Impact of E-Commerce on Marketing

Marketing is one of the business function most dramatically affected by emerging information technologies. Companies can use the web to provide ongoing information, service and support, creating positive interaction with customers that can serve as the foundation for long term relationships and encourage repeat purchases. Even cyber shopping allows customers to sit in the comfort of their homes and purchase their goods. One can shop any kind of product or service in the mid of the night and from any part of the world.

During the agrarian economy, probably the term marketing was not used for trade in agricultural goods or sale of other items. But people engaged in the process of exchanging goods and services used the barter system, in this system, buyers and sellers knew each other and there was mutual dependence on each other for survival during this period. The essence of barter system can be summarized as follows:

      Buyers and sellers knew each other.

      They operated on mutual co-existence principles

      There was no dominance relationship.

      There was a high level of loyalty among the sellers and buyers.

During the industrial age the marketing term was coined to signify the need for identification and satisfaction process. In this system manufacturers/sellers did not have a face to face interaction with consumers, which led to problems for producers in understanding customer needs. To avoid this problem marketers are using different tools like advertising, direct marketing and E-commerce to exploit the gullible customers.

Electronic Commerce

According to Ravi Kalakota and Andrew B Whinston, "E-Commerce is the process of buying and selling or exchanging of products, services and information via computer networks including the internet. Electronic commerce can take many forms depending on the degree of digitalization of the delivery product/ service sold, the process, and the delivery agent or intermediary. A product can be physical or digital, an agent can be physical or digital, and the process can be physical or digital. These create eight cubes, each of which has three dimensions. In traditional commerce, all dimensions of the product, an agent and the process are physical and in E-Commerce all dimensions are digital that is pure E-Commerce, where Enhancement male prescription customers are receiving goods or services in digital format.

Benefits of E-Commerce on marketing

It provides many potential benefits to consumers and organizations. These are:

      It enables customers to shop or do other transactions round the clock a day, all year around, through any part of the world.

      It provides customers with more choices; they can select from many vendors and from more products.

      It allows quick delivery, especially in case of digitalized products like music and books.

      It makes it possible to participate in virtual auctions.

      It allows customers to interact with other customers in electronic communities and exchange ideas as well as compare experiences.

      It allows customers to receive detailed and relevant information within seconds.

      It facilitates competition, which results in substantial discounts.

      E-Commerce expands he marketplace to national and international markets. With minimal capital outlay, a company can easily and quickly locate more customers, the best suppliers and the most suitable business partners worldwide.

      It allows reduced inventories and overhead by facilitating ‘pull' type supply chain management.

      It reduces the time between the outlay of capital and the receipt of products and services.

      It decreases the cost of creating, processing, distributing, storing and retrieving paper based information. Apart from this benefit it attracts improved image and customer services.

Impact of E-Commerce on marketing

      Product promotion: Electronic commerce enhances promotions of products and services through direct, information-rich and interacting cheap buy ampicillin contact with customers.

      Direct saving: The cost of delivering information to customers over the internet results in substantial savings to senders.

      Customer Service: Customer service can be greatly enhanced by enabling customers to find detailed information online.

      Brand Image: Newcomers can establish brand or corporate images very quickly through net and affordable cost.

      Advertising: Traditional advertising used mass or direct – one way – communication to persuade customers to buy their products and services. In the electronic period, it is interacting communication – two way- aims at customers to browse, explore, compare, question and even customer design the product configuration.

      Customization: The ultimate luxury can get is in terms of custom designed products and services. The net offers a tremendous opportunity to understand customers needs one at a time and offer customized products and services.

      Order making process: Taking orders from customers can drastically be improved if it is done electronically, this saves time and reduces expenses, so sales people have more time to sell their products or services.

      Intermediaries: In traditional marketing middlemen are supposed to provide pace and time utilities to the ultimate customer, but advancement of information technology is turning intermediation in to disintermediation.

      Customer Value: Traditional marketing tries to maximize the value per transactions; here customer attraction is big target. But in electronic marketing, the marketers are trying to form relationship with customers and they are looking for long term value maximization.

Conclusion

Day by day, technology is getting sophisticated and costs are crumbling, making the internet easy and cheap to access. Eventually, even for buying a product from a shop situated near to home, the customer may use the internet to place order, and may get the product delivered immediately. The integration of electronic commerce and marketing will bring a renaissance in marketing function.

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About the Author:
S.Saravanakumar, MBA, M.Com, M.Phil, (Ph.D)
Asst Prof
JKKNCET,
Komarapalayam
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comments.

2. Pictures speak a thousand words

To make your blogging worth browsing and to increase the time someone spends on each post, put some pictures in it. This does not mean your blog has to be billboard of yourself or company. Any eye-catching photographs will do as long as they go along with the theme of your blog post in some way and aren't offensive or too adult in nature.

