Abstract
The amount of research on Internet marketing has expanded dramatically since the onset of the Internet Age. A review of the literature will aid in finding issues that have been researched as well as generate ideas for future study. This research project gathers, synthesizes, and analyzes the research methodology and content of the current literature before proposing an agenda for future research activities. The findings demonstrate an increase in activity, a skewed distribution of Internet marketing publications focusing on exploratory techniques, and a plethora of research methodologies. Researchers and practitioners alike will benefit greatly from this study’s difficulties and prospects. It also highlights the limitations of current research, identifying research gaps, and developing propositions that can help advance knowledge in the domain of digital marketing.
Introduction
With the growth of technology, company executives now have the option to assess data and use the knowledge to increase efficiency. The amount of material available through online marketing has risen, as has the way individuals and companies connect (Lin, 2007). To fully grasp and comprehend the potential benefits of internet marketing, business owners must ensure that their operations are in sync with technological changes. Failure to grasp the potential benefits of internet marketing may result in decreased productivity, income, and communication. To maintain a competitive edge and improve revenue and communication, company executives must prepare to meet client needs while also implementing creative technical techniques (Kuan et al., 2008). This study looked at the ways that business executives utilize to execute internet marketing in order to enhance their sales. The United States of America boasts of a stable retail industry, contributing an estimated $3.53 trillion to the country’s gross domestic product each year.
A Literature Review
Lin, H.-F. (2007). The effect of website quality aspects on consumer satisfaction in the context of B2C e-commerce. Management of Total Quality and Business Excellence. According to this research, customer happiness is influenced by service, system, and information quality. The author looked at the relationship between customer satisfaction and two aspects of system excellence, two aspects of evidence quality, and three aspects of service quality. Customer satisfaction is affected by all three dimensions except empathy, according to the findings. The sample used in this article could not be generalized to the whole market because of the sample’s small size.
Huei-Huang K., Gee-Woo B., and Vichita V. (2008) Comparing the effects of website quality on initial customer purchase and continued purchase at e-commerce websites. Behavior & Information Technology DeLone and McLean’s information systems success model was utilized by academics from the universities of Singapore, Korea, and Thailand to generate a clear and unifying image of website quality. This study’s goal is to determine whether or not a customer’s first interest in making a purchase is influenced by how well-designed the website is. Online businesses should focus on system quality and service excellence in order to increase client conversion and retention. Additional studies examining the relationship between e-commerce website quality and first-time and recurrent purchases might benefit from this study.
Hsu, C. L., Chang, K. C., & Chen, M. C. (2012). The impact of website quality on customer satisfaction and purchase intention: perceived playfulness and perceived flow as mediators. Information Systems and e-Business Management, 10(4), 549-570. This study aims to investigate the degree of mutuality of supposed flow and fun in the setting of an online travel agency, as well as the relationships between website quality, customer happiness, and purchase intentions. User impressions of fun and flow are influenced by website quality, which in turn affects their happiness and purchasing intent. In the paper, the repercussions are analyzed in depth, and future research choices are also discussed.
Chiung-Ju L. and Hui-Ju C. (2009). A study of the impacts of website quality on customer relationships. Performance. Total Quality Management, 20(9), 971 –988. There was a strong correlation between the quality of a company’s website, customer satisfaction, and trust in the online financial services industry. The survey may have generated a combined method bias, inflating the idea associations, which is one of the study’s limitations. Quality website content was shown to be the most important factor in increasing the depth and breadth of a connection, although website organization and facility quality also had an important influence.
Setiawati, N. P. A., Sunarsi, D., Nurjaya, S., Manan, A., Nurhadi, A., Erlangga, H.,… & Purwanto, A. (2021). Effect of Technology Acceptance Factors, Website Service Quality and Specific Holdup Cost on Customer Loyalty: A Study in Marketing Departement of Packaging Industry. Annals of the Romanian Society for Cell Biology, 12685-12697. The research wanted to find out how technological adoption affects online service quality and customer loyalty, as well as the holdup costs on consumer loyalty. According to the conclusions of the data investigation, client loyalty is not influenced by variables such as technological adoption. Customer loyalty is also influenced by the quality of the website’s service. The unique holdup cost has an impact on customer loyalty.
Lennon, R., Harris, J. (2002) Customer service on the Web: A cross-industry investigation. Journal of Targeting, Measurement and Analysis for Marketing 10, 325–338. Customers’ service is examined in this study by looking at the differences in breadth and quality between online businesses that are customer-oriented. According to them, they compare and contrast travel and retail firms, which are more customer-oriented, with technology and industrial companies. They also examine how a company’s online presence influences its customer service. The authors find that the degree of customer service given by online trade is continuously inadequate and suggest that there is opportunity for younger, smaller enterprises to engage in the facility. The study also takes into account any other ideas that could be made.
Xiang, J., & Chen, X. (2009, May). Customer satisfaction of e-commerce websites. In 2009 International Workshop on Intelligent Systems and Applications (pp. 1-5). For E-commerce websites, this study gives a hypothetic model based on earlier studies and empirical research, and then hypotheses are raised and tested via reason examination. Customer satisfaction is positively influenced by all five of the categories in the study, namely design, system quality, customer assistance, online security, and website knowledge. E-commerce websites may benefit from the study’s suggestions.
