10.4 Online marketing
As mentioned earlier, online marketing (or Internet marketing) can be viewed as a subset of e-commerce although the lines are becoming increasingly blurred. As Herbig and Hale (1997, p. 97) explain, 'the Internet is a marketing channel that is presently being used as an avenue for advertisers, marketers, and society by and large to find the right combination of marketing mix utilities that best suit the customer's needs'.
In this section we will review the impact the Internet is having on marketing strategy including the marketing mix. To begin with, read through the following article that suggests the use of 4Cs for online marketing.
Reading 10.5
Shea, P. 2002, 'Emarketing in infospace', Marketing & eBusiness , May, pp. 60-63.
Activity 10.3
Shea (2002) discusses the 4Cs for marketing online. Write down a brief note on each of them and write a couple of sentences on whether this is a useful approach.
The Internet and thus e-commerce has emerged as a leading technology enabling purchases to be made electronically via debit cards, or much more commonly, credit cards. Your text provides the statistic that some 65 per cent of non-cash transactions in Australia were carried out via a digital network even though only one per cent of Australian adults pay bills or transfer funds over the Web. If these figures appear surprising, think about when was the last time you purchased a product via the Internet instead of from a brick and mortar retailer.
Consider this
Why are consumers hesitant to use the Internet for purchasing products, yet some will happily provide their credit card details over the telephone system?
Perhaps the major use of the Internet in a business sense so far has been for communication purposes. We can all attest to the attempts at communication when we are surfing the Web in terms of the number of advertisements on banners, on pop-up screens and within the Web pages themselves. Turn now to the following readings that discuss how to improve the marketing of web sites, provide guidelines for using email marketing, and how to manage the growing use of mobile phone marketing.
Reading 10.6
Fradkin, M. 2002, 'Marketing your web site', Marketing , November,
pp. 42-43.Reading 10.7
Rosenfield, J. 2003, 'De-horning email's devil child', Marketing , March, pp. 44-45.
Reading 10.8
Newell, C. 2001, 'Seven steps to e-mail success', B&T Weekly ,
11 May, p. 16.Reading 10.9
Kelly, T. 2003, 'The new wave in marketing', Professional Marketing , January/February, pp. 18-21.
Table 10.2 provides further examples of how businesses are using the Internet based on a sample of 555 information technology decision-makers. Note for example that the 73 per cent of US and UK businesses use the Internet for marketing whereas French companies do little marketing this way.
Table 10.2 How businesses worldwide are using the Internet
as at August 2001 (as a percentage of respondents)
|
US |
Japan |
Singapore |
Denmark |
France |
UK |
Internal or external email |
93% |
87% |
80% |
81% |
87% |
91% |
Marketing |
73% |
28% |
57% |
59% |
9% |
73% |
CRM or customer service |
68% |
14% |
35% |
34% |
19% |
51% |
Selling goods and/or services |
50% |
29% |
21% |
22% |
4% |
51% |
Order fulfillment |
37% |
9% |
10% |
11% |
11% |
29% |
Internal training |
57% |
6% |
6% |
18% |
8% |
35% |
Wireless access to the Internet |
35% |
43% |
29% |
21% |
36% |
49% |
Knowledge management |
52% |
11% |
28% |
9% |
21% |
46% |
Employee schedule management |
33% |
11% |
2% |
7% |
4% |
27% |
Supply chain management |
27% |
2% |
13% |
4% |
1% |
21% |
Source: adapted from Web of Culture (2002)
Your text discusses other Internet-based communication techniques such as Web page personalisation, spamming, online eyeball-to-eyeball encounters, synchronous marketing and permission marketing. The reading also explains how marketers attempt to evaluate the effectiveness of both direct and online marketing.
In your text
Kotler et al. (2004) Chapter 18, pp. 699-708, 'What is online marketing?' and pp. 718-725, 'Evaluating direct and online marketing results'.
Activity 10.4
What are the three roles of the Internet in commerce and government? Write a sentence on each.
As you may have gathered, the Internet is much more than just an advertising tool. Besides providing many of the features of brick-and-mortar stores, the online or virtual shop allows customers to find out many more details about products at their convenience 24 hours a day seven days a week (24/7), ask questions by sending emails, and purchase products online.
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