E-Marketing, 3rd edition Judy Strauss, Adel I. El-Ansary, and Raymond Frost

E-Marketing, 3rd editionJudy Strauss, Adel I. El-Ansary,and Raymond Frost Chapter 4: Leveraging Technology © Prentice Hall 2003

Overview The Marriage of Marketing &Technology Product Technologies Building a Web Site HTML Forms Java Dynamic HTML (DHTML) XHTML XML Multimedia Database Marketing Computer Viruses Denial of Service Attacks Price Technologies Distribution Technologies Bandwidth and Market Opportunities Content Filtering Transaction Security IMC Technologies Proxy Servers How Search Engines Work Log Files and Cookies Rotating and Targeted Ad Banners Relationship Marketing Technologies

The Marriage of Marketing and Technology • Marketing managers need to understand the capabilities of new media to develop and implement an effective marketing plan. • E.g. AutoTrader.com

Product Technologies E-marketers can use a wide variety of technologies to support their product strategies.

Building a Web Site • Building and publishing Web pages = greatly simplified. • HyperText Markup Language (HTML): language originally used to construct all Web pages. • Today other languages have been added to support interactive Web pages. • These languages creates a computer program that runs • On the Web server = slow response times, • On the user's browser = instantaneous response.

HTML Forms = Text boxes, check boxes, radio buttons, drop-down lists. • When completing a survey or ordering online, the customer fills out an HTML form. • Creating the form is easy. • Processing the information is more difficult. • The processing is performed on the server by a separate program: • Common Gateway Interface (CGI) scripts for Unix operating system, • Active Server Pages (ASP) for servers running Microsoft.

Java = A general-purpose computer language developed by Sun Microsystems that can be used to develop interactive Web sites. • Fast: Programs run very quickly on the user’s computer system. • Flexible: Programs support animation, streaming media, 3D visualization, or almost any other task.

Java • Safe: Programs run in a protected memory space where they cannot infect or otherwise damage the user’s computer system. • Difficult to program: A Java Development Kit (JDK) can simplify the process but Java is a language for professional programmers. • Dynamic HTML: Enhanced form of HTML providing many of the interactive functions of java without the heavy-duty programming.

Dynamic HTML (DHTML) • DHTML encompasses a range of enhancements to the HTML standard to make it: • more interactive, • more capable of multimedia, • better suited to professional page layout. • These enhancements include: • JavaScript, • Cascading style sheets (CSS), • plug-ins, • ActiveX.

JavaScript • Name: has nothing to do with Java+ was chosen because of the cachet of the Java language. • Origin: It was developed by Netscape and then became an industry standard. • Use: • Create the fancy buttons and rollover effects, • Check user input for errors and issue warning messages, • Detect the user’s browser version and monitor size and send a version of the Web page optimized for the user’s machine, • Create calculators, clocks, games, and many other applications.

ActiveX = A competitor to Java but has not achieved nearly the same market share. • It works only with the Windows operating system: • Developers programming in ActiveX risk alienating a portion of the user base, • ActiveX programs can access the file system on the user’s computer = opens up the possibility of privacy abuse.

Plug-Ins = Small programs that must be downloaded and installed on the user’s computer. • Use: • Play multimedia content encoded in a specific format, • Create content with relatively little effort. • Safety: • For fear of viruses, users are disinclined to download and install software, • Some plug-ins are so prevalent that they have a large installed base of users and are safe.

Plug-Ins • The best known plug-ins: • RealPlayer: Plays streaming audio and video over low-bandwidth connections, • Acrobat: Allows professional page layouts to be saved with the possibility lock the document so it cannot be altered, • Flash: Plays animations including charts, graphics, sounds, scrolling lists, tickers, and movie clips.

Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) • Assist with precise formatting of text and graphics on the Web page. • Enable relatively painless sitewide updates. • Allow the separation of a document’s content from its presentation in separate files. • Have to be used with caution because some older browser versions cannot support them: • Solution: create multiple versions of each page, then send the appropriate one to the user.

XHTML • Goals: • Bring more uniformity to the HTML language by requiring every tag to have a matching end tag, • Increase the separation between document content and presentation (CSS). • XHTML can be seen as an intermediate step toward the real direction that the Web may be heading = XML.

XML • XML completes the separation of document content and presentation opening up a significant business application: • Web enabling business databases + the exchange of information from those databases: • Consumers can request online account information, product availability, which are sent from database to Web page instantaneously on demand, • Businesses can easily exchange data with their supply chain partners, gaining a significant competitive advantage.

XML • Drawbacks: • Lack of support for the standard by Netscape (pages have unpredictable displays on a Netscape browser), • It is relatively difficult to program and only accessible to professional programmers. • Developers have three options: • Learn XML and become professional programmers, • Use an XML authoring tool such as Microsoft Word to automatically generate XML, • Ignore the standard in the same way that many developers ignored Java.

Multimedia • Challenge: Deliver multimedia content over the Web requiring high bandwidth to slow home connections. • Solutions: • Speed up the home Internet connection using a high-bandwidth wired or wireless connection, • Compress the multimedia content into smaller packets of information, • RealNetworks: compression audio (RealAudio) and video (RealVideo), • MP3: compression technology for music (1/10th of original size, • Stream the multimedia so that the user can play a piece of it while the rest downloads, • Distribute multiple copies of the multimedia content around the Internet so that it is closer to the end users and delays are avoided.

