The Online Customer Decision-Making Styles as Marketing Innovation Strategies for the New Normal

Abstract

Purpose. This research contributed to the customer decision-making style (CDMS) theory in the online framework (eCDMS) to unravel new orientations and segmentation to generate marketing innovation strategies for the new normal firms. Methodology. It is based on a literature review designing a model and questionnaire applied to 400 Mexican online customers (May-Aug, 2021). The dataset is analyzed under Covariance-Based Structural Equation Modelling (CB-SEM), Cluster Analysis, and one-way-ANOVA multivariate methods. Findings and Originality. The obtention of an empirical model with 9 factors, 24 indicators as new online customer decision-making styles orientations (eCDMS orientation), being quality, brand, and customer experience the most relevant. Besides, we obtained four new online customer groups (eCDMS Segmentation) that we called: marketing followers, price searchers, convenience shoppers, ethics& reputation keepers. The originality is based on a framework proposal about the discussion of new online consumers after the COVID-19 pandemic as the first insights to conform to an online customer decision-making style (eCDMS) theory.