Chapter 5

Which is larger, B2B or B2C e marketing?

B2B

• List the six major forms of business-to-business e-marketing.

B2B e-marketing is the process of selling goods and services from one business to another through online transactions. B2B e-marketing includes product information; ordering, invoicing, and payment processes; and customer service. In a B2B context, e-business uses Internet technology to conduct transactions between two organizations via electronic data interchange, Web services, extranets, private exchanges, electronic exchanges, and e-procurement.

How can companies benefit from blogs and avoid their downsides?

Benefits: public journal for individual or org. Read by at 30% of Americans who use internet. Notified of updates, interactive with posts, wikis, or media. They help resolve differences, increase network. Treated as press. Downside: improper blogging affects company. Bad press.

List the five e business catagories

Business 2business (B2B), business 2 consumer (B2C), consumer 2 consumer(C2C), consumer to business(C2B), business to govt. (B2G), consumer to bus/govt. (C2G).

List the reasons consumers give for why they shop online.

Competitive pricing, access and convenience, and personalized service.

How is wireless access changing e marketing?

Consumers can order from almost anywhere and anytime with the push of a button.

Describe the issues that go into developing a successful website. How does the purpose of the website affect its implementation and cost?

Creation, cost, updates, server rent, advertisement... $100-10,000 minimum creation for a website to handle your e-business. If interactive then thousands of dollars. Rent $30+. And maintenance which is also expensive. Website must stay spcurrent or it will lose customers.

• Explain the difference between e-business and e-marketing.

E-business involves a wide range of activities that take place via the Internet. It is divided into five broad categories: 1. e-tailing; 2. business-to-business transactions; 3. electronic data interchanges; 4. email, instant messaging, blogs, podcasts, and other Web-enabled communication; and 5. gathering and use of information through Web contacts. E-marketing transfers the traditional marketing functions of creating, distributing, promoting, and pricing goods and services to the Internet or through digital tools.

Explain how a web presence can improve the performance of traditional brick and mortar operations.

It increases a firms global reach by allowing firms to sell products to a wider audience without geographic limitations. Specialized search engines, stronger bond due to social media, competitive, gives leverage due to reviews.

What is purchase fraud?

Orders placed online and paid with credit card, issuer requests money back after the merchandise has already been sent. The cardholder requests refund claiming to have not made the purchase or received any items. Usually merchant bears the liability in fraud cases due to lack of consumer signature.

Describe the type and purpose of information found on a corporate website.

Purpose would be to increase firms visibility, promote offerings, and to provide information to interested parties. Type would be a corporate website. (There are two types of website in this instance, corporate and marketing sites).

Describe how firms can alleviate some of the privacy concerns of online shoppers.

Secure payment systems, encryption system. Secure sockets layer (SSL).

• Explain the difference between click-through rate, conversion rate, and engagement.

The click-through rate is the percentage of viewers who, when presented with a banner ad, click on it. The conversion rate is the percentage of visitors to a website who actually make purchases. Engagement measures how long a user spends on a site instead of how many pages he or she views.

• What are blogs, wikis, and podcasts?

○ A blog, short for Web log, is a Web page that serves as a publicly accessible journal for an individual or organization. A wiki is a Web page anyone can edit. A podcast is an audio or video file that can be downloaded from a website to a digital device. Companies use blogs, wikis, and podcasts as tools to build and maintain customer relationships.

• Explain the difference between a corporate website and a marketing website.

○ A corporate website is designed to increase a firm's visibility, promote its offerings, and provide information for interested parties. A marketing website generally includes the same information found on a corporate website but is also designed to increase sales by site visitors.

• Define EDI and Web services.

○ An EDI is a computer- to-computer exchange of invoices, purchase orders, price quotations, and other sales information between buyers and sellers. All parties must use the same computer operating system. Web services consist of Internet-based systems that allow parties to communicate and exchange data regardless of the computer operating system they use.

• What is B2B e-marketing? How large is it relative to consumer e-marketing?

○ B2B e-marketing is the use of the Internet for business transactions between organizations. By some estimates, B2B e-commerce revenues are more than double that of consumer transactions.