3. Create constructive, helpful blogs

Even if you are free to write anything you want, it would be better to write something that would be beneficial to your readers.

Blogs that get stumbled, posted on digg, and bookmarked offer more than just entertainment, they teach someone something.

4. Avoid making your posts too complicated

In order to have a popular blog, try not to use highly technical or isolating terminology or  words. After all, it is not a graduate discourse or a debate you are giving. Stick to simple facts and short blogs (less than 250 words per post).

Keep in mind that most people who use the Internet do more scanning than scrutinizing each post word for word anyway. Therefore, it would be better to come with blogs that will not bore your readers with lengthy articles.

5. Make your blog interactive

Audio and Video clips increase the interactivity of blogs, so do contests and puzzles. Remember the games on the back of a cereal box as a kid? Try posting something like that every now and then to break up the monotony.

You should always have an area for comments. In this way, you can get some impressions or reactions from real people about your posts. Who knows? You might even gain some friends or valuable links just by making people feel online Ampicillin at home on your blog site.

Indeed, blogs are not created just for fun. They should serve a purpose to contribute to the ever-growing content of the internet.

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About the Author:
The author is a frequent contributor to several high-ranking niche blogs, including New York Custom Labels Blog
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Many years ago I had a professor whose favorite saying was, "It's the simple things that elude people." It's not a new idea of course, but it is an important one, often associated with 14th century English logician William of Ockham. Occam's razor as it is commonly referred to states that "entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity" which in pop culture terms has been interpreted as meaning 'the simplest solution is most often the best.' It is also pretty clear that old Ockham would have been a big believer in what we now call the 'Paradox of Choice' as coined by Barry Schwartz in his book by the same name. The Paradox of Choice basically describes how customers intent on buying from you, don't, because they are confused with too many options; to paraphrase Ockham, features or options must not be multiplied beyond what it takes to get Best diet in cheappillsonline.net an order.' In fact, it is pretty well understood by those of us who actually study how to communicate a marketing message that a focus on an emotional benefit is what works, not another new feature.

The implications of this seemingly simple insight into decision-making are quite significant for marketing executives: features are out; emotional and psychological benefits are in. Ah, but what emotional benefit, there's the rub. I will assume that if you are reading this you are interested in improving your business and that you are open to new ways of doing things, and that starts with new ways of thinking about things.

Finding Your Emotional Benefit

Finding your emotional benefit is really not that hard if you know where to look. The extended version of Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is the place to start. Every product or service needs to fit into at least one level of the psychological hierarchy from basic survival, to ‘be all you can be' self-actualization. Every successful brand has its place on the hierarchy.

The Web was recently all abuzz with the success of the Old Spice commercials featuring Isaiah Mustafa. Many analysts chalked its success up to the social networking aspect of the campaign but as much as that may have helped initially, it also over-exposed it, shortening its effective run. There were lots of things the Old Spice campaign got right, it was kind of a perfect-creative-marketing-storm, but the one thing that actually drove its success was the emotional value proposition – Old Spice will make you more attractive to women, and sex is one of Maslow's basic needs.

The Key Component To Marketing Is Establishing Want

How do you improve your business, how do you increase your sales, how do you sell more stuff? And how do you simplify the process so you narrow your focus down to a manageable marketing communication concept - a brand. Following our pal Ockham's advice, the answer is simple, concentrate on why people should buy from you.

What customers want is the key component in today's materialistic consumer environment, especially in a marketplace that breeds competitive brand alternatives like rabbits breed bunnies.

Why people should buy from you is not the same as why they should buy your product or service. If you are a monopoly then the answer is easy, people have two choices, to buy from you or not at all. But most companies aren't so lucky. Most companies have competition either selling the exact same products and services or substitute products and services.

What customers' think they need is only one criteria of the decision-making process; in fact, want invariably plays a large role in establishing what people think they need. For most products and services, need plays only a superficial role in what people actually buy. What your audience wants is really the decision-clincher, a fact that should be at the center of all your marketing.

How To Sell Anybody Anything On The Web

According to management consultant David Fields of Ascendant Consulting there are six basic sales criteria.

Know: A potential client must know you exist if you want to make a sale, that's pretty obvious. This aspect of the sales process has led to an obsession with search engine optimization and social networking. What needs to be remembered is that knowing of your existence, as important as it is, is only one of the six sales criteria.

Like: Your intended audience may know who you are, and what you do, but that doesn't mean they care, or that you have any chance of getting an order: for example, you may be able to name a half-a-dozen different kinds of apples but when you go to the supermarket, you don't buy just any apple, you buy the one you like best.

