An Empathy-Helping Perspective on Consumers' Responses to Fund-Raising Appeals

The research examines viewers' actual responses to four televised fund-raising drives by a public television station over a 2-year period. The 584 pledge breaks we studied contain 4,868 individual appeals that were decomposed into two underlying dimensions based on the empathy-helping hypothesis: the appeal beneficiary (self versus other) and emotional valence (positive versus negative). We find that the most effective fund-raising appeals communicate the benefits to others rather than to the self and evoke negative rather than positive emotions. Appeals that emphasize benefits to the self significantly reduce the number of calls to the station, particularly when they have a positive emotional valence. (c) 2008 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..

Managing Marketing Channel Multiplicity

Advances in information technology and changing customer needs for channel service outputs have dramatically affected the routes to markets in many industries. The authors propose that these changes have led to significant alterations in how customers interact with firms and consequently to a phenomenon that we dub "channel multiplicity." Channel multiplicity is characterized by the customer's reliance on multiple sources of information from independent (and often disparate) channel organizations and increasing demand for a seamless experience throughout the buying process. The authors identify the new market operating realities driving channel multiplicity and provide an overview of the consequences for channel design and channel management: a broadened view of products and services, channel leadership challenges, alterations in channel structure, and an expanded view of distribution intensity. The authors also identify issues triggered by these developments, which calls for further research in this field