Thematic Exploration of Digital, Social Media, and Mobile Marketing PDF

Cait Lamberton & Andrew T.
Stephen
A Thematic Exploration of Digital,

Social Media, and Mobile Marketing:
Research Evolution from 2000 to 2015
and an Agenda for Future Inquiry
Over the past 15 years, digital media platforms have revolutionized marketing, offering new ways to reach, inform,
engage, sell to, learn about, and provide service to customers. As a means of taking stock of academic work’s ability
to contribute to this revolution, this article tracks the changes in scholarly researchers’ perspectives on three major digital,
social media, and mobile (DSMM) marketing themes from 2000 to 2015. The authors first use keyword counts from the
premier general marketing journals to gain a macro-level view of the shifting importance of various DSMM topics since
2000. They then identify key themes emerging in five-year time frames during this period: (1) DSMM as a facilitator of
individual expression, (2) DSMM as decision support tool, and (3) DSMM as a market intelligence source. In both academic
research to date and corresponding practitioner discussion, there is much to appreciate. However, there are also several
shortcomings of extant research that have limited its relevance and created points of disconnect between academia and
practice. Finally, in light of this, an agenda for future research based on emerging research topics is advanced.
Keywords: digital marketing, social media, mobile marketing, research agenda, marketing practice
Online Supplement: http://dx.doi.org/10.1509/jm.15.0415
ver the past decade and a half, marketing academics most interestingly, how technology has facilitated novel market
O and practitioners have witnessed a major trans-

formation of marketing. The growth in the prominence
of digital, social media, and mobile (DSMM) marketing
behaviors, interactions, and experiences.
Accordingly, a substantial body of research published in
marketing journals has developed over the same time frame,
has paralleled technological innovations, such as the in- attempting to make sense of this sea change. This work ranges
creasing penetration of home Internet and affordable high- from early studies on digital marketing as decision aids to more
speed broadband connections, the development of social recent topics such as social media and mobile marketing. At this
media platforms such as Facebook, and widespread con- point, a backward look at the way that major themes have
sumer adoption of “smart” mobile devices. Such innovation emerged and evolved in the DSMM marketing domain is
has also influenced the ways that consumers behave across all warranted. This will then allow us to adopt a forward-looking,
types of market settings. For example, just as the rapid growth future-research-oriented perspective to help chart the next phase
in mobile adoption has opened new marketing communica- of interesting, rigorous, and relevant research in this domain.
tions and targeting possibilities, the ubiquity of social media The present article takes this as its goal. It should be noted
has changed how buyers share information with each other from the outset that the purpose is not to provide a com-
and interact with brands. Thus, the “digital transformation of prehensive literature review of the growing body of DSMM
marketing” over the past 15 years is reflected in the ways that marketing work or to cite every article in this domain. The
firms and customers have embraced new technologies and, breadth of DSMM topics that now exist make such an
undertaking infeasible in a single article. Readers interested
in more comprehensive literature reviews may refer to recent
Cait Lamberton is Ben Fryrear Chair and Associate Professor of
Marketing, Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business, University of articles that take such an approach within particular topic
Pittsburgh (e-mail: [email protected]). Andrew T. Stephen is areas. For example, Berger (2014) provides a detailed review
L’Oréal Professor of Marketing, Saı̈d Business School, University of of word of mouth (WOM) research, including recent work
Oxford (e-mail: [email protected]). Authors’ names are related to online forms of WOM. Yadav and Pavlou (2014)
listed in alphabetical order, and both contributed equally to this work. The broadly review research related to marketing in “computer-
authors thank John Deighton, Yaniv Dover, Kevin Keller, Juliano Laran, Ross mediated environments.” Grewal et al. (2016) offer an up-to-
Rizley, participants at the MSI “Frontiers of Marketing” conference in July
date treatment of mobile marketing research. Humphreys
2015, and the anonymous JM editorial team for their ideas and feedback, as
well as David Weiner and Zhenziang Zhao for research assistance. (2016) documents research related to social media across a
variety of disciplines (including marketing). Stephen (2016)
© 2016, American Marketing Association Journal of Marketing: AMA/MSI Special Issue

ISSN: 0022-2429 (print) Vol. 80 (November 2016), 146–172
1547-7185 (electronic) 146 DOI: 10.1509/jm.15.0415
reviews recent DSMM work in consumer behavior and con- over the 15 years of our analysis. We close by discussing
sumer psychology. potential threats to DSMM’s ability to inform research pro-
In contrast to these efforts, the present article offers a gress and practice in light of certain shortcomings we have
macro-level and thematic discussion of DSMM topics as they identified in extant research. Our hope is that we do not repeat
have evolved between 2000 and 2015. This analysis suggests some of the patterns that led to an extant body of research that
that the field has evolved from considering DSMM in a static we and others (e.g., Yadav and Pavlou 2014) believe is overly
and utilitarian sense, as a new “tool” marketers and customers fragmented and, in parts, at risk of rapid obsolescence.
can use, toward a conceptualization of transformative DSMM
marketing, wherein markets and actors (marketers, custom-
ers) both shape and are shaped by technology. Importantly, Methodology
we use our analysis of marketing work and a consideration
Identifying Relevant Articles
of related conversations in the world of practice to advance a
research agenda that we hope will push the DSMM marketing We begin by presenting a macro-level analysis of the keywords
literature forward in relevant and meaningful ways. Thus, our and citations of academic research on DSMM-related topics
contribution lies in helping researchers first understand how the published between 2000 and 2015.1 Throughout 2015 we
DSMM marketing research domain has evolved in the major conducted keyword searches on EBSCO to identify relevant
general marketing journals from a broad perspective, and, most DSMM articles in the five premier journals listed previously.
importantly, developing new research directions to advance We started our search using general keywords (“Internet
the literature and offer relevant insights for marketing practice. marketing,” “online retailing,” “digital marketing,” “social
media,” “mobile marketing”) and considered articles published
in the 2000–2015 period. Next, we examined these articles’
Overview of This Article references to identify other relevant articles published in
We begin with an analysis of the evolution of DSMM research these journals during the same time frame. Following that, we
published in Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing continued this snowball procedure by searching the Web of
Research, Journal of Consumer Research, Marketing Science, Science Social Sciences Citation Index to identify other articles
and the marketing section of Management Science between published in these journals that cited the existing set of iden-
2000 and 2015. Specifically, we examine keyword and citation tified papers during the 2000–2015 time frame. As we collected
aggregations to understand the ways that various subfields relevant articles matching the described criteria, we also
within DSMM have gained or lost prominence. These five expanded our keyword searches to include more-specific terms
premier journals are considered for two reasons. First, our (e.g., “search advertising,” “banner advertising,” “social net-
focus is on marketing. Other fields (e.g., information systems, works,” “Facebook,” “Twitter”). We then repeated the process
computer science) cover topics related to DSMM, but we of reviewing reference lists to identify additional articles to
consider work in those fields to be beyond the scope of this include. Overall, this process resulted in a set of 160 articles
undertaking. Second, other marketing journals (e.g., Interna- published in the five premier marketing journals that were
tional Journal of Research in Marketing, Journal of Interactive theoretical and/or substantive (but not purely methodological
Marketing) also publish DSMM work, but for practical rea- in the sense that they were methods studies that simply used
sons we had to limit the scope. Highly cited work from those DSMM as an application; for studies in our data set that are
journals is included later when we discuss key research themes not cited directly in this article, see the Web Appendix). While
over time. methodological work is clearly important as a means of
We then discuss the most highly cited papers in each of identifying new ways to mine or model new types of online data
three successive five-year research “eras,” as well as the most such as data from Twitter (e.g., Tirunillai and Tellis 2014), we
recent work in the current era. The field has evolved over time do not focus on methodological work here since it is beyond
with regard to its perspective on three recurring themes: (1) the the scope of the present work (a solely methodological article
influence of DSMM technologies on consumer self-expression focusing on new types of data, however, would be interesting;
and communication, (2) the use of DSMM technologies as see Wedel and Kannan 2016).
decision support tools, and (3) the ways that DSMM tech-
nologies can be used as sources of market intelligence. By Classifying Articles and Data Collection
examining the ways in which these themes have shifted over Each of the 160 articles was classified according to its broad
time, we can discern the progressively complex and interac- DSMM topic (e.g., digital decision aids, social networks,
tive conceptualization of the relationship between firms, con- mobile marketing, search advertising). For each article, we
sumers, and DSMM technologies. We can also observe that in also collected the published keywords (usually determined
some cases, work in top specialized journals led the work that by authors, though sometimes also with input from editors
appeared in the general outlets. Also, we provide a snapshot of and/or reviewers). Neither authors nor editors select articles’
practitioner discussion in order to show the degree to which keywords from a standardized “master list,” and therefore
research diverged or converged with practitioners’ issues. keywords tend to be fairly idiosyncratic. Thus, we coded each
Finally, we advance a set of recommendations for future article’s keywords into a set of common keyword categories
research that draws on both an understanding of important
emerging topics and an examination of the ways that academic- 1Articles accepted or published in 2015 were excluded because
and practice-related conversations have converged or diverged they have no citations. They are covered later.
Research Evolution in Digital, Social Media, and Mobile Marketing / 147

for the purposes of our analysis. For example, keywords these keyword strings in the following popular business press
related to “diffusion,” “diffusion of innovation,” “contagion,” outlets: Bloomberg Businessweek, the Economist, the New
and “diffusion models” were assigned to the category “dif- York Times, and the Wall Street Journal.
fusion.” Keywords such as “consumer-generated content,”
“user-generated content,” and “online consumer reviews” were
classified as “user-generated content.” Macro-Level Keyword Analysis to
We next collected citation counts for these articles using
the Web of Science Social Sciences Citation Index.2 Cita-
Identify Overall Patterns and
tion counts over time allowed us to examine the extent to which Research Trajectories
the themes or ideas in the articles had “caught on” over time We first examined the keywords used to categorize the
and shaped subsequent research. For each of the articles, we DSMM articles in our set. We compiled our keyword set
obtained a time-series record of annual citation counts cover- from keywords given by editors and/or authors for the arti-
ing all journals (i.e., not only the five journals included in our cles. We also combined keywords that referred to the same
sampling frame). In addition, we used our classifications of the thing. Figure 1 shows the occurrences of each keyword across
papers to aggregate citation counts across articles into topics. the set to give a general sense of the prominence of topics in
This allowed us to see how various DSMM themes rose and this body of research. A number of observations can be made.
declined in academic popularity over time. Finally, we iden- First, we identified approximately 200 distinct keywords
tified the ten most frequently cited articles in each journal in in the surveyed articles, 167 (83.5%) of which are used only
each year from 2000 to 2014 (excluding 2015 because it was too once. Even after we combined keywords that were alike, it was
soon for those articles to accumulate citations). We then cal- apparent that DSMM researchers define their work in myriad
culated, for each year in our time frame, the proportion of these ways and that a fair amount of fragmentation is present.
most-cited articles that were on DSMM topics, to obtain an Second, the two most common keyword types are related
indication of the impact-based prominence of DSMM research to data analysis methods and empirical model types (both of
relative to non-DSMM topics in the marketing literature. which we consider to be primarily methodological), as well as
Sometimes specialized journals can lead the more general advertising, which is a substantive topic. For the former, it is
journals in exploring fast-evolving domains like DSMM. important to note that keywords related to a modeling or data-
Because specialized journals are more open to preliminary or analytic techniques are usually only assigned to an article
speculative work, they might publish new insights before the if the study’s approach is nonstandard in some way. Their
ideas are developed further in work published in more gen- dominance in our data set suggests that DSMM research may
eral journals. With this possibility in mind, we also identified include a high level of methodological innovation, partic-
the most-cited papers in three relevant premier specialized ularly with respect to advanced empirical modeling tech-
marketing journals—Journal of Interactive Marketing, Jour- niques developed to handle new data types (e.g., clickstream,
nal of Retailing, and International Journal of Research in social network, search advertising datasets) that have emerged
Marketing—to see if this work mirrored or, in some cases, led as marketing practice has been digitally transformed. In the latter
the thematic emphases in the more general outlets. case—advertising—the prevalence of this keyword reflects
Finally, we collected data that we could use to measure the the (1) general prominence of paid media within the DSMM
prominence of DSMM topics outside the academic literature in space, (2) ongoing digital transformation of advertising, (3)
outlets that reasonably reflect interest in business/marketing emergence of new advertising channels such as social media
practice. We first searched for white papers, industry reports, and mobile, and (4) digitally enabled advertising techniques
and research priorities published by the Marketing Science such as retargeting.
Institute (MSI) for each of the five-year time frames. Next, we Third, DSMM research related to social networks was
converted the set of academic article keywords that we used to fairly uncommon in the early years of our time frame, but it has
classify articles into equivalent keywords that would be likely quickly risen to prominence as platforms such as Friendster,
to appear in the business press. For example, the academic Myspace, and, in particular, Facebook and Twitter, have risen
keyword “diffusion” was converted into the following set of in popularity.
layperson keywords: “social contagion,” “social diffusion,” Fourth, we note the focus on psychological processes and
“information spreading,” and “information diffusion.” Sim- behavioral topics, for which we note 33 distinct terms. In this
ilarly, the academic keyword “digital advertising” was con- category we include terms such as “self-esteem,” “learning,”
verted into “online advertising,” “digital advertising,” “search “memory,” and “emotions,” which differ from those in, for
advertising,” “online ads,” “digital ads,” and “search ads.” example, the diffusion literature, in that they often draw on very
For each set of layperson keywords that corresponded to broad psychological theories. The frequency of such keywords
an academic keyword, we queried the Dow Jones Factiva underscores the broad importance of understanding the con-
database to compile keyword prevalence data (i.e., counts) on sumer’s role in DSMM marketing—as individuals and as
an annual basis from 2000 to 2014 according to appearance of interdependent actors embedded in social systems or networks.
However, reliance on such a wide range of fairly generic
2An alternative to this source of citation count data is Google psychological processes also suggests that more focused the-
Scholar. We used the SSCI because it tends to provide more con- ories related to consumers’ psychological experiences in the
servative citation counts than Google Scholar since it does not include DSMM domain may be lacking in extant literature. Instead,
citations in unpublished work (e.g., working papers on SSRN). work thus far may be more focused on replicating basic
148 / Journal of Marketing: AMA/MSI Special Issue, November 2016

