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19 Oct 2000, Pakistan

Dear Dr. Ecommerce,

I am currently doing my B.Sc. in computing from university of London. I am given a case study, where I am acting as a sales manager of a Ltd company. Sir, my assignment is to convince the management to slash down their cost from other media and to promote their Web site. Therefore I have to portray, all the positive reasons for promoting goods and services using a web site as the main media. (Also it would be advisable to answer this question in terms of Business view point and Customer view point)

I would sincerely appreciate all your effort!!!!

yours sincerely,

Nadir

Dear Nadir:

The key point here is that YOU are doing YOUR BSc. I've already got a degree. Hence the bulk of the research has to be on YOUR part. Fortunately, the Internet is rich in information about marketing on the web.

How successful your proposed strategy will be depends largely on the kind of company and its target market. Even in countries with very high Internet penetration, 40-50% of the adult population DOES NOT use the Internet. In most countries, an even greater percentage of people are not using the Internet. Obviously, Internet marketing will not reach Internet non-users. However, there are clear demographic trends in Internet use. Internet users tend to be middle or higher income, university educated people. If your product targets such people and your market is in a country with reasonably high Internet use, then you could be successful in promoting your products via a web site.

Unfortunately, there are millions of other web sites out there and many of them are also promoting products. Simply having a web site is not enough. You need to promote the web site to ensure people visit it and you need to ensure the content is interesting enough that people spend time on your web site and want to come back again. You will clearly need to develop a strategy to achieve this. And that strategy must be based on the kind of products you sell.

The first thing I suggest you do is look for web sites of companies similar to your hypothetical company in order to see what they are doing. Then look for information on Internet marketing. Finally, join our eThesis discussion forum.

Good luck,

Dr. Ecommerce