Chapter 15
Internet Commerce and Social Media
The principles required for Internet marketing are the same as for all other forms of marketing. However, I'm hoping that the advice contained within this chapter will prevent some people from making costly mistakes in their quest to capture markets outside their traditional territory.
There are three fundamental elements of Internet commerce: business to business (B2B), business to consumer (B2C), and consumer to consumer (C2C). This chapter will discuss the practice of e-commerce as a global phenomenon, as well as how both individuals and small- to medium-size enterprises can build an effective website to expand their market catchment area. We will also expand on the extraordinary influence that social media has had on today's commercial environment, as discussed in the previous chapter.
E-Commerce Is a Sales Channel, Another Route into the Market Place
Some argue that the Web has caused the third biggest upheaval in retail, after malls in the 1940s and the major discount warehouses of the 1980s. International Data Corporation (IDC) predicts that the global bricks and mortar retail economy will exceed $13.5 trillion in 2010, with the Internet economy representing 6 percent of that. Extraordinarily, the latest study by Discover Small Business Watch showed that, despite spending nearly a trillion dollars on retail on the web in 2009, 55 percent of small businesses still don't have a website, and 57 percent of them claim that they never ...