Osakwe, C. N., & Chovancová, M. (2015). Exploring online shopping behaviour within the context of online advertisement, customer service experience consciousness and price comparison websites: Perspectives from young female shoppers in the ZlĂnskĂ˝ region. Acta Universitatis Agriculturae Et Silviculturae Mendelianae Brunensis. For this research, the author wanted to examine the impact of online advertising and customer service on the intents of young female consumers and the relevance of price comparison websites in this context in terms of buy intention and online selling environment. Female customers are more likely to use price comparison websites if they have had a positive experience with customer care, according to a new study.
Lasek, M., & Jessa, S. (2013). CHATBOTS FOR CUSTOMER SERVICE ON HOTELS’WEBSITES. Information Systems in Management, 2(2), 146-158. In this work, researchers examine the employment of chatbots in hotels and guesthouses. A chatbot is a computer software that mimics human conversation with online visitors. There were 17413 user utterances and 4165 interactions recorded across five distinct websites. The hotel chatbot’s instructive role was verified in more than 56% of the discussions. Additionally, 63% of guests prefer to engage with a hotel chatbot instead of typing provided the chatbot has at least one clickable option to choose from. The results reveal that integrating voice synthesis increases the amount of people who start a conversation with the hotel chatbot, which in turn increases the number of people who book online rooms.
Dholakia, R. R., & Zhao, M. (2009). Retail web site interactivity: How does it influence customer satisfaction and behavioral intentions?. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management. Customers’ pleasure, telepresence, and behavioral intention were all examined as a result of this study’s focus on interactivity’s subjective vs objective distinctions. To better understand how people, purchase online, the authors built two retail websites with varying levels of interaction. However, telepresence is only impacted by subjective interaction, even though both objective and subjective interactivity positively enhance online consumers’ enjoyment and behavioral intentions. This effect is not totally moderated by satisfaction, according to the Lisrel research on telepresence and behavioral intentions.
Social Media as a Business Tool
Social media is a tool for communication. The Internet phenomenon of social media marketing enables small retail business operators to incorporate Internet communication into their business strategy and has evolved into an advertising platform (Hsu et al., 2012). Online communication is different from traditional marketing and has become one of the most important parts of a business. Social networking provides small business executives with significant communication benefits, empowers buyers, and lowers marketing expenses. Although some businesses rely on social media to brand and sell their products, other creative resources are necessary to tackle 20 challenges when marketing online.
Business leaders utilize social media to interact with people from all walks of life. The use of web-based social networking technologies allows businesses to engage in two-way communication and reach a larger audience (Chiung-Ju & Hui-Ju 2009). Some businesses use web-based social networking to engage with groups, buyers, and partners. Some company executives utilize Facebook to communicate, introduce themselves, and make relationships with a larger consumer base. Furthermore, if they lacked essential assets or web-based social networking advertising strategies, internet marketing specialists faced difficulties in using web-based social networking for correspondence.
How Website Marketing and Customer Service Work Together
Consumers are increasingly turning to social media as a means of communicating with companies, making the need for symbiotic marketing and customer service relationships even more critical (Lennon & Harris, 2002). For many consumers, social media is their favorite means of getting in touch with a firm, preferring it over live chat, email, or even calling them. One of the ways marketing and customer service teams need to communicate is by establishing defined swim lanes and assigning accountable employees so that both groups may utilize social media to accomplish their respective objectives. Website marketing and customer service can work together in the following ways:
Ideas for Content Creation
Successful marketers know that frequent and continuous content development is critical to their marketing strategy. Regular and consistent content production needs a constant supply of ideas for new material, and even the most experienced content producers might run into difficulty inventing new ideas for content that their target audience would find useful and interesting Marketers want to generate content that helps address the problems of their audience, and your team is the greatest place to get an idea of what those issues are. In addition, one may be able to supply the marketing team with real-life client success stories and examples that they may utilize in their material. This team is a veritable treasure of content ideas since they are always talking with and learning about their clients’ issues, interests, and demands (Lennon & Harris, 2002). Meet with them on a regular basis to educate them about the issues your consumers are encountering and to generate content ideas to solve those issues. In your capacity as a customer service representative, brainstorm content ideas that would be particularly beneficial to your clients and potential clients.
Setting Customers’ Expectations
One of the best ways to identify whether a marketing team is doing a good job is if leads know exactly how the company’s goods and services will benefit them. In addition, when leads have defined expectations, the transition from lead to customer and the future experience of that customer as a customer may be considerably easier. So, what role does customer service play here? It is easier for the marketing and customer support teams to work together when they’re more aligned, since employees of your own team are more likely to spot anomalies in the product. It is possible for the marketing team to fix the misleading expectations they were generating in their marketing efforts, for example, by depending heavily on messaging that the interior paint the shop offers dries in minutes, but in fact clients report that it takes hours.
