i-Branding is one of the fastest-growing aspects of internet marketing. Internet marketing is still an experimental area that continues to grow, evolve, and adapt. The use of the internet as a branding tool is an important area of study since the literature on internet branding is currently in the formative stage. This study investigated the relationship of various factors with respect to customer satisfaction of youths towards purchasing through the internet. The sample size is comprised of 520 respondents from various regions of Punjab. For this purpose, CFA has been applied to analyze the customer satisfaction of internet marketing among youngsters. Finally, this chapter would help academicians as well as industry experts to analyze the potential of i-branding in the future.
TopIntroduction
The concept of brand was not popular in earlier days i.e. 10-15 years ago. And it has been treated as a part of product, merely as an off-hand fashion of the product (Urde,1999). The concept of branding was again considered as an integral part of the product (Kotler,2000). Kapferer (1999) also discussed the few major concern related to the brand and it was only a sign to disclose the qualities of the product and it was also associated with tangible products and there was no significance of branding for service industry. Before 1980’s, the corporate houses was having totally different approach towards the brand, the main focus was on product instead of creating distinctive place in the mind of the customer. Product was wholly solely a brand. For the service industry, service provider was considered as a brand.
In case of product, the branding efforts can be performed with the help of various others marketing activities such as packaging and labeling etc. and it was really difficult to perform branding activities for service industry, because service were less standardized, although services involved various attributes (Cobb-welgren, Rubble & Donthu,1995). Now here the importance of brand equity arises for the service industry. In case of service industry, the concept of brand equity helps the organization to get the higher profits and loyal customer, which would enable the organization to gain the competitive position in the market (Berry,2000). The concept of value services emerged as a dominant attribute, if a customer is satisfied with the services, it will directly lead to the customer loyalty.
The concept of internet branding in an initial stages of recognition in the corporate as well as academic world, so there is very less literature available pertaining to the internet branding. (Merisavo,2004 ; Ibah, 2005). During the last 8 months, due to COVID-2019, the demand of this concept has gained significant relevance. Most of the organizations, recognized the need of integrated marketing across offline and online channels. Branding on the platform of internet includes number of challenges and opportunities for the corporate world. Thus it is the need of the hour for every company to find out the impact of online platform for branding strategies
Online branding concept has so many advantages for companies, this is a platform where organization can avail the benefit of global world on the internet, even they can save the consumer time by reducing their extra search cost (Ward and Lee, 2000).