The authors investigate the changing role of marketing communication over the life cycle of a new product category. They postulate two effects of marketing communication on consumers' choices: an “indirect effect” through reduction of uncertainty about product quality and a “direct...

Marketing communication plays a major role in influencing consumer purchases in new product categories. An important question about this communication is whether it plays an informative or a persuasive role over the life cycle of the new product category. We expect that consumers are not well...

We investigate the roles of the level and variability in quality in driving customer retention for a new service. We present model-free evidence that while high average quality helps in retaining customers, high variability leads to higher termination rates. Apart from these main effects, we use...

This paper documents the existence of the direct and indirect (via word-of-mouth) effects of service quality on new customer acquisition, usage and retention using behavioral data from the launch of a new video on demand type service. For this technology, service quality - the quality of the...

One of the major advances of the digital economy is the facilitation of building and managing individual customer relationships - a process usually referred to as "customer relationship management" or CRM. For a typical web site selling frequently-purchased consumer items, the most important...