Strategic Internet Marketing

Citation

Pope, N. and Winzar, H. (2003), "Strategic Internet Marketing", European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 37 No. 3/4, pp. 614-616. https://doi.org/10.1108/ejm.2003.37.3_4.614.1

This is another of the seeming plethora of Internet‐marketing texts. Others, of course, include such titles as: Electronic Commerce: A Manager's Guide (Kalakota and Winston); Greenstein and Feinman's Electronic Commerce: Security, Risk Management and Control; Whiteley's E‐commerce: Strategy, Technologies and Applications; and Strategic Electronic Marketing: Managing E‐business by Kleindl. Note that, as is the tendency with so many recent texts, these books have double titles. It is as though we are seeking that little bit of extra incentive to make us purchase. This was never the case with such luminaries as Hofacker, who kept his 1999 work, Internet Marketing, to a nice and simple statement. At least what you see is what you get.

We find a similar simplicity in Dann and Dann's offering, Strategic Internet Marketing. For a long time academics have sought refuge in the solace of adding “strategic” or “global” to the title of a book. For that matter, we see it in the offerings of many universities. How many global marketing strategy courses or are there now? In order to live up to its title, both a subject and a text need to actually deal with what the title says. We are pleased to note that sibling team Susan and Stephen Dann have achieved that with this book. The title Strategic Internet Marketing is appealing in its simplicity. It connotes clarity of thinking and a potentially useful addition to the multitudes of e‐marketing texts.

The text is well grounded in both strategy and consumer behaviour theory, offering examples from an international context. This comes as something of a relief to those of us who live outside North America and so offers a useful addition to the growing literature on the use of the Internet in marketing. We also note with satisfaction that the authors do not follow the dogma that the Internet is the most important tool in the marketer's armoury. Rather, while acknowledging that it is a very useful and powerful tool, they present the user with its limitations and ways to deal with them. That should be enough to recommend it to most traditional marketing academics.

This book is clearly aimed at the student who has already developed some understanding of marketing. At least two years into a degree would be our estimate. So, while a good overview of the Net is given in part one, later parts on marketing communications, consumer behaviour and strategy assume a level of education one would not find in, for example, an information technology student. For that reason we recommend this as a set text for marketing students undergraduates and perhaps Masters students with some background in consumer behaviour.

Those teaching faculty who feel most comfortable with a detailed instructors’ manual and accompanying MCQ test bank will be disappointed. Support material includes chapter abstracts, learning objectives for each section, chapter discussion questions and PowerPoint slides that summarise each chapter. There are no model answers for the discussion questions or multiple‐choice questions in a test bank. We found the support material more than adequate but it could make for a heavier workload if teaching in a very large class that require the usual assessment shortcuts.

The book is divided into five sections:

1. 1.

   “Definition and domain of Internet marketing” provides the usual history of the internet and a very useful overview of key concepts and terminology, nicely linking some techno‐babble with more common marketing and strategy jargon.

2. 2.

   “New marketing strategies for the new media” highlights unique technical aspects of the Internet and the social and business implications of rapid, low‐cost, borderless communication. An interesting feature is the exploration of online interpersonal communication and its role in consumption behaviour reminding us that often the marketer has a minor role in affecting purchase and consumption.

3. 3.

   “Marketing fundamentals in the interactive age” revisits the traditional 4P's in marketing strategy, discussing how the internet moderates, and is moderated by, the marketing mix. A valuable inclusion in most chapters in this section is a brief reminder of the marketing theory and practice that students learned in earlier courses. Each reminder is then followed by an exposition of how the Internet may affect traditional marketing practice and, on occasion, moderate marketing theory.

4. 4.

   “Strategic marketing applications for the Internet” covers additional areas of service marketing, the popular concepts of relationship marketing, international marketing and marketing research.

5. 5.

   “The future” is a final chapter overviewing important issues of personal privacy, marketing ethics and the very real possibility that some businesses, and consumers, will miss this important technological trend.

Overall, the format of the text is one that fits nicely within a semester of teaching and is well received by the students we have taught.

The text is not without its shortcomings. The Internet is a rapidly changing set of technologies, and a rapidly changing set of poster‐boy heroes, companies and business models. In this environment, the risk of becoming dated is so much greater. The instructor then has to be alert to emerging technologies and ideas. In our last semester, for example, a major area of interest in the class was mobile marketing, the application of Internet technologies to mobile phones and PDAs. In fairness, this topic was barely on the horizon at the time of publishing, and it would be an ambitious writer who would commit to firm predictions of this combination of communications opportunities.

Some concepts may be beyond most business school candidates. Sections in early chapters challenge students with unusual concepts such as “post‐modern consumption”, the artificial construction and presentation of “self” and “hyper‐reality”. These concepts were thought provoking and inspiring for some students but clearly beyond comprehension or were perceived to be of little value for many of our students. We found some sections confusing, with at times a focus on business strategy and methods to facilitate transactions and at other times a focus on what it's like to be a consumer online. Even within the framework of the online consumer some sections melded of the notions of the Internet as a consumption experience in itself and of the Internet as a conduit for interpersonal and marketing communications. These are valuable and rich ideas but at times the reader is left up in the air about how these ideas can be applied or how they fit with other ideas.

Of course, these criticisms are in no way unique to Dann and Dann's work. Greater criticism could be levelled at the two best alternatives to this text, in our opinion. These are Ward Hansen's Principles of Internet Marketing, 2000 (Thompson), which already is beginning to date, and Ian Chaston's E‐marketing Strategy, 2001 (McGraw‐Hill). Both of these US‐orientated texts are highly descriptive in parts with relatively little attempt to contain strategy within a sound theoretical framework. Similarly they lack any comprehensive treatment of marketing for Government, non‐profit, service, international or disadvantaged sectors. Dann and Dann, by contrast, have explicitly included these areas with interesting vignettes and Web‐site examples.

All of the above leads us to the final conclusion. This is a book that is a useful text for final year undergraduates and/or Masters students in the marketing discipline. While the main thrust of the book is grounded in good theory there are one or two chapters that tend to be fairly descriptive. The big plusses for the book are its grounding in current marketing thought and its acceptance of the Internet as another tool in a large armoury. The user needs to be aware that it will date quickly however, and so we look forward to a future edition.