Trends in Online & Traditional Marketing

in Online vs. Traditional Marketing

Introduction and Objectives of the Study

Marketing encompasses a broad array of activities and strategies that deal with pricing, selling, and distributing a product (Wheelen & Hunger, 2000). Using a market development strategy, a business organization or business unit works to either capture a larger share of an existing market for current products through market saturation or penetration or to develop new markets for current products. Consumer product manufacturers and distributors have become expert at using advertising and promotion to achieve one or both of these goals (Wheelen & Hunger, 2000).

With the development of the World Wide Web or the Internet, new marketing venues have become available. Marketers in both the business-to-business (B2B) and the business-to-consumer (B2C) sectors are now using the Internet for online marketing. Online marketing may either supplant or augment traditional marketing modes, which include the use of other media and direct contact with potential or already identified customers (Pride & Ferrell, 1987).

Generally, marketing is defined as individual and organizational activities that facilitate and expedite satisfying exchange relationships in a dynamic environment through the creation, distribution, promotion, and pricing of goods, services, and ideas (Pride & Ferrell, 1987). The dynamic nature of the curr

ake rich media more commonplace these days. Combining a compelling rich media advertisement with dynamic placement and effective audience targeting is seen as delivering performance and profits for both the advertisers and the publishers (Gotham, 2002). Another trend in Internet e-commerce advertising described by Green and Gogoi (2003) is the text-only ads on search engines that are highly targeted to the exact search word that the user has just typed. These ads, which appear on the right side of the screen along with search results on a search engine like Google, are now intrusive and are designed to satisfy the user's needs at the moment. These ads are seen as likely to be effective in that the user has already indicated an interest in the topic or the product or service. Unlike banners and pop-ups, these text only or classified type ads speak directly to an expressed interest of the user, are not intrusive, and do not distract the user from his or her primary quest. E-mail marketing is also changing the e-commerce landscape. Like direct mail, e-mail marketing attempts to directly target consumers or business buyers who have been previously been identified as likely to have an interest in a particular product or se