A New Marketing Paradigm for Electronic Commerce

The World Wide Web possesses unique characteristics which distinguish it in important ways from traditional commercial communications environments. Because the Web presents a fundamentally different environment for marketing activities than traditional media, conventional marketing activities are becoming transformed, as they are often difficult to implement in their present form. In this paper, we discuss the idea that these changes portend an evolution in the marketing concept and argue that in order for marketing efforts to be successful in this new medium, a new business paradigm is required. In this new approach, the marketing function must be reconstructed to facilitate electronic commerce in the emerging electronic society underlying the Web. 2 A New Marketing Paradigm for Electronic Commerce The World Wide Web, the first and current networked global implementation of a hypermedia computer-mediated environment (CME), is increasingly being recognized as an important emerging...