Customer Retention Initiatives
Creating a customer loyalty program is a crucial part of retaining current consumers. The customer success team may work closely with marketing to make the offer more enticing for consumers, whether it’s via points, discounts, or visibility on the company’s social media or other marketing channels. Marketing might play a significant role in a meaningful customer loyalty award by sharing customer resources on social media, writing a guest blog post, or participating in co-marketing activities.
Research Methodology
The semi-structured interviews with open-ended questions were a good fit for the qualitative technique. A researcher who employs qualitative techniques seeks to get a deeper understanding of a topic or a group of participants by delving into the viewpoints of the people involved (Xiang & Chen, 2009). Research questions that need real data, broad knowledge, and specified variables are best answered using quantitative methodologies.
Results
A One-Sample Test, with a test value of 4, was used for data analysis. During the course of the investigation, we discovered three key methods of internet marketing: the chat area, email advertising, and word-of-mouth. The results were unanimous and consistent across all four choices in the sample. Customers’ word of mouth is the most successful form of internet marketing across all industries, whereas email advertising and live chat were not. Chat and email advertising have a mean score of less than 3 across three categories, indicating that the respondents disagree. Because of this, word of mouth might be important or negligible. An increase in the mean difference is a strong indicator of significance. As a result, values for email advertising and the chat section all have a negative mean difference, which indicates disagreement.
Discussion
As a result of this trend, today’s businesses are adopting processes that emphasize social responsibility as a means of achieving their objectives and maintaining long-term partnerships with all stakeholders (Setiawati et al., 2021). Online shoppers have become more knowledgeable and discerning. Before making a purchase, they thoroughly research the items, their features and benefits, the pricing, the payment choices, the shipping costs, and the return policies (Osakwe & Chovancová, 2015). This ability to quickly recognize and respond to the needs and desires of prospective customers in a competitive market is now a reality for merchants. Online merchants’ websites are becoming information warehouses that feature product information, images, videos, effective endorsements, and user reviews (Lasek & Jessa, 2013). More than a few shops are making an attempt to market their items through social media in order to build long-term ties with their consumers. In order to develop a trusting connection between firms and their consumers, many internet businesses must concentrate on a brand-building awareness campaign among their clients (Dholakia & Zhao, 2009). All price promotions must be clearly communicated and confirmed to customers in an effective manner.
Conclusion
Modern website marketing technologies have been recognized as a natural complement to more traditional forms of advertising. Consumers and suppliers benefit from e-ability marketing’s ability to improve organizational structure and forge closer relationships. Globally, e-marketing is rapidly expanding and having a big impact on consumer behavior and the corporate industries it serves. E-marketing apps and techniques are being developed by a number of companies in order to connect with both local and international clients through the internet and other virtual networks. Customers’ trustworthiness is directly related to their level of satisfaction with a product or service. Websites that are visually appealing and easy to use may help businesses gain customers’ trust and increase consumer loyalty by supplying environmentally friendly goods.
References
Chiung-Ju L. and Hui-Ju C. (2009). A study of the impacts of website quality on customer relationships. Performance. Total Quality Management, 20(9), 971 –988. Web.
Dholakia, R. R., & Zhao, M. (2009). Retail web site interactivity: How does it influence customer satisfaction and behavioral intentions?. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management. Web.
Hsu, C. L., Chang, K. C., & Chen, M. C. (2012). The impact of website quality on customer satisfaction and purchase intention: perceived playfulness and perceived flow as mediators. Information Systems and e-Business Management, 10(4), 549-570. Web.
Kuan, H. H., Bock, G. W., & Vathanophas, V. (2008). Comparing the effects of website quality on customer initial purchase and continued purchase at e-commerce websites. Behaviour & Information Technology, 27(1), 3-16. Web.
Lasek, M., & Jessa, S. (2013). CHATBOTS FOR CUSTOMER SERVICE ON HOTELS’WEBSITES. Information Systems in Management, 2(2), 146-158. Web.
Lennon, R., Harris, J. (2002) Customer service on the Web: A cross-industry investigation. Journal of Targeting, Measurement and Analysis for Marketing 10, 325–338 Web.
Lin, H.-F. (2007). The impact of website quality dimensions on customer satisfaction in the B2C e-commerce context. Total Quality Management and Business Excellence, 18(4), 363–378. Web.
Osakwe, C. N., & Chovancová, M. (2015). Exploring online shopping behaviour within the context of online advertisement, customer service experience consciousness and price comparison websites: Perspectives from young female shoppers in the ZlĂnskĂ˝ region. Acta Universitatis Agriculturae Et Silviculturae Mendelianae Brunensis. Web.
Setiawati, N. P. A., Sunarsi, D., Nurjaya, S., Manan, A., Nurhadi, A., Erlangga, H.,… & Purwanto, A. (2021). Effect of Technology Acceptance Factors, Website Service Quality and Specific Holdup Cost on Customer Loyalty: A Study in Marketing Departement of Packaging Industry. Annals of the Romanian Society for Cell Biology, 12685-12697. Web.
Xiang, J., & Chen, X. (2009). Customer satisfaction of e-commerce websites. In 2009 International Workshop on Intelligent Systems and Applications (pp. 1-5). IEEE. Web.