for products, as described earlier in this chapter. Most newspaper and magazine publish-
ers such as VNU (www.vnu.com) and Emap (www.emap.com) now provide online
versions of their publications. These are as important in the online world in promoting
products as newspapers and magazines are in the offline world.
Online intermediaries are businesses which support business and consumer audi-
ences, so they can serve both B2B and B2C information exchanges. Auction sites are
another type of online intermediary that support the B2B and the C2C exchanges intro-
duced in Chapter 1. Online intermediaries sometimes support online social networks
which are a form of online community described in more detail in the section on virtual
communities at the end of Chapter 6. The Google Orkut service (www.orkut.com) is an
example of a personal social network, while Linked In (www.linkedin.com) and
Eacademy (www.eacademy.com) are examples of business networks. A business-to-busi-
ness community serving the interest of Internet marketers is the E-consultancy forums
(www.e-consultancy.com/forum).
Online intermediaries are typically independent of merchants and brands, but can be
owned by brands. In business-to-business marketing examples of such intermediaries
include Clearly Business (www.clearlybusiness.com) from Barclays or bCentral
(www.bcentral.co.uk) from Microsoft. These are examples of ‘countermediaries’ referred
to earlier in the chapter which are created by a service provider to provide valuable con-
tent or services to their audience with a view to enhancing their brand, so they are not
truly independent.
Sarkar et al. (1996) identified many different types of potential online intermediaries
(mainly from a B2C perspective) which they refer to as ‘cybermediaries’. Some of the
main intermediaries identified by Sarkar et al. (1996), listed with current examples, are:
Directories (such as Yahoo! directory, Open Directory, Business.com).
Search engines (Google, Yahoo! Search).
Malls (now replaced by comparison sites such as Kelkoo and Pricerunner).
Virtual resellers (own inventory and sells direct, e.g. Amazon, CDWOW).
Financial intermediaries (offering digital cash and payment services such as PayPal
which is now part of eBay).
Forums, fan clubs and user groups (referred to collectively as ‘virtual communities’ or
social networks such as HabboHotel for youth audiences).
Evaluators (sites which act as reviewers or comparison of services such as Kelkoo).At the time that Sarkar et al. (1996) listed the different types of intermediaries given
above, there were many separate web sites offering these types of services. For example,
AltaVista (www.altavista.com) offered search enginefacilities and Yahoo! (www.yahoo.com)
offered a directoryof different web sites. Since this time, such sites have diversified the serv-
ices offered. Yahoo! now offers all these services and additional types such as dating,
communities and auctions. Diversification has occurred through the introduction of new
intermediaries that provide services to other intermediaries and also through acquisition and
merger. Since Google issued shares it has increasingly acquired or developed new services in
its Google Labs (http://labs.google.com) to integrate into its services as Yahoo! has done
throughout its history. For example, it has purchased provider Blogger (www.blogger.com)
and has introduced the Gmail e-mail service and Orkut social networking service.
Activity 2.6 highlights the alternative revenue models available to these new interme-
diaries, in this case an evaluator, and speculates on their future.INTERMEDIARIESOnline social
network
A service facilitating
the connection,
collaboration and
exchange of
information between
individuals.
Online intermediary
sites
Web sites that facilitate
exchanges between
consumer and business
suppliers.
Search engines,
spiders and robots
Automatic tools known
as ‘spiders’ or ‘robots’
index registered sites.
Users search by typing
keywords and are
presented with a list of
pages.
Directories or
catalogues
Structured listings of
registered sites in
different categories.