FIGURE 1
Total Keyword Count in Academic and Business Press, 2001–2015
A: Number of Articles per Keyword
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
B: Factiva Mentions per Major Topic in Popular Business Press
8,000 7,612
6,852
7,000
6,000
5,000 4,164
4,000
3,000
1,832
2,000
672 498
1,000 177 27 7
0
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el
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psychological phenomena in DSMM domains or using extant “crowdfunding,” “direct marketing,” “freemium”) or were
“off the shelf” theories to explain effects, rather than advancing more general or methodological and cut across many topic areas
our knowledge of psychology by examining truly novel digital (e.g., “market dynamics,” “optimization,” “complex systems”).
phenomena. Finally, we also examined the prevalence of DSMM topics/
Fifth, DSMM work has a “long tail” that includes many keywords in the popular business press over our 15-year time
other types of keywords. Note that Figure 1, Panel A, does frame. This is depicted in Figure 1, Panel B. A comparison of
not include the entire “long tail” of topics but only ones that the prevalence of topics in academic journals and practitioner-
appeared at least five times. Fifty other words appeared five focused press is mostly encouraging when considered in the
times or fewer. Many of these words are related to topics aggregate. While it is not surprising to see that practitioners
that were important at some time because they reflected have been less focused on the development of analytical
an intriguing phenomenon of substantive interest (e.g., methods than have academics, some of the more strongly

represented topics in the academic world (advertising/search Another interesting observation from our citation analysis
advertising, networks, return on investment [ROI], and user- is that some topics have been covered in the literature for
generated content [UGC]) parallel topics of substantial dis- many years but have not achieved high levels of citation-
cussion in the practitioner world (digital advertising, social based impact. This is the case for research related to search
media and networks, ROI, and UGC), although the ordering engine marketing (paid search, keyword advertising). This
diverges to some extent. Furthermore, newer, emerging topics research has been around for some time (e.g., has been cited
such as mobile and multichannel remained fairly minor matters since 2002), though it has attracted relatively few cites over
for both practitioner discussion and research through 2014. the years (mean cites per year: 3.4 for “search engines,” 4.73
However, despite the fairly high degree of correspondence of for “keyword,” and 13.93 for “paid search”). This is intrigu-
prevalent topics between the two sides, there may still be some ing given that search engine advertising is typically very
temporal lags between academic work and practice in par- important in marketing practice. It may be that these areas
ticular areas. We return to this concern later when we reflect on simply lend themselves to narrow-in-scope, data set–specific
practitioners’ views for each “era” of research in our analysis. studies instead of more theory-driven work (which tends to
be more generalizable and thus potentially highly cited). It
could also be that knowledge on this particular topic quickly
Research Impact According to becomes dated because search advertising technology (e.g.,
Citation Analysis how Google’s algorithms work) evolves rapidly.
We next examined article citation data. Citation counts by Another way to characterize the growth in the impact of
article topic and year are reported in Table 1. In Figure 2 we DSMM research is to compare similar statistics for other re-
plot the cumulative citation counts for the top four most popular search domains. We compared the impact of DSMM research
topics. In general, we see that over time, the overall impact and with the impact of other research types in the marketing literature
influence of DSMM marketing research has skyrocketed. in the following way. We identified the ten most highly cited
The two most cited topics were WOM, with 2,528 cites, and papers per year from the five premier marketing journals for
social networks. with 1,143 cites.3 The least cited topic was 2000–2014. This produced a set of 50 highly cited articles per
mobile, with 10 cites as of the present’s article’s submission date; year. Interestingly, 13.43% of all highly cited articles in these
however, this is obviously because of the relative newness of journals were DSMM articles. This percentage varies across
mobile marketing as a research topic. journals: for Marketing Science, 25% of the annual most cited
In addition to WOM and social networks, other topics articles over this period were DSMM; for Journal of Mar-
with relatively high citation counts are (1) decision aids, keting Research, 18.57%; for Journal of Marketing, 11.43%;
which refers to articles that describe how DSMM is used by for Management Science, 6.43%; and for Journal of Con-
either managers or buyers to support decision making (e.g., sumer Research, only 5.71%. Furthermore, by year and ac-
how Internet search can lower consumers’ search costs or ross journals, we observe a steady increase in the percentage
how online social commerce marketplaces can help consumers of highly cited papers related to DSMM. For instance, none
discover new retailers or products); (2) consumer-focused top- of the most impactful papers published in these journals in 2000
ics, which encompasses research into buyer/consumer behavior or 2001 were about DSMM topics, but between 2010 and 2013,
in DSMM contexts; (3) community, referring to studies about at least 20% of the most impactful papers were on DSMM
online communities and their various impacts on both buyers and (20% in 2010, 40% in 2011, 26% in 2012, and 20% in 2013).
marketing outcomes; and (4) UGC, referring to studies about Thus, despite the heterogeneity in the impact of specific DSMM
content contributed to online platforms by consumers, most topics, the importance of the domain as a whole is considerable.
typically online reviews. Decision aids research has been highly This increase broadly mirrors the rise in importance of digital
cited in part because of its longevity; this work was among marketing channels and approaches in practice and reflects how
the earliest in the DSMM domain and persists in influence. the digital transformation of marketing has touched both aca-
Consumer-focused topics yield citations both because of their demia and practice.
breadth, which covers various aspects of decision making,
consumer experience, and psychology, and because this work
can be exported to other journals quite easily. Online com- Three Research Eras, Three Themes
munities likely warrant citation because of the novelty of such While the prior analysis sheds descriptive light on DSMM
communities as phenomena and their role as sources of rich marketing research at a high level, it does not tell us much
data. Work on UGC has been cited heavily given the continued how specific topics have been discussed and how they have
ubiquity of consumer-generated online reviews and their in- evolved, and it does not speak to whether newer work has in
creasingly natural use by consumers when making decisions. fact built on earlier work in ways that advance our under-
Given these overall citation counts, it follows that we should see standing. We now turn our attention to these issues.
strong, cumulative frameworks emerging in these domains—an Interesting shifts in priorities appear at approximately five-
expectation that we will return to in our critique of the field’s year intervals during our 2000–2015 time frame. We thus divide
progress over time, because such an outcome has been largely our time frame into periods, or “eras,” according to these
absent. intervals, and we use these eras as a basis for a closer exami-
nation of the recurrent themes and advances in DSMM research
3We did not include Lynch and Ariely (2000) because it has more over time. We begin by considering the groundwork laid in the
than 8,300 citations, making it an extreme outlier. initial phase of DSMM research in era 1, identifying three

TABLE 1
Citation Counts by Topic and Year
Average Citations
Topic 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 Total Citations per Year
WOM 0 0 6 4 17 49 69 115 163 225 321 391 512 524 132 2528 168.5
Social networks 0 4 19 23 30 42 47 52 59 74 122 147 253 239 32 1143 76.20
Decision aids 2 11 32 27 31 40 37 45 56 69 53 66 54 66 14 603 40.20
UGC 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 2 11 14 33 92 178 110 441 29.40
Community 0 0 2 7 11 17 24 23 36 50 50 56 57 55 13 401 26.73
Consumer-focused 0 0 0 1 6 9 23 22 38 36 39 38 67 84 20 383 25.53
Sales-focused 0 0 0 4 9 15 15 21 30 27 29 28 49 50 13 290 19.33
Legal/regulation 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 8 23 48 107 73 259 17.27
Paid search 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 16 31 36 64 61 209 13.93
Retailing 0 0 0 1 4 14 9 13 22 30 19 25 18 36 10 201 13.40
Pricing 0 2 4 7 12 15 9 13 13 15 14 15 12 17 10 158 10.53
Display/banner 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 5 11 10 15 14 12 31 9 107 7.13
Diffusion 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 7 35 55 3 100 6.67
Keyword 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 4 4 11 15 32 5 71 4.73
Search engines 0 1 0 4 0 5 2 3 6 6 6 3 4 10 1 51 3.40
Mobile 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 7 10 .67

FIGURE 2 domain that emerged beyond the first-mover journals such as
Cumulative Citation Counts over Time for Four Journal of Interactive Marketing.
Most-Cited Topics
3,000 Theme 1: The Internet as a Platform for Individual

2,500 Expression
2,000 It was recognized early in this period that the Internet could
1,500
help individuals by providing access to other consumers,
1,000
500
either as audience members or as information sources.
0 Qualitative researchers drew attention to the fact that con-
sumers sought self-definition through expression in both
01
02
03
04
05
06
07
08
09
10
11
12
13
14
15
personal portals and online communities (Schau and Gilly
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
20
2003). In this work, online experiences augmented and
WOM Decision aids influenced consumers’ offline lives—a theme that would be
Social networks UGC revisited using experimental and quantitative methods over
the next decade and a half. Along similar lines, Kozinets
(2002) qualitatively examined consumers’ communication
interactions in online communities and showed how these
fundamental themes that emerged in these early years. We then online domains—precursors to the more sophisticated social
analyze the changes in the ways in which high-impact academic media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter—could be
research in marketing has revisited these themes during eras 2 rich sources for researchers seeking to understand online
and 3. Then, we discuss the way that these themes have changed consumer expression. Importantly, Kozinets’s work on net-
in the currently emerging era 4. A summary of the eras, key nography (using ethnographic techniques on the Internet)
themes and topics within each one, and the most highly-cited helped show marketing practitioners how online communities
papers in the major journals is presented in Table 2. could be viable sources of information from which to derive
consumer insights.
While qualitative researchers were identifying digital
Era 1: Digital Media Shapes and platforms as informative research settings, quantitative re-
searchers were also exploring online WOM and communi-
Facilitates Buyer Behavior, ties. Two major seed articles for this literature stream were
2000–2004 Dellarocas (2003) and Godes and Mayzlin (2004). Dellarocas
We begin our study in 2000 for a number of reasons. First, at discussed the idea that online WOM offered both promises
that time, academic research was beginning to amass a body and challenges, focusing on how online feedback mechanisms
of literature focused on digital interactions; the Journal of affect individuals’ behaviors in online communities. This
Interactive Marketing launched in 1998, as a successor to the research spurred a substantial amount of work, with nearly 39
Journal of Direct Marketing. By 1999, Journal of Interactive average annual cites in each of the next 12 years. As important
Marketing argued (with perhaps premature, but nonetheless to the field of marketing as a whole was Godes and Mayzlin’s
prescient, vision) that “all marketing is, or soon will be, study of how online WOM in online discussion forums
interactive marketing,” but at the same time, it lamented the connected to television show ratings. Godes and Mayzlin
paucity of “high-quality case studies that would offer enduring, found that online WOM had an effect on television con-
generalizable findings about this context” (Glazer 1999, p. 3). sumption, which spurred substantial research into the effects of
Second, early insights into the potential of DSMM were various forms of online WOM on a wide array of marketing
already being considered, largely from a conceptual level, outcomes. Such research also legitimized the use of online
as authors such as Iacobucci (1998) were arguing for net- conversation data in research, establishing that online WOM,
work analyses, suggesting the use of marketing information, in this case in discussion forums, could be a source of un-
and highlighting the potential for customization and high re- obtrusive observational consumer WOM data. Legitimizing
sponsiveness. Third, 2000 brought the burst of the “dot-com the use of such data was important because prior to the Internet,
bubble,” validating concerns that strategies for interactive tools WOM was almost exclusively private (and offline) and thus
should be based on observations and data rather than unbridled difficult to study without relying on questionably accurate self-
enthusiasm or recommendations of self-styled Internet mar- report data.
keting gurus (Lohse, Bellman, and Johnson 2000). The New As much as it provided new answers, this work raised
York Times (2000) suggested that reliance on such excitement questions for later scholars to explore. For example, could
and its mouthpieces had led to an expansion and subsequent causality truly be inferred from analyses of online WOM and
plunge in the market, as the lack of a “sensible business plan” marketing performance data observed over time? How good
highlighted the fact that despite brisk online sales, the Internet is online WOM as a predictor of offline behavior? How does
“may not be an indiscriminate, magical new means of making offline behavior influence online behavior, and how can that
money.” These events underscored the importance of scientific influence be captured or modeled? Is it ethical to capture
understandings of DSMM phenomena and called for increas- individuals’ conversations as data sources, given that explicit
ingly rigorous scientific approaches to data and theory in this approval for data to be used in this manner is typically not

