Marketing, impact of brands,

eBranding

Dr Amit Mitra
Bristol Business School
Agenda
• Overview of components of emarketing
• Marketing strategies to develop customer
engagement
• Role of new technologies
• Nature of brands
• Framework to analyse B2C websites

2
 Marketing in eC
• Probably the most important component of eC
capability
• Responsible for mainly the ‘why?’ as well as to
some extent the ‘how?’ of product or service that is
being offered via eC
• Effectiveness of marketing [eyeballs/stickiness]
depends on the extent of harmonisation with
consumer behaviour/preferences
• Due to the dynamic nature of markets, strategy to
market goods and services need to be continually
refreshed to ensure effectiveness

3
Dimensions of firm competition
within an industry:
• Differentiation
• Cost
• Focus
• Scope

Features of competitive markets:

• Plenty of substitute products
• Easy entry
• Low differentiation among suppliers
• Strong bargaining power of customers and suppliers

4
Stages in the consumer decision
process:
• Need identification
• Information search
• Evaluation of alternatives
• The actual purchase decision and delivery
• Post-purchase contact with the firm

5
Generic market entry strategies

New Firm Existing Firm

First mover Fast follower
‘CLICKS’
PURE PLAY
1
Amazon.com
eBay.com
Barnes & Noble
Toys R Us
eTrade.com
Alliances Brand extender
‘CLICKS &
BRICKS’ Toys.com REI
LL Bean
MIXED PLAY
Wal-Mart

6
Approaches to customer relationship

• Permission marketing
• Affiliate marketing
• Viral marketing
• Sponsorship marketing
• Brand leveraging

7
Average time spent with major media

Time

2.6 3.8
6.9 Magazines
39.6 9.4 Newspapers
Other
Mobile
13.6 Radio
Internet
TV & Video
24.1

8
Customer retention strategies
• Personalisation and One to one marketing
• Customisation and customer co-
production
• Frequently asked questions
• Real-time customer service chat systems
• Automated response systems

9
Mass market personalisation continuum
Marketing Marketing attributes
Strategies
Product Target Pricing Techniques

Mass marketing Simple All consumers One nation, Mass media

one price

Direct Marketing Stratified Segments One price Targeted

communication
s, e.g. mail and
phone

Micromarketing Complex Micro- Variable pricing Segment

segments profiles

Personalised, Highly Individual Unique pricing Individual and

One to one complex social network
marketing profiles

10
Growth features of social marketing
• Social sign-on
– Signing on websites through SNS like FB
• Collaborative shopping
– Online chat about brands, products and
services
• Network notification
– FB’s like button, Twitter tweets an followers
• Social search (recommendation)
– Amazon’s social recommender system can use
your FB profile to recommend products
11
 Twitter marketing products
• Promoted tweets
– Advertisers pay to have their tweets appear in
users’ search results
• Promoted trends
– Advertisers pay to move their hashtags to the
top of Twitter’s Trends List
• Promoted accounts
– Advertisers pay to have their branded account
moved to the top of their Who to Follow list on
the Twitter home page
12
Channel strategies
• The term channel refers to the different methods
through which goods can be distributed and sold
• Traditional channels include sales by
manufacturers both directly and through
intermediaries such as manufacturer
representatives, distributors, retailers
• Channel conflict occurs when a new venue for
selling products or services threatens to destroy
existing venues for selling goods.

13
Impact of unique features of
eCommerce technology on marketing
eC Technology Dimension Significance for marketing

Ubiquity The marketplace has been replaced by ‘marketspace’ and is removed

from a temporal and geographic location

Global reach Worldwide customer service and marketing communications have been
enabled.

Universal standards Cost of delivering marketing messages and receiving feedback from users
is reduced because of shared, global standards of the Internet.

Richness Video, audio, and text marketing msgs can be integrated into a single
marketing msg and consuming experience.
Interactivity Consumers can be engaged in a dialogue, dynamically adjusting the
experience to the consumer
Information density Fine-grained, highly detailed information on consumers’ real-time
behaviour can be gathered and analysed for the first time.
Customisation Potentially enables product and service differentiation down to the level of
the individual, thus strengthening the ability of marketers to create brands.

14
Primary functions of branding

• What image should the product/service

reinforce?

• How is the product/service different

from those offered by competitors?

15
 Brands
• A brand is a set of expectations that a consumer
has when consuming, or thinking about consuming,
a product or service from a specific company.
• Brand expectations are based in part on past
experiences the consumer has had actually using
the product, on the experiences of trusted others
who have consumed the product, and on promises
of marketers who extol the unique features of the
product.

