Darden E-Business I Assignment

Book Review “Principles of Internet Marketing” Ward Hanson, South –Western College Publishing

From: Takashi Yoshino

To : Instructors of GBUS

It was a good time for me to review this book in July because my summer internship was to propose a marketing plan for Citiibank’s Global Consumer Business Internet banking division. However, I felt that this book lacks much information on marketing plans that could be used in practice. The book is explaining basic ideas rather than providing new information. And it has not focus on online financial business. Also the explanation on internet advertisement is scarce. The book explains about banners but it hasn’t explained about e-mail magazines which has much lower CPA’s(Cost per acquisition) than banners in Japan. In addition, the book should explain more about new technologies that are being developed. One is wireless internet service such as I-mode. I-mode is serviced by NTT DoComo in Japan and is a internet service available through cellular phone that has an small screen. Citibank Japan provides internet service through this I-mode cellular phone in Japan. I think we have to learn about these new technologies because the customer behavior/usage is different from the PC based Internet.

I have criticized this book but there are some insights that I’ve got.

The book gives explanation to Internet and related topics such as Internet history, portal sites, Metcalfe’s law, Moore’s law etc. Also, it has a lot of numbers such as penetration rates, usage rates and other customer survey data. Nevertheless, the most interesting was the part that explained “the Web chains”. A web chains of events is a sequence of steps that a visitor to a site can follow.

Example of Web chain Events (excluded details)

Begin – Views page with paid link -Doesn’t notice

-Notices but doesn’t click

-Clicks through - Views web but doesn’t buy

- Visits website and buys (conversion rate)

è Repeat rate (only available if collect

Personal ID datas)

A similar concept was used at Citibank. However, they have not benchmarked or tracked the important rates (page view, click through, conversion rate, repeat rate). I think it is useful to track these rates because you can check the efficiency of your advertisements and web navigations up-to-date. Also it leads to evaluating the lifetime value of the customer.

There were other interesting topics as online community. (But in reality, the cost of establishing/ maintaining the online community usually outweighs the benefit. )

As a result of reading this book, I found that there is a need to develop new Internet marketing methods that could be used in practice. I would like to work hard on all the e-business/marketing related classes at Darden to be one of best Internet marketers in the world.