort users must exert, responsiveness to the user, monitoring information use, ease of adding information, and facilitation of interpersonal communication.
Steuer (1992) Speed (i.e., "the rate at which input can be assimilated into the mediated environment"), range (i.e., "the number of possibilities for action at any given time"), and mapping (i.e., "the way in which human actions are connected to actions within a mediated environment") (pp.85-86).
Ha and James (1998) Playfulness, choice, connectedness, information collection, and reciprocal communication.
Downes and McMillan (2000) Direction of communication, time flexibility, sense of place, level of control, responsiveness, and perceived purpose of communication.
Table 2
Respondent profile
Types of organizations
Frequency
Percent
Home electronics
12
8.1
Personal computers
16
10.7
Telecommunications
26
17.4
Automobiles
6
4.0
Finance & Insurance
6
4.0
Gasoline
10
6.7
Clothes
13
8.7
Retail trade
3
2.0
Pharmaceutical
9
6.0
Personal care
22
14.8
Home appliances
6
4.0
Tires
1
0.7
Food
4
2.7
Beer
1
0.7
Home shopping
3
2.0
Toys & fancy products
4
2.7
Service
7
4.7
Total
149
100
Table 3
The extent of adoption of the interactivity forms
Types of the forms
Frequency
Percent
Comment
60
40.3
E-mail
121
81.2
Chat with webmaster
10
6.7
Bulletin board
118
79.2
Web site survey
15
10.1
Product survey
17
11.4
Others
4
2.7
Table 4
Perceptions of the usefulness of the interactivity forms
Types of the forms
N
ENU
NU
NT
UF
EU
Mean
Comment
60
1.7
11.7
31.7
35.0
20.0
3.60
E-mail
121
0.0
6.6
40.5
28.1
24.8
3.71
Chat with webmaster
10
10.0
0.0
50.0
20.0
20.0
3.40
Bulletin board
118
2.5
6.8
31.4
37.3
22.0
3.69
Web site survey
15
6.7
20.0
13.3
33.3
26.7
3.53
Product survey
17
0.0
17.6
29.4
29.4
23.5
3.59
Note: N = the number of respondents, ENU = extremely not useful, NU = not useful,
NT = neutral, UF = useful, and, EU = extremely useful.
Table 5
Perceptions of the reduction of marketing activity expenses
Perceptions
Frequency
Percent
Agree to the reduction
41
27.5
Disagree to the reduction
108
72.5
Table 6
Types of the reduction of marketing activity expenses
Types of the reduction
Frequency
Percent
Advertising
19
46.3
Off-line survey
16
39.0
Promotion
3
7.3
Others
3
7.3
Table 7
Perceptions of the informativeness of the interactivity forms
Types of the forms
N
SD
DA
NT
AG
SA
Mean
Comment
60
5.0
8.3
41.7
31.7
13.3
3.40
E-mail
121
5.0
9.9
37.2
28.1
19.8
3.43
Chat with webmaster
10
10.0
0.0
50.0
20.0
20.0
3.40
Bulletin board
118
5.1
8.5
37.3
27.1
22.0
3.53
Web site survey
15
13.3
13.3
26.7
40.0
6.7
3.13
Product survey
17
0.0
23.5
47.1
23.5
5.9
3.12
Note: N = the number of respondents, SD = strongly disagree, DA = disagree, NT = neutral,
AG = agree, and SA = strongly agree.
Table 8
Perceptions of the credibility of the interactivity forms
Types of the forms
N
SD
DA
NT
AG
SA
Mean
Comment
60
3.3
21.7
43.3
18.3
13.3
3.17
E-mail
121
3.3
16.5
40.5
29.8
9.9
3.23
Chat with webmaster
10
0.0
10.0
30.0
50.0
10.0
3.60
Bulletin board
118
3.4
12.7
46.6
29.7
7.6
3.25
Web site survey
15
0.0
6.7
46.7
40.0
6.7
3.47
Product survey
17
0.0
5.9
70.6
23.5
0.0
3.18
Note: N = the number of respondents, SD = strongly disagree, DA = disagree, NT = neutral,
AG = agree, and SA = strongly agree.
Table 9
Frequency of perceived barriers to using the interactivity forms
Comment
E-mail
Chat with webmaster
Bulletin board
Web site survey
Product survey
N=42
N=82
N=7
N=80
N=10
N=11
NR=18
NR=39
NR=3
NR=38
NR=5
NR=6
Lack of consumer
16 (38.1%)
29 (35.4%)
1 (14.3%)
35 (43.8%)
5 (50%)
6 (54.5%)
response & credibility
Need to upgrade functions
11 (26.2%)
14 (17.1%)
3 (42.9%)
10 (12.5%)
1 (10%)
2 (18.2%)
and introduce other systems
Reinforce organizations' fast
8 (19%)
22 (26.8%)
1 (14.3%)
22 (27.5%)
1 (10%)
1 (9.1%)
response
Need to increase staff
7 (16.7%)
17 (20.7%)
2 (28.6%)
13 (16.3%)
3 (30%)
2 (18.2%)
in charge
Note: N = the number of respondents, and NR = non-response frequency
Table 10
Prediction of future use of the interactivity forms
N=149
Will use more
Will be similar to
Will use less
Types of the forms
in the future
the present use
in the future
Comment
94 (63.1%)
48 (32.2%)
7 (4.7%)
E-mail
100 (67.1%)
43 (28.9%)
6 (4%)
Chat with webmaster
87 (58.4%)
47 (31.5%)
15 (10.1%)
Bulletin board
90 (60.4%)
56 (37.6%)
3 (2%)
Web site survey
83 (55.7%)
47 (31.5%)
19 (12.8%)
Product survey
87 (58.4%)
55 (36.9%)
7 (4.7%)
Table 11
Reasons for the predictions of future use of the interactivity forms
Comment
E-mail
Chat with webmaster
Bulletin board
Web site survey
Product survey
N=104
N=111
N=100
N=112
N=102
N=101
Positive
Important source to gather
35
19
23
26
23
28
various consumer opinions
Easy use due to the development of
18
28
21
21
18
16
Internet technology
Good for building a relationship with consumers
13
28
15
23
15
16
through two-way communication
Neutral
Cost of equipment and maintenance
16
12
21
8
9
8
Lack of objectivity & consumer response
11
12
5
20
13
22
Lack of technological experience
6
8
6
12
11
7
Negative
Cost of equipment and maintenance
2
1
5
0
4
1
Lack of objectivity & consumer response
3
2
2
1
7
3
Lack of technological experience
0
1
2
1
2
0
Note: Positive means the response of "will use more in the future," neutral means that of "will be similar to the present use,"
and negative means that of "will use less in the future."
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