Free Marketing Dissertations - Marketing And Design Of Products Table Of Contents Executive Summary
Marketing and Design of Products
Table of contents
Executive Summary
Questions
1. Identify the different levels of access to the World Wide Web in each of the following continents - Asia, Africa, Europe, America (North and South) and Australia. Explore the reasons for this variation.
2. Discuss the implications this has for international marketing development and strategy implementation for companies with global reach. You may choose to illustrate your answer by reference to a single company of your choice.
3. Critically evaluate the role and limitations of the Internet as a distribution and promotional channel. What are the operational implications of selling through web sites?
References
Executive Summary
Worldwide access to the Internet has grown more than 125 percent since 2000, with European users now slightly surpassing North American users, according to statistics published by InternetWorldStats.com, and quoted by Conhaim. (2004) However, there is still a long way to go, with only 12.7 percent of the global population being Internet users, compared with 68.3 percent of the North American population. The areas of the world with the lowest percentage of Internet users are Africa (1.4 percent), the Middle East (6.7 percent), Asia (7.1 percent), and Latin America/ Caribbean (10.3 percent). (Conhaim, 2004)
In the U.S., the Internet has become the dominant information provider among the critical 18- to 24-year-old age group, according to a study issued in April 2004 by the Online Publishers Association. (Conhaim, 2004) With its widespread adoption as a primary source for information access and communications, the Internet continues to transform businesses, institutions, and people's lives. The Internet is still evolving, both in terms of the network itself and the software and services it offers, with many claiming that the semantic Web is the Web's next generation. The semantic web is aimed at allow for more intuitive and context-sensitive automation to occur, in order to accomplish some of what people do as they work with information found on the Net, as well as allowing companies to accomplish more through the Internet, in the fields of marketing and promotion.
The Internet can also be used to develop markets, by facilitating the introduction and distribution of existing products into new markets. A presence on the Internet means being international, and Watson, Zinkhan, and Pitt (2000) claim that, for many firms with limited resources, it offers hitherto undreamed of opportunities to tap into global markets. The Internet enables international marketers to overcome the previously debilitating effects of time and distance, negotiation of local representation, and the considerable costs of promotional material production costs.