What is B2C e-marketing?

○ B2C e-marketing uses the Internet to connect companies directly with consumers either through shopping sites or through informational sites.

• Explain the differences between a banner ad, a pop-up ad, a pre-roll video ad, and search marketing.

○ Banner ads are strip messages placed in high-visibility areas of frequently visited websites. A pop-up ad is a separate window that pops up with an advertising message. Pre-roll video ads are brief marketing messages that appear before expected video content. Search marketing is an arrangement by which a firm pays a search engine—such as Google—a fee to make sure the firm's listing appears toward the top of the search results.

• Discuss the benefits of B2C e-marketing.

○ Benefits of B2C e-marketing include competitive prices, increased access and convenience, and personalized service.

• Explain business-to-consumer (B2C) e-marketing.

○ Business-to-consumer (B2C) e-marketing is maturing. B2C uses the Internet to connect companies directly with consumers. E-tailing and electronic storefronts are the major forms of B2C online sales channels. B2C websites are either shopping sites or informational sites. Products can be purchased on shopping sites; informational sites provide product information along with links to sellers. Benefits of B2C e-marketing include competitive prices, increased access and convenience, and personalized service.

• Describe the process of developing successful e-business websites and how to assess their effectiveness.

○ Businesses establish websites to expand their customer bases, increase buyer awareness of their products, improve consumer communications, and provide better service. Before designing a website, a company's decision makers must first determine what they want to achieve with the site. ○ Other important decisions include who should create, host, and manage the site; how to promote it; and how much funding to allocate. Successful websites contain informative, up-to-date, and visually appealing content. Sites should also download quickly and be easy to use. Finally, management must develop ways of assessing how well a site accomplishes its objectives. Common methods of measuring the effectiveness of websites include profitability, click-through rates, conversion rates, and engagement.

• Discuss how marketers use the communication function of the Web as part of their online marketing strategies.

○ Communication remains the most popular function of the Internet. Companies have long used email to communicate with customers, suppliers, and other partners. Online communities are groups of people who share common interests. Companies use online communities such as forums to communicate with and obtain feedback from customers and other partners. Blogs are online journals that have gained popularity in recent years. Wikis are Web pages anyone can edit, and podcasts are audio and video files that can be downloaded from the Web to any digital device. Web-based promotions include advertising on other websites using banner ads and pop-up ads, pre-roll video ads, and search marketing (also known as search engine optimization). Banner ads are strip messages placed in high-visibility areas of frequently visited websites. A pop-up ad is a separate window that pops up with an advertising message. Pre-roll video ads appear before a selected video. Search marketing is an arrangement by which a firm pays a search engine such as Google a fee to make sure the firm's listing appears toward the top of the search results.

• Explain the difference between a shopping website and an informational website.

○ Consumers can purchase products on shopping sites, while informational sites provide product information along with links to sellers. However, consumers cannot actually purchase products on informational sites.

• Explain e-business, e-marketing, and the opportunities e-marketing presents.

○ E-business involves targeting customers by collecting and analyzing business information, conducting customer transactions, and maintaining online relationships with customers by means of computer networks such as the Internet. E-marketing is the strategic process of creating, distributing, promoting, and pricing goods and services to a target market over the Internet or through digital tools. The capabilities and benefits of e-business and e-marketing include the elimination of geographical boundaries, personalized marketing, interactive marketing, right-time marketing, and integrated marketing.

• What are some of the capabilities e-marketers might add to their websites in the future?

○ E-marketers need to update their offerings at their websites at an increasing rate, speed the checkout process, add video segments to their online product catalogs, implement advanced and easy-to-use search and navigation technologies, and initiate network-type conversations with and among their customers.

• Define e-marketing.

○ E-marketing is the strategic process of creating, distributing, promoting, and pricing goods and services to a target market over the Internet.

Briefly explain how e-procurement works.

○ E-procurement systems are Web-based systems that enable all types of organizations to improve the efficiency of their bidding and purchasing processes.

• How does the type of website affect measures of effectiveness?

