Marketing And Internet

18 Pages 4382 Words

esearchers to simulate a buyer’s actual experience in a supermarket with remarkable accuracy.
While the Internet has been around since the 1960s, only since the development of the WWW (Berners-Lee et. al. 1993) has its potential for electronic commerce become apparent. The WWW is essentially a network of “home pages” where companies (and other organizations and individuals) can place information about themselves, communicate with customers, receive communications from customers, make transactions, and deliver customized messages, products, and services to customers. Through the use of layers of information called hypertext, “hot links” that permit easy flow from one WWW site to another, web search engines that permit a user to search for information by simply typing in a keyword or phrase, and various methods of payment including credit cards and “E-cash,” the WWW has become a hot area of marketing.
These technologies are examples of what we refer to as computer-mediated environments (CMEs) . In general, we define a CME as a link between a “sponsor” (e.g., a seller) and “users” (e.g., a customer) involving
? information technology
? feedback (i.e., interactivity)
? customization.
A CME may or may not allow open access and communications among the users. For example, AOL is a subscription-based service while, in most cases, the WWW permits open access. The WWW and AOL both allow for communications among users while Peapod does not.
In this paper, we focus on the research implications of CMEs for better understanding consumer choice. Because of their interactive, dynamic nature, CMEs provide a rich environment for studying choice. In particular, we examine the following different areas for research using CMEs: (1) decision processes, (2) advertising/communications, (3) brand choice, (4) “communities” around brands, and (5) pricing. An important question that we explore is whether or not the CMEs giv...