Contemporary Research in E-Marketing_9

198 Andreini begin at a specific starting point for negotiation (e.g., list of potential suppliers), or without a specific starting point for negotiation (e.g., personalized research). Even in this case, the Internet proves to be an extremely suitable interactive means, in particular for reducing negotiation times, usually very long and costly in terms of resources. The Internet is also very efficient at extending the bargaining to elements other than price, and using different software, the sales proposals can be personalized according to the features of the product or the services that are complementary to the sale. Sellers can also construct automatic negotiation systems with the customer to reduce costs and the risk of human error. Finally, one particular negotiated price strategy is the purchase aggregate, that is, the simultaneous purchase of the same product by many buyers unknown to one another, the demand for which is aggregated on the Internet site with the aim of achieving a discount on the bought quantity. Last, there are the strategies of price at auction, which were traditionally used for very targeted sectors, such as the antiques or furniture sector. The Internet has allowed this model to be widened to more markets, so that the search for peculiar products or an excess in production have has allowed auctions to be used by potential online customers. In this way, search costs, particularly for rare items, decrease and suppliers have the possibility of reducing warehouse excesses. There are different types of auctions and the company may select the most suitable according to its product. • “Name your price”:16 the starting price is not specified by the seller, it is left to potential customers to suggest the ideal price. The enterprise will then verify the fairness of the price with respect to its internal conditions. • Reverse auction: in this case, it is the customer that activates the auction and suppliers participate until they arrive at a price which is as near as possible to that requested by the customer. • Bargaining: these are market places in which sellers and buyer meet and bargain in an unstructured way. It can therefore be concluded that if, on the one hand, Internet eases the comparison of price between the different online offers for the user, putting many enterprises in difficulty, on the other hand, it gives the enterprise a wide choice of pricing strategy, more flexible and involving compared to more traditional strategies. Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. The Evolution of the Theory and Practice of Marketing 199 Advertising The third component of the marketing mix here considered is the so-called communication, promotion, and advertising. Communication has already been fully dealt with in the paragraph above; in this section, the contents regarding promotion and advertising will be analyzed. Among the elements that make up a marketing plan, communication—even in its advertising aspect—is the key factor for the commercial development of the Internet. The Internet has, in fact, all the characteristics of interactivity, integration of texts and moving images, entertainment, high dynamism and updating, and above all of flexibility toward consumers’ needs. Moreover, the Internet enjoys a wide possibility of targeting communication through thematic sites, portals, search engines, and the interactivity itself with the consumer. And last, the Internet is the mass media with the lowest advertising contact cost. Because of the above-mentioned unique characteristics of this virtual instru-ment, the definitions of marketing and advertising are not so clear; this difficulty often arises from the impossibility of drawing a line between the neutral communication for the construction of a marketing relationship and actual commercial advertising. Much more than in other media, on the Internet advertising merges with written contents or with technical and value information. It is easy, in fact, to find online editorials with direct links to the companies that offer the products in questions, or banners connected to the kind of news search online, the so-called advertorial. In his study on Web advertising, Ducoffe (1996) shows that more than 75% of his sample survey considers shopping guides, online catalogues, graphic displays of products, and offers for free samples as commercial advertising, not as information.17 As far as online communication is concerned, in the fifth paragraph we dealt with the substantial difference between the “push” and “pull” nature of the traditional communication strategy as compared to the online communication. It has also been considered how the technological framework and culture developed on the Web do not allow intrusive policies of mass marketing. The choice of being involved or not in an advertising policy is left to the consumer. In this way, advertising is more effective, as it is aimed directly to people who are really interested and self-selected. Examples of pull online advertising activities are as follows (Subramaniam, Shaw, & Gardner, 2000): • Banners: they are advertising images present in Internet sites that are aimed at the traffic of users interested in the advertised company. The Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. 200 Andreini online user, at his/her discretion, can click on the banners and directly enter the company site or the page dedicated to the offer advertised. • Buttons: they include only the name or the brand of the product. Such buttons can be used by companies to create brand awareness, as they are constantly present on the Web page. • Advertising on key words: it is an advertising software situated in the search engines which autonomously connect to advertising banners linked to a text or to key words typed directly in the search engine. • Interstices (gap): ads that, like television commercials, can be audio or video. When the user clicks on a specific topic, a separate window opens with advertising connected to that topic. • Advertising on request: it is a new instrument used by some Internet sites. The first in Italy was www.google.com which gives the possibility of viewing advertising banners only by specific request of the user. Another existing version is the possibility given to the user of eliminating advertising present on the Internet site he/she is visiting. Intrusive advertising aims to reach and foster the needs—not yet evident—of the possible consumers toward the company’s products. The aim of such strategies of online advertising is to study methods that can connect in some form the push culture of the traditional marketing with the pull culture of Internet. The