○ For a shopping site, profitability is an important measure of effectiveness, though profitability can be difficult to measure given the tendencies of Web-to-store shoppers. For company websites, online success is measured by increased brand awareness and loyalty, which presumably translate into greater profitability through offline transactions.

• What do most U.S. consumers do online?

○ Nearly all U.S. consumers say they use email; almost 85 percent get news, search for health or medical news, look for information about items they're interested in buying, or go online just to pass the time or to have fun.

• Describe the challenges associated with online marketing and e-business.

○ One of the challenges to e-business is developing safe online payment methods. Most firms involved in e-business use Secure Sockets Layer technology to encrypt information and provide authentication. The growth of e-business has also been hampered by consumer security and privacy concerns and fraud. In addition, poor website design and service, unreliability of delivery and returns, and lack of retail expertise has limited e-business success. The Internet can also generate conflict among manufacturers, wholesalers, and retailers and present another avenue for copyright disputes.

What are online communities? Explain how online communities can help companies market their products and improve customer service.

○ Online communities can take several forms and include Internet discussion groups and social media sites (discussed in Chapter 4). Users log in and participate by sending comments and questions or receiving information from other forum members. Companies use online communities to ask questions and exchange information with customers.

• Describe phishing, vishing, and smishing.

○ Phishing is a scam that uses email or pop-up messages that claim to be from familiar banks, Internet service providers, or other organizations asking for personal information. The purpose of phishing is to get unsuspecting victims to disclose personal information such as credit card numbers. Vishing is the voice equivalent of phishing, and consists of a voice message or email telling the user to make a phone call designed to elicit credit card information. Smishing is the text-message equivalent of phishing and consists of a spam text message delivered to a cell phone asking the user to reply to the message with personal information.

• Explain how e-marketing can create channel conflicts and copyright disputes.

○ The Internet can generate conflict among manufacturers, wholesalers, and retailers—so-called channel conflicts. For instance, a channel conflict could be created when a manufacturer sells its products online and competes with its retail partners. Copyright disputes usually arise when a site hosts content to which someone else holds the rights.

• What are the basic questions a company should ask itself when planning a website?

○ The first question deals with the purpose of the website. The second deals with whether the firm should develop the site itself or outsource it to a specialized firm. The third question is determining the name of the site.

• What are the major benefits of e-marketing?

○ The major benefits of e-business include the elimination of geographical boundaries, personalized marketing, interactive marketing, right-time marketing, and integrated marketing.

• What are the major challenges to growth in e-business and e-marketing?

○ The major challenges include developing safe online payment, privacy concerns, and fraud and scams. In addition, poor site design and customer service, unreliability of delivery and returns, and lack of retail expertise have limited e-business success.

• Describe the growth of Internet use worldwide.

○ The number of Internet users worldwide has reached more than 2.8 billion. Among individual countries with the highest number of Internet users, China is first with almost a quarter of its population online, followed by the United States, India, and Japan.

• Who shops online? Are the characteristics of online shoppers changing?

○ The typical Internet user now is likely to be between 18 and 64 years of age. Men used to shop more frequently online than women did, but today women shoppers outnumber men.

• Distinguish between a corporate website and a marketing website.

○ The vast majority of businesses have websites. Generally, these sites can be classified as either corporate websites or marketing websites. Corporate websites are designed to increase the firms' visibility, promote their offerings, and provide information to interested parties. Marketing websites are also designed to communicate information and build customer relationships, but the main purpose of marketing websites is to increase purchases by site visitors.

• Why would companies not sell products on their websites?

○ Their products might not lend themselves to online sales, or the firms may have relationships with partners, such as dealers or franchisees, that sell their products instead.

• Describe online buyers and sellers.

○ Today's typical Internet user is from 18 to 64 years of age. Women now outnumber men online. During a recent year, the top products sold online included women's apparel, consumer electronics, and health and beauty products.

• How would you describe the growth of Internet use worldwide?

○ Worldwide, the number of Internet users has reached more than 2.8 billion. Among individual countries with the highest number of Internet users, China is first with almost one-quarter of the population online. The next three countries are the United States, India, and Japan. Growth in Asia has been rapid.