Electronic Marketing

Question - four broad classifications of commercial internet web-sites: Communications, Ordering, Transacting and Delivery.

Using this framework as a basis, discuss the factors influencing consumer behaviour on the internet, and identify the role marketing managers can have in increasing the use of commercial internet web-sites by consumers.

Answer : "The growth of online shopping and companies' desire to capture a large share of the existing and future Internet market, necessitate an understanding, amongst others, of the impact of users' demographic characteristics on attitudes towards purchasing over the Internet. Such knowledge will assist managers to better understand and segment their markets and design appropriate marketing communication strategies. In this essay, a sample of a few Internet users was used to analyse attitudes toward buying online. The findings indicated that gender and occupation had an influence only on attitudes concerning perceptions of the competitiveness of the Internet and its impersonal nature.

The essay provides an analysis of the data, a discussion of the findings and their managerial implications and offers directions for future research."

Internet users en

World Internet Users Statistics 2010

Internet users by country world map

As the approach to a new millennium, the Internet is revolutionizing the society, the economy and the technological systems. It is not known for certain how far, or in what direction, the Internet will evolve. However its importance should not be underestimated.

Over the past century and a half, important technological developments have created a global environment that is drawing the people of the world closer and closer together. Computer resources are infinitely flexible tools; networked together, they allow generating, exchange, sharing and manipulating information in an uncountable number of ways. The Internet, as an integrating force, has melded the technology of communications and computing to provide instant connectivity and global information services to all its users at very low cost. (Kahn and Vinton, 1999, p.1)

Ten years...