Innovations In Behavioral Marketing And Essays - E-commerce

Innovations In Behavioral Marketing And MARKETING MANAGEMENT TERM PROJECT ?Innovations in Behavioral Marketing and Electronic Commerce? Date: June 15, 2000 Table of Contents Preface1 ? . Introduction ? . Benefits of Electronic Marketing ? . Effectiveness of E-Commerce I. Ways for Promoting your Website II. Learning about your Visitors III. Segmenting your Internet Market ? . E-Commerce in Lebanon I. Lebanese Companies on the Net II. Customer Adaptation to E-Commerce Websites ? . Conclusion I. Introduction An online marketing channel is one that a person can reach via computer and modem. A modem connects a computer to a telephone line so that the computer user can reach various online information services. There are two types of online channels: Commercial Online Channels: Various companies have set up online information and marketing services that can be accessed by those who have signed up for the service and pay a monthly fee. The best-known online services are: CompuServe, America Online, and Prodigy, with more than 3,200,000, 3,000,000, and 1,600,000 subscribers respectively. These online channels provide subscribers with five main services: information (news, libraries, education, travel, sports, reference), entertainment (fun and games), shopping services, dialogue opportunities (bulletin boards, forums, chat boxes), and E-mail. The Internet: The Internet is a global web of some 45,000-computer networks that has made instantaneous and decentralized global communication possible. Originally established to facilitate research and scholarly exchanges, the Internet is now available to a much broad audience, some 25,000,000 people. Users can send e-mail, exchange views, shop for products, and access news, food recipes, art and business information. The Internet itself is free, though individual users may need to pay a commercial service to be hooked up to it. II. Benefits of Electronic Marketing Why have online services become so popular? First, they provide three major benefits to potential buyers: Convenience: Customers can order products 24 hours a day wherever they are. They do not have to sit in traffic, find a parking space, and walk through countless aisles to find and examine goods. And they do not have to drive all the way to a store, only to find out that the desired product is out of stock. Information: Customers can find reams of comparative information about companies products, and competitors without leaving their office or home. They can focus on objective criteria such as prices, quality, performance, and availability. Fewer hassles: With online services, customers do not have to face salespeople or open themselves up to persuasion and emotional factors. Second, online services also provide a number of benefits to marketers: Quick adjustments to market conditions: companies can quickly add products to their offering and change prices and descriptions. Lower costs: Online marketers avoid the expense of maintaining a store and the accompanying costs of rent, insurance, and utilities. They can produce digital catalogs for much less than the cost of printing and mailing paper catalogs. Relationship building: Online marketers can talk with consumers and learn much from them. Marketers can also upload useful reports, or a free demo of their software, or a free sample of their newsletter, onto the system Consumers can then download these items into their electronic mailboxes. Audience sizing: Marketers can learn how many people visited their online site and how many stopped at particular places on the site. This information can help the marketers improve their offers and ads. Clearly, marketers will want to consider using online services to find, reach communicate, and sell. Online marketing has at least four great advantages. First, both small and large firms can afford it. Second, there is no real limit on advertising space, in contrast to print and broadcast media. Third, information access and retrieval are fast, compared to overnight mail and even fax. Fourth, shopping can be done privately and swiftly. However, online marketing is not for every company or for every product; thought has to be given to if, when, and how it should be done. III. Effectiveness of E-Commerce In order for your company to be effective in its electronic commerce, some conditions must be satisfied. For example, your company should promote its web site properly in order to attract visitors who are the company's potential customers. Thus the more the visitors, the higher the probability of having more customers. Another point of concern is the size of the Internet, which constitutes