16
 From products to brands

Marketing consumer research

Product design
Consumer

Consumer
MARKETING experience
AUGMENTED PRODUCT COMMUNICATIONS
Differentiating features Create expectations
CORE PRODUCT *
Quality Trust
Branded
Price Affection product
Support Loyalty
Reliability Reputation

17
Source: Adapted from Laudon and Traver (2005)
 Characteristics of brands

• Reliability
• After sales service
• Standardisation of products
• Price
• Product differentiation
• Focused differentiation

18
 Influence of brands
• Corporate image facilitates development of
trust

• Adoption of standards of exchange may be

supported by the power of the brand image

• The movement of the organisational role to a

network role based on knowledge involves
risk
19
Brand perspective
• Brand strategy is a set of plans for
differentiating a product from its
competitor, and communicating these
differences effectively to the marketplace.
• Brand equity is the estimated value of the
premium customers are willing to pay for
using a branded product when compared
to unbranded competitors (Feldwick
1996).
20
 Comparative return on investment
Television 6.62

Radio 8.28 ROI

Telephone marketing 8.42

Mobile internet 10.08

DR magazine 10.26

DR newspaper 12.26

Social networking sites 12.45

Direct mail (postal) 12.57

Internet, other 16.75

Display ads 19.57
Online catalogues 19.86
Search engine (keyword and context marketing) 21.9
Commercial email
42.08
0 10 20 30 40 50

21
Nature of ideal markets
• Dependent on homogeneous suppliers or
customers
• Necessarily faceless
• No memory of past transactions
• Little or negligible historical context

22
Expectations from effectiveness of
brand include:
• Loyalty
• Price advantages
• Partnerships
• Leadership
• Entry into hitherto unexplored realms
(Local  Global)

23
Impact of ISs on market information

ISs by increasing the amount of market

information available increases the choice of
supply sources and thus hastens the move
toward markets governed primarily by price
mechanisms.
(Adapted from Malone et al. 1987)

24
Pointers through markets and
products:
• Markets
– Annuities
– Metal trading;
• Products
– Gold seal;
– Argos;
– Hawkeshead

25
Framework to analyse B2C websites

• Company information and functions

• Product service information and promotion
• Transaction processing
• Customer services
• Ease of use
• Innovation in services and technology

26
International comparison of
(B2C) website characteristics
Australia Greece United Kingdom
Chaos Music Beauty Shop Insight

Dymocks Best-e (oops.gr) Blackwell

E-Store E-shop easyJet

GreenGrocer Papasotiriou Thomas Cook

WINEPLANET Plaisio

Denmark Hong Kong, China United States

Haburi Ambassador HomeToDo

Ravenholm DVDShelf Outpost

Rejsefeber EBabyasia UPS Tools

Saxo Net Fun UPS Returns/buy.com

Velux Wing On Webvan

27
Sustenance of brand may be
expected to be based upon:
• Relationships
– Cumulative over time, stable and long term in nature;
– Accumulation of past experiences and consequences of
future expectations;
– Mutual orientation;
– Dependence;
– Bonds;
– Investments
• Interactions
– Represent the ‘here and now’ of interim behaviour and
constitute the dynamic aspects of relationships (Easton
1992)
– Made up of exchange processes and adaptation processes

28
Context of brand development:
direction of trust/risk
• Task orientation
– Refers to societies defining themselves by impersonal
contractual and legal relationships, based more upon mutual
need to achieve specific tasks than on kinship;
– Interpreted as task focused societies with firm (fixed) goals
and rules, where relationships are defined by legal contract
• Relationship orientation
– Natural grouping of people based upon kinship and
neighbourhood, shared culture, and folkways;
– Primary emphasis on maintaining long-term, multi-faceted
relationships, sometimes even at the expense of modifying
the goals in order to avoid harm to the relationship (Walls
1993)

29
Conclusion:

• Immediacy of need
• Expectations
• Price
• Nature of the good

30
 References:
A brand is more than a logo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTeO0lf_CV0&feature=related
Laudon, K.C., and Traver, C.G. (2013). E-commerce 2013: business, technology,
society, Pearson
Turban, E., King, D., and Lang, J. (2012). Introduction to Electronic Commerce, Pearson
Feldwick, P. (1996). ‘What is brand equity anyway, and how do you measure it?’ Journal
of the Market Research Society
Easton, G. (1992) “Industrial Networks: A Review,” in B. Axelsson and G. Easton edited
Industrial Networks: A New View of Reality, Routledge
Kumar, K., van Dissel, H.G., Bielli, P. (1998) “The Merchant of Prato – Revisited: Toward
a Third Rationality of Information Systems,” MIS Quarterly, June
Malone, T.W., Yates, J. and Benjamin, R.I.(1987) “Electronic Markets and Electronic
Hierarchies,” Communications of the ACM, 30:6, pp.484-497
Toennies, F. (1965) Community and Society, Harper and Row
Walls, J. (1993) “Global Networking for Local Development: Task Focus and
Relationship Focus in Cross-Cultural Communication,” in L.M. Harasim (ed.) Global
Networks: Computers and International Communication, The MIT Press

31