list of “push” advertising techniques which follows, with the indication of some devices, should be considered mainly for the “pull” culture of the Internet instrument (Schlosser & Kanfer, 2000): a) E-mail marketing: to avoid spamming and benefit from the e–mail market-ing technique, messages should be sent only to users who have directly requested information to the company. The addresses of the bidders or users could be supplied by specialized or targeted infomediators. b) Discussion groups: these thematic and virtual meeting points represent good opportunities to advertise company products and services. But before sending commercial messages to all discussion groups more or less relating to the company products, the specific scope of the virtual community should be analyzed, considering all netiquette rules, that is, written and not written regulations for the participation in discussion groups. c) Target: the best target to address “push” advertising ventures are users who have already responded positively to other activities of direct market-ing, such as home shopping or mail orders through catalogues. These users are more positively disposed toward Internet marketing ventures than Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. The Evolution of the Theory and Practice of Marketing 201 traditional consumers, possibly because they are used to remote buying and searching information through texts, without the necessity of a physical approach to goods (Schlosser, Shavitt, & Kanfer, 1999). d) Customization: companies should give up mass marketing messages in favor of more customized messages. A way to begin with the targeting of messages is to prepare messages suitable to the interests of newsgroups or to specific requests for information received by the company. e) Interaction: creating a dynamic and interactive Internet site helps the company to be in tune with the online consumer, who will consider the interactive Internet site as a reference point for his/her shopping. f) Advertising integration: it is important for the company to use all the available information channels to advertise its Internet site, but it is important that the advertising policy developed online is consistent with the one traditionally adopted by the company. For example, it is important to exactly indicate the specific Internet address of the products on special offer, rather than leave the Internet address of the home page which would cause the user to get lost while searching the product offered on the company Internet site. Once the surfer has been persuaded to visit the Internet site, advertisers must also find the way to get him/her to visit it regularly. Promotional games, contents, serialized stories, updated news, and any other material regularly and frequently updated may help in keeping an Internet site always active. Hoffman and Novak (1994) state that the play aspect of the surfing instruments of the Internet sites help the netsurfers to concentrate more on the interactivity. High levels of playfulness in the man–machine interconnections are related to higher experi-mentation levels. Games, surfing or fluidity are the basic elements for a steady permanence of surfers on the sites, as well as the continuity of their visits. As for the rating of the effectiveness of advertisements (Subramaniam, Shaw, & Gardner, 1999), as mentioned earlier, the new technologies allow the advertisers to better identify the individual behavior of the buyers, both when searching for and purchasing the product. The number of entries (access) to a home page, the repeated visits for each individual customer, the number of internal pages visited, and the amount of time spent on each page are all data that are easily gathered on the Internet. These statistics can be used to measure the contacts, the frequency of visits, and the interest level of an Internet site. Moreover, it will be easier to distinguish the effectiveness of an advertisement from the effectiveness of the product advertised. Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. 202 Andreini Distribution At the beginning the Internet seemed the instrument that could create a highly transparent and informative environment, where the producers could exchange goods and information directly with the final consumers, thanks to the low contact costs. But as the few years of experience online have demonstrated, “the complete de-brokerage is an unattainable myth” (Kalakota & Robinson, 2000). The company must decide where and how to present its product online: search engines, portals, medium-sized Internet sites, or even personal sites. These are the new digital brokers that have come up in the net economy and that, like the old agents in the business world, live on sales commissions. Therefore, contrary to what was thought at the beginning of the Internet era, that the Internet was believed to be a commercial instrument capable of eliminating all intermediary figures between producers and final customers, today it is evident that the online brokerage is a highly developed and profitable business model. Therefore, Coase’s law (1937) is once again reconfirmed and the three kinds of transaction costs have allowed the birth and the flourishing of online brokers: • Research costs: they relate both to the survey costs of the products and to the costs for the search of suppliers. • Negotiation costs: such an activity is less developed in B2C. If, hypotheti-cally, even for the final consumers, a fixed price or a previous negotiation on behalf of the broker did not exist, they would have to spend time and resources negotiating the price and the delivery and payment terms every time. • Coordination costs: the customer would have to carry out further re-search to find out whether there are complementary products that can replace or be added to the goods of his/her interest. As mentioned more than once before, on the Internet it is possible to easily access the information one may need to make a decision and coordinate complex activities, virtually in real time and at a low cost. But all this has not eliminated the need to rely on business brokers to reduce the above-mentioned brokerage costs. Indeed, the Internet is a virtual place based on such a quantity of information that often confuses the users, who then have to spend time to evaluate the sources, coordinate the contents and bargain over the goods and services offered online. For this reason, on the Internet there is a proliferation of brokers, who under the condition of acquiring the trust of the users, are Copyright © 2006, Idea Group Inc. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of Idea Group Inc. is prohibited. ... - tailieumienphi.vn