The Evolution of Theory and Practice of Marketing in Light of Information Technology

Abstract

Marketing is a discipline that concentrates on the process of exchange between two market groups, and for this reason, it has been immediately involved with developments in the Internet—understood as a suitable phenomenon for discovering new opportunities and possible threats to modern business management (Burke, 1996) and as a commercial business tool (Alba et al., 1997; Quelch & Klein, 1996). The aim of this chapter is to highlight the marketing elements that, according to an accurate review of international literature, have been involved in the development of new information technology and, in particular, the Internet. The investigation concerns in particular • customers: the buying behavior of Internet users compared to traditional behavior; • relations and communication: in this section we try to understand what are the barriers to the development of these relations: trust, safety, and manipulation are some of the obstacles examined; • marketing research: an accurate review of international scientific literature highlights the online research techniques and tools that are of greater use to companies; • marketing management: products, prices, place (distribution), and promotion are unequivocally decided by the company but may become an area of negotiation between companies and customers thanks to new multimedia tools; and • marketing performance: this section illustrates what are the best performance indicators for measuring the activities carried out by an e-commerce project.