Advertising Technologies in the New Millennium - Assignment Example

 Advertising Technologies in the New Millennium Introduction Advertising is a type of communication intended to persuade an audience (viewers, readers or listeners) to take some action. It involves the name of a product or service and how that product or service could benefit the consumer, to persuade potential customers to purchase or to consume that particular brand. Modern advertising developed with the rise of mass production in the late 19th and early 20th centuries (Oxford Journal, April 20, 2009). In years, advertising is focused on the emphasis of consumers’ benefit to a certain product or service, targeting to increase its demand. In various means, advertising and customer researchers continuously encounter the test of making images that depict respondents to marketing-related stimuli, this represents as a data for purposes of analysis. This data will incarcerate the fundamental nature of significant utilization practices; that will be communicated to research findings for interested audiences; or play a role in executing the pictorial components of marketing stratagem (Morris, 1997). Generic advertising was the common methodology used in enticing consumers to purchase a product or avail a certain service. This method captures the public attention in an instant, but this will not sustain if the advertisement is boring and dry. The generic approach is very important in preparing advertising messages that concentrates on the customer benefits that apply to all brands in a product category, as opposed to benefits that are unique to specific brands. Thesis statement Rather than being generic, companies and advertising agencies are finding effective means and faster communication of messages to the direct consumers. In the new millennium, the internet-based technology has played a key role in expanding a wide array of consumers in a small span of time worldwide. The potential of the World Wide Web on the Internet as a commercial medium and market has been widely documented in a variety of media. However, a critical examination of its commercial development has received little attention (Ricciuti, 1995). Technology in Advertising In this fast-paced environment, technology was always an important tool in spreading the good news and to easily communicate with direct customers. The development of internet-based technologies opened endless possibilities for Marketers. Marketing research can be carried out subtly by actively archiving the procedures that each individual undertakes on the Web, through Web tracking software (Culnan, 1999). When we make a whole new set of variables available to the marketer, the technological opportunities are obviously highly appealing for Marketers to explore and use extensively and intensively. However, we suggest that exploiting all these opportunities can be a threat to marketing performance in the long run. Technology has no inherent morality and the way in which it is utilized is what really matters. In this matter, both the deontological as well as the utilitarian view of ethics (Bergman 1997) apply. Paying close attention to the ethical aspects of the use of web-based technologies in marketing might constitute a differentiating force for proactive firms. Competitive Advantage on the internet The observation of marketing practice on the Internet can give an idea of the types of unethical practices that are either already in place or recommended by certain marketing consultancy sites. A simple analysis of many sites highlights two important issues. The first one is concerned with the gathering of consumer information and the second one is concerned with the utilization of various marketing techniques. These are many and varied ranging from banners to fixed spot advertisements and flash advertisements and the selling or exchange of consumer information (Gauzente and Ranchhod, 2001). Figure 1 illustrates how some areas of Internet advertising compare with general advertising tactics. (see figure 1). Figure 1 throws some light on how advertising on the Internet can impinge on customer autonomy and sovereignty by being intrusive and disrespectful of personal privacy. If we consider the key factors pointed out by Nwachukwu et al., take into account Culnan’s (1999a, 1999b) criteria of online privacy and add intrusiveness to the mix, it is possible to create a model for understanding and judging ethical marketing practices on the Internet. This model is illustrated in Figure 2. The model shows how individual autonomy, consumer sovereignty and harmfulness of product interact with the seven factors that are shown. The composite of seven factors in addition to Culnan’s (1999a, 1999b) factors of notice, choice, contact, security and access, include horizon (time element) and intrusiveness. We feel that the time element, in terms of how long companies can access customer information is important as is the degree of intrusiveness as shown in Figure 1. These seven factors could be used to evaluate the overall degree of ethical interactivity of a company on the Internet. A zero level (or minimum) ethical stance corresponds to an offer of notice and security (see table 1) However, as noted by Culnan (1999a, 1999b), the level of disclosure can range from a comprehensive privacy policy notice (PPN) to a discrete statement. This might be difficult to provide as customer details can be either gathered from the home page or through hyperlinks to the home page. Nonetheless, paying attention to these two factors show the degree of ethical concern afforded to the consumer by a company. Figure 1. Ethical Perceptual Map of the Current Range of Advertisements Figure 2. Delineating Ethical Internet Marketing Source: Gauzente, C. and Ranchhod, A. Academy of Marketing Science Review. AMS Review Articles. 