Investigating cross-media effects in a multichannel marketing environment: the role of email, catalog, television, and radio

We empirically examine the cross-media effects of personalized and mass media on consumers’ purchase incidence in a multichannel shopping environment. We capture the cross-media effect as the combined impact of two distinct marketing communications on consumers’ purchase behavior. Our data consists of individual-level transaction data and information on consumers’ exposure to multiple marketing media consisting of personalized (catalog and email) and mass (television and radio) media. We find that personalized (mass) media are more influential in driving consumers’ online (offline) purchases in a multichannel shopping environment. Our analysis of cross-media effects reveals synergistic (attenuating) effects between media components across (within) personalized and mass media. Furthermore, our examination of media elasticities demonstrates that discounting such cross-media effects between personalized and mass media components can bias a firm’s assessment of the effectiveness of media components in a multichannel-multimedia marketing environment. Results from our model can help marketing managers in the optimal planning of integrated marketing communication in a multichannel-multimedia shopping environment.