TABLE 2
Key Articles and Topics Through the Evolution of Core DSMM Themes from 2000 to 2015
Topic Era 1 Era 2 Era 3 Current
Individual expression Benefits the consumer by Benefits the consumer via sharing Benefits both the consumer and the Benefits the firm differently with
augmenting offline life: of opinions and narratives: firm through viral transmission and regard to volume vs. valence:
• Kozinets (2002) • Kozinets et al. (2010) content creation: • You, Vadakkepatt, and Joshi
• Schau and Gilly (2003) • Schlosser (2005) • Berger and Milkman (2012) (2015)
Benefits the firm through WOM: Benefits the firm through WOM: • Toubia and Stephen (2013)
• Dellarocas (2003) • Chevalier and Mayzlin (2006)
• Godes and Mayzlin (2004) • Godes and Mayzlin (2004)
• Trusov, Bucklin and Pauwels
(2009)
The Internet as a tool For consumers to raise choice For firms and consumers to gain For marketers, who can benefit from For firms and consumers, who can
quality without higher price/effort: information from network position: UGC: benefit by using or buying search
• Brynjolfsson and Smith (2000) • Chen, Liu, and Whinston (2009) • Albuquerque et al. (2012) terms:
• Häubl and Trifts (2000) • Ghose and Yang (2009) • Ghose and Han (2011) • Narayanan and Kalyanam (2015)
• Lynch and Ariely (2000) • Goldenberg, Oestreicher-Singer, • Ghose, Ipeirotis, and Li (2012)
and Reichman (2009) • Goldenberg, Oestreicher-Singer,
• Trusov, Bodapati, and Bucklin and Reichman (2012)
(2010) • Moe and Trusov (2011)
• Katona and Sarvary (2008) • Shriver, Nair, and Hofstetter (2013)
• Katona, Zubcsek, and Sarvary • Stephen and Galak (2012)
(2011) • Tirunillai and Tellis (2012)
• Stephen and Toubia (2010) • Wang, Mai, and Chiang (2014)
• Villanueva, Yoo, and Hanssens
(2008)
• Watts and Dodds (2007)
Marketing intelligence For observing, analyzing and • Wilbur and Zhu (2009) From specific social media At lower cost than other methods:
source predicting behavior: platforms: • Du, Hu, and Damangir (2015)
• Ansari, Essegaier, and Kohli • Naylor, Lamberton, and West • Kim and Krishnan (2015)
(2000) (2012)
• Bradlow and Schmittlein (2000) • Toubia and Stephen (2013)
• Bucklin and Sismeiro (2003) • Wilcox and Stephen (2012)
• Chatterjee, Hoffman, and Novak
(2003)
• Montgomery et al. (2004)

given? These questions foreshadowed work that continues to (2000) found that prices from online retailers were indeed
the present. 9%–16% lower than those from offline retailers, suggesting
that perhaps online retailers were responding to strong price
competition. However, they found that consumer trust and
Theme 2: Internet as Search and Decision brand power still mattered online, suggesting that attention
Support Tool to quality was not overwhelmed by easy price search. For-
A second way that the Internet could help consumers was by tunately, lower search costs appeared to allow consumers to
making search easier and choice better. At the same time that differentiate among products: Lynch and Ariely (2000) found
psychology was recognizing perils of choice overload and the that only when different firms offered the same exact product
downsides of self-determination (e.g., Iyengar and Lepper would low search costs lead to strong price-based com-
2000; Schwartz 2000) and retailers were struggling with as- petition; making it easy for consumers to see a firm’s unique
sortment decisions (e.g., Broniarczyk, Hoyer, and McAlister items could turn ease of search into a boon rather than a
1998, e-commerce presented essentially endless virtual store danger. Diehl, Kornish, and Lynch (2003) argued that search
shelves. Given that choosing from 32 types of jam left consumers agents that ordered options in terms of quality could increase
exhausted and degraded choice quality (Iyengar and Lepper price sensitivity in many cases because well-sorted lists presented
2000), how would consumers navigate huge online choice sets? consumers with a group of items that was fairly homogeneous
In considering the Internet as a decision tool, Häubl and with regard to its ability to match their preferences. Furthermore,
Trifts’s (2000) study formed an important bridge between they showed that for quality-focused consumers, sorting
consumer behavior research and this new shopping setting. The options in terms of quality led to the choice of higher-priced,
authors explored two decision tools: recommendation agents better-quality options, but for price-focused consumers, sorting
and comparison matrices, tools that roughly paralleled the two- options in terms of quality led to the choice of lower-priced, but
stage decision process previously outlined by Payne (1982) also lower-quality items.
and Payne, Bettman, and Johnson (1988). Recommendation Researchers also went on to develop more nuanced
agents perform a screening function, weeding through a huge understandings of the non-price-based outcomes of the
number of alternatives, and comparison matrices facilitate the Internet as a decision tool. For example, Ansari and Mela
choice process by comparing and evaluating a smaller number (2003) considered how customized electronic communica-
of items before a choice is made. The bulk of the article reports a tions (now considered commonplace in personalization of
controlled experiment in which 80 participants shopped for a marketers’ customer e-mail campaigns) could be used to aid
number of products either with or without these decision aids. customer decisions and reduce information overload. Other
Results indicated that the decision aids promoted search of work noted that despite the fact that recommendations from
higher-quality alternatives, lower search costs, and better intelligent agents could ease consumer decision making, they
choices, compared with shopping without decision aids. could also generate psychological reactance in electronic
While in retrospect this finding seems unsurprising, it settings (Fitzsimons and Lehmann 2004). Other research
remains important: in contrast to past work that argued for noted that rather than providing additive benefits, the use of
the inescapability of effort–accuracy trade-offs (e.g., Payne, simultaneous search-facilitating tools might degrade consum-
Bettman, and Johnson 1993), Häubl and Trifts’s findings ers’ choice quality (Diehl 2005).
suggested that decreased effort and increased accuracy could Note that while this work was very important in Era 1,
exist simultaneously online. Brynjolfsson, Hu, and Smith citation levels for work on decision aids have remained
(2003) extended this thinking to argue that the vast variety essentially constant over time. This stability suggests two
available online was a boon to consumer well-being, in things. First, the survival and growth of the Internet itself
part, but not only, because online markets created greater price signaled that easy search would not generate a price war
competition: “The increased product variety of online book- apocalypse for marketers or unmanageable choice overload
stores enhanced consumer welfare by $731 million to $1.03 for consumers. While price sensitivity might move up or down
billion in the year 2000, which is between 7 and 10 times as in different contexts, on the whole, it did not appear to be
large as the consumer welfare gain from increased competition crippling. Moreover, firms could decide whether or not to
and lower prices in this market” (p. 1580). share information about price and quality in ways that helped
But did such “frictionless commerce” and easy search either themselves of consumers (see, e.g., Clemons, Hann,
mean that the Internet’s low search costs would erode all firm and Hitt 2002, for a discussion of this decision in online
profits? Even before the dot-com bubble burst, some travel). Second, while the Internet continued to aid in con-
analytical modeling work had begun to consider the effects of sumer decision making as time continued, search engines,
Internet retailing on price-based competition (Lal and Sarvary marketer-provided screening tools, and strategies related to
1999). On one hand, if consumers had all price information search costs were no longer the critical means of doing so, as
presented to them, researchers could predict very strong price- power to facilitate search and choice progressively shifted to
based competition. On the other hand, though, low search costs consumers, networks, and social media.
could also exist for quality information. If quality were easy to
determine, consumers would be able to differentiate among
products, pushing price sensitivity down. Theme 3: Internet as a Marketing Intelligence Tool
These possible countervailing effects proved to be rich A third way that the Internet could be of utility was in its
ground for researchers. For example, Brynjolfsson and Smith ability to anticipate consumers’ preferences and customer

behavior, that is, as a marketing intelligence tool for marketers. (approximately 2% of budgets as of 2005) to a “lack of
Using the internet as a marketing tool could conceivably benefit knowledge about digital media and channels’ capabilities as a
both customers, who might receive products that better matched through-the-line marketing vehicle and, as a consequence,
their preferences (e.g., Ansari and Mela 2003), and firms, who lack of insight on how to use digital strategically and long-
might be able to generate higher levels of customer satisfac- term” (Jakobson 2005). Thus, although consumers might
tion and loyalty. Consideration of this potential began with have been forming active brand communities and sharing
the research note of Ansari, Essegaier, and Kohli (2000) on WOM online, as academic research had addressed, marketers
intelligent recommendation agents. By this time, some work had did not seem to have a strong sense that these actions offered
already introduced collaborative filtering as a mechanism for reliable routes for communication or long-term growth.
offering recommendations (see Breese, Heckerman, and Kadie Rather, this situation generated calls for deeper psycho-
1998) but had fairly disappointing predictive results: sparse data, logical examinations. Velenge argued, “As always, the
product heterogeneity, ad hoc algorithms, indirect accounting future lies in consumer insight and consumer behavior,
for attribute preferences, and the limitations of correlational data not in the media, channels and technology themselves”
all presented challenges for marketing researchers. (Campaign 2005).
The prevailing approach in the early DSMM research Despite this sense that insight was lacking, practitioners—
within this theme was to innovate in terms of empirical like their academic counterparts—did perceive the Internet
methodology, in large part because the then-new digital as a marketing tool with a great deal of potential. Rapid
sources (e.g., Internet recommendation systems on websites) growth was predicted for spending on online advertising,
provided researchers with new types of data. This is perhaps for which expansion estimates for 2004 hovered around
best summed up by Ansari, Essegaier, and Kohli (2000), who 25% (Case 2004). While some cautioned against excessive
suggested that “the new applications of information agents optimism, others argued that this growth estimate could be
will … require advances in data collection and analysis supported by the pace of growth in search, which had jumped
procedures; marketing researchers are eminently posed to 170% in 2003 and was estimated to grow 35%–40% in 2004
contribute significantly in those areas” (p. 373). A similar (Case 2004). With the growth of search, experts predicted
perspective was taken by Bradlow and Schmittlein (2000), continued growth in online advertising, which offered a
who modeled the performance of the six dominant search competitive price relative to traditional media channels such
engines in use at that time (AltaVista, Northern Light, as television, superior trackability, and potentially better
HotBot, Infoseek, Excite, and Lycos) and dealt with novel targeting technology. Thus, it could be argued that academia’s
data characteristics and, thus, modeling challenges. In this emphasis on DSMM as a means of facilitating search and
research the authors sought to identify the search engines that decision making was fairly consistent with practitioner dis-
managers should use to find marketing information. While cussion during this era.
the specific findings were important at the time, given that However, academic findings emerging during this time
these search engines would soon become obsolete, the more frame did not appear to strongly influence practitioners or
lasting contribution of this work lay in its modeling approach affect their understanding of DSMM opportunities. For ex-
and correct prediction: that future search engines would ample, by the last year of this era (2004), a study reported
evolve with the Internet and continue to be a rich source of that while 92% of marketing executives felt that digital
marketing intelligence. Other work focused on clickstream technology was transforming their business, only 43% felt
data, with the goal of understanding the way that advertising that they had a strong understanding of online marketing, and
and consumer browsing patterns interact to drive sales (e.g., only 41% saw the dedication of corporate resources to keeping
Bucklin and Sismeiro 2003; Chatterjee, Hoffman, and Novak pace with new technologies. While academic work was pro-
2003; Montgomery et al. 2004). In the present, of course, in ducing insights, a sizable chunk of practitioners did not appear
addition to search engines as sources of marketing intelli- to feel well-informed, suggesting missed opportunities for
gence, we now have social media data that provide vast marketing academics to help practitioners in closing this
amounts of information about markets and, in particular, understanding gap. This is a theme we will continue to see in
consumers—it could be argued that our ability to approach subsequent eras.
such data was rooted in these early efforts to gain marketing
intelligence from consumer behavior online.
Era 2: Consumers Shape DSMM:
WOM and Networks, 2005–2010
The Perspective from Practice In contrast to Era 1’s conceptualization of the Internet as a
During this time, practitioners took somewhat divergent promising but separate tool for consumers and marketers,
perspectives on these three themes. First, while academics 2005–2010 saw mainstream consumers taking a more active
were applauding the potential of the Internet as a means of role in their online social interactions through online WOM
deriving insights about and selling to consumers, marketers and social networking. This shift was likely promoted by a
remained concerned about the wisdom of relying on digital number of events. First, by 2005, Internet use had passed
methods for data collection, which seemed particularly 50% penetration, up from approximately 40% in 2000 (Pew
vulnerable to spam, privacy, and fraud (Jakobson 2005). Research Center 2014). In part because Internet use was
Helene Velenge, the head of digital marketing for Levi’s becoming an increasingly common part of life, its role as a
Europe, attributed the low spending on digital marketing forum for online expression and a repository for valuable

