Generating Value Through Online Interaction: Individual and Situational Differences

Although companies try numerous ways to engage consumers through the online communication channel, consumers have their own preferred level of interactivity at a certain time. The mismatch between such preferences and the interactivity companies provide can result in the poor performance of an otherwise nicely designed online marketing message. Existing research on the online medium, however, has failed to capture such critical individual and temporal differences in interaction preferences. The purpose of this paper is to propose a new construct — interaction readiness — that describes consumers’ ability and willingness to interact in an online environment. It argues that it is often the match or mismatch between interaction readiness and the actual level of interactivity provided (rather than the actual interactivity level itself) that defines consumers’ responses.