This paper empirically investigates using the e‐mail channel to target customers with a delayed incentive promotion—specifically, gift card promotion—and derives data‐driven e‐mail targeting ...policies. Gift card promotions are popular across retailers because they incentivize customers to spend more than a fixed expenditure level on regularly priced products by rewarding customers with a gift card to be redeemed against a future purchase. The e‐mail channel provides retailers with new sources of customer‐level data, which enables better prediction of customers' responsiveness to e‐mails (e.g., clicking) and the sales promotion that comes with it (e.g., participation in the promotion). We formulate the retailer's promotion e‐mail targeting problem by maximizing two objectives—the promotion's profitability (i.e., profit‐based targeting) and e‐mail click‐through rate (i.e., CTR‐based targeting). We also take into account the retailer's promotion budget and exclusivity concerns in targeting e‐mails. We use a comprehensive dataset from a Fortune 500 luxury fashion retailer's online channel and utilize both parametric and non‐parametric methods to predict customers' response to promotion e‐mails. Our data‐driven targeting policies improve the promotion's profitability by 5.57% and e‐mail CTR by 472.57%, on average, compared to our partner retailer's current e‐mail policy. We also find that the CTR‐based targeting policy lowers the promotion profitability by, on average, 9.09% compared to the profit‐based one. However, the CTR‐based policy recuperates the short‐term losses in the long‐term and increases the long‐term profitability by 3.94%, on average, compared to the profit‐based targeting policy.
The COVID‐19 crisis brought numerous challenges to work life. One of the most notable may be the acceleration of digital transformation, accompanied by an intensification of e‐mail usage and related ...demands such as high e‐mail workload. While research quickly started to examine the implications of these changes for employees, another important group of stakeholders has been overlooked: leaders. We focus on leaders during the COVID‐19 crisis and examine how COVID‐19‐related work intensification links to leaders' e‐mail overload appraisal and finally exhaustion and transformational leadership, a leader behaviour especially needed in times of crisis. In a 5‐day diary study in September 2020, 84 leaders responded to daily surveys on 343 days. Results of multilevel analysis showed that perceived COVID‐19‐related work intensification was positively linked to worktime spent dealing with e‐mail and appraised e‐mail overload. E‐mail overload appraisal was positively related to leaders' exhaustion, but unrelated to their transformational behaviour. Day‐specific time spent dealing with e‐mail, however, was negatively related to transformational leadership. E‐mail overload appraisal mediated the relationship between COVID‐19‐related work intensification and exhaustion. Turning the focus on leaders during the COVID‐19 crisis, our study has important implications for the design of work of leaders in times of crisis and beyond.
Given the unprecedented reach of social media, firms are increasingly relying on it as a channel for marketing communication. The objective of this study is to examine the effect of firm-generated ...content (FGC) in social media on three key customer metrics: spending, cross-buying, and customer profitability. The authors further investigate the synergistic effects of FGC with television advertising and e-mail communication. To accomplish their objectives, the authors assemble a novel data set comprising customers' social media participation data, transaction data, and attitudinal data obtained through surveys. The results indicate that after the authors account for the effects of television advertising and e-mail marketing, FGC has a positive and significant effect on customers' behavior. The authors show that FGC works synergistically with both television advertising and e-mail marketing and also find that the effect of FGC is greater for more experienced, tech-savvy, and social media-prone customers. They propose and examine the effect of three characteristics of FGC: valence, receptivity, and customer susceptibility. The authors find that whereas all three components of FGC have a positive impact, the effect of FGC receptivity is the largest. The study offers critical managerial insights regarding how to leverage social media for better returns.
With the growing threat of phishing emails and the limited effectiveness of current mitigation approaches, there is an urgent need to better understand what leads to phishing victimization. There is ...a limited body of phishing research that identified cognitive automaticity as a potential factor, but more research on the relationship between user cognition and victimization is needed. Additionally, the current phishing research has not considered the characteristics of the environment in which phishing judgments are made. To fill these gaps, this work used the analysis capabilities afforded by the double system lens model (a judgment analysis technique) and the cognitive continuum theory, specifically the task continuum index and the cognitive continuum index. By calculating a task continuum index score, the cognition best suited for the email sorting task was identified. This calculation resulted in a value which indicated that more analytical cognition was most effective. The cognitive continuum index score evaluated the participants’s cognition level while making judgments. The relationships between these measures and achievement were evaluated. Results indicated that more analytical cognition was associated with lower rates of phishing victimization. This work provides a deeper insight into the phishing problem and has implications for combating phishing.
