The Marketing Book 5th Edition

A B C

Off-line On-line

662 The Marketing Book

expenditure is less than service and design. This
is more typical for a traditional bricks and
mortar company that already has a brand
recognition and an established customer base.
Defining the correct balance between on-
line and off-line promotion is another key
aspect of resourcing.
Organizations need to decide which of the
options in Figure 25.11 is the best balance.
Surveys indicate that, for many companies,
situation B is most common. However, there is
a general trend to higher spend on on-line
promotion, possibly because of better targeting
and a direct response between advertising and
site visits.

People

In services marketing, people, or staff, are
considered a crucial element of the marketing
mix. As more products add on-line services to
enhance their offerings ‘people’ become more
important. In an on-line context, ‘people’ corre-
sponds to customer service whether delivered
through the website as ‘customer self-service’
or through interaction with staff. Automated
self-service options include:

 Autoresponders. These automatically generate a
response when a company e-mails an
organization, or submits an on-line form.

 E-mail notification. Automatically generated by a

companies systems to update customers on

the status of their order; for example, order

received, item now in stock, order dispatched.

 Call-back facility. Customers fill in their phone

number on a form and specify a convenient

time to be contacted. Dialling from a

representative in the call centre occurs

automatically at the appointed time and the

company pays, which is popular.

 Frequently asked questions (FAQ). For these, the

art is in compiling and categorizing the

questions so customers can easily find (a) the

question and (b) a helpful answer.

 On-site search engines. These help customers

find what they’re looking for quickly and are

popular when available. Site maps are a related

feature.

 Virtual assistants. These come in varying

degrees of sophistication and usually help to

guide the customer through a maze of choices.

Customer contact strategies also need to be

considered – we need to ask whether all

customers want to conduct all their interactions

on-line. Many companies use an inbound con-

tact strategy of customer choice or customer

preferred channel– offering customers a range of

contact options. But a more cost-effective con-

tact strategy may involve steering customers

towards using the web as a contact tool.

Figure 25.11 Alternative options for investment in on-line and off-line traffic building