Reading Minds from Reading Patterns: A Field Experiment on the Effectiveness of Consumption-based Targeting in E-Book Markets

To examine the effectiveness of consumption-based targeted promotion strategies in the e-book context, we established a field study with 11,000 participants in cooperation with a major e-book company. As opposed to purchase-transaction data that are commonly leveraged in retail environments, consumption patterns may provide novel and deep insights into consumers’ value consciousness, preferences, and other personal usage traits. The general findings obtained from the study revealed that consumers with low completion rates are more receptive to coupon promotions than those with high completion rates. Likewise, consumers who exhibit concentrated reading patterns are more likely to redeem coupons than customers who display distracted reading behaviors. Consumers who register low completion rates and engage in concentrated reading have the highest response likelihood among the groups with varying consumption patterns. Conversely, book readers with high completion rates and strong propensities for distracted reading are the least likely to redeem promotional coupons