From consumer response to active consumer: Measuring the effectiveness of interactive media

Traditional measures of the effectiveness of marketing communications suggest a specific process by which marketing actions influence consumers. This article offers a broader philosophical perspective on measuring the effectiveness of marketing communications that focuses on interaction as the unit of analysis, rather than the behavior of either the marketer or the consumer. Structuration theory is discussed and offered as a viable foundation for the identification, selection, and evaluation of new measures of effectiveness in an interactive context among active, goal-driven consumers and marketers. Structuration theory focuses on the emergency and evolution of the structure of interaction, which is posited as a critical factor in devising, selecting, and evaluating new measures of the effectiveness of marketing communications. This view broadens the potential set of measures of effectiveness of interactive marketing communications, implying alternative meanings for measures under different interaction structures and combinations of goal states. David W. Stewart is the Robert E. Brooker Professor of Marketing and the deputy dean of the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California. He is also the immediate past editor of theJournal of Marketing. His research has examined a wide range of issues, including marketing strategy, the analysis of markets, consumer information search and decision making, effectiveness of marketing communications, and methodological approaches to the analysis of marketing data. Paul A. Pavlou is a Ph.D. candidate of information systems at the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California. His research focuses on business-to-business and business-to-consumer electronic commerce, new product development, institutional trust, interactive marketing, communications, and e-government. He has more than 25 publications in journals, books, and refereed conference proceedings. His research has appeared (or scheduled to appear) inMIS Quarterly, Electronic Markets, International Journal of Electronic Commerce, Journal of Strategic Information Systems, Journal of Logistics Information Management, andJournal of Interactive Advertising, among others. He has recently won the Best Interactive Paper Award at the 2002 Academy of Management Conference.