Eight hundred eighty-seven phishing emails from Arizona State University, Brown University, and Cornell University were assessed by two reviewers for Cialdini’s six principles of persuasion: ...authority, social proof, liking/similarity, commitment/consistency, scarcity, and reciprocation. A correlational analysis of email characteristics by year revealed that the persuasion principles of commitment/consistency and scarcity have increased over time, while the principles of reciprocation and social proof have decreased over time. Authority and liking/similarity revealed mixed results with certain characteristics increasing and others decreasing. Results from this study can inform user training of phishing emails and help cybersecurity software to become more effective.
Questo studio indaga le strategie di politeness nelle richieste degli studenti algerini attraverso l'analisi delle loro e-mail accademiche al loro docente. Un corpus di 29 e-mail di richieste ...scritte da studenti di Master uno che studiano la lingua italiana (LS) presso la Facoltà di Lettere e Lingue di Annaba (Algeria). I dati per il presente studio sono stati raccolti e analizzati secondo la teoria universale di politeness proposta da Brown e Levinson (1978, 1987) e la tassonomia di Blum Kulka (1989), con l’obiettivo di sapere quali strategie più utilizzate dagli studenti algerini ed il grado di direttezza nei loro messaggi per mantenere l’armonia nelle relazioni interpersonali in contesto universitario attraverso la realizzazione degli atti linguistici. I risultati hanno rivelato che gli studenti hanno applicato strategie di politeness per lo più positive e diretti più degli altre strategie e che il modo di esprimere cortesia da parte degli studenti è influenzato da diversi fattori. Abstract This study investigates the strategies of politeness in the requests of Algerian students through the analysis of their academic emails to their teacher. A corpus of 29 e-mails of written requests from Master one students studying the Italian foreigen language at the Faculty of Letters and Languages of Annaba (Algeria). The data for this study have been collected and analyzed according to the universal theory of politeness proposed by Brown and Levinson (1978, 1987) and the taxonomy of Blum kulka (1989), with the aim of knowing which strategies most used by Algerian students and the level of directness in their messages to maintain harmony in interpersonal relations in the university context through the implementation of linguistic acts.The results revealed that students have applied mostly positive and direct politeness strategies more than other strategies and that the way students express politeness is influenced by several factors.
► The study examines e-mail requests sent by Greek Cypriot university students to faculty. ► Their e-mails are characterized by directness and lack of lexical/phrasal downgraders. ► There was an ...omission of greetings and closings and inappropriate or unacceptable forms of address. ► These e-mails can be perceived as status-incongruent and capable of causing pragmatic failure. ► They appear to give the faculty no choice and fail to acknowledge the imposition involved.
The present study examines e-mail requests sent by Greek Cypriot university students (non-native speakers of English) to faculty at a major, English-medium university in Cyprus, over a period of several semesters. It examines forms of address (salutations), the degree of directness employed, and the degree and type of supportive moves and lexical/phrasal modifiers used by students in order to soften or aggravate their e-requests. Findings from the study have shown that the NNS students’ e-mails are characterized by significant directness (particularly in relation to requests for information), an absence of lexical/phrasal downgraders, an omission of greetings and closings and inappropriate or unacceptable forms of address. This paper argues that such e-mails can be perceived as impolite and discourteous and therefore capable of causing pragmatic failure. This is primarily due to the fact that they appear to give the faculty no choice in complying with the request and fail to acknowledge the imposition involved.
•Susceptibility to phishing emails is explored in an ecologically valid setting.•Authority and urgency techniques are found to impact employee susceptibility.•Context-specific factors are also likely ...to impact employee susceptibility.•A range of targeted initiatives are required to address susceptibility factors.
