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Introduction
Effectiveness of E-marketing
The aim of this work based learning is to unfold the effectiveness of the e-marketing for the non-profit making organization. Non-profit making organizations are organizations which provide goods and services to the consumers without the aim of making profit. The research paper shall review some of the existing literatures concerning e-marketing and its effectiveness to the non-profit organizations. Some of the areas of effectiveness to be discussed include: its effectiveness as an advertising tool, its influence on consumer behaviour, how it improves competitive advantage and its effectiveness in customer relationship management.
E-marketing is the marketing of products and services through the internet. E-marketing is crucial for any given organization when it comes to marketing of products. Non-profit making organizations are those organizations which are not interested in making profit. They include organizations such as face-book, twitter among others. The main role of these organizations is to provide services to the citizens with no intention of making profit.
During the past decades, internet marketing has become an important tool for marketing used by various organizations. Internet marketing has been growing explosively over the past decades. For instance, according to Cyberatlas.com (2002), the application of internet as a marketing tool in the United States of America has grown significantly. Cyberatlas.com (2002) suggests that the users of internet as a marketing tool have been growing significantly at a rate of 2 million new internet users per month. It is also in record that the number of companies and other organizations such as the non-profit making organizations that create web presence in order to get in touch with their clients has been dramatically increasing over time.
Despite internet being a new trend in marketing, it is surprising that it has been accepted by broad consumer segment for various purposes. For instance, the internet have been accepted as a means of delivering information about products and services offered by a given business organization. It has also been accepted as a way of initiating purchases of products by various consumers. According to cyberatlas.com, more than 36% of Americans use the internet to search for the products and service information. On the other hand, approximately 39% use the internet to purchase their products.
The researches done so far concerning the effectiveness of the internet marketing in the non-profit making organizations have yielded many important findings. Among all those studies, the internet has been seen an advertising medium, communication platform, understanding consumer behaviour, medium for self learning theory and a marketing channel. However, the fundamental purpose of this paper is to review some of the existing studies regarding some findings of some aspects of internet marketing in non-profit organizations and to provide direction for further studies in the area.
Effectiveness of internet marketing for non-profit organizations
In order to completely analyse the effectiveness of the internet marketing, it is prudent that we analyse it through the following headlines.
Internet as a marketing tool
The success of the internet as a marketing tool solely depends on the advantages that it can offer compared to other marketing systems available. Many researchers have compared the use of internet and other marketing system from different perspectives.
Internet as an advertising tool
Advertising is the process of communicating relevant information about products and services being offered with a view of persuading and encouraging different customers to buy particular products. internet marketing provide an effective way through which different information relating to the products and services being offered by a particular non-profit organizations are communicated to the potential consumers. According to (Peterson, Balasubramanian and Bronnenberg 1997), internet serves as an efficient medium for accessing, organizing and communicating relevant information about the products and services. Through the internet, the consumers can directly request for additional information relating to particular products. The consumer can do so by controlling an advertising message or instead request for further information about a given product or service being offered by a non-profit making organization.
The internet not only serves as an excellent advertising medium, but also reduces dramatically the cost incurred by the non-profit organization in communication purposes. Nowadays, a good number of consumers are willing to contact firms through emails before and after the purchase has been done. Therefore, it is by no doubt that the increasing use of internet as a marketing tool by the non-profit organization apart from being an excellent advertising medium; it also provides them with new opportunities which allow them to expand their operation by attracting new clients.
Consumer behaviour
Research on the internet marketing have identified asset of factors which are likely to affect the consumers acceptance of the internet as a communication medium. For instance, it has been found that in both U.S and Asia that male consumers with high income and education level are more likely to purchase online (Tse 2002). This in turn implies that demographic factors have no big influence in determining consumers’ internet acceptance since both the educated and the less income earners may have access to the internet.
However, research indicate that psychographic variables such as product involvement, novelty seeking, need for social interaction among others have great effect on the consumer’s decision on whether or not to purchase online. (Tse 2002). In addition, the consumer’s attitude also affects their decision on the adoption of the internet. Another factor that determines the consumer’s decision on whether to transact online or not is online security. Therefore, the factors mentioned determine the decision of the consumers to transact business online. This in turn affects online operations of the non-profit organizations.
The internet and competition.
The emergence of the internet has changed the nature and intensity of competition. The internet have the ability to change how the existing non-profit making organizations compete among themselves. The internet enables the organization to attract other clients into the organization. Research shows that the new generation prefer doing their things online. Therefore, organizations which advertise their products and services online are likely to have a competitive advantage over their competitors.
The internet and customer relationship management
The use of internet by non-profit making organizations has dramatically enhanced the ability of such organizations to interact, hence serving their clients better. According to Zabin (2002), internet can be served as a platform that enables relationship management. This implies that the internet provides non-profit organization with effective tool for customer relationship management
Conclusion
References
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