Arguably, businesses and doing business has tremendously changed today. The digital era has led to an accelerated range of branded services and products, as well as consumerism. The manufacture, producers and businesses advertise their services and products by employing the digital media, which include cell phones, electronic billboards, internet, as well as celebrity endorsement. One of the prominent way of marketing during the digital era is the e-marketing. E-marketing complements entire marketing strategy that is perfect, and at the same time offers advertising opportunities that are proven and is in a position to take the marketing process to the next level. E-marketing provides an absolute solution to an event invitation, product promotion, as well as query responses. In fact, e-marketing in the digital age entails the efforts to promote, communicate about, as well as sell services and products over the internet. There are four main domains of e-marketing, these include business to business, business to consumer, consumer to business, as well as consumer to consumer.
Certainly, one of the e-marketing domain is business to business. It is a situation whereby businesses focus its marketing strategies on the businesses. The ultimate objective of this crucial domain is to ensure that they sell a service of a product to other businesses. In fact, business-to-business domain has become one of the main focuses for various online marketers. The business-to-business domain can be described as the transactions between wholesalers and manufacturers or retailers and wholesalers (Strauss & Frost, 2009). The volume transacted between business-to-business is very high. The main reason for this tremendous volume of transaction is that the supply chain between business involve transfer of raw materials, as well as sub raw materials. One of the main manufacturers who are involved in business-to-business domain are the automobile manufacturers. Most of the transactions include windscreen glass, and tires. In the year 2003, the business-to-business was approximately $4 trillion (Armstrong & Kotler, 2006). It uses online product catalogues, spot exchanges, trading networks, and barter and auction sites. The crucial offers under business-to-business domain are online information, support, and purchasing. In general analysis, there are various private trading exchanges that are developed for various business-to-business transactions.
Business-to-consumers is also another domain in e-marketing. It entails the process of selling and buying services and products using internet instead of old methods such as catalog orders. Perhaps business-to-consumer is tremendously growing since most of the customers are trying to experiment online selling and buying. The popularity of online transactions is growing during the digital age since most consumers have realized that it is more advantageous as compared to ancient strategies (Strauss & Frost, 2009). One of the main examples of business-to-consumer electronic commerce include the Noble, and the Amazon. The advantages of this domain are that the consumers get the services and products at cheaper costs, easy payment method, as well as fast delivery. Based on this domain the consumer is put in a position to conveniently do shopping and place orders at any time. Business-to-consumer domain presents the consumer with a chance to access various online stores around the clock, and place orders, which are automatically processed.
The business also are the great beneficiaries of this domain since business-to-consumer helps the consumer identifies companies to shop from. If this domain was not available, then it would be very difficult for companies to reach any potential customer. It is worth noting that online consumers are becoming more diverse and mainstream. As the new online opportunities emerge, behaviors of the consumers also change. In fact, online consumers control and initiate exchange processes, and at the same time value the information that they find online. Business –to-consumer domain is expected was expected to generate approximately $316 billion by 2010, which makes up 13% of the entire retail sales (Armstrong & Kotler, 2006). The model of business-to-consumer applies to all forms of business that sells its services or products to consumers through the internet. In the digital age, this is a reality since most business organizations are part of the strategy. The services include travel services, health information and banking services. The types of business-to-consumer that can be identified include advertising, fee-based, community-based, direct sellers, as well as online intermediaries. With the continuous improvement of technology, it is evident that the future of business-to-consumer is very bright.
The third domain of e-marketing during the digital era is consumer-to-consumer. Just like other domains, this takes place on the internet and it involves services and goods. This is one of the internet commerce, whereby consumers have an opportunity to interact through online auctions with other consumers. This implies that consumers conduct services and goods on the internet with other consumers. In the auction process a third party can be part of the business that is being undertaken over the internet (Armstrong & Kotler, 2006). The third party in this case helps in officiating a and ensuring that goods and services transacted are paid and received by the consumers involved. The consumer-to-consumer domain was even used before the business was taken over by internet. The main rationale behind consumer-to-consumer is that it helps the sellers and the buyers to meet and interact easily (Strauss & Frost, 2009). The consumers opt for this domain because there is the reduction of transaction costs, which in one way or another increases profitability. The consumer is in a position to easily complete transactions without visiting stores physically. Some of the established sites that facilitate consumer-to-consumer transactions include Ebay, Amazon, and Half.com. It best works when there is a creation of virtual community where consumers with common interest can interact.
The fourth e-commerce domain in the digital era is the consumer-to-business. This is a domain whereby the consumer takes the initiative of creating value, and firms are there to consume the value. The organizations utilize the services or products that the consumer made to achieve competitive advantage or accomplish a certain business process. The e-commerce domains gives the consumer a change to make a decision on what they want (Armstrong & Kotler, 2006). The consumer-to-business is a demand collection strategy or reverse action; this is because the consumers make a service or a product names it and place prizes, and the business pay the product or services. Perhaps, the consumers view offers, give feedback, initiate purchase, and search for sellers. For example, one can bid for an airline ticket, and make a decision whether to reject of accepting the offer.
For decades now companies have utilized the e-marketing to profitability. As a matter of fact, this is achieved through delivering quality value to the consumers. As technology advances, consumers become more rational, in that they go for the best quality at the minimum cost possible. On the other hand, companies have utilized e-commerce to attain competitive advantage and consumer loyalty, which directly reflects inn profitability. E-marketing has driven companies towards profitability because it aligns with the decisions of customers to purchase the products at their convenient time (Strauss & Frost, 2009). In addition, e-marketing has enabled the organizations to build a strong relationship with prospects and consumers through low cost communication and , mass marketing.
Internet marketing enables organizations to open businesses in various parts of the world at any time and place. E-marketing has broken physical barrier that was the tremendous setback to businesses. In this case, when consumers are easily accessed, and consumers can buy hat they want at the same time, sales will increase. When sales increases there is a great opportunity for businesses making profitability. In addition, companies go about conducting e-marketing for profitability since it reduces the transaction costs (Armstrong & Kotler, 2006). E-marketing is more advantageous to companies in satisfying the consumer, this is because e-marketing is cheaper as compared to the traditional physical outlets. The companies do not have to incur costs of property maintenance and rental. Perhaps, companies go by serving the clients and maximizing profits by stocking products on demand, which leads to reduced cost of inventory.
The companies that utilize e-marketing has benefited from the ever growing social media networks. Studies show that there is a tremendous increase of online revenue due to the social networks. The consumers strongly respond to social media information by buying products online (Strauss & Frost, 2009). Competition in every business is an important factor that determines profitability. E-marketing allows companies to critically analyze their competitors online, and maintain its competitive advantage by providing the best to the consumers. The e-marketing gives companies an opportunity to react to consumer changes and competitors strategy. This sort of thread has enabled companies to maintain its profitability or increase the profit margin. In general perspective, the way companies utilizes the e-marketing has proven to increase profits in the business and maintain consumers loyalty. It is worth noting that profitability comes as a result of satisfying the consumer at an given time.
References
Armstrong, G., & Kotler, P. (2006). Marketing: An introduction. Upper Saddle River, N.J: Pearson Prentice Hall.
Strauss, J., & Frost, R. (2009). E-marketing. Upper Saddle River, N.J: Pearson Prentice Hall.