If you don't like a company ampicillin online you will find somebody else to buy from. Just because you're good at what you do or sell the best product on the market doesn't mean a thing if people don't like your company. How often have you sworn-off a company because the person on the telephone was uncooperative. That company may have thousands of employees and a customer service manual three inches thick, but if the minimum wage call center person is a jerk, you'll find yourself someone else.

Need: Every client has needs but in the final analysis those needs are a highly over-rated motivating factor when it comes to buying a specific product or service from a specific supplier. You may need an accountant but you have many options from which to hire. You may need drywall to complete a project but you can buy it from a dozen different local building supply dealers. There are very few products or services for which you can't find an alternative or that can't be purchased from multiple vendors.

Want: Of all the sales criteria listed the most important one is want, what you want ultimately overrides all other considerations, even trust and affordability. I once had a teacher who road the bus to work every day for twenty years until he saved enough money to buy a Mercedes – granted he was crazy but you get my point. You may need a mobile phone but you want an iPhone; you may need a new suit but you want a Boss suit; you want your audience to want your company.

Trust: People are leery of companies they don't trust. Trust is an important factor in building a long-term business relationship. Companies that engage in unethical practices or who cross the ethical marketing line may get one order, but they will never build a long-term business relationship or customer loyalty.

Afford: And then there is money, there is always an issue when it comes to what things cost but surprisingly it's not even close to the deciding factor in many purchases. Often companies think that cutting prices is the surefire method of attracting more business, but depending on the company, brand, category, and target audience, cutting prices may have the opposite affect. Every company has budgets, and no one would suggest that companies buy things they can't afford, but sometimes it is better to wait until you can afford the optimum solution instead of making-do, and ending up with a second rate or mediocre result.

A Final Thought

As complicated as Web marketing has become with the myriad of digital advertising options available, the only real way you can move forward is to break things down to a series of simple decisions based on the fundamental aspects of human nature. People need to feel connected and they need to feel good about your company. We all inherently know this but for some reason find it more comforting to put our faith in technological solutions that you may, or may not really understand, and that often make no real-world practical sense.

People are people and they are all motivated by the same natural hard-wired instincts. Your job is to find the one motivating factor that will get your audience to salivate over your brand, and present it in a way that will make your company the one company everyone wants to do business with.

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About the Author:
Jerry Bader is Senior Partner at MRPwebmedia, a Thornhill, Ontario based website design firm that specializes in delivering their North American, Australian, and British clients' marketing messages using the latest audio, video, and interactive Flash presentation techniques to create compelling, informative and memorable Web-experiences that enhance brand personality and increase sales and profits. Visit http://www.mrpwebmedia.com, http://www.136words.com http://www.sonicpersonality.com. Contact at info@mrpwebmedia.com or telephone (905) 764-1246.
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Strategic Content Planning

So we've all heard the saying "Content is King".  Well, I took the step to perform a Google Search on the term.  Sure enough, the first result was a Wikipedia definition that I will share with you.  Per Wikipedia – "Content is King is a current meme when organizing or building a website.  Text content is particularly important for search engine placement.  Without original content, most search engines will be unable to match search terms to the content of a site."  There you have it… SEO 101.  Thank you for your time.

You might say, "ok – I get it.  Now what?" Or rather ask, "What content? How much content? And when exactly do you need content?"  I'll answer in this order.  What content? – An answer your Bayshore Solutions' buy ampicillin online marketing strategist will deliver and manage upon confirmation of your online objectives, timeline, and commitment.  How much content? – Similar response as the first question, with content ready to be delivered to market quickly (time to market), efficiently (cost Buy a prescription online to market) and effectively (through SEO best practices) by way of technology through the use of a Content Management System, such as Bayshore Solutions' WebModules. And finally, When do you need it? – Begin collecting and organizing your current content assets today.

Bayshore Solutions' answer to content includes a step by step process as outlined:  Plan, Create, Optimize, Distribute, Measure, Plan – Devising content plans that outlines deliverables and associated ownership.  These include customer, keyword, and competitive research as well an overall website sitemap development.  Create – Creating content that is not only website copy but also content within press releases, articles, blogs,podcast, and video.  Optimize – Optimizing content for search engines including keyword, link building, readability, and paid advertisement context.  Distribute – Distributing content through PR Web, Social Marketing, Syndications, and other Digital Outlets.  Measure – Evaluating the performance including impressions, traffic, and leads that convert to sales at the lowest possible cost per acquisition.

Fresh, directed, action-driven content provides answers to website visitors.  The process outlined above and a commitment to the principle that "Content is (in FACT) King" is the catalyst for your next online marketing campaign and long-term business growth.

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About the Author:
Ian Dyer is Vice President of target="_blank" href="http://www.bayshoresolutions.com/">Bayshore Solutions - a web design and interactive marketing agency in Tampa, Florida.
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