Brandon Custafson’s Three Minute Thesis
Online Affiliate Engagement Strategies and Customer Relationship Outcomes
Affiliate marketing is a nascent research area with many avenues of exploration. In this dissertation, I provide insight into the affiliate marketing sales process and elaborate on the importance of investigating the relationship exchange between affiliates and customers. In doing so, I conduct a field examination and interview affiliates to determine the affiliate engagement strategies used to connect with customers. My finding reveal that affiliates take a relationship building approach to connecting with customers by providing predominantly economic, technical learning, or social support customer value. Following, I conduct a series of studies to determine the customer relationship outcomes of trust, commitment, gratitude, and community, customers ascribe to affiliate after engaging with their web content.
The focus of Brandon’s research is to investigate the marketing strategy phenomena related to business-to-business and sales. Currently, his research centers on the relationship outcomes from a third party sales agents’ engagement with customers. This includes the development of marketing theories derived from qualitative research methods, experimental design, and econometric modeling to test hypothesized relationships. Long term, his research will address marketing questions relevant to both scholars and practitioners thereby contributing broadly to the areas of marketing and management.