Business Effective e-Relationship Marketing

A company web site is the most popular e-business application across all business sectors. Establishing and maintaining these sites is expensive. In many cases the business benefits deriving from the site are not clear. Despite the considerable expenditure in time and money in the creation of company websites there has been little empirical research concerning effective practice. This paper investigates why companies that do not use the web as a primary market channel to invest in web site provision. This study is based on wide international literature review and case studies from companies operating in the Fast Moving Consumer Goods sector in the United Kingdom. The depth and reach of the sample size suggests that the results are highly representative of the sector. It is believed that these findings have significance to other industrial sectors. The authors found that the stated intent of these web sites was to create an e-marketing presence. In practice there is little effort to gather data with regard to the consumers and their on-line behaviour. There is a mismatch between the site capabilities and the functional requirements the businesses are placing on their website. This sector is using the web to do things it could do through conventional channels. Relationship Marketing is not being widely practiced through the web by this sector. More effective models and metrics are required before the website can operate strategically within a full marketing programme. Overall the results support the need for the development of appropriate metrics which support the development of the brand rather than merely tracking performance of the website.