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Describe what interactive marketing is and how it creates customer value, customer relationships, and customer experiences. (LO1)
- Interactive marketing involves two-way buyer-seller electronic communication in a computer-mediated environment in which the buyer controls the kind and amount of information received from the seller.
- It creates customer value by providing time, place, form, and possession utility for consumers.
- Customer relationships are created and sustained through two unique capabilities of Internet technology: interactivity and individuality.
- From an interactive marketing perspective, customer experience represents the sum total of the interactions that a customer has with a company's Web site, from the initial look at a home page through the entire purchase decision process.
- Companies produce a customer experience through seven Web site design elements: context, content, community, customization, communication, connection, and commerce.
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Choiceboards and Personalization
- Choiceboard: interactive, Internet-enabled system that allows individual customers to design their own products and services by answering a few questions and choosing from a menu of product or service attributes, prices, and delivery options.
- - companies collect precise info about preferences and behavior of individual buyers (better anticipate and fulfill customer's needs)
- - marketer-initiated efforts
- - collaborative filtering: process that automatically groups people with similar buying intentions, preferences, behaviors and predicts future purchases
- Personalization: consumer-initiated practice of generating content on a marketer's Website that is custom tailored to an individual's specific needs and preferences
- - personalizing MyYahoo! pages
- - permission marketing: solicitation of a consumer's consent (opt-in) to receive email and advertising based on personal data supplied by the consumer
- - adhere to three rules:
- - (1) make sure opt-in customers receive only information that is relevant and meaningful to them
- - (2) customers are given option to opt-out, or change the kind, amount, or timing of info sent to them
- - (3) customers are assured that name and buyer profile data will not be sold or shared with others
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Creating customer experience
- Context: refers to Web site's aesthetic appeal and functional look and feel reflected in site layout and visual design
- - focuses on company's offerings (products, services, information)
- - attempts to convey the core consumer benefit provided
- Content: applies to all digital information on a Web site, including the presentation form (text, video, audio, and graphics)
- - content quality and presentation + context dimensions = platform for other elements
- Customization: ability of a site to modify itself to, or be modified by, each individual user
- Connection: network of linkages between a company's site and other sites (embedded in Web site)
- Communication: dialogue that unfolds between the Web site and its users
- - customer representatives while shopping, user-to-user communications
- Community: user-to-user communications hosted by the company to create virtual communities
- Commerce: Web site's ability to conduct sales transactions for products and services
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Identify the demographic and lifestyle profile of online consumers. (LO2)
- As a group, online consumers are more likely to be women than men and tend to be better educated, younger, and more affluent than the general U.S. population
- Women tend to purchase more goods and services online than men
- Lifestyle profile of online consumers reflects the different kinds of online experiences they seek
- Six lifestyle segments have been identified:
- (1) click-and-mortar segment consists of women who browse retailer Web sites but actually buy products at retail outlets
- (2) hunger-gatherers use Internet like a consumer magazine to gather information and compare products and services
- (3) brand loyalists regularly visit their favorite bookmarked Web sites and spend the most money online
- (4) time-sensitive materialists regard the Internet as a convenient tool for buying
- (5) hooked, online, and single segment spends more time online than any segment
- (6) ebivalent newbies are relative newcomers to the Internet who rarely spend money online, but seek product information
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Explain why certain types of products and services are particularly suited for interactive marketing. (LO3)
- (Six general product and service categories dominate online consumer buying)
- Items for which product information is an important part of the purchase decision, but prepurchase trial is not necessarily critical
- Items for which audio or video demonstration is important
- Items that can be digitally delivered
- Items that are unique
- Items that are regularly purchased and where convenience is very important
- Highly standardized items for which information about price is important
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Describe why consumers shop and buy online and how marketers influence online purchasing behavior. (LO4)
- Six reasons consumers shop and buy online: convenience, choice, customization, communication, cost, and control
- Marketers have capitalized on these reasons through a variety of means
- ie: provide choice assistance using choiceboard and collborative filtering technology, which also provides opportunities for customization
- Company-hosted Web communities and viral marketing practices capitalize on the communications dimensions of Internet-enabled technologies
- Dynamic pricing provides real-time responses to supply and demand conditions, often resulting in lower prices to consumers
- Permission marketing is popular given consumer interest in control
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Define cross-channel shoppers and the role of transactional and promotional Web sites in reaching these shoppers. (LO5)
- A cross-channel shopper is an online consumer who researches products online and then purchases them at a retail store
- These shoppers are reached through multichannel marketing
- Websites play a multifaceted role in multichannel marketing because they can serve as either a delivery or communication channel
- Transactional Websites are essentially electronic storefronts
- They focus principally on converting an online browser into an online, catalog, or in-store buyer using the Web site design elements described earlier
- On the other hand, promotional Web sites serve to advertise and promote a company's products and services and provide information on how items can be purchased and where they can be purchased
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