peer-to-peer or socially sourced information about products, on two prominent online booksellers (Amazon.com,
services, and brands expanded. Barnesandnoble.com) affected relative sales of books on
In addition, UGC, often in the form of online reviews, those sites (i.e., sales ranks). They found positive links be-
became increasingly commonplace during this time. For tween user-generated ratings (1–5) and reviews (text) and
example, Yelp, founded in 2004, took off in 2005. Between sales, thus demonstrating that the then-novel forms of online
2005 and 2006, the number of reviewers skyrocketed from WOM (product ratings and reviews) had measurable impacts
12,000 to 100,000, and in 2006 the site reported 1 million on sales. Their study has been extremely important, gen-
monthly visitors. By 2010, the company was reporting erating on average approximately 54 cites per year and, like
revenues of approximately $30 million. Era 2 also saw the Godes and Mayzlin’s (2004) study before it, encouraging
platforms eventually referred to as “social media” moving more research into the effects of online WOM on sales as well
from niche markets to mainstream use, as Friendster (founded as moderators of those effects. Work in high-quality speci-
in 2002), Myspace (founded in 2003) and, of course, Facebook alized journals also considered product reviews and their link
(founded in 2004) vied for marketplace dominance. A key with sales. A noteworthy example is Dellarocas, Zhang, and
development for social media marketing occurred in this era, Awad (2007), who developed forecasting models based on
with everyone from global brands (e.g., McDonalds) to diffusion models that used online review metrics to predict
musicians (e.g., Bon Jovi) to local dentists starting to use movie sales.
Facebook (then Twitter and others) as a digital marketing Trusov, Bucklin, and Pauwels (2009) considered a dif-
content channel. ferent indicator of marketing performance and a different type
For marketing academics and practitioners alike, these of online WOM. In their study of a then-popular online social
trends raised a number of questions about how to best use networking site, they examined new customer acquisitions
online WOM and social networks for marketing purposes, (i.e., membership growth) as a marketing consequence of
which invariably required a more detailed understanding of WOM and focused on online WOM in the form of “refer
these social processes and systems than had been developed a friend” e-mails from existing customers to potential new
in Era 1. As new platforms, particularly social media, began customers. Importantly, this study also considered non-WOM
to allow advertising, marketers were faced with questions drivers of customer acquisition, which is important meth-
related to ROI for this type of spending. Likely as a result, the odologically (to control for omitted variables or to account for
three themes identified in Era 2 now took on a different other potential mechanisms through which customers can be
emphasis. Whereas in Era 1, DSMM was a tool to be used by acquired). It is also theoretically interesting because the au-
marketers and buyers, in Era 2, marketers and buyers actively thors compared online WOM with traditional marketing (in
contributed to and shaped DSMM. this case, in the form of both media/PR and offline events), a
comparison that would then be repeated in other research, as
we discuss later (e.g., in Stephen and Galak’s [2012] com-
Theme 1: Online WOM as Individual Expression parison of traditional and social earned media as sales drivers).
That Matters to Marketing Trusov, Bucklin, and Pauwels (2009) found that in general,
Recall that in Era 1, academic research had shown the potential the long-term effects of online WOM referrals on customer
for online forums to offer tools for individual expression. In acquisition were greater than those from traditional marketing
Era 2, the tendency to express one’s opinions became more activities, thus providing an important justification for invest-
directly connected to marketing practice. Earlier work on ment in the development of online WOM. Similar findings were
online WOM, in particular Godes and Mayzlin (2004), had provided by Villanueva, Yoo, and Hanssens (2008), who tested
demonstrated that online discussion forums could be used to an empirical model using data from a web hosting company,
measure WOM activity and that such activity was associated finding that traditional marketing customers created greater
with marketing outcomes. In the days of the Usenet forums short-term but less long-term value than those acquired
studied by Godes and Mayzlin, individuals having conver- through WOM. These findings have major implications for
sations about things such as products (or, in the case of Godes optimal allocation of marketing spending.
and Mayzlin, television shows) was uncommon and limited to a On the less-quantitative side, work by Schlosser (2005)
niche segment of consumers. That changed when e-commerce and Kozinets et al. (2010) delved into understanding online
sites allowed users to post product reviews online (i.e., to WOM from consumer behavior and culture perspectives.
provide UGC). The rise of UGC in Era 2 spurred more Schlosser conducted seminal experimental work into the
research into online WOM and a drive to understand of the way that “posters” (people who share online opinions) and
impact of online reviews specifically, as a particular form of “lurkers” (people who read but do not post their opinions) are
online WOM, on outcomes such as sales and new customer differentially affected by the opinions of others. Kozinets
acquisition. et al. (2010) argued that when marketers use WOM they
This challenge was taken up by numerous research teams face a situation of “networked coproduction of narratives”
using a wide range of methods and data sources. The most with consumers in the roles of, for instance, bloggers. Thus,
impactful research in this area was quantitative work by whereas the two quantitative articles focused on how online
Chevalier and Mayzlin (2006) and Trusov, Bucklin, and WOM affects some indicator of marketing performance, this
Pauwels (2009); behavioral work by Schlosser (2005); work considered what happens when marketers involve
and qualitative work by Kozinets et al. (2010). Chevalier and consumers in the construction of WOM in the form of stories
Mayzlin examined how online ratings/reviews of books or narratives. This led to the development of a framework of

online WOM marketing communication strategies based on with network concepts now had a mainstream context in which
consumers’ production and response to information in on- these concepts could be applied to interesting new phenomena
line communities. High-quality specialized journals also in the digital space. One of the phenomena on the horizon was
contributed to the analysis of UGC: Sen and Lerman (2007) mobile, which was gaining early attention in high-quality
reported observational and experimental work related to specialized journals (e.g., Shankar and Balasubramanian
negative UGC, a topic that would gain more attention in the 2009).
coming two eras. Dhar and Chang (2009) considered the One of the key questions during this era had to do with
amount of UGC (i.e., WOM volume) as an additional predictor who was driving diffusion in networks. On one hand, Watts
of sales, alongside traditional indicators, to show the impor- and Dodds’s (2007) simulation-based work combined network-
tance of online “chatter” in the context of music sales. Finally, and contagion-related concepts to argue that information
qualitative work by Brown, Broderick, and Lee (2007) con- spreads not necessarily because an initial transmitter (“seed”)
ceptualized websites as “primary actors” in a consumer’s online has a disproportionately large number of social contacts (i.e.,
experience and argued that the consumer–website relationship is a social hub) but instead due to characteristics of its audi-
is a key element in online community behavior. ence, how susceptible to social influence the mass audience
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given industry’s lack of clear happens to be. This work is highly cited in part because of its
direction about DSMM technology in Era 1, Era 2 also provocative nature, given that it suggests that the idea that
brought attention to the way that firms managed UGC and influencers or social hubs drive information diffusion (and
online WOM. Theoretically, Dellarocas (2006) considered corresponding product adoption) may not be the whole story
firms’ opportunities to strategically manipulate online WOM and that the other side—the audience—might also be important
in opinion forums and how this both generates firm profits to consider (cf. Coleman, Katz, and Menzel 1957; Van den
and consumer surplus. Empirically, Godes and Mayzlin (2009) Bulte and Lilien 2001).
examined “firm-created WOM” and considered whether firms This paper certainly did not settle this question, however,
should try to exogenously generate WOM where it otherwise as other researchers still sought to identify “influential”
would not exist (e.g., through viral seeding campaigns). They people. In this work, influencers were identified in terms of
found that this could be a useful strategy for products for which network-structure (positional) properties as opposed to, for
there were initially low levels of awareness. This article was a example, individual differences such as expertise or per-
precursor to the work on firm-created or firm-seeded online sonality traits. Identification in such terms was possible
WOM that emerged in Era 3 (e.g., Libai, Muller, and Peres because social network position lent itself to relatively easy
2013) and that is still emerging in 2015–2016 (e.g., Chae et al. measurement. With this knowledge, firms could then target
2016). potentially influential individuals as part of their WOM/viral/
influencer marketing programs. Three articles were partic-
Themes 2 and 3 Converge: Digital Networks as ularly important in this regard. Goldenberg et al. (2009) used
Tools for Information and Value online social networking data from a Korean website to show
that adoption by social hubs—people with disproportion-
In Era 1, academics suggested both that the Internet could help
ately high numbers of connections (i.e., “degree” in network
consumers and that it could be a vital source of marketing
terminology)—speeds up diffusion/adoption processes, in
intelligence. In Era 2, these themes converged as inquiry into the
their case, for virtual goods shared between users of the
Internet took on a distinct networks flavor, following the lead
network. Trusov, Bodapati, and Bucklin (2010) also made an
of earlier work by Goldenberg, Libai, and Muller (2001) and
important contribution to this literature by developing a
Van den Bulte and Lilien (2001). Importantly, network rep-
method for identifying influential users in online social
resentations were shown to be useful for capturing the inter-
networks, where influence is defined by having significant
connectivity among various types of marketplace actors, which
effects on the online activities of others. Katona, Zubcsek,
enabled researchers to study the extent to which different kinds
and Sarvary (2011) took a similar approach by examining
of interconnectivity and different network positions mattered.
adoption data in an online social network (in their case, a
The growing interest in networks was a function of at
Hungarian site) and showed that individual customers’
least three factors. First, as mentioned, the emergence of
network positions (degree and clustering) were predictive of
online social networks provided scholars with new inspira-
their ability to influence others to join. This delineation be-
tion for research and practitioners with new dilemmas that
tween individual roles and influence provided hinted that
could be addressed. Second, the popularity of social networks
the high degree of consumer empowerment might radically
due to work in sociology by Duncan Watts and colleagues
challenge prior business models, as discussed in high-quality
(e.g., Watts and Strogatz 1998), including concepts popu-
specialized journals (Deighton and Kornfield 2009). Con-
larized by best-selling “pop science” books (e.g., Gladwell
ceptual work in such outlets also set up the field to push its
2000; Watts 2003), meant that scholars were already inter-
focus beyond isolated individuals and toward complex phe-
ested in networks and successfully sharing this interest broadly
nomena embedded in the virtual world (Hoffman and Novak 2009;
in the population.4 Third, marketing scholars who were familiar
Nambisam and Baron 2007).
4There was also nondigital social networks research in the mar- Network concepts were also used to understand how
keting literature, such as Goldenberg, Libai, and Muller (2001) and firms could maximize utility. Katona and Sarvary (2008)
Frenzen and Nakamoto (2003), as well as books such as Van den modeled the commercial Internet as a network graph that
Bulte and Wuyts (2007), and Iacobucci (1998). linked websites according to purchased advertising links that