Database Marketing = Utilize relational databases to store tables of information: • Can be mined for information about clients. • Can be used to generate promotional campaigns. • A collection of tables containing information about a common subject. • Relational databases such as Oracle and DB2 utilize a very powerful query language called SQL.

Database Marketing • E-marketers use the client and interest files to target by demographics or psychographics. • Structured Query Language (SQL): used to extract information from large databases. • How does the user data get into the database? • Explicit method: User fills out a short survey during the registration process at a Web site, • Implicit method: Study of the user’s pattern of frequenting pages on a site.

Computer Viruses = Intrusive pieces of computer code that secretly attach to existing software, reproducing themselves and wreaking havoc with data. • They can spread throughout a computer network. • Problem: Reinforce consumer perceptions that the Internet is not secure.

Computer Viruses • 4 common types of viruses are: • Macro viruses: attached to data files and infect Microsoft Word or Excel when users open the infected data file, • Worms: replicate rapidly, eating up memory, • Trojan Horses: are activated at a certain date or event, • Boot viruses: reside on floppy disks and destroy operating systems when users mistakenly boot the computer with a disk inserted.

Computer Viruses • What can e-marketers do? • The best place to stop a computer virus is before it reaches the end user. • All e-mail messages pass through a mail server that stores the messages on a disk drive in users’ mailboxes: • Software installed on the mail server can scan all incoming messages for known viruses and destroy them. • Anti-viral software can also be installed on each individual computer such as McAfee Anti-Virus, or the Symantec's Norton AntiVirus.

Denial of Service Attacks • Occurs when a hacker floods a computer system with millions of requests for information and effectively exceeds its ability to respond. • Remedies: • Distribute multiple copies of a Web site around the country in the hope that all sites will not be attacked simultaneously, • Infrastructure companies are also working together to develop procedures for early detection and neutralization of attacks.

Price Technologies • Shopping agents are a key technology that e-marketers need to understand when planning pricing strategies. • A shopping agent: • Helps consumers shop by compiling all the information they need to complete a purchase, • Knows which stores to visit, provides accurate product and price information, • Helps buyers compare product features and prices, negotiates specials on their behalf, • Completes the transaction with the click of a button, • Uses a technology called parallel pull.

Price Technologies • The merchants’ benefits: The agents attract customers to their sites. • The agents’ benefits: Sell preferred placement and advertising inventory as well as by collecting referral fees. • Easy price-shop + little product or merchant differentiation perception • Commodity markets with all prices reaching similar levels. • BUT most consumers are brand sensitive about their merchants: • Look at the price sorted results for a familiar merchant name.

Price Technologies • For whom is the agent really working? • The buyer: the agents do not charge vendors a fee for listing such as PriceSCAN. • The vendors: certain agents may charge a fee for listing and additional fees for preferred placement in the listings but the consumer is usually able to sort the listings by price. • One weakness: vendor ‘s selectivity is not prominently mentioned on the site.

Bandwidth and Market Opportunities • Complex infrastructure systems bring a variety of utilities to the consumer’s home. • The consumer is interested by the benefits and not how the systems works. • BUT to provide these additional services major infrastructure improvements behind the scenes are required.

Bandwidth: = The carrying capacity of an information channel (telephone or cable TV wire). • Greater bandwidth results in greater information delivery speed (less download waiting time). • Measured in bits per second. • Modems are used to pump information over a telephone line. The fastest modems operate at about 50,000 bits per second. = 1,000 words sent from person A to person B in 1 second.

Bandwidth: • Just how fast does transmission need to be to support various media types?

Bandwidth: • Developing low-involvement brands requires high-quality multimedia on the Web but this is only available for high-bandwidth users. • High-bandwidth means: • Personal selling and customer service, • Phone calls delivered over the Internet, • Delivery of music CDs over the Web, • Delivery of movies over the Web, • Real-time virtual reality. • DIFFICULTY: The telephone line to the consumer’s home was never designed to carry voice communications. • Need major infrastructure changes.

Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) • Methods for transmitting at speeds up to 8 Mbps over a standard phone line. • Uses the phone line already installed in consumer homes. • Allows users to simultaneously make phone calls + surf the Web because the data travels outside of the audible voice band. • Users must install a DSL modem + phone companies have to deploy the infrastructure to support DSL technology (some technical issues remain).

Cable Modems • Allow transmission of Internet traffic over the cable TV wire connected to the home. • Speed:500 Kbps - 2.5 Mbps. • Problem: having too many subscribers! (cable neighborhood share bandwidth).

Cable Modems • The advantages: • Early market penetration = the cable modems were the first available, • Diffusion via word of mouth, • The cable companies solved their infrastructure issues early and are able focus on establishing value-added services (CD-quality audio) = barriers to entry for the phone companies.

Other Broadband Options: Wireless • Relies on towers to relay signals. • Personal data assistants (PDAs), notebook computers and other wireless devices are best served by wireless communication. • Constraint: Users want access anytime from anywhere.

Other Broadband Options: Wireless • A natural outgrowth: Cell phone towers already in place + network very reliable + most of the communication already digital. • Problem: bandwidth, network designed to handle low bandwidth voice communications.Data communications is slow. • Solution: Third generation (3G) cell phone networks = transfer data up to 10 times faster.

E-Marketing, 3rd edition Judy Strauss, Adel I. El-Ansary, and Raymond Frost