Marketing on the Internet [antikvár]

Preface The Internet is the first exciting, significant marketing tool to emerge in many years. New opportunities create lots of questions, however. How can firms leverage new technologies to maximum benefit? How much commitment should marketers make to Internet programs? Is our market online? In this book, we attempt to answer these and many other questions—some developing even as we wrote the text! We believe that the Internet is emerging both as an extremely useful tool for business planning and also as part of a company's marketing mix. As planning tool, the Internet search and resource sites can aid any discipline by opening a high-speed gateway to a wealth of information. In addition, the Net is a vehicle for marketing research. The Net also assists with text-based communication: one-to-one e-mail conversation and e-mail conferencing via newsgroups and mailing lists. In the marketing discipline, the Internet serves as distribution channel, conamunication medium, and fertile ground for new products. It has also lowered marketing costs and put tremendous downward price pressure on products sold online. Marketers use the Net for direct distribution of digital products (e.g., news stories and live radio) and for electronic retaiUng. The Net marketing communication function includes advertising to the tune of over $1 biUion in 1998, pubhc relations, and sales promotion (e.g., coupons and sweepstakes). Finally, Internet technologies have created the opportunity for a variety of innovative products for creating, delivering, and reading messages as well as services such as search engines, stock trading, and interactive games. What's next? Several popular books exist to shed light on the problems, opportunities, and techniques of marketing online, and we have used them in our classes with some success. This textbook is different in five important ways. ¦ First, we explain Internet marketing not as a list of ideas and techniques, but as part of a larger set of concepts and theories in the marketing discipline. The Internet is, after all, just one of many tools marketers use. To this end, readers will find marketing concept reviews with Internet examples throughout. We strongly believe that Internet strategies are more likely to succeed if selected using the marketing planning process, especially as the Internet grows to maturity and competition intensifies. After the shakeout there will only be room for the best. ¦ Second, we highly recommend that marketers learn a bit about the technology behind the Internet, something most of us are not drawn to naturally. While it is not necessary to be able to set up commerce servers, knowledge of the possibilities for their use will give savvy marketers an advantage in the marketplace. This book attempts to educate marketers gently in important technology issues, showing the relevance of each concept. ¦ Next, this book does not cover Web site design. This is a topic we love to teach, our students enjoy learning, and one that is included in many Marketing on the Internet courses. We did not include it in this book both because we felt it