The effect of sample & email marketing on (re)purchase behavior in online retailing

Purpose – this research aims to examine the purchase behavior of consumers in the online selling of interior products by a startup company. This paper measures the relationship between the first order and future orders a customer places. Trying to understand what the value and quantity of those orders will be and how they influence each other. Furthermore, two different marketing techniques, free sample marketing & e-mail marketing, are investigated for their effect on the purchase intention of online consumers throughout the online customer journey. Design/Methodology/Approach – A quantitative analysis is conducted based on real-life order and marketing data of a startup company that sells technological interior products solely online. Data is extracted from their e-commerce platform, email marketing tool and BI software. Linear and binary regressions are conducted to examine the relationship between the different variables. Findings – Free sample marketing had a positive significant effect on the customer profitability and order quantity of online consumers of the analyzed company. Furthermore, no explicit linear relationships were found between first order and retention order & between email marketing and retention orders. However, the research did show that when the engagement with emailing was high, the probability of retention was higher.