Does online media sequence matter in product marketing?

Recently, integrating multiple online media to achieve synergistic effects has become more and more popular, and this is primarily driven by emerging online interactive media. Scholars and practitioners are interested in the relationship between online media sequence and consumer persuasion. However, how online media sequence influences consumer persuasion is not fully understood. Previous studies have had inconsistent conclusions about media sequence on this relationship. Using the media congruence hypothesis and primacy effects as our theoretical foundation, we investigate how consumer persuasion, mainly reflected as message acceptance and message responses, is influenced by different types of online media sequence and product types. The results show that the interaction between them type affects consumer persuasion. For search products, the sequence of first online broadcast media and then online interactive media makes consumers be higher in message acceptance and message responses. For experience products though, online interactive media then online broadcast mediamake consumers prone to higher message acceptance and message responses. Message acceptance mediates the effect of online media sequence on message responses also. This study contributes to the empirical research on onlinemedia synergy and integrated marketing communications, and has practical implications that we discuss also.