2001 New models of Marketing in the web The Internet, a revolution in distributed computing and interactive multimedia many-to-many communication, is dramatically altering this traditional view of communication media. As Figure 2 indicates, the new many-to-many marketing communications model defining the Web offers a radical departure from traditional marketing environments (Hoffman & Novak, 1995). Figure 3. New Model of Marketing Communications for the Web Source: Hoffman, F; Noval, T.; Chatterjee,P. Project 200: Research Program on Marketing in Computer-Mediated Environments. Owen Graduate School of Management. Vanderbuilt University Figure 3 suggests that the Internet offers an alternative to mass media communication. Some applications on the Internet (e.g., personal homepages) represent "narrowcasting" to the extreme, with content created by consumers and for consumers. As a marketing and advertising medium, the Web has the potential to change radically the way firms do business with their customers by blending together publishing, real-time communication broadcast and narrowcast. As an operational model of distributed computing, the "Net" supports: Discussion groups (e.g., USENET news, moderated and unmoderated mailing lists), Multi-player games and communications systems (e.g., MUDs, irc, chat, MUSEs), File transfer (ftp) and remote login (telnet), Electronic mail ("email"), and Global information access and retrieval systems (e.g., archie, veronica, gopher, and the World Wide Web). From a business and marketing perspective, the most exciting developments are occurring on that portion of the Internet known as the World Wide Web. In this paper, we present an initial attempt to organize the commercial activity on the Web thus far according to its business function. We identify two major categories of sites: "Destination Sites," and "Web Traffic Control Sites." Under destination sites, we identify Online Storefronts, Internet Presence Sites, and Content Sites. These comprise the ultimate "destinations" housing a firm's virtual counterpart. The purpose of the Web Traffic Control Sites is to direct consumers to these various Destination Sites. There are three major categories of Web Traffic Control: Malls, Incentive Sites, and Search Agents. We argue for considering our framework in the context of "integrated marketing," in which various communications vehicles are coordinated to create a single, strategically appropriate marketing effort to maximize customer response (Schultz, Tannenbaum, & Lauterborn, 1992; Tynan, 1994). Conclusion It is evident that there is a big potential in the Internet and Communications Technology. Its interactive capacity will create an innovative and grim decent dilemmas revealed by using diminutive-term insistent acts. Companies who follow the new methodologies in advertising are more competitively advantaged in the future. Ethical marketing can be judged against seven criteria: notice, choice, contact, security, access, horizon and intrusiveness. The importance paid to each criterion can reflect the degree of ethical interactivity that the firm is willing to exhibit. At the same time firms need to understand the impact on individual autonomy and safeguard customer sovereignty. In the long run, increasing ethical interactivity is likely to produce consumers who feel empowered, creating competitive advantage for a firm and satisfaction for the consumers. Future work should focus on empirically estimating the relative distributions of firms across these different categories and the types of firms within each category. Research efforts should be especially concentrated at developing integrated marketing approaches that specify the ways in which these different elements can be combined for maximum advantage. The Internet, especially that portion known as the World Wide Web, has the potential to change radically the way businesses interact with their customers. The Web frees customers from their traditionally passive role as receivers of marketing communications, gives them much greater control over the information search and acquisition process, and allows them to become active participants in the marketing process. However, significant adoption barriers to commercialization preclude predictable and smooth development of commercial opportunities in this emerging medium. Commercial development of the Web must follow the demand ("demand pull"), instead of being driven by "gold fever." Firms will reap the benefits of innovation in interactivity by being closer to the customer than ever before. Bibliography Anderson, Rolph. Essentials of Personal Selling: The New Professionalism. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1995. Holbrook, Morris, Three-Dimensional Stereographic Visual Displays in Marketing and Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer and Market Research [Online], 97 (11)w]’92. 1997 Bergman, Alexander."Ethique et gestion." in Encyclopédie de Gestion, Economica Paris. 1997 Boulaire, Christelle and A. Mathieu. "La fidélité à un site web : proposition d'un cadre préliminaire." Actes du XVIème Congrès International de l'Association Française du Marketing (Montréal): 303-312. 2000 Chen, Q. and W. 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