Phishing emails provide a means to infiltrate the technical systems of organisations by encouraging employees to click on malicious links or attachments. Despite the use of awareness campaigns and phishing simulations, employees remain vulnerable to phishing emails. The present research uses a mixed methods approach to explore employee susceptibility to targeted phishing emails, known as spear phishing. In study one, nine spear phishing simulation emails sent to 62,000 employees over a six-week period were rated according to the presence of authority and urgency influence techniques. Results demonstrated that the presence of authority cues increased the likelihood that a user would click a suspicious link contained in an email. In study two, six focus groups were conducted in a second organisation to explore whether additional factors within the work environment impact employee susceptibility to spear phishing. We discuss these factors in relation to current theoretical approaches and provide implications for user communities.
ÖZ: E-posta pazarlaması internetin gelişimi ile ortaya çıkan elektronik bir pazarlama aracı olarak literatürde yer almaktadır. Şematik yazın taraması (mapping review) olarak gerçekleştirilen bu ...çalışmanın amacı, pazarlama aracı olarak ele alınan e-posta pazarlaması alanına dair bir öngörü sağlanmasıdır. Çalışmada 1950-2019 yılları arasında uluslararası akademik dergilerde yer alan pazarlama odaklı 57 e-posta pazarlaması çalışması incelenmiştir. Çalışmaların seçiminde anahtar kelimeler kullanılarak filtreleme gerçekleştirilmiş, doğrudan ilgili alana ve pazarlamaya yönelik olmayan çalışmalar kapsam dışında bırakılmıştır. İncelenen çalışmalar ile e-posta pazarlamasının teorik arka planınına, odaklandığı alanlara, ele alındığı sektörlere ve çalışmaların yönelimlerine dair sonuçlar elde edilmiştir. İncelenen çalışmaların 42’si ampirik, 15’i ise kavramsaldır. En çok çalışılan alanın tüketici davranışları olduğuna, en fazla sayıda yayının “Journal of Direct, Data and Digital Marketing Practice” dergisinde yer aldığına ve 2016 yılının 11 çalışma ile ilgili literatürde en çok yayının yapıldığı yıl olduğu sonucuna ulaşılmıştır. Çalışmada elde edilen sonuçlar ile farklı bir alana yönelmek isteyen akademisyenlere niş bir alan önerisi sunularak, e-posta pazarlaması literatüründe ele alınmamış olan alanlar gösterilmektedir. ABSTRACT: E-mail marketing is included in the literature as an electronic marketing tool that emerges with the development of the internet. The puspose of this study, carried out as a mapping review, is to provide an insight into the field of e-mail marketing, which is considered as a marketing tool. In the study, 57 marketing focused e-mail marketing studies in international academic journals between 1950-2019 were examined. In the selection of the studies, filtering was carried out using keywords, and studies not directly related to the field and marketing were excluded. With the studies examined, results were obtained regarding the theoretical background of e-mail marketing, the areas it focuses on, the sectors it is addressed, and the orientations of the studies. 42 of the studies examined are empirical and 15 are conceptual. It has been concluded that the most studied area is consumer behavior, the highest number of publications are included in the journal “Journal of Direct, Data and Digital Marketing Practice” and that 2016 is the year in which the most publications were made in the literatüre related to 11 studies. With the results obtained in the study, a niche field proposal is presented to academicians who want to move to a different area, and the areas not covered in the e-mail marketing literature are shown.
Nowadays, online spamming has already been a remarkable threat to contents security of Internet of Things. Due to constant technical progress, online spamming activities have been more and more ...concealed. This brings much fuzziness to spammer detection scenarios, yielding the issue of fuzzy detection of spammers. Although existing detection techniques for spammers utilized idea of deep learning, they still ignore to release power of label spaces. As real nature about a user may be usually fuzzy, but the label annotated for a user is always certain. To remedy such gap, this article proposes a label smoothing-based fuzzy detection method for spammers (Fuz-Spam). First of all, deep representation is still utilized to deeply fuse features, which acts as the foundation of neural computing. On this basis, generative adversarial learning is introduced to transform previous label spaces into distributed forms. In addition, two groups of experiments are carried out on two real-world datasets for evaluation. The results demonstrate that the Fuz-Spam improves identification efficiency about 10% to 20% than previous ones, and that the Fuz-Spam is endowed with proper stability.
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