Digital Marketing Optimization

The Digital World

The internet has been identified as the world’s fastest growing market place with an enormous increase in the globalization environment for marketing products and services (Domains, 1999). Projected estimates indicate that the worldwide internet population may reach 1.35 billion by the end of current year (Internet World Stats, 2010; eTForecasts, 2004; Gong et al., 2007). The internet today has been hailed as the single most important invention of the 20^th century and digital marketing is transforming companies, customization and advertising (Majumdar, 2010). There seems to be rapid adoption of the internet by consumers for various purposes, including information search and online shopping (Ranganathan & Ganapathy, 2002).

Consumer behavior has changed dramatically in the past decade. The present day, consumers can order many customized products online, ranging from sneakers to computers. Many have replaced their daily newspapers with customized, online editions of these media and are increasingly receiving information from online sources (Schiffman & Kanuk, 2009). If nowadays, experts want to identify the most profound influences on consumer behavior in recent times, the answer would be the internet. One reason the internet is dramatically changing consumer behavior is that it helps us to search more easily and efficiently than ever before (Roger et al., 2006).

According to one report, internet household penetration in India reached 42 million households in 2007 (Internet Usage, January 2009), and there will be about 10.5 million broadband households in India by 2011 (e-Marketer.com, January 2008). Worldwide, more than 540 million people now have Internet access.