Goal-Directed and Exploratory Search under Competing Demands for Attention: The Influence of Promotional Tools on Online Search Behavior

The Internet has spawned a host of online promotional tools such as email ad, banner ad, search ad, and shopping bot. Most website managers employ multiple online tools to attract prospective customers, yet there is little conceptual understanding of how those tools differ from one another. We present a theoretical model to compare the role of different online promotional tools in consumer behavior. The central thesis is that the online...