The Internet Promotional Strategy

The development of the World Wide Web has changed the business environment forever. The Dot com landscape has changed the way business is done. The e-commerce model promises to deliver a more efficient way of conducting business. Shoppers can now purchase from the comfort of their homes 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, all year round and from anywhere in the world.

Owning a website is a now a crucial ingredient to the marketing mix strategy of any organisation. Consumers can now obtain instant information on products or services to guide them in their crucial purchase decision. Sony Japan took pre-orders of their popular Playstation 2 console over the net, which topped 1 million after just a few days, European football stars are now issuing press releases over the web with the sites registered under their own names – and hit rates are phenomenal.

Arnott & Bridgewater (2002) studied the extent to which organisations are capitalising on the interactive potential of the Internet. It is this interactive potential that will spell the difference between success and failure of the technology in marketing terms, for it holds the power to facilitate and develop one-to-one long-term relationships with customers on a global scale. This capability is, as yet, little used – since the primary purpose of the Internet is still used by most people for informational reasons. Transactional functions of the Internet are increasingly becoming common but again, this is not pervasive. Just look at the Malaysian websites. If at all, there is some level of marketing sophistication – the use of relationship marketing – this is currently limited to large multinationals that are serving the global marketplace via the Internet.

Dutta and Segev (1999) reinforce our position that organisations have a long way to go to exploit the potential of the Internet. They divide Internet activity into three stages:

1. Publishing corporate information;
2. Conducting electronic commerce; and
3. Business transformation.

According to their data only around one third of firms have reached the second stage of Internet activity and less than 20 per cent of firms stimulate any interaction, let alone intra-community interactions.

Figure 10.8: The road to online success

The above (Figure 10.8), by no means, represents all the strategies in our arsenal – but that they should be seriously considered when organisations formulate and execute strategies to compete. These strategies complement the generic strategies that will be employed, e.g. a public relations strategy, a sponsorship strategy, an advertising strategy. At the end of the day, if organisations are serious about long-term sustainability in terms of market share and sales, they are useful.  All too often, businesses focus only on the short- to medium-term – granted that if there is no short- or medium-term, there wouldn’t be a long-term. Still, a business must be brave to have a long-term view in this highly-competitive and extremely-crowded marketplace. Many businesses come and go, but only the daring few will last for the long haul. Think:

• The Coca-Cola Company.
• Disney.
• Kraft Foods.
• PepsiCo.
• General Electric.
• Nestle.