Marketing's Evolution on the Internet

By Shuting Qi and Allison Zwarka

Marketing is a broad verb for reaching out to target audiences and promoting and selling a good or service. In marketing close relationships to individuals and to your region's culture is extremely important. Our world has been experiencing an evolution within technology during the last several decades. The internet has changed our lifestyle and therefore marketing has as well since it is a reflection of our culture.The following three technological advancements are aspects of how the internet has changed marketing:

     Online Shopping

20 years ago, people rarely shopped online. One of the main reasons for this was due to the fact that computers weren't affordable for many families. Another reason for the lack of online shopping was due to the fact that not many people knew that is was even an option. Advertising for online shopping wasn't necessarily present at that time. Since the internet wasn't very prevalent at the time, marketers tended to focus on TV, radio, and newspaper. Nowadays, almost everyone has a smartphone and computer to go online. We have Amazon, eBay and other online commerce to purchase almost any goods we want. Marketing strategies have adapted to this change quickly, and that's a necessity in the field, you must be able to change quickly with the times. Almost every company has developed an online site. Online promotion and shopping experiences have became new research topics for business. across the world.

Social Media

The first social media type program was email communication. However, social media today is completely different. Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter are used to communicate to hundreds of people at once. Marketing has also taken advantage of this increase in social media. One of the keys to success for commerce is marketing online. By creating an official account for your business on a social media platform a company can easily market their goods and services for free.

Advertisement

Advertisement has always been an essential part of marketing no matter time period. But what has changed? Today, more and more websites' revenue is generated by online advertisement instead of past forms of print advertising. Strategies has been adopted by businesses such as Amazon where they sell advertisement to other businesses on their website in order to increase their revenue.

In short, the internet changed our lifestyle over the past decades. These implementations of the internet into marketing strategies have increased the incomes of companies across the world and have been major factors in changing the industry.

Kotler, Philip, Kevin Lane Keller, and Taihong Lu. Marketing Management in China. Singapore: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2009. Print.