allowed traffic to move between websites. This was the first fraud related to advertisers wasting money (estimated to be
analytical modeling study in marketing to propose a network $7.2 billion in 2016) on online ad impressions that are
structure as an equilibrium outcome of a market-based process, never seen due to “bot fraud” (e.g., Vizard 2016). Some-
in this case, a game between utility-maximizing websites that what related to this work, Ghose and Yang (2009) studied
used digital advertising to purchase traffic from each other. A sponsored search advertising on Google, seeking to model
few years later, Stephen and Toubia (2010) modeled a digital the complex system of Adwords as a two-sided market, that
marketplace’s structure as a network of sellers in which links is, a market that responds to and relies on both consumer and
between sellers facilitated flows of potential revenue (cus- firm actions.
tomers) between sellers’ sites. Data for this study came from a
French e-commerce company that allowed individuals to set up
their own online stores (as websites) and, interestingly, to link The Perspective from Practice
their stores to others’ stores in the marketplace (to engage in In some ways, academic research in Era 2 did respond to the
“social commerce”). They found that greater interconnected- needs that practitioners had expressed in Era 1. Research was
ness among sellers—structures that facilitate easier brows- developing better understandings on topics that practitioners
ing between stores—increases total marketplace revenues. By had indicated were of critical importance to them, for example,
contrast, structures that “trap” customers in browsing “dead search/keyword advertising, and capturing the ways that online
ends” hurt revenues, presumably because the lack of browsing marketing and consumer expression/UGC activities could be
ease makes it more likely for customers to leave the market- directly related to revenue and profit.
place. This work also showed that online stores that were more However, some of the concerns from practice in Era 1
centrally located in the network—that is, more accessible from were not as focal for academics in Era 2. This may be because
other stores—earned higher revenues over time. practice-oriented researchers were working on non-DSMM
Together, these articles did three important things. First, topics of high priority. For example, at the end of Era 1 and
they provided some response to the practitioner concern the start of Era 2, MSI’s 2004–2006 research priorities placed
about converting digital strategy to quantifiable firm out- very little emphasis on DSMM. In fact, of all first- and
comes, suggesting the importance of participation in a net- second-tier MSI research priorities for 2004–2006, the only
work of businesses as a means of creating economic value. topic of potential relevance to DSMM was “incorporating
Second, to some extent, this work would form a basis for non-traditional media … in marketing mix models.” Words
research into present-day systems. For example, Stephen and such as “digital,” “online,” and “Internet” were not mentioned.
Toubia’s social commerce setting allowed individuals to Over the course of Era 2, however, marketing practitioners
behave as firms (sellers) to benefit other individuals (buyers), turned their attention to then-emergent phenomena such as
themselves (as beneficiaries of sales), and a marketplace that online social networks and social media, looking for ways to
profited from economic activity on its platform. This concept use these digital platforms as marketing channels. Indeed,
is arguably a precursor to the platform-based business models MSI’s 2006–2008 research priorities were summarized by the
present in today’s economy, in which individuals can par- theme “the connected consumer,” and one of the six first-tier
ticipate as buyers or sellers and the facilitating platform priorities for 2008–2010 was referred to as “new media.” Thus,
benefits from all exchanges (e.g., Airbnb, eBay, Uber). We it seems that in Era 2, a solid bridge between practice and
return to this discussion later. Third, the use of network- academics was forming such that research work was becoming
analytic methodologies during Era 2 constituted an important more aligned with practice-relevant topics and concerns.
advance. A strength of this approach was that data sets that Notwithstanding this closer alignment, we argue that
might be considered somewhat idiosyncratic, given their inter- there was still a lag in some respects in between academics’
national origins and specific purposes (e.g., Korean, Hungarian, efforts to argue that social media and UGC created value for
or French networks and e-commerce websites), were effective firms and practitioners’ willingness to raise their budgets
in collectively demonstrating the practically generalizable use- accordingly. Recall that articles such as Chevalier and Mayzlin
fulness of network perspectives and the importance of con- (2006); Goldenberg et al. (2009); Katona and Sarvary (2008);
nectivity and network position. Stephen and Toubia (2010); Trusov, Bucklin, and Pauwels
But echoing practitioner concerns about fraud that were (2009); and Villanueva, Yoo, and Hanssens (2008) were
expressed in Era 1, researchers also saw that danger might offering perspectives on how “connected consumers” and
exist in this highly networked scheme. Wilbur and Zhu (2009) social media–related concepts such as networking and
analyzed a phenomenon called “click fraud,” which occurs UGC were related to marketing outcomes such as customer
when search ads are deceptively clicked on by someone (e.g., acquisition, adoption, sales, and profitability. However, a prac-
a competitor, a third-party website who receives traffic-based titioner survey in 2007, for example, indicated widespread
revenue from the ads) with the intention to spend an adver- recognition that social media could be used to build a com-
tiser’s budget or to drive up a third party’s traffic revenues. petitive edge, but at that time it only received 8% of total
They considered how this theoretically could impact a search marketing spend (PR Newswire 2007). Articles later in this era
engine’s revenue and showed under which conditions click reiterated that marketers remained largely uncertain about how
fraud may benefit or harm advertisers. It is worth nothing that to effectively use social media for marketing purposes (e.g.,
the topic of advertising fraud has received relatively little Business Wire 2009), despite research indicating the value-
attention since Wilbur and Zhu (2009), although this may relevant impacts of social media–related concepts such as
change due to recent practitioner concerns about online ad UGC.

In contrast, industry sources reported that during Era 2, a result, the theories that were developed were intended to
search engine optimization (SEO) was marketers’ top pri- apply to consumers in general, not simply to special sub-
ority. Academia was not wholly unresponsive to this; a populations with unique network positions, individual traits,
number of articles considered the firm’s capacity to facilitate or knowledge. Furthermore, researchers wanted to under-
search and optimize search engine marketing campaigns. The stand how they could harness consumer power in social
study of online search keyword auctions garnered some media by trying to work out how UGC that spread through
attention, primarily from an analytical perspective (Chen, social media could best be harnessed for marketing purposes.
Liu, and Whinston 2009). Similarly, sponsored search also Finally, researchers began to examine the use (i.e., consump-
emerged as a research topic (e.g., Ghose and Yang 2009). But tion) of social media itself by studying consumer behavior on
the quantity of research produced by academics did not match specific social media platforms—particularly Facebook and
its position as marketers’ top priority, possibly because SEO Twitter, which had come to dominate the market and therefore
is a mostly tactical and operational activity that offers little offered the possibility of novel theoretical development in
potential for theory development. themselves.
Theme 1: Individual Self-Expression as a Means of

Era 3: The Age of Social Media, Amplifying or Dulling Marketing Actions
2011–2014 Recall that prior eras laid the groundwork to explore novel
As mentioned earlier, MSI’s theme for its 2006–2008 research ways that the Internet allowed consumers to express their
priorities was “the connected consumer.” This had a significant opinions, showed the marketing relevance of online WOM
carryover influence on research in Era 3. Additionally, it is (e.g., because it can affect sales), and pointed out how infor-
worth noting that 2008–2010, 2010–2012, and 2012–2014, mation or UGC spread via online social networks and social
MSI research priorities also featured many DSMM-related media platforms. In this third era, the consumers came to be
topics/questions. This makes sense, given the insights from seen as more than contributors to WOM streams, but rather as
the network-related research in Era 2 that consumers were not agents who could amplify or undermine the effect of marketing
only connected but also empowered by their online con- actions. Arguably, this recognition of the consumer’s social
nections to others. Note too that by 2010–2011, Internet usage influence power was due to the mainstream acceptance of
penetration had reached 80% in the United States. Meanwhile, social media as a ubiquitous and likely permanent market-
social networking sites were consolidating: while in 2011, ing medium. Because consumers had embraced social media
Myspace was essentially liquidated, in the same year, 250 and made it part of their means of meeting goals, construct-
million Facebook users logged in every day—representing 1 ing identities, socially interacting, seeking information, and
in every 13 people on earth. Furthermore, during this era, we learning about the world, their actions in these domains
observed the emergence of contemporary platforms that, rather could have far-reaching consequences. In combination with
than competing with Facebook, extended its reach into other this trend, researchers and practitioners were also inspired
aspects of consumers’ online and offline lives (e.g., Instagram, by technological innovation that turned purely social online
Pinterest, Snapchat, Twitter). Thus, increasingly, people both channels into exciting new marketing platforms. In theory,
were shaped by marketing and actively shaped markets; there at least, such platforms could be used for large-scale online
was no part of many consumers’ lives in which they were not WOM marketing, viral campaigns, and precisely targeted digital
“always on” and “constantly connected”—particularly due to advertising that leveraged the personal information consumers
widespread adoption of Internet-connected mobile phones were voluntarily providing both in their public social media
such as the iPhone. It was also now recognized that social profiles and through their actions on social media.
media allowed any consumer to act as both advertiser/promoter These realizations raised a number of questions. First,
and consumer for a given brand at any time. Thus, the res- what factors would drive people to disseminate content to
pective roles of the consumer, marketer, and Internet platform their contacts online, either through more conventional
as defined in Eras 1 and 2 were expanded in Era 3. online WOM (e.g., e-mail) or through social media, by
Interestingly, however, because it seemed that all con- “sharing” or “retweeting” posts? A body of literature emerged
sumers were now empowered, at least in terms of having a that attempted to study the drivers of online social-sharing
“voice” through DSMM technologies, Era 3 reduced its fo- behaviors, led by scholars such as Jonah Berger. An impactful
cus on differentiating among consumers according to their article in this area is Berger and Milkman (2012), which
positions in a network. Rather, as individuals’ online social reports a study of New York Times articles to see which
networks grew denser and social media platforms moved characteristics of the articles were correlated with “e-mail a
from their prior focus on having users amass social ties to friend” sharing behaviors. They found that high-arousal
being more about places for interactivity and content-delivery content was more likely to be shared than low-arousal con-
channels, it seemed that all consumers’ actions had poten- tent. Though still relatively new, this work has already
tial to influence. Thus, this era continued to explore online captured an average of 16 citations per year, suggesting the
WOM as a focal topic, but it more squarely placed the importance of research on content-related drivers of social
“typical” consumers—not necessarily “hubs” or “influencers” transmission. This also indicates the need to address many
or “experts”—at the heart of the most groundbreaking effects, remaining open questions, not only with respect to content-
such as virality and consumer-to-consumer interactivity. As related drivers of social transmission but also in terms of a

wider variety of factors that could influence the decision about (online WOM generated by “fans” in an online forum) had a
whether to socially share a piece of information (opinion or stronger long-run positive impact on sales than traditional
news article or branded social media post). earned media did, even though the traditional earned media
A second question that emerged in Era 3 was how con- (e.g., mentions in national newspapers) likely reached more
sumers used social media to meet their own goals. In general, people.
this stream of literature considered drivers of social media use Some of this work presents a somewhat muddy picture of
instead of drivers of specific social transmissions. For instance, the way that UGC works, however. For example, Ghose and
Toubia and Stephen (2013) considered drivers of social media Han’s (2011) empirical analysis of UGC and usage behavior
posting activity irrespective of the type of post (i.e., not in the mobile context found that when individuals consume
considering content characteristics), starting with the broad more content, they tend to produce less content, and vice
question of why people tweet (i.e., use Twitter). They con- versa. This insight is important, albeit somewhat unsur-
sidered individual drivers (instead of Berger and Milkman’s prising, because it suggests that people make trade-offs
content drivers) and focused on intrinsic and image-related between creating and consuming content in DSM settings
sources of utility from posting. Using a field experiment, they and, thus, content creation and content consumption may be
observed how regular Twitter users’ posting activity changed substitutes for each other at any given point in time. Another
as a result of increases in their number of followers over a important and fairly intuitive finding is that when people
period of time (i.e., an increase in social status on Twitter). travel, they tend to consume rather than generate content. In
Toubia and Stephen concluded that image-related utility is a addition to this work, Shriver, Nair, and Hofstetter (2013)
dominant driver (vs. intrinsic utility) of posting activity in most examined the dynamics of UGC production. They showed
cases. Importantly, Toubia and Stephen showed that as the that surfers who posted information for others in an online
number of followers a consumer had changed, so too did the community for surfers benefited by attracting more social ties
consumer’s behavior. This insight made it possible for firms and that this spurred them to generate more content. They
to customize their approach to various consumers according also found that having UGC raises overall browsing activity
to observable information and to behave in a way that was and advertising revenue for a website. Compared with Ghose
dynamically appropriate, given the consumer’s status. Note and Han (2011), who suggested a possible inverse relation-
that both Berger and Milkman (2012) and Toubia and Stephen ship between content creation and consumption at an indi-
(2013) included experimental components, whether in the lab vidual level, the findings of Shriver, Nair, and Hofstetter (2013)
or in a field study. Use of experimental methods allowed indicate a complementary relationship between content gen-
researchers to make more direct causal inferences about eration and consumption when they are considered at a more
consumers’ roles as transmitters of information than did prior aggregate (website) level.
purely quantitative or analytical methods. Also related to this work, Goldenberg, Oestreicher-
Singer, and Reichman (2012) explored another role played by
consumers in the UGC space, namely, the consumer’s role
Theme 2: User-Generated Content as as content curator. In a way that brings us back to many of
Marketing Tool the initial search–related questions raised in Era 1, this work
In Era 1 and to some extent in Era 2, digital technology had reported seven YouTube experiments in which consumers
been seen as a tool—a way to facilitate search, push out received two different sources of recommendation for videos
advertising messages, or learn about network effects. In Era to watch: an algorithm (i.e., a recommendation agent, akin to
3, consumers’ online activity and content generation itself those studied in Era 1), and other consumers who curated
became a tool for marketers. For example, Ghose, Ipeirotis, links to videos. In this landscape of enormous choice sets, the
and Li (2012) used crowdsourced content to design ranking authors found that consumers effectively brokered content
systems for hotels that would help consumers find the best between one another, allowing them to reach good outcomes
alternatives, and Albuquerque et al. (2012) and Wang, Mai, more quickly than they would through search. Again, we note
and Chiang (2014) explored the dynamics of markets after the recurrent theme of consumer search, but we note in
introduction of UGC, both in theory and in practice. particular the advances made by these authors: people can
A number of articles also attempted to demonstrate the search for content or information through their social net-
value of UGC or social media–based WOM. Moe and Trusov works, as opposed to through algorithm-driven tools such as
(2011) examined this from the perspective of social dynamics search engines or recommendation agents. Practically, this
in online review forums, linking review rating dynamics finding has important implications for the growing trend of
to subsequent ratings and product sales as a way to under- consumers curating content in the form of product recom-
stand the value of such platforms. From a different per- mendations by using popular social media sites such as
spective, Tirunillai and Tellis (2012) examined whether Pinterest that make it easy to pull together information from
UGC affected a firm’s stock performance in terms of abnormal across the Internet into a single place.
stock returns, trading volume, and idiosyncratic risk. They
found, for instance, that the amount of “chatter” affected
returns and trading volume the most, and negative-valenced Theme 3: Capturing Marketing Intelligence in
WOM also had an effect, although positive did not. Finally, Specific Social Media Platforms
Stephen and Galak’s (2012) analysis of data from a popular By Era 3, researchers started to focus on studying particular
microlending marketplace showed that earned social media social media platforms that were widely used by consumers,

