The purpose of this paper is to summarize and discuss the article "Do traditional strategic concepts apply on the e-marketing concept?" written by Bill Merrilees and published in the Journal of Business Strategies, volume 18, issue 2, published in 2001. Merrilees states his research problem as establishing whether (and if so, the extent to which) traditional strategic concepts like competitive market position and sustainable competitive advantage apply in the new world of e-marketing. He proposes to do so through a review and application of the literature and a qualitative study based on the opinions of a large group of college students having some level of marketing knowledge. The audience for this article is businesspeople, business students, marketers and future researchers of e-commerce-related issues.
Merilees points out that one of the assumptions that has been maintained by many in the new world of e-commerce is that this marketing channel is so different from any previous channel that the traditional rules of marketing and business do not apply; his purpose is to use three online book sellers, evaluate them, how they operate (their level and means of use of marketing) and how they compare. An important issue here is that, as e-commerce grows and matures, events prove that this channel is NOT exempt from traditional ideas of business, as the "pioneers" who first designed websites and portals and the business financiers would have had us believe - this was proven by the "shakeout" of most of the less solid websites at the beginning of the century when it was that the "tech bubble" burst. At that time, the e-companies that were founded on strong principles were the ones that endured while the rest vanished, taking billions of dollars in capitalization with them.
That said for the business side, we can use this article as an example of how three major online bookselling sites use marketing and how well this works for ...