Web-based marketing: The coming revolution in marketing thought and strategy

Abstract

The web is growing at a dramatic pace and is significantly impacting customer and business market behaviors. As a result, most firms have started developing marketing strategies for the web. In this paper, we propose that the web is fundamentally changing, and will continue to change, marketing thought and practice. The paper suggests that the web-based markets of tomorrow may have little resemblance to the markets of today. We discuss the emergence of reverse marketing, customer-centric marketing, effective-efficiency, adaptation, expectation management, marketing process focus and fixed cost marketing in the context of marketing theory and practice. In addition, we discuss customer behaviors such as cocreation, universal availability, use of infomediaries, temporal shifts, open pricing and a move toward bricks to clicks.