thus warranting research in their own right. Perhaps because of gathering market intelligence—was gaining popularity in
this work has such high significance both to the firms who are practice. However, despite valuable academic efforts to un-
using these platforms and to the billions of consumers who derstand the ways that UGC could be used by marketers as
have made them part of their daily lives, it has tended to part of a social listening or monitoring process (e.g., Schweidel
quickly generate citations and capture popular press notice. and Moe 2014), experts said that firms still had little idea
For example, Toubia and Stephen’s (2013) work on Twitter how to convert data gathered from observing customers and
and Wilcox and Stephen’s (2012) and Naylor, Lamberton, competitors in social media into actionable insights. Simply
and West’s (2012) work on Facebook have been rapidly because firms could capture a vast amount of data did not mean
gaining citations. In part, this may be because such efforts that they were collecting the most important data, designing
present methods that allow other researchers to explore these appropriate analyses, and connecting findings to tactics that
platforms, in the lab, in the field, and as reflected in complex motivated consumers (Grimes 2013). Again, it seemed that
data, thus moving beyond the observational methods that, academic research was leading practice in this regard. How-
while offering interesting insights, make causal inferences ever, much of the academic work in this area was not adopted
challenging (e.g., De Vries, Gensler, and Leeflang 2012). by marketers as much as it should have been.
Additionally, and arguably more importantly, these articles Perhaps because integrating social media into a com-
sought to understand some psychological aspects about how prehensive marketing strategy was an ongoing challenge,
people behave on social media platforms and why they do firms continued to search for ways to extract value from their
what they do (Toubia and Stephen 2013; Naylor, Lamberton, DSMM channels and actions. For example, in 2012, Steve
and West 2012) or how using a social media platform affects Boese of Oracle stated that managers primarily wanted to
seemingly unrelated psychology such as self-control (Wilcox “extract business values from social technologies” (Roberts
and Stephen 2012). Each of the three aforementioned articles 2012). Because social media alone seemed unable to achieve
focused on the psychological characteristics and needs of con- this goal, marketers began to place great hope in mobile and
sumers as determinants of marketing outcomes. Anchoring multichannel options. Despite the fact that one of the field’s
research in aspects of consumers rather than aspects of specific first conceptual pieces on mobile had been published in 2009,
platforms may be justified; because the platforms them- practitioners still had little guidance about whether they
selves are notoriously dynamic, connecting research to should self-develop apps, place ads in existing apps, use ad
consumers’ traits, inference-making strategies, and needs networks for placements, or adopt flat-rate or impression-
may allow us to revise predictions as the forums evolve. based payment schemes—the potential appeared vast, but
strategies did not yet exist (Sullivan 2010). In spring of 2010,
Ogilvy & Mather held their first “Mobile Battle,” wherein
The Perspective from Practice practitioners discussed the potential of mobile media to
By 2010, there was little question in practice that digital mar- behaviorally and geographically target consumers, provide
keting was a crucial part of the landscape; 66% of senior time-sensitive promotions, build relationships, and provide
management were “very interested” in digital marketing, “fun” experiences (Ogilvy & Mather 2010). When asked who
a 10% increase over the prior year. Furthermore, 70% of should advertise on tablets in 2011, Darren Pereira, president
North American marketers were using SEO, a bump of 56% of Indusblue, simply answered, “Everyone” (Androich 2011).
from 2008 (Beer 2010). Furthermore, the convergence of e-mail, mobile, social, and
Given the high hopes of the period and the increasing cross-channel marketing opportunities was increasing by 2013,
amount of relevant research, however, Era 3 was a surprisingly with 78% of marketers saying that cross-channel campaigns
fallow period in terms of social media marketing’s actual were important or very important to their business—but 35%
growth. At the beginning of this era, expectations were very of them also ranked it as one of their greatest challenges
high: In February 2011, practitioners reported that 5.6% of their (Business Wire 2012). By the end of this era, challenges were
marketing budget was devoted to social media, but they also appearing on the horizon, as consumers began to use ad-
predicted that by 2015, the proportion of their budget dedicated blocking software, for instance. Whether behavioral targeting
to social media spending would more than triple, to about 18% and “precision advertising” (i.e., programmatic buying with
(Moorman 2011). On a scale from 1 to 7, where a 1 indicated a precise targeting) could overcome this backlash in a cost-
“not at all effective” integration of social media with overall effective way was unclear (Wheaton 2015).
marketing strategy at their firms, respondents reported a mean These facts all point to somewhat of a disconnect between
value of 3.8 at that time. However, by February 2014, social practice and academia in Era 3. This could have been due to a
media spending had grown by only about half, to 7.4% of total seemingly disproportionate focus on both sides on some older
marketing budget. More concerning, estimates of integration of topics at the expense of newer, potentially important topics.
social media within marketing strategy had not changed at all, For example, researchers continued to investigate online
still averaging a 3.8 on the same scale (Moorman 2014). Thus, WOM and cite prior WOM research heavily, and there was
Era 2’s work on the relationships between WOM, customer very strong interest in UGC in the form of consumers’ ratings
acquisition, and profitability, though timely and highly relevant, of products and services (as indicated by the Marketing
had yet to make a large impact on how marketers thought about Science special issue on UGC in 2012). While these topics are
social media as part of their marketing mixes. important, with the rise of social media during this era, there
Similarly, “social listening”—the observation of digital were now other forms of online WOM and UGC, which firms
behaviors, particularly in social media channels, as a means were experimenting with but academics were paying less

attention to. For example, the rise of Facebook led most firms to review 51 studies on WOM volume and valence elasticities
focus heavily on generating user engagement with brand posts and concluded that WOM volume elasticity is lower (.236)
in the form of “likes,” assuming that this type of engagement than valence elasticity (.416) but that it depends on various
might translate into outcomes such as increased awareness or product, industry, and platform characteristics (i.e., moder-
even sales. Only a few academic pieces were exploring these ators). A second meta-analysis (Rosario et al. 2016) also
actions and assumptions by the end of Era 3. suggests that we are beginning to accumulate enough
Instead, to a large extent, extant marketing literature knowledge to offer robust and nuanced findings to practice;
conflated WOM and UGC, in some cases using these terms these authors also explore the effect of electronic WOM on
interchangeably. During Era 3, research also focused dis- sales. Here, the authors find that, consistent with previous
proportionately on a few “legacy” forms of online WOM and findings, electronic WOM generally has a positive impact on
UGC (e.g., product ratings and reviews) while paying less sales, but its effects vary widely by platform, product, and
attention to newer forms such as the engagement actions metric. For example, tangible goods that are novel show a
taken in relation to content on social media platforms (e.g., strong positive effect of electronic WOM, but services do not
likes, comments, shares, retweets, favorites). User-generated show similar sensitivity to their tenure in the market. Fur-
ratings/reviews on websites are merely one type of online thermore, Rosario et al. (2016) conclude that WOM volume
WOM, and the emphasis on user-generated ratings in par- has a stronger, rather than a weaker, effect on sales compared
ticular (perhaps because they are numeric and thus easier to with WOM valence, implicating high variability rather than
manage as data instead of unstructured text) has led the negative valence as the largest threat to sales. Thus, this meta-
literature in a particular direction. This is unfortunate because analysis provides both useful insights for managers and an
one of the most interesting aspects of the rise of social media interesting counterpoint to You et al. (2015).
has been the emergence of new ways for consumers to engage Another example of new research that has reexamined
with brands and interact with other consumers on these consumer-expression topics from previous eras is Chae et al.
platforms. The marketing value-relevance of these new forms (2016). These authors link to prior work on online WOM and,
of online WOM and UGC, however, has not been extensively in particular, firm-encouraged WOM approaches such as
explored or linked with stages in the path to purchase (as “viral” or “seeding” campaigns (e.g., Godes and Mayzlin
a recent noteworthy exception, see Srinivasan, Rutz, and 2009; Libai, Muller, and Peres 2013). However, in contrast to
Pauwels 2016). From a practitioner perspective, this has prior work, they empirically examine the effects of seeding
meant that the extant literature related to social media and campaigns intended to generate UGC for a specific focal
online WOM speaks often to a special case and not to broader product on other products from competitors or from the same
notions of online social behavior in social media channels. brand but in other categories (i.e., online WOM “spillover”
An important attempt to broaden the scope of this literature effects). They are able to show, in the context of beauty/
was a special issue of the Journal of Interactive Marketing on cosmetics products discussed by consumers on a major Korean
social media in 2013, but more would yet need to be done to social media platform, that seeding a product does indeed spur
help practitioners best manage these sources of information more online conversation about that product. However, doing
and potentially, value. so also reduces the amounts of conversation about compet-
ing products in the same category (a desirable spillover) and
reduces conversation about products in other categories from
The New Era: The Rise of DSMM the focal brand (an undesirable spillover).
Culture and the Postdigital World Recent work has also revisited the earlier concept of the
Internet as a marketing tool, particularly in the context of new
In 2015 and early 2016, more than 20 articles in A-level
forms of digital advertising. As earlier noted, display and
marketing journals (published or forthcoming) have explored
search advertising have been explored in the DSMM liter-
DSMM topics. While we cannot yet quantify the impact or
ature, but articles on these topics never achieved high levels
long-run relevance of these papers, the sheer number suggests
of impact. More recently, due to the rise of social media
that we have entered into a “boom” era for DSMM research.
marketing, research has explored firm-generated or firm-
Consideration of these articles not only allows us to see how
branded content in social channels (e.g., a brand’s post on
our focal themes are continuing to evolve but also gives us
its own Facebook page or Twitter feed). In practice, this is
some idea of where the field may be headed, in terms of
often called “content marketing,” and it is now used as a
advances in data, research approach, and substantive domains.
complement to (or sometimes as a substitute for) traditional
advertising. Some work in Era 3 started looking at this idea
Themes 1 and 2 Combined: Revisiting Consumer (e.g., De Vries, Gensler, and Leeflang 2012), although purely
Expression and Internet as a Tool from a customer engagement perspective. Importantly, re-
New research in this era revisits earlier ideas and concepts in cent work by Kumar et al. (2016) also considers how firm-
a number of ways. First, how consumers express themselves generated content in social media affects sales.
online—a major theme in all previous eras, particularly in Work on more conventional forms of advertising is also
the online WOM literature—continues to be examined. An emerging currently, particularly with respect to the mobile
important example of this is You, Vadakkepatt, and Joshi advertising space. For example, Bart, Stephen, and Sarvary
(2015), who report one of the first meta-analyses in the DSMM (2014) study mobile display advertising using field data
space, focusing on online WOM volume and valence. They from a large number of mobile advertising campaigns. In

