ARC: Community: ELMAR: Posting

areas: direct: call

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Date: Mon,  2 Oct 2006 13:12:26 +0800
From: "Indranil Bose" <bose@business.hku.hk>

Call for papers

Special Issue of
Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce

Theme: Quantitative models in support of direct marketing in electronic channels

Guest editor: Indranil Bose, The University of Hong Kong

Direct marketing activities are “communications where data are used systematically to achieve quantifiable marketing objectives and where direct contact is made, or invited, between a company and its customers and prospective customers”. The aim of direct marketing is to classify customers, so that personalized advertising and promotion activities can be targeted to specific classes of customers. Such an approach is gaining importance at present. According to a recent report issued by the Direct Marketing Association, the total direct marketing advertising expenditure of $161.3 billion is expected to generate $1,850.6 billion ($1.85 trillion) in increased sales in 2005, or 7.0% of the US $26 trillion total sales in the US economy. The traditional channels for direct marketing include telephone and catalog mail. Nowadays, due to the proliferation of the Internet and mobile telecommunication networks, new channels are catching the attention of direct marketers and they include email, short messaging service (SMS), multimedia messaging service (MMS) and instant messenger services. There is evidence that direct marketing in these non-traditional channels can be extremely profitable.

The fundamental problem of direct marketing that marketers and scholars want to solve is how to target customers who are most likely to respond positively to marketing activities. One group of tools used in this area include quantitative research models such as logistic regression, discriminant analysis, clustering, and machine learning techniques such as neural networks, decision trees, support vector machines, self organizing maps, among others. These quantitative models can help marketers do various tasks, such as customer segmentation, customer lifetime value evaluation, and customer targeting. The challenge remains in the integration of these quantitative models with the non-traditional channels so that marketers can deliver advertising and promotion information to customers effectively and efficiently.

This special issue will focus on advancing research in quantitative models for direct marketing by publishing forward-thinking, rigorous research that stimulates future research on designing, managing, and evaluating direct marketing activities in non-traditional channels in today’s rapidly changing marketing environment. The special issue will encourage research using quantitative models to solve different types of problems in direct marketing ranging from strategic to operational decision making. Research from diverse academic disciplines such as information systems, marketing, operations management, strategic management, and other related areas are welcome for this issue. This special issue seeks original manuscripts that are previously unpublished and that present an interdisciplinary approach in solving problems related to direct marketing.  

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to the following:

• Models for customer targeting in electronic channels
• Models for customer profiling in electronic channels
• Models for predicting customer behavior in electronic channels
• Personalized marketing models for Web based marketing
• Direct marketing models for wireless devices
• Location and context sensitive wireless marketing models
• Recommendation based models for direct marketing on the Web
• Models for content design and development of advertising on the Web
• Direct marketing using machine learning models
• Models for customer churn management
• Models for up-selling and cross-selling activities
• Models for identification of potential customers
• Models for combining search with direct marketing on the Web
• Evaluation and assessment of direct marketing models for electronic channels
• Case studies on application and/or assessment of models for electronic marketing

Editorial review board:

• Apurva Jain, Associate Professor, University of Washington
• Benjamin Yen, Associate Professor, The University of Hong Kong
• Bennett Yim, Associate Professor, The University of Hong Kong
• Dirk Van den Poel, Associate Professor, Ghent University
• Michael Chau, Assistant Professor, The University of Hong Kong
• Piyush Kumar, Associate Professor, The University of Georgia
• Riyaz Sikora, Associate Professor, University of Texas at Arlington
• Sagnika Sen, Associate Professor, California State University Fullerton
• Selwyn Piramuthu, Associate Professor, University of Florida
• Vincent Lai, Professor, Chinese University of Hong Kong

Tentative dates:

• 1 August 2007: Due date for full paper submissions for special issue
• 1 October 2007: Outcomes of initial screening sent to authors
• 1 January 2007: Outcomes of first round reviews sent to corresponding authors
• 1 April 2007: Due date for resubmission of papers with required revisions
• 1 July 2008: Final decision
• 1 August 2008: Due date for authors of accepted papers to submit papers formatted according to instructions
• End 2008: Target publication date of special issue

Instructions for submission:

A submitted paper must not have been published, accepted for publication, or presently be under consideration for publication elsewhere. A standard review process will be used to select papers for the special issue. Any paper that fails to meet the required revisions after the reviews will be rejected. Electronic submission is required. The manuscript in PDF format must be emailed to the guest editor. Please specify "JOCEC Special Issue Submission" in the "Subject" of your e-mail message. The submitted manuscripts should follow the formatting guidelines specified on the JOCEC web site at http://www.leaonline.com/loi/joce. Please refer to the same web site for more information about the journal.

For questions regarding the special issue and manuscript submission please contact the guest editor by e-mail.

Indranil Bose
Associate Professor
School of Business
The University of Hong Kong
e-mail: bose@business.hku.hk

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