IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/ormnsc/v69y2023i8p4518-4540.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Multidimensional Targeting and Consumer Response

Author

Listed:
  • Stylianos Despotakis

    (Department of Marketing, College of Business, City University of Hong Kong, Kowloon Tong, Hong Kong)

  • Jungju Yu

    (College of Business, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Seoul 02455, Republic of Korea)

Abstract

Advancements in targeting technology have allowed firms to engage in more precise targeting based on several aspects of consumers’ preferences. Exposed to more targeted ads, consumers are becoming increasingly aware of being targeted and respond accordingly. This paper provides a theoretical analysis of multidimensional targeting under which consumers can draw inferences about multiple components of their utility from the advertised product. We show that the firm can be worse off under multidimensional targeting than under single-dimensional targeting, in which the firm targets consumers based only on a single component of their utility. This is because, with multidimensional targeting, targeted consumers may face greater uncertainty about on which specific dimension(s) they can expect to enjoy the advertised product. Therefore, they may be less willing to exert a costly effort of clicking the ad and making a purchase decision. When this result holds, the firm may want to adopt a single-dimensional targeting strategy. However, we show that the firm cannot credibly commit to such a strategy once given access to multiple dimensions of customer data. Interestingly, a higher unit cost of advertising can mitigate the firm’s commitment problem for using customer data and thus increase the firm’s profit. Moreover, the firm can sometimes lower the price to recover some of, but not entirely offset, the drawbacks of multidimensional targeting. We discuss the implications of our results regarding the current practice of targeted advertising and data privacy protection policies.