doing so, they are able to determine for which types of Damangir (2015) combined Google Trends data, which
products mobile display ads are more effective. They find provide information about consumers’ actual search terms,
that mobile display ads seem to be best suited to high- with marketing mix data related to various brand expendi-
involvement, utilitarian products, in terms of being able to lift tures and characteristics. This creative combination of data,
brand attitudes and purchase intent. Other recent articles the authors argue, makes it less necessary to perform costly
have also examined topics related to mobile advertising. repeated conjoint analyses or struggle with low-response sur-
For example, Danaher et al. (2015) study the effectiveness veys. In a similarly creative manner, Schweidel and Moe (2014)
of location-based mobile coupons delivered to customers’ combined social media posts from firms in two industries across
devices as they walk around a shopping mall, and Fong, multiple platforms with performance measures taken from
Fang, and Luo (2015) consider location-based targeting of stock prices and offline brand-tracking studies. Because they
offers sent to mobile devices according to proximities to link these sources, Schweidel and Moe develop a nuanced
competitors’ physical locations. Even more research on sentiment measure that predicts the way that chatter in the
mobile marketing is expected in the near future, including online world predicts important outcomes in the offline world.
2017 special issues on mobile in Marketing Science and the Indeed, combining multiple sources of data can unobtrusively
Journal of Interactive Marketing and a 2017 special issue capture consumer preferences in ways that optimize marketing
on connected and always-on consumers in the Journal of the spending.
Association for Consumer Research. A similar approach is taken by Kim and Krishnan (2015),
Search advertising has also been revisited in recent work. who use individual purchase data from a large Korean on-
Importantly, new analytic approaches continue to challenge line retailer to observe learning among consumers. Results
our conceptualization of search advertising. For example, show that as consumers gain online shopping experience, they
prior work was inconclusive regarding the importance of become more willing to buy products of uncertain quality.
search order: some work concluded that top positions in However, this effect occurs only for less-expensive products.
search advertising were generally preferable (Chen and He Again, this study combines transaction data with information
2011), whereas other work had identified situations in which about brands’ auxiliary communications and offline charac-
clicks might not follow ranks (Jerath et al. 2011; Katona and teristics, such as digitized video commercials and brand equity.
Sarvary 2010). However, Narayanan and Kalyanam’s (2015) In combining these data, the authors show that these auxiliary
work points out that main effects of position may be con- elements of a brand’s marketing mix can substitute for
tingent on characteristics of the brand or of the consumer. learning, overcoming consumers’ uncertainty about product
Specifically, by analyzing online advertising data from com- quality. Again, one may argue that such substitution effects
peting companies, the authors find that in the aggregate, the could previously have been contingent on experiments in
first position is preferable to the second, consistent with prior which various factors were promoted or withheld; Kim and
research. The importance of order effects may primarily hold for Krishnan’s study suggests that observation and combined data
smaller or less-familiar advertisers. However, as consumers’ reduce this reliance.
familiarity with a specific brand or desire for an exact match to
their preference increases, position effects become substantially
smaller and often disappear. Recent work by Li et al. (2016) Era 4, Thus Far
also contributes to the literature on search/keyword advertising Although this era is still unfolding, we have reason to have
by addressing the important problem of attribution in the some optimism about its perspectives. First, we are gaining
context of understanding the value of specific keywords in understanding of some topics, such as online WOM. Although
search advertising. new work should certainly be done, two meta-analyses allows
us to offer some of the first few empirical generalizations in
DSMM. Second, we are returning to the now-established uses
Theme 3: Internet as Market Intelligence Source of the Internet as a tool for consumer expression and marketing
Revisited and Improved Tools for Data Analysis intelligence, but now with greater methodological and analytic
The idea that search can be a valuable source of marketing capacities.
knowledge persists in the newest work. Happily, we can see Interestingly, the work of 2015–2016 also marks a return
clear advances over early efforts in this domain. Recall that to some of the topics that sparked the initial growth of
foundational work by Ansari et al. (2000) attempted to develop DSMM. First, we are revisiting topics related to individual
collaborative filters that would accurately predict consumer expression online, a domain that has matured to the point that
preferences. Interestingly, the same goal persists 15 years we are able to conduct a meta-analysis. Second, strong in-
later—but with arguably more convincing results. Specifically, terest remains in understanding how digital (and particularly
Du, Hu, and Damangir (2015) argue that marketers can infer social and mobile) activity generates quantifiable marketing
shifts in consumer preferences by analyzing the popularity of outcomes of value. Finally, we are improving our ability to
the words for which consumers search. In turn, marketers can gain marketing insights by observing the ways that consumers
adjust their marketing mix to leverage this knowledge. search and learn in new DSMM contexts.
Our ability to advance on this topic comes in part from Our newest revisits to these topics have a number of
a number of differences between the data available in the features that provide a snapshot of the field’s progress since
early 2000s and data available today. Whereas Ansari and its genesis. First, the articles in this space now not only
Mela (2003) faced numerous data shortcomings, Du, Hu, and describe patterns in data or report equilibria from analytic

models but also connect findings to psychological theory. Firm Use of Consumer Data and Privacy
Thus, DSMM increasingly helps to extend prior general Considerations
frameworks for studying human behavior. Second, the
Certainly, it is a positive development that we are getting
newest work combines multiple data sources and methods
better at gleaning information from digital sources. However,
in creative ways. In the first half of 2015 alone, we see
recall that in Era 1, Godes and Mayzlin (2004) questioned the
combinations of, for example, field and lab experiments,
ethicality of acquiring data from consumers’ online behavior
transaction data, coded characteristics of studies, and
without their explicit permission. Other articles had explored
Google Trends data. This approach allows researchers
the importance of trust and privacy but had not yet gained
to pinpoint moderators that would not be included in a single-
large volumes of citations: for example, Bart et al. (2005)
source data set. Perhaps more importantly for marketers, as in
analyzed the drivers of online trust in different websites and
Era 3, we see that quasi-experimental approaches, observa-
consumer segments, and Urban, Amyx, and Lorenzo (2009)
tion, and combined data sets can be analyzed in ways that
conceptualized consumer trust and privacy. Citations for
offer insights that previously required large expenditures
these articles hit their peaks in 2014 and 2015, as issues related
of time and money. Thus, this new work not only extends
to trust and privacy online once again became prominent
our knowledge but also extends our knowledge-gathering
among firms, consumers, and policy makers. Some researchers,
ability.
notably Catherine Tucker, have been working on developing
research based on issues pertaining to consumer data privacy
and regulation in online advertising. For example, Tucker
Emerging Future Research Topics: (2014) considers the trade-offs between well-targeted ads (that
Insights from Academia and Practice exploit often highly personal consumer data available to firms)
We next discuss the areas that appear to be gaining attention and consumer-perceived privacy invasion. But many questions
in this present period and highlight important areas for fu- remain: Is it ethical for firms to acquire as much information
ture research. A summary of these areas, early seed articles, as possible about consumers, even without permission?
and potentially interesting research questions is presented in How should firms respond if consumers become similarly
Table 3. We then suggest broader approaches to research that acquisitive with regard to their products, again, without
may allow us to take more of a leading role in exploring permission? How do consumers feel about their information
DSMM topics, rather than lagging behind practice, as has being used by firms for marketing purposes? These questions
sometimes been the case, or addressing issues that are not of are likely to warrant additional, multimethod research as
immediate relevance to practice. In general, by taking active consumer protection groups, industry organizations, and
steps to work with industry in the areas discussed next, we lawmakers increasingly debate their importance.
may be able to correct the asynchrony between academia and
practice that has been observed in our period of analysis, thus Multichannel and Multitasking Behavior
allowing DSMM work to develop in ways that are more
Some researchers have sought to bridge the online and offline
fruitful for all involved.
world, considering the ways that digital and nondigital
marketing activities interact (e.g., Danaher, Wilson, and
Collective Behavior and New Business Models Davis 2003; Naik and Peters 2009; Stephen and Galak 2012;
Researchers in the DSMM space have often focused on Trusov, Bucklin, and Pauwels 2009; Zhang et al. 2010).
buyers’ volitional participation in communities, most of However, as noted, practitioners in Era 3 struggled with ways
which are based in friendships or shared affinities. However, to integrate “digital” with “traditional” or ways to incorporate
little work has directly tied these social networks to mar- “new media” into existing marketing mix models in ways
keting outcomes. At this point, marketers have found ways that indisputably create value. The emerging era appears to be
to more directly take advantage of consumers’ tendency to somewhat responsive to this need (e.g., Joo et al. 2014), but we
act in groups. For example, the rise of consumer-focused believe the crossover between the online and offline worlds
crowdsourcing of innovations offers one means to exploit warrants deeper exploration. Or, rather, the omnichannel worlds
collective behavior for marketing gains. This topic has in which consumers search for products, interact with brands,
been examined by Bayus (2013), in the context of Dell’s share information and experiences, and buy products should be
Ideastorm.com idea crowdsourcing community, and in recent understood more thoroughly and deeply.
work by Stephen, Zubcsek, and Goldenberg (2016), which Recently, Liaukonyte, Teixeira, and Wilbur (2015) used a
examines the role of online networks in driving the inno- quasi-experimental design that found that firms that advertise
vativeness of consumers’ ideas in “interdependent product on television create higher sales levels in the two-hour widows
ideation” tasks online. It is also likely that we will see more around the time of their ad broadcasts, compared with firms
research into the “sharing economy” due to the growth of that do not advertise on television. The authors apply con-
services such as Uber. As collaborative consumption firms structs from consumer psychology to further untangle these
increasingly seek to differentiate themselves from tradi- effects, differentiating between action-, emotion-, information-,
tional market competitors while raising standards for quality and imagery-focused ads. While all types raise the num-
and safety, understanding the psychological experience ber of consumer transactions, they do so through different
unique to technology-enabled exchange will also increase combinations of direct visits and search engine referrals.
in importance. By using a difference-in-difference approach and regression

TABLE 3
Emerging DSMM Research Topics
Topic Early/Seed Articles Sample Questions
Collective behavior Bayus (2013); Stephen, • How does crowdsourcing work?

Zubcsek, and • How does the structure of networks affect the way that crowdsourcing
Goldenberg (2016) proceeds and the products it can create?
• What other collective activities can DSMM technologies facilitate, and
how can they be used to both consumers’ and firms’ advantage?
Regulation and digital Tucker (2014) • How do consumers respond to firms’ acquisition of their DSMM data?
consumer privacy • What are the optimal limits on the use of DSMM data for marketing
issues activities, from firm, consumer, and policy perspectives?
• How should marketers use consumer data to target ads, and how does
regulation affect these practices?
Online and offline Joo et al. (2014); • When, how, and why do consumers multitask across DSMM
crossover Liaukonyte, Teixeira, and technologies?
Wilbur (2015) • How does such multitasking affect the efficacy of marketing actions?
• How does the use of multiple DSMM technologies affect consumers and
shape their actions in the marketplace?
• How do consumers decide whether to acquire or consume online vs.
offline?
• How do online and offline marketing activities affect one another?
• What do consumers’ omnichannel experiences look like, and how should
these experiences be designed and managed?
Mobile marketing Andrews et al. (2015); • How does mobile differ from other tools in the DSMM domain?
theory development Danaher et al. (2015) • What are consumers’ goals and practices with regard to mobile?
• When is mobile a better means of reaching consumers than other DSMM
or offline methods?
• What frameworks can we construct to help us understand mobile
opportunities as technology advances?
• How can unique aspects of mobile technology (including wearables) be
used effectively by marketers?
discontinuity analysis, the authors are able to present causal important development in this literature. However, we can
arguments without conducting costly field experiments. It still benefit from testing these theories comprehensively and
is likely that new analytic techniques, coupled with rele- developing a better understanding of how the mobile and
vant behavioral theory, multiple data sources, and creative nonmobile DSMM contexts relate to each other (e.g., Ghose
methods, will help us to further understand the immersive and Han 2011; Shriver, Nair, and Hofstetter 2013). As noted
experience that consumers have with DSMM technologies in Ghose and Han (2011) and Shriver, Nair, and Hofstetter
across multiple channels and goals and, therefore, to identify (2013), results from the mobile domain appear to be a bit
the best stand-alone or combined uses of channels of both different from those found in the nonmobile context. It may
communication and sales available to marketers. New work be that these findings can be reconciled by recognizing that
that considers “social TV”—how consumers use social media mobile may present a more task-oriented focus for con-
while watching television—and how this multitasking behavior sumers, while nonmobile Internet use lends itself more to
affects advertising effectiveness (Fossen and Schweidel 2016) network building and relationship development. At present,
is a good example of this approach that will become increasingly though, such explanations are only speculative. That said, as
important moving forward. the world becomes heavily “mobile first” with respect to how
consumers use the Internet, mobile versus nonmobile com-
parative research might lose relevance rapidly. Thus, we
Toward a Theory of Mobile Marketing advocate that researchers focus on understanding the mar-
Relatedly, mobile use represents a domain of online–offline keting value of aspects of mobile technology that allow
convergence that warrants independent consideration—and, marketers and/or consumers to do things that cannot be done
importantly, will require the development of a data-driven with nonmobile technology (e.g., geo-located ad targeting;
theory. There are good reasons to push at this point for a making use of sensors in mobile devices that measure ambient
comprehensive theory of mobile marketing. This is not to say contextual attributes, or even user biometrics, in the case of
that no theories of mobile use have been offered. In fact, wearable devices).
conceptualizations of mobile marketing were described five Arguably the best way to develop a more comprehen-
to six years ago in specialized journals (e.g., Shankar and sive understanding and more generalizable theory of mobile
Balasubramanian 2009; Shankar et al. 2010). A recent review consumer behavior and mobile marketing will be to combine
and agenda-setting article by Grewal et al. (201) is also an big data with field experiments that enable consumer-level

