Focus on online branding

What comprises a successful online brand? Is it an e-commerce site with high levels of traffic? Is it a brand with good name recognition? Is it a profitable brand? Or is it a site with more modest sales levels, but one that customers perceive as providing good service? Although sites meeting only some of

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E-marketing Actions

The actions component of e-marketing planning refers to activities conducted by managers to execute the plan. Questions that need to be resolved when specifying actions include: What level of investment in the Internet channel is sufficient to deliver these services? What will be the payback? What training of staff is required? What new responsibilities

E-marketing Control

The control element of the e-marketing plan can be achieved through a combination of tra­ditional techniques such as marketing research to obtain customer views and opinions and novel techniques such as analysis of web-server log files that use technology to monitor whether objectives are achieved. These techniques are reviewed in detail in Chapter 12

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The new Napster changes the music marketing mix

This case about the online music subscription service Napster illustrates how different elements of the mix can be varied online. It also highlights success factors for developing an online marketing strategy since Napster’s proposition, objectives, competitors and risk factors are all reviewed. The Napster brand has had a varied history. Its initial incarnation was

What is e-CRM?

The interactive nature of the web combined with e-mail communications provides an ideal environment in which to develop customer relationships, and databases provide a foun­dation for storing information about the relationship and providing information to strengthen it by improved, personalized services. This online approach to CRM is often known as ‘e-CRM’ or ‘electronic customer

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Conversion marketing in E-commerce

For managers to assess and improve the effectiveness of their customer relationship manage­ment implementation, evaluation using the conversion marketing concept is useful. In an online context, this assesses how effective marketing communications are in converting: Web browsers or offline audiences to site visitors; Site visitors to engaged site visitors who stay on the site

The online buying process

Companies that understand how customers use the new media in their purchase decision­making can develop integrated communications strategies that support their customers at each stage of the buying process. Considering mixed-mode buying or how a customer changes between an online channel and an offline channel during the buying process is a key aspect of

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Customer acquisition management in E-commerce

In an online context, ‘customer acquisition’ can have two meanings. First, it may mean the use of the web site to acquire new customers for a company as qualified leads that can hope­fully be converted into sales. Second, it may mean encouraging existing customers to migrate to using online for purchase or service. Many

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Focus on marketing communications for customer acquisition in E-commerce

1. The characteristics of interactive marketing communications To best exploit the characteristics of digital media, it is important to understand the differ­ent communications characteristics of traditional and new media. In this section, we look at eight key differences: From push to pull. From monologue to dialogue. From one-to-many to one-to-some and one-to-one. From one-to-many

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Customer retention management in E-commerce

For an e-commerce site, customer retention has two distinct goals: To retain customers of the organization (repeat customers). To keep customers using the online channel (repeat visits). These are similar to the two aims of customer acquisition as described in a previous section. Ideally marketing communications should address both aims. Maintaining online customer relationships

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Focus on excelling in e-commerce service quality

In the virtual world customer service is a key difference between brands. Jevons and Gabbot (2000) have stressed the importance of service quality in determining brand loyalty with ref­erence to e-commerce. They say: ‘ the first-hand experience of the brand is a more powerful token of trust than the perception of the brand’. Research

Customer extension in E-commerce

Customer extension has the aim of increasing the lifetime value of the customer to the company by encouraging cross-sales, for example an Egg credit card customer may be offered the option of a loan or a deposit account. When a customer returns to a web site this is an opportunity for cross-selling and such

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Technology solutions for e-CRM

Database technology is at the heart of delivering CRM applications. Often the database is accessible through an intranet web site accessed by employees, or an extranet accessed by customers or partners provides an interface with the entire customer relationship manage­ment system. Today, on-demand web services such as Siebel CRM On Demand (www.crmondemand.com) and Salesforce.com

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Tesco.com increases product range and uses triggered communications to support e-CRM

1. Context Tesco, well known as Britain’s leading food retail group with a presence in Europe and Asia has also been a pioneer online. By September 2005 online sales in the first half of the year were £401 million, a 31% year-on- year increase, and profit increased by 37% to £21 million. Tesco.com now

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The challenges of e-business transformation

Figure 10.1 shows key aspects or levers of change that need to be assessed in order to maxi­mize the benefits of e-business. The main change levers required are: Market and business model (described in Chapter 2). Business process (described in Chapter 4). Organizational structure, culture and staff responsibilities (described in this chapter). Technology infrastructure

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Different types of change in e-business

Viewed at a large scale across an entire industry, change takes two forms. Incremental change involves relatively small adjustments required by changes in the businesss environ­ment (Chapter 4). Organizations scan their environment and make adjustments according to the introduction of new products from competitors, new laws or long-term changes in customer behaviour such as

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Planning change for e-business

Our starting point for managing change is when the objectives, strategy and tactics for introducing e-business change have already been specified as outlined in Part 2. Here, we are concerned with how to implement the strategy to achieve the objectives through the activi­ties performed by the project management team as part of project planning.

Human resource requirements for e-business

E-business implementation requires specialist skills that may not be present within an organization. The range of specialist skill requirements is indicated with Figure 10.8. The Econsultancy (2005) research showed that over half of respondents felt it was a challenge, although there were more pressing challenges. E-business project managers have a choice of building a

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Revising organizational structures in e-business

When a company first embarks on e-business, perhaps through creating a new web site to pro­mote its products, it will normally operate within the existing company structure, perhaps using outsourcing to make good a resource deficit. However, as the contribution of the web site to the company increases, the work involved increases and more

Approaches to managing change in e-business

Hayes (2002) notes that for external forces of change, it maybe difficult for those in an organization to manage and control the impact of change – the deterministic view. However, the voluntarist view is that managers can make an important difference to managing the impact of change. In the case of information systems management,

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