4 Digital marketing strategies:this section looks at the focus of digital marketing
strategies – tactical or strategic, the extent to which such strategies are integrated into
an organisation’s overall strategic planning; and the impact on organisational success.Within this chapter, industry case histories are provided as illustrative examples of
organisational behaviour in the online trading environment. Additionally, academic
articles are introduced to support underlying theoretical issues and concepts.This section considers the features of the online trading environment that are unique
and might ultimately impact on the extent to which organisations develop a web pres-
ence and trade online. Visibilityand transparencyare examples of unusual characteristics
of the online trading environment, which can be either advantageous or not depending
on an organisation’s objectives. For buyers, ‘marketsites’ facilitate potentially lower
prices and lower search and order costs, but for sellers, market share and value can
become eroded over a relatively short period of time when trading in such electronic
markets. From a more tactical perspective, Brynjolfsson and Kahin (2000) identified
more detailed and unusual characteristics of online financial transactions (e.g. making a
greater number of price adjustments), and as a result concluded online markets are (at
least in part) different to off-line markets.
Regardless of the effects of trading online it is important to remember that B2B mar-
kets are different from B2C markets in a number of ways. According to Jobber (2004), in
organisational markets, there are typically fewer customers that are likely to buy goods
in bulk quantities and the buyer organisations tend to be larger and subsequently of
great value to the supplier. What are the implications of this? First, with fewer buyers,
the existence of suppliers tends to be well known. Choice criteria vary: impulse pur-
chases, and those based on emotional motives are rare in organisational buying
situations as buyers tend to be professionals who use technical and economic choice cri-
teria to inform their decision making. This means that efforts to promote brands are
different to those used for consumer brands and price setting tends to involve more
negotiation between the seller and the buyer.Online environment analysis
The situation or context in which an activity takes place needs to be analysed in order to
understand the full meaning of the actions which are taking place in a given trading sit-
uation. This is particularly relevant to the online trading environment. As suggested, it
has unusual characteristics which can impact on the way an organisation defines its
marketing strategy and the activities in which it engages online.
According to Finlay (2000) organisations operate in an environment that consists of a
great many influences and a particularly important part of strategy development is being
able to make sense of what is happening or likely to happen in the future in this envi-
ronment (for further discussion of details of the micro- and macro-environment analysis
see Chapters 2 and 3). There is much academic work focusing on various aspects of
online trading situations and how characteristics of this environment potentially impact
on organisational behaviour and influence strategy development. Three aspects of
the trading environment are considered by focusing on academic literature in order toCHAPTER 11· BUSINESS-TO-BUSINESS INTERNET MARKETING
B2B e-context
Marketsite
eXchange, eHub,
metamediaries are
terms used to refer to
complex web sites that
facilitate trading
exchanges between
companies around the
globe. MarketSite™is a
trade mark of
commerceOne and
considered as the
leading e-marketplace
operating environment.