insights. For example, Andrews et al. (2015) combine data research that offers deep or comprehensive tests of previously
from one of China’s largest mobile providers on nearly offered theory or that substantiates or refutes earlier con-
15,000 consumers with a follow-up survey that explores ceptualizations with nuance.
consumer motivations. The researchers find evidence that in This fragmentation may be a natural by-product of re-
highly crowded spaces (e.g., crowded commuter trains), search programs that tend to be data-driven rather than
people turn inward, seeing their mobile phones as a “welcome theoretically programmatic. After all, incentives exist for
relief” to the anxiety-producing crush around them, and that maximizing every data set as a stand-alone study. However,
when in this state they are more receptive to mobile adver- our fragmented approach may also be due to divergence in
tising. This is a good example of how a combination of nomenclature, reflected in the previously discussed pro-
empirical insights from large data sets and psychology-based liferation of keywords, with little understanding of whether
explanations can be used to move the mobile marketing these terms reflect the same or different phenomena. This
literature forward. level of precision may be a positive, in that researchers are not
The mobile domain also introduces the importance of attempting to conflate distinct ideas, but it may also pose a
both geographic and temporal proximity in determining the barrier to researchers who wish to gain comprehensive knowl-
effectiveness of marketing promotions, which are, in essence, edge on a given topic.
contextual factors that reflect real-world environments. In The biggest problem that arises because of this frag-
many ways, this thinking revisits some of the earliest DSMM mentation is that while we may be able to make statements
qualitative work but inverts its perspective. For example, about many discrete topics, we remain curiously mute with
recall that early work (Schau and Gilly 2003) highlighted the regard to many of the fundamental questions that practi-
way that online experiences could shape consumers’ offline tioners may have about DSMM. For example, as yet we have
lives. In comparison, the research of Andrews et al. (2015) is only one meta-analysis, and despite the evolution and breadth
entirely about how an offline contextual factor (physical of the field, the literature lacks comprehensive answers drawn
crowdedness) affects online behavior. Similar examples can from amassed knowledge from multiple studies to questions
be found in Danaher et al. (2015) and Fong et al. (2015), who such as the following:
use location-based targeting for mobile coupon delivery and
thus consider how physical proximity or geographic factors
• Why do people use social media? How has it affected their
lives?
affect both online and offline behavior because their studies
• When is social media marketing preferable to traditional
involve mobile delivery of coupons for offline products/services marketing?
(see also Luo et al. 2014). Yet another example comes in Hui • What are the key elements in a successful social media
et al. (2013), whose work considers the offline effects (i.e., strategy?
travel distance in stores) of coupons delivered in online (mobile) • Should marketers still be differentiating among consumers
formats on in-store spending. As such, mobile research offers a (i.e., doing work to identify influencers and hubs), or is this
unique opportunity to build new theories of behavior in digi- segmentation irrelevant?
tized or digitally enhanced environments where both virtual and • How important is viral content in driving sales? What is the
real contextual factors are important. sales elasticity of social transmission vis-à-vis, for example,
advertising?
• What makes a digital marketing initiative a success for firms
Not Only What, but How: or consumers? Are there metrics beyond ROI that matter?
Recommended Future Approaches • How has the consumer’s fundamental decision-making process
changed due to digital experiences and environments?
for DSMM • What is the optimal balance between online and offline
We close by discussing some concerns suggested by the first marketing?
15 years of work in this area. We offer suggestions for over- • What is the optimal balance between human and techno-
coming the threats that these tendencies may pose to scientific logically enabled interaction?
inquiry. How can this lack of answers be rectified? Of course, truly
novel contributions will continue to be highly valued by the
Addressing the Fragmentation Problem: Rewards field, particularly given the fast-paced nature of technologi-
for Breadth, Not Depth or Complexity cal innovation that underpins much of the DSMM market-
First, while we are able to outline recurrent themes across the ing space. In addition, however, we recommend that research
15 years of our analysis, we note from our macro-level that directly builds on prior work in meaningful, relevant,
analysis that the level of fragmentation in DSMM research in and constructive ways should be considered valuable con-
the top journals is high, and many interesting articles do tributions. Thus, our definition of “contribution” has to expand
not clearly speak to or build on one another. Generally, the to include new inquiries into and extensions of prior work.
pattern has been for high-quality specialized journals to offer Following calls in the behavioral literature (e.g., Lynch et al.
conceptual pieces or single-study observational models on 2015), replication work is also needed to learn whether DSMM
broad topics but to do little to offer comprehensive tests. effects are stable over time and across methods. It is not
Work in the more general journals then tends to bite off single necessarily a concern if prior effects fail to replicate; in fact,
pieces of such theory or segments of a model, as allowed by this may be a likely outcome in this dynamic domain.
their data or experimental design. What we seem to lack is However, finding out which effects are more or less stable will

be crucial in building more timely and helpful paths to norms for certain types of DSMM data and/or research
practitioners. For those findings that appear to be less stable settings.
over time, understanding this variation (e.g., identifying new Another issue is the tendency to herd toward a narrow
boundary conditions) will help move the field forward in conceptual emphasis: WOM. While understanding “buzz”
useful ways. One example of new work that does this is Saini and social transmission behavior in online environments is
and Lynch’s (2016) work. This study provides a conceptual certainly important, and it is good to have two meta-analyses
replication of prior econometric findings that brand famil- on this topic, it is not the only goal with which marketers
iarity effects are more important for purchases made online approach DSMM. These technologies are used by marketers
than offline (e.g., Danaher, Wilson, and Davis 2003), to do many things such as build brand communities, foster
using experimental methods. Saini and Lynch also extend consumer engagement, nurture consumer–brand relation-
these findings to show that the advantage of offline settings ships, gather market intelligence, service customers, procure
for unfamiliar brands lies in the brick-and-mortar environ- and test new product ideas, drive traffic to websites, generate
ment’s ability to provide sensory information. leads, source content, and instigate offline behaviors such as
Another way to make progress is for researchers to join increasing customer traffic to brick-and-mortar retail outlets.
forces to work on common data sets that help them address In short, WOM (and then sales, or some other revenue-related
big questions. This has not tended to be the norm in mar- outcome) is not the only reason why marketers use DSMM
keting, although it has in other fields. For example, in technologies. Therefore, the extent to which the DSMM
computer science, many common data sets are available for marketing literature has honed in on WOM is somewhat of
researchers to use. Interestingly, some of these data sets a concern. Moreover, as we remarked earlier, much of the
are provided by companies (e.g., Netflix, Yelp). To some online WOM (and UGC) work focuses on special cases of
extent, the infrastructure for such an endeavor is already in WOM, such as online reviews/ratings.
place. For example, the Wharton Customer Analytics Ini- Of course, if our use of DSMM as a laboratory for WOM
tiative regularly obtains data sets from companies and were yielding massive quantities of truly novel insights, we
makes them available to teams of researchers who qualify might justify this disproportionate focus. However, another
for access; MSI has also been involved in these types of reason that our disproportionate focus on WOM is prob-
initiatives. Thus, having multiple teams of researchers working lematic is because the WOM literature does not regularly and
on common data sets (and, thus, related—but not necessarily conclusively demonstrate that online WOM is in fact dif-
identical—questions) is not without precedent and should be ferent from offline WOM in ways that matter for marketing
encouraged. (a notable exception is Lovett, Peres, and Shachar [2013]).
A third recommendation is for researchers to employ Online WOM, particularly in the age of social media, is
multiple methodological approaches, a tactic that has in- probably different in a number of important ways because it
creased in use in the last two eras of our discussion. For can take on many more forms (e.g., sharing a photo of oneself
example, an empirical analysis of a large real-world data set using a product on Instagram is unlikely to be the same as
might identify a particular effect of interest and establish consumers talking about durable goods such as refrigerators
its relevance. This might be followed by experiments that “over the backyard fence” in the 1950s). However, the im-
try to pinpoint causal mechanisms. Using multiple types of portant question is not so much whether online and offline
approaches to attack big and messy problems can help avoid forms of WOM are different but, rather, whether these dif-
the fragmentation described earlier. It will also help over- ferences are important for marketers to know about. For
come shortcomings in the literature whereby we find evi- example, WOM can travel more quickly and have a greater
dence for the existence of a particular effect but do not reach online than offline, but is the underlying mechanism
understand why it occurs (e.g., from an empirical analysis through which the information influences consumers’ atti-
of a large, real-world data set from a company), or vice tudes and behaviors markedly different?
versa, that is, whereby we understand an effect but do not These two issues of focus (exclusive focus on one’s own
know whether it occurs in the real world (e.g., on the basis of data and overconcentration on WOM) will be difficult to
small-scale experiments). address. Solutions to the former, as with the problem of frag-
mentation, will likely rely on cooperation among scholars,
who may be able to show that new methodologies that ad-
Fostering a Broader Focus: Avoiding Myopic dress their own data deficiencies may also help mine new
Methods and Overconcentrated Concepts insights from previously explored data sets. The second issue
A second concern is one of article-internal focus. As indi- will require at least two things: first, more careful listening to
cated by our initial keyword analysis, a large number of the world of practice to understand the many uses of DSMM
articles specify methodological advances as a major part and outcomes researchers would like to capture as effects of
of their contribution. Clearly, for any given author team, WOM; and second, an attention to past literature that pushes
methods are important. Of course, it might be the case that us to define our contributions in terms not of our novel
very specific data characteristics call for very specific model domain but in terms of existing theory. We hope that the two
applications (which is entirely appropriate for empirical meta-analyses presented in this area thus far offer good
marketing science research more generally). Nevertheless, starting places for this work, as will the development of new
it is surprising to see a proliferation of idiosyncratic data- techniques to identify causal relationships between online
analytic approaches instead of the emergence of certain and offline behaviors.

Time Problems: Topic Transience and exception of DSMM research that has used time-series data to
Technological Pace look for short- versus long-term effects (e.g., Moe and Trusov
2011; Stephen and Galak 2012; Tirunillai and Tellis 2012;
While academia and practice are not always out of step, our
Trusov, Bucklin, and Pauwels 2009), most studies in the
comparison between the two realms tends to suggest that a
DSMM literature represent single points in time. That said, in
frustrating asynchrony may persist. Part of our tendency to
many cases time-series data exist because data points are
fall out of step with practice may be our fascination with
spread across some observation window, but researchers do
transient topics without much regard to their likelihood of
not (or perhaps cannot) exploit the time-series nature of their
enduring relevance. New technologies and novel data seem to
data to examine effects over time. A longitudinal perspective
draw considerable interest among researchers, often due to
is important due to all of the problems outlined earlier.
convenience or opportunity (e.g., when a researcher has a
Longitudinal studies allow us to see how things change over
nice data set “fall into their lap” from a company) or driven by
time, which is particularly important in a fast-paced envi-
idiosyncratic attraction to a particular platform that might
ronment such as DSMM. If phenomena change over time,
not reflect broad relevance among marketers (e.g., interest in
then understanding why they change is important. Alter-
now-obsolete virtual worlds such as Second Life). Reliance
natively, if they are robust to changes in time, then that is also
on these approaches can lead to disproportionate amounts
important to know.
of effort going into the study of phenomena that are not
immediately or enduringly relevant to important stakeholder
groups and that are ultimately not cited by later researchers. In
addition, given the time it takes to complete the publication Conclusion
process, by the time an article is published, the phenomenon There is much to like about the way that academic research
or digital platform under study may no longer be particularly has approached DSMM in the past 15 years, and there is a
relevant (e.g., research on group buying or daily deals plat- great deal of opportunity moving forward. We have seen a
forms such as Groupon). proliferation of topics, an evolution of methods, and con-
Again, this concern makes it even more crucial that tinued enthusiasm for this domain. From its roots on
DSMM researchers work to close the academic–practitioner the fringe of marketing research and practice, DSMM is
gap. We have noted that in the past, MSI has played a role in now represents a mainstream subfield within marketing on
creating a bridge between these two sides of marketing, and the academic side, drawing interest across methodological
some researchers (such as Christine Moorman, in her annual and philosophical boundaries. In practice, we are rapidly
CMO survey, and the Wharton Customer Analytics Initiative, entering a “postdigital” world in marketing, where the siloed
as discussed earlier) provide useful data; thus, inventing an thinking that divided marketing into “digital” and “tradi-
additional bridge is not what we advocate. Rather, we want tional” (or everything else) is being replaced. Instead, we are
to see the bridge and information used by more researchers at a point in practice where digital marketing is just mar-
(particularly early-career researchers), more frequently, and for keting, simply because almost all marketing activities a firm
more than data acquisition. Some researchers do this already, might consider now can have some kind of digital aspect.
either on their own (e.g., through relationships with compa- Our hope is that this article provides insights about the
nies, consulting work, and executive education) or through way this domain has developed, as our perspective on DSMM
organized efforts (e.g., MSI’s roundtable initiatives that bring has increasingly highlighted its transformational power in
together marketers from noncompeting companies on a regular business and consumer life. As these transformations con-
basis to talk about issues facing them, accompanied by a senior tinue, we hope that recognizing the key ideas on which we’ve
marketing academic). However, this tends to favor the better- gained—and failed to gain—ground can help researchers
established senior academics who have developed industry contribute in meaningful and relevant ways while avoiding
relationships over the years. Researchers at all career stages pitfalls that can threaten scientific progress. Many challenges
will avoid chasing potentially transient topics with better ac- certainly lie ahead, but collaboration, the application of the
cess to practitioner experience and insight. wide range of methods used by marketing academics, and
Finally, we propose that the issues of pace may be strong relationships with practice can help create an exciting
addressed by adopting longitudinal perspectives. With the future for DSMM research in marketing.
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Cait Lamberton & Andrew T.

A Thematic Exploration of Digital,

Online Supplement: http://dx.doi.org/10.1509/jm.15.0415

O and practitioners have witnessed a major trans-

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B: Factiva Mentions per Major Topic in Popular Business Press

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3,000 Theme 1: The Internet as a Platform for Individual

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Theme 1: Individual Self-Expression as a Means of

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Collective behavior Bayus (2013); Stephen, • How does crowdsourcing work?

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Additional References Used in the Study

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