E Business w2 assignment

CH. 3 Summary

In this chapter, you learned that businesses are using six main approaches to generate revenue on the Web, including: the Web catalog, digital content sales, advertising-supported, advertising-subscription mixed, fee-for-transaction, and fee-for-service models. You learned how these models work and what kinds of businesses use which models (or combinations of these mod-els). You also learned that some companies have changed revenue models as they learned more about their customers and the business environment in which their Web sites operate. Changes in technology have also driven shifts in some companies ‘choice of revenue models. Companies sometimes face the challenges of channel conflict and cannibalization either within their own organizations or with the companies that have traditionally provided sales distribution to consumers for them. In accordance with the network model of organization that you learned about in Chapter 1, companies doing business online sometimes form strategic alliances with other companies to obtain their skills in Web site operation. By understanding how the Web differs from other media and by designing a Web site to capitalize on those differences, companies can create an effective Web presence that delivers value to visitors. Every organization must anticipate that visitors to its Web site arrive with a variety of expectations, prior knowledge, and skill levels, and are connected to the Internet through a variety of different technologies. Knowing how these factors can affect the visitor’s ability to navigate the site and extract information from the site can help organizations design better, more usable Web sites. Enlisting the help of users when building test versions of the Website is also a good way to create a Web site that represents the organization well. Firms must understand the nature of communication on the Web so they can use it to identify and reach the largest possible number of customers and qualified prospects. Using a many-to-one communication model enables Web sites to effectively reach potential customers.

CH 4 Summary

In this chapter, you learned how companies can use the principles of marketing strategy and the four Ps of marketing to develop a marketing mix that achieves their goals for selling and promoting their products and services online. Some companies use a product-based marketing strategy and some use a customer-based strategy. The Web enables companies to mix these strategies and give customers a choice about which approach they prefer. Many companies are using storytelling techniques to establish consistent branding messages across all media (online and offline) channels they use to connect with customers. Market segmentation using geographic, demographic, and psychographic information can work as well on the Web as it does in the physical world. The Web gives companies the powerful added ability to segment markets by customer behavior and life-cycle stage, even when the same customer exhibits different behavior during different visits to the company’s site. These additional segmentation capabilities can lead to one-to-one online marketing approaches that result in greater relationship intensity than most non-online approaches. Companies have developed a number of ways to categorize customers in these relationships and can design marketing messages tailored to customer needs. Online advertising has become more intrusive since it was introduced in the mid-1990s, even though research has shown that users find such ads to be irritating. You learned how companies are using various types of ads, including banners, pop-ups, pop-behinds, text, inline text, and interstitials to sell products and services online. Permission marketing and opt-in e-mail offer alternatives that can be used with or instead of Web page ads. Context-sensitive text ads are a rapidly growing form of online advertising that users find less intrusive than other online advertising media. Many companies are using the Web to manage their relationships with customers. By understanding the nature of communication on the Web, companies can use it to identify and reach the largest possible number of qualified customers. Technology-enabled customer relationship management can provide better returns for businesses on the Web than the traditional unaided approaches of market segmentation and micromarketing. Firms on the Web can use rational branding instead of the emotional branding techniques that work well in mass media advertising. Some businesses on the Web are sharing and transferring brand benefits through affiliate marketing and cooperative efforts among brand owners. Others are using viral marketing strategies in online social media to increase awareness of their brands and the size of their customer bases. Successful search engine positioning and domain name selection can be critical for many businesses in their quests for new online customers. The most important theme in this chapter is that companies must integrate the Web marketing tools they use into a cohesive and customer-sensitive overall marketing strategy.