Suggested Citation

  • Stylianos Despotakis & Jungju Yu, 2023. "Multidimensional Targeting and Consumer Response," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 69(8), pages 4518-4540, August.
  • Handle: RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:69:y:2023:i:8:p:4518-4540
    DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2022.4604
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4604
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4604?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Dina Mayzlin & Jiwoong Shin, 2011. "Uninformative Advertising as an Invitation to Search," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 30(4), pages 666-685, July.
    2. Michael Braun & Wendy W. Moe, 2013. "Online Display Advertising: Modeling the Effects of Multiple Creatives and Individual Impression Histories," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 32(5), pages 753-767, September.
    3. Avi Goldfarb & Catherine E. Tucker, 2011. "Privacy Regulation and Online Advertising," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 57(1), pages 57-71, January.
    4. Michael Trusov & Liye Ma & Zainab Jamal, 2016. "Crumbs of the Cookie: User Profiling in Customer-Base Analysis and Behavioral Targeting," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 35(3), pages 405-426, May.
    5. Justin P. Johnson, 2013. "Targeted advertising and advertising avoidance," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 44(1), pages 128-144, March.
    6. Thomas Blake & Chris Nosko & Steven Tadelis, 2015. "Consumer Heterogeneity and Paid Search Effectiveness: A Large‐Scale Field Experiment," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 83, pages 155-174, January.
    7. Omid Rafieian & Hema Yoganarasimhan, 2021. "Targeting and Privacy in Mobile Advertising," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 40(2), pages 193-218, March.
    8. Christopher A. Summers & Robert W. Smith & Rebecca Walker Reczek, 2016. "An Audience of One: Behaviorally Targeted Ads as Implied Social Labels," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 43(1), pages 156-178.
    9. Jonathan Levin & Paul Milgrom, 2010. "Online Advertising: Heterogeneity and Conflation in Market Design," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(2), pages 603-607, May.
    10. Ganesh Iyer & David Soberman & J. Miguel Villas-Boas, 2005. "The Targeting of Advertising," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 24(3), pages 461-476, May.
    11. Guy Aridor & Yeon-Koo Che & Tobias Salz, 2020. "The Effect of Privacy Regulation on the Data Industry: Empirical Evidence from GDPR," NBER Working Papers 26900, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Simon P. Anderson & Joshua S. Gans, 2011. "Platform Siphoning: Ad-Avoidance and Media Content," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(4), pages 1-34, November.
    13. Anindya Ghose & Panagiotis G. Ipeirotis & Beibei Li, 2012. "Designing Ranking Systems for Hotels on Travel Search Engines by Mining User-Generated and Crowdsourced Content," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 31(3), pages 493-520, May.
    14. Andrew Rhodes, 2015. "Multiproduct Retailing," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 82(1), pages 360-390.
    15. Yuxin Chen & Chakravarthi Narasimhan & Z. John Zhang, 2001. "Individual Marketing with Imperfect Targetability," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 20(1), pages 23-41, November.
    16. Randall A. Lewis & Justin M. Rao, 2015. "The Unfavorable Economics of Measuring the Returns to Advertising," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 130(4), pages 1941-1973.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jiwoong Shin & Jungju Yu, 2021. "Targeted Advertising and Consumer Inference," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 40(5), pages 900-922, September.
    2. Garrett Johnson & Julian Runge & Eric Seufert, 2022. "Privacy-Centric Digital Advertising: Implications for Research," Customer Needs and Solutions, Springer;Institute for Sustainable Innovation and Growth (iSIG), vol. 9(1), pages 49-54, June.
    3. Peitz, Martin & Reisinger, Markus, 2014. "The Economics of Internet Media," Working Papers 14-23, University of Mannheim, Department of Economics.
    4. Randall Lewis & Dan Nguyen, 2015. "Display advertising’s competitive spillovers to consumer search," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 13(2), pages 93-115, June.
    5. Avi Goldfarb, 2014. "What is Different About Online Advertising?," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 44(2), pages 115-129, March.
    6. Yuxin Chen & Qihong Liu, 2022. "Signaling Through Advertising When an Ad Can Be Blocked," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 41(1), pages 166-187, January.
    7. Hana Choi & Carl F. Mela & Santiago R. Balseiro & Adam Leary, 2020. "Online Display Advertising Markets: A Literature Review and Future Directions," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 31(2), pages 556-575, June.
    8. Pedro M. Gardete & Yakov Bart, 2018. "Tailored Cheap Talk: The Effects of Privacy Policy on Ad Content and Market Outcomes," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 37(5), pages 733-752, September.
    9. Anna D’Annunzio & Antonio Russo, 2020. "Ad Networks and Consumer Tracking," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(11), pages 5040-5058, November.
    10. Anna D’Annunzio & Antonio Russo, 2024. "Intermediaries in the Online Advertising Market," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 43(1), pages 33-53, January.
    11. Rene Laub & Klaus M. Miller & Bernd Skiera, 2023. "The Economic Value of User Tracking for Publishers," Papers 2303.10906, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2024.
    12. Veronica Marotta & Yue Wu & Kaifu Zhang & Alessandro Acquisti, 2022. "The Welfare Impact of Targeted Advertising Technologies," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 33(1), pages 131-151, March.
    13. Sumitro Banerjee & Alex P. Thevaranjan, 2013. "How to deal with unprofitable customers? A salesforce compensation perspective," ESMT Research Working Papers ESMT-13-05, ESMT European School of Management and Technology.
    14. Xiuxian Li & Pengwen Hou & Shuhua Zhang, 2023. "The optimal advertising strategy with differentiated targeted effect consumers," Annals of Operations Research, Springer, vol. 324(1), pages 1295-1336, May.
    15. Zhao Jiang & Dan Wu, 2022. "Targeting Precision in Imperfect Targeted Advertising: Implications for the Regulation of Market Structure and Efficiency," SAGE Open, , vol. 12(1), pages 21582440221, March.
    16. Esteban, Lola & Hernández, José M., 2017. "Direct advertising and opt-in provisions: Policy and market implications," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(C), pages 15-25.
    17. Qiaowei Shen & J. Miguel Villas-Boas, 2018. "Behavior-Based Advertising," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(5), pages 2047-2064, May.
    18. Wang, Wei & Li, Gang & Fung, Richard Y.K. & Cheng, T.C.E., 2019. "Mobile Advertising and Traffic Conversion: The Effects of Front Traffic and Spatial Competition," Journal of Interactive Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 84-101.
    19. Susan Athey & Kristen Grabarz & Michael Luca & Nils Wernerfelt, 2023. "Digital public health interventions at scale: The impact of social media advertising on beliefs and outcomes related to COVID vaccines," Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 120(5), pages 2208110120-, January.
    20. Simon P. Anderson & Bruno Jullien, 2015. "The advertising-financed business model in two-sided media markets," Post-Print hal-02866192, HAL.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:69:y:2023:i:8:p:4518-4540. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.