650 The Marketing Book
on-line sales achieved at the expense of tradi-
tional channels? Another major on-line objec-
tive might be to consolidate relationships and
increase loyalty from 50 to 75 per cent among
high-spending customer segments during the
year.
Strategies
Strategy summarizes objectives and establishes
how they’ll be achieved. Many of the key
questions that an e-marketing strategy should
answer are common to those for a marketing
strategy, namely:
Whichsegments, and selected target markets
are being targeted.
Positioning(P) is a fundamental part of the
overall customer proposition or offering, e.g.
what exactly is the product, its price and
perceived value in the marketplace.
Source of differentiation – what is the value
proposition?
Which access platforms should e-marketing be
achieved through. For most organizations,
websites or e-mail marketing will be
appropriate, but are mobile marketing or
interactive TV further options? For each
platform, different stages of on-line services
should be identified for future roll-out, as
discussed in the section on situation analysis.
For example, what level of interaction on-site
- brochure, two-way interactive sales support,
on-line sales or full e-CRM?
Should new or existing products be sold into
all existing segments and markets, or can
specific or new segments and markets be
targeted?
What resources are appropriate? For example,
what is the split between on-line and off-line
e-marketing and budget, and how are
resources split between website design,
website service and website traffic generation.
In this section, some of the key strategic
e-marketing options are outlined below based
on the discussion in Chaffey (2002).
Decision 1. E-marketing priorities
The e-marketing strategy must be directed
according to the priority of different strategic
objectives, as discussed above. E-marketing
strategy priorities can be summarized as Gulati
and Garino (2000) have said by ‘Getting the right
mix of bricks and clicks’. ‘Bricks and mortar’
refers to a traditional organization with limited
on-line presence, ‘clicks and mortar’ to a
business combining an on-line and off-line
presence, and ‘clicks only or Internet pure-play’
refers to an organization principally with an
on-line presence. In reality, there is a continuum
of options from a replacement strategy (Inter-
net pure-play) to complementary strategy
(clicks and mortar).
If it is believed that sales through digital
channels will primarily replace other channels,
then it is important to invest in the technical,
human and organizational resources to achieve
this. A replace strategy was chosen by airlines
such as easyJet and Ryanair, who now sell over
90 per cent of their tickets on-line. Kumar
(1999) provides a framework to assess the
replace versus complement strategy options.
He suggests that replacement is most likely to
happen when:1 Customer access to the Internet is high.
2 The Internet can offer a better value
proposition than other media (i.e. propensity
to purchase on-line is high).
3 The product can be delivered over the
Internet (it can be argued that this is not
essential).
4 The product can be standardized (user does
not usually need to view to purchase).If at least two of Kumar’s conditions are met
there may be a replacement effect. For example,
purchase of travel services or insurance on-line
fulfils criteria 1, 2 and 4.
De Kare-Silver (2000) suggests that strate-
gic e-commerce alternatives for companies
should be selected according to the percentage
of the target market using the channel and the
commitment of the company, the idea being