638 The Marketing Book
all ‘moments of truth’ involving electronically
mediated requests for information and all on-
line inbound and outbound marketing commu-
nications such as e-mail marketing are also part
of e-commerce. Kalakota and Whinston (1997)
refer to a range of different perspectives for
e-commerce that highlight the type of commu-
nications involved:
1 A communications perspective– the delivery of
information, products/services or payment by
electronic means.
2 A business process perspective– the application
of technology towards the automation of
business transactions and workflows.
3 A service perspective– enabling cost cutting at
the same time as increasing the speed and
quality of service delivery.
4 An on-line perspective– the buying and selling of
products and information on-line.
Similarly, Zwass (1998) uses a broad definition
of e-commerce. He refers to it as:
the sharing of business information, maintain-
ing business relationships, and conducting
business transactions by means of telecommu-
nications networks.When evaluating the impact of e-commerce on
an organization, it is instructive to identify
opportunities for buy-side and sell-side
e-commerce transactions. Buy-side e-commerce
refers to transactions to procure resources
needed by an organization from its suppliers.
These business-to-business (B2B) transactions
are often neglected in favour of discussion of
Sell-side e-commerce, which refers to transactions
involved with selling products to an organiza-
tion’s customers through distributors as
appropriate.
E-businessis broader: referring to both buy-
side and sell-side e-commerce and the internal
use of Internet technologies through an intranet
to streamline business processes. Using an
intranet to share ideas and market research on a
new product development or marketing per-
formance data are examples of e-business mar-
keting applications.
E-marketingcan be simply expressed as the
use of electronic communications technology to
achieve marketing objectives (see, for example,
McDonald and Wilson, 1999). The electronic
communications technology refers to:1 The use of Internet-based (TCP/IP) network
technology for communications within an
organization using an intranet, beyond the
organization to partners such as suppliers,
distributors and key account customers using
password-based access to extranets and the
open Internet, where information is accessible
by all with Internet access.
2 The use of web servers or websites to enable
informational or financial exchanges as
e-commerce transactions.
3 The use of other digital access platforms, such
as interactive digital TV, wireless or mobile
phones and games consoles.
4 The use of electronic mail for managing
enquiries (inbound e-mail) and for promotion
(outbound e-mail).
5 Integration of the digital access platforms and
e-mail with other information systems, such as
customer databases and applications for
customer relationship management and supply
chain management.To illustrate some of the opportunities of
e-marketing, it is useful to reapply the defini-
tion of marketing from the Chartered Institute
of Marketing:E-marketing can identify, anticipate and satisfy
customer needs efficiently.Taking a website as a major part of e-marketing,
consider how a website can fulfil these require-
ments of marketing. It can: Identifyneeds from customer comments,
enquiries, requests and complaints solicited via
e-mail and the website’s contact facility, bulletin
boards, chat rooms, on-line searches and sales