E-Marketing

• Author: Jensen Zhao
• Pages: 234-235

Page 234

E-marketing is a process of planning and executing the conception, distribution, promotion, and pricing of products and services in a computerized, networked environment, such as the Internet and the World Wide Web, to facilitate exchanges and satisfy customer demands. It has two distinct advantages over traditional marketing. E-marketing provides customers with more convenience and more competitive prices, and it enables businesses to reduce operational costs.

As businesses offer e-marketing and online shopping, customers can get market information from their computers or cell phones and buy goods or find services without leaving home twenty-four hours a day and seven days a week (24/7). They can read ads on the Web or from e-mail, get e-coupons, view pictures of goods, compare prices, and make purchases with a few clicks of their mouse, saving the time and money it would take to shop in person at a brick-and-mortar store. At the same time, ebusinesses can reduce costs in distribution channels and physical store space and thus pass the savings on to customers.

To make e-marketing effective and efficient, managers of e-businesses need to know online customer behavior, e-marketing techniques, costs and benefits of emarketing over traditional marketing, and pitfalls and legal issues of e-marketing. A discussion of each of these aspects follows.

ONLINE CUSTOMER BEHAVIOR

In the late 1990s online shoppers were mainly well-educated, high-earning, twenty- to forty-year-olds. By 2003 online shoppers represented a broader demographic, with an average age of forty-four years and an average annual household income of $65,000. Of these shoppers, 50 percent were female and 50 percent were college graduates. According to a 2004 report from the U.S. Department of Commerce, in 2003 searching for product/service information was the second most popular online activity after e-mailing or instant messaging and 77 percent of U.S. Internet users age fifteen and older shopped online. E-customers researched products and services that they were considering for purchase online. Their final purchases, however, may not have been made online.

Several reasons are behind the reluctance to purchase online. Studies published in 2003 and 2004 reported that 25 percent of e-commerce sites do not display a phone number...