sell to a country without a local sales or customer service force (although this may still
be necessary for some products). In such situations and with the restructuring in con-
junction with disintermediation and reintermediation, strategists also need to carefully
consider channel conflicts that may arise. If a customer is buying direct from a company
in another country rather than via the agent, this will marginalise the business of the
local agent who may want some recompense for sales efforts or may look for a partner-
ship with competitors.
Kiani (1998) has presented a useful perspective to differences between the old and
new media, which are shown as a summary to this section in Table 1.2.Marketers require a basic understanding of Internet technology in order to discuss the
implementation of e-marketing with suppliers such as digital marketing agencies and
with the internal IT team. In the final section of this chapter we provide a brief intro-
duction to the technology, with which many readers will already be familiar. The
Internethas existed since the late 1960s when a limited number of computers were con-
nected for military and research purposes in the United States to form the ARPAnet.
Why then has the Internet only recently been widely adopted for business purposes?
The recent dramatic growth in the use of the Internet has occurred because of the devel-
opment of the World Wide Web. This became a commercial proposition in 1993 after
development of the original concept by Tim Berners-Lee, a British scientist working at
CERN in Switzerland in 1989. The World Wide Web changed the Internet from a diffi-
cult-to-use tool for academics and technicians to an easy-to-use tool for finding
information for businesses and consumers. The World Wide Web is an interlinkedCHAPTER 1· AN INTRODUCTION TO INTERNET MARKETING
Table 1.2 An interpretation of the differences between the old and digital media
Old media Digital media Comment
One-to-many communication One-to-one or many-to-many Hoffman and Novak (1996) state that
model communication model theoretically the Internet is a many-to-many
medium, but for company-to-customer
organisation(s) communications it is best
considered as one-to-one or one-to-many
Mass-marketing push model Individualised marketing or Personalisation possible because of
mass customisation. technology to monitor preferences and tailor
Pull model for web marketing content (Deighton, 1996)
Monologue Dialogue Indicates the interactive nature of the World
Wide Web, with the facility for feedback
Branding Communication Increased involvement of customer in
defining brand characteristics. Opportunities
for adding value to brand
Supply-side thinking Demand-side thinking Customer pull becomes more important
Customer as a target Customer as a partner Customer has more input into products and
services required
Segmentation Communities Aggregations of like-minded consumers
rather than arbitrarily defined target segments
Source: After Kiani (1998)Internet
The physical network
that links computers
across the globe. It
consists of the
infrastructure of
network servers and
communication links
between them that are
used to hold and
transport the vast
amount of information
on the Internet.