Management Awareness of How to Integrate Internet Effectively for Marketing

Management Awareness of How to Integrate Internet Effectively for Marketing

Executive Summary

The majority of the initial application of the Internet to the requirements of business came from IT staff. This has altered, with most of the impetus as well as energy now coming from the marketing department. Since the use of the Internet, for marketing purposes, turns out to be more and more significant it is imperative for marketers, and other managers, to completely recognize the potential and abilities of the technology. Very frequently the accomplishment or collapse of a company's Internet investment is judged exclusively on its capability to produce new sales. This underestimation of the potential is often the consequence of a failure to think the full range of presented services and their capacity to help the business all together. When evaluating the success of Internet applications, decision makers have to be aware of the extent of the audiences that can be tackled as well as the multiplicity of possible applications. Brand awareness plus corporate identity will uphold their importance. Without doubt, the strength of brands will become, if anything, even more important as customers, when navigating the enormous and complex market place of the World Wide Web, will be attracted to the security and acquaintance of known brand names and products. The generation of sales demonstrates the way and the opportunity to sell to new customers by means of the web is an attractive prospect for the majority companies and one which has encouraged several to make the initial investment. Sadly, it is often the case that the volume of quality leads plus business generated is disappointing; making an early disenchant with the medium. This failure to match expectations can result from an inadequate level of investment though more likely from the failure to evaluate the appropriateness of the World Wide Web for the task. (Stroud 1998). Thus rather than merely looking for new sales prospects, companies have to take a broader view of the Internet's potential and search for the ways in which it can be integrated into all areas of sales activity.

Introduction

The evolution of the internet marketplace has been fast and furious. Most business-to-consumer developments have centered on consumer products and services, the products and services most affected by price and convenience as purchase factors. The most successful brands have developed in a seemingly haphazard way. Many Internet start-ups moved into an industry with little concern for traditional brick-and-mortar stores and grabbed the spotlight. Others built niche positions by creating tools and value for consumers searching for deals on the Internet. The current state of the market is both booming and confusing. (Hardaker and Graham 2001). The organizations that waited to see whether the Internet was merely a passing fad have either been fired or retired from the business. The rest of the world has awoken to new challenges for the speed and environments in which they must work. Determining how to meet these challenges has created reactions ranging from mild concern to outright terror. Clearly there is a difference between deciding what to buy and actually buying on the Internet. Studies continue to confirm that consumers are out there making decisions about what they want to buy using the Web as a sophisticated research tool, but many are often still buying via traditional stores.

In many cases it is difficult for consumers to acquire a product locally; in other cases the distribution channel has not yet given up on the retail end of its pipeline. As a result, the cries of disintermediation in the marketplace have turned out to be false. At least so far. This situation is a function of which products consumers can find on the Internet and whether they sense they are getting a good deal. Take the example of shopping for an automobile. At least until some recent changes were implemented in the dealership areas, this was a stressful consumer activity. Now, armed with the Web, consumers are able to do some serious comparison shopping regarding features, performance, and price. This situation is good for consumers, but often frustrating for businesses. (Many of the major automobile manufacturers, for example, were upset when Microsoft's carpoint.com provided more information about their vehicles than they provided on their own sites.) Of course, consumers still have to drive down the road to the dealer to complete their purchase. (This trend is changing, with more than 25 percent of all cars expected to be purchased on-line in 2000.) (Dholakia 2002). Although the test drive will continue to be important, a time will come when test driving will be easy and without obligation and consumers will pay one price for a car based on market demand. GM's Saturn division, formed in the late '80s, has managed to squeeze new success from a mature market by taking a careful look at the details of the complete customer experience. Staying close to the consumer will be the mark of many new business-to-consumer programs.

Early views of the Internet marketplace by traditional brick and-mortar operations ranged from "I hope this will go away soon" to "Let's set up a task force and take the beach." Both strategies were destined to fail. Businesses that viewed the Internet strictly as the enemy also failed. Most traditional off-line businesses now understand that the Internet is not a destination, but a marketplace. (Lewis and Lewis 2005). With Net users now approaching 200 million strong, it's only a matter of time until they turn into consumers of products and services on the Web. The amount of money being poured into capturing market share, mindshare, demographics, and information to provide the most appropriate products is staggering. The world of one-to-one marketing for the individual consumer is evolving and will move from being a new marketing focus to being the dominant model. Targeting the right consumer with the right information in this marketplace will change the way business is done.

Now the most common error, after considering the use of the Internet, is to consider simply the application of making sales from new customers. Another mistake is to consider only applications that use the WWW relatively than also considering how e-mail and push technology can be useful. (Hardaker and Graham 2001). In many cases the Internet will be completely inappropriate for new business generation but might have substantial scope for generating business from current customers, dealing with the media, supporting the sales channel and so on. (Lewis and Lewis 2005). There is a long list of audiences that use an important influence on an organization's activities comprising