Effectiveness of online marketing and its determinants: marketers’ perspective

The present study aims to the profile of the marketers, their e-marketing behavior and its antecedents and the service quality in online marketing and the factors leading to the successful implementation.

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EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE MARKETING AND ITS DETERMINANTS: MARKETERS’

PERSPECTIVE Veluchamy Ramanujam

Associate Professor, Bharathiar School of Management and Entrepreneur Development

(BSMED), Bharathiar University, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India

Picthai Parthiban

Research Scholar, Bharathiar School of Management and Entrepreneur Development

(BSMED), Bharathiar University, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, India

Kasilingam Lingaraja

Assistant Professor, Department of Business Administration, Thiagarajar College

(Autonomous), Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India

ABSTRACT

The present study aims to the profile of the marketers, their e-marketing behavior and its antecedents and the service quality in online marketing and the factors leading

to the successful implementation And also the effectiveness of online marketing, its determinants and its consequences, causes for service failure in online marketing and the expected service quality in online marketing In total 535 marketers were identified Out of the 535 marketers only 392 marketers responded the questionnaire given to them Hence the sample size of customers came to 392 had been used to collect the data The present study conclude that the level of EE adoption have a significant impact on the rate of implementation of online marketing The important antecedents to implement online marketing are convenience, merchandize, interactivity, reliability, navigation, and promotion

Key Words: Online Marketing, Service Failure, Expected Service Quality

JEL Classification Code: M15, M31, O32, Z33

Cite this Article: Veluchamy Ramanujam, Picthai Parthiban and Kasilingam Lingaraja,

Effectiveness of Online Marketing and its Determinants: Marketers’ Perspective,

International Journal of Management (IJM), 11 (3), 2020, pp 439–448

http://www.iaeme.com/IJM/issues.asp?JType=IJM&VType=11&IType=3

1 INTRODUCTION

On line communication can enhance efficiency in many ways In the content of sales performance and customer satisfaction, information flows facilitated by e-businesses can help

the sales volume by reacting customer directly and promptly whenever a new product is introduced and by tapping into markets that were hitherto inaccessible on account of distribution or other infrastructural constraints The business can also enhance customer satisfaction by providing information about products, trouble shooting, and service on line furthermore, interested consumers who set can invoke a relationship with the unit on their own accord Both sales performance and customer satisfaction can benefit on these accounts In the context of relationship development, online communication can help a business increase the intensity of and enrich the quality of, its interactions with partners and suppliers In addition, important product planning and inventory information can be shared on a regular, or even real-time, basis, leading to more productive relationships Also, when the business units systems and online information repositories are integrated with those of its partners and suppliers, these parties are likely to exhibit a greater commitment to their mutual relationship Internal administration covers processes related to financial and management accounting, travel reimbursement, payroll, and employee benefits procession The e-business adoption makes its impact on order taking performance, procurement of materials and relationship development also

2 SCOPE AND NEED FOR THE STUDY

The proliferation of and rapid advances in technology – based systems, especially those related

to the interest, are leading to fundamental changes in how companies interact with one another and with customers Indeed, selling products and service via the internet is agreed to have enormous potential, and e–commerce has received enormous pressure, speculation and criticism The internet technology has the potential to alter almost every aspect of business operations As a result, it is necessary to take a multidisciplinary approach for understanding the marketers view on e-marketing since the e-marketers act as a intermediaries between the customers and producers of goods and services Since, the e-marketers, producers and consumers are interlinked with each other’s, it is imperative to analyze the marketers’ perception on various aspects related to e-marketing and its impact Hence, the present study has made an attempt on these aspects

3 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

In the case of e-marketing, there is no direct personal meet of the marketers and consumers Hence, the marketers have to be careful in the determination of the customers’ expectations and perception on various aspects related to the products and services in e-marketing They should

be aware of the factors leading to their attitude towards e-marketing At the same time, the marketers should know their strengths and weakness in e-marketing If not, there will be a lot service failure Nowadays, the management of service failure in e-marketing has received increasing attention Furthermore, despite the phenomenal growth in electronic commerce in general and e-marketing in particular, research has yet to examine the role of service recovery management The e-marketing is subjected with some issues like credit card security, privacy,

on – time delivery and ease of navigation The ability of the consumers to exit a relationship with their marketers is very easy and frequent in e-marketing Hence the service quality of the marketers is an important as ever in this realm Indeed, the technological changes in the world lead to ever changing environment in the e-marketing Hence, the marketers have to be vigilant

on knowing all these changes and prepare to accompany the changes in e-environment

4 REVIEW OF LITERATURE

Ozment and Morash (2014) revealed that delivering quality in services has been shown to be

an important strategy for marketers who are typing to differentiate their service offering by

establishing customer value and satisfying customer needs Bienstock et al., (2017) have shown

that when a service provider and service customer are physically separated, it has a significant impact in the criteria used to evaluate the service quality The ability to handle question, concerns, and frustrations from that customer is essential to the customer perception on

e-service quality Mohr and Bitner (2015) demonstrated that e-service recovery has a direct

relationship with factors such as a trust, repurchase intention, commitment and word of mouth,

which all play a crucial role in success for e-retailers Fram and Crady (2015) identified that

the ease of use in considered on one of the most important factors to customer on the internet This concept has been characterized as the customer ability to use as few “clicks” as possible

It also includes the issue of navigation, effective search engines, the ability to easily change or

cancel an order, and the ability to inform customer of missing information Pan et al, (2017)

took an empirical study on the price dispersion in e-markets They found that e-price dispersion

is persistent, even after controlling for toiler heterogeneity They found evidence that

e-markets are not especially competitive from a pricing perspective Alba and Hutchwison,

(2017) believed that price sensitivity would be lower e-than in traditional outlets when the

non-price attributes or quality attributes are of greater importance and when there is more product differentiation among the choices When the products are relatively comparable, then price, of course, will play a greater role

5 OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY

1 To identify the success factors and the hurdles in their placement of online marketing;

2 To evaluate the impact of service quality in online marketing, handless in it on the

overall effectiveness of online marketing

6 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

In the present study, research methodology covers the research design, locale of research, sample and sampling, procedure and measurement variables, method of data collection, frame work of analysis and limitations

In the present study, the descriptive research design have been administered Since this research describes the characteristics of the marketers in e-marketing, it is concerned with descriptive in nature Meanwhile, this study analyze the e-marketing behavior and its antecedents, e-services quality, service failure in e-marketing, its relationship with the profile

of the marketers, it seems to be diagnostic in nature Besides, this present study is completely based on determined objectives, research design, and data collection, processing of the collected data and reporting Hence it is descriptive in nature The sampling framework consists of determination of sample size and distribution of sample size The sampled e-marketers have been identified by the pilot study among 20 experienced and 20 lesser experienced marketers Since the population of the study is unknown, the sample size of the study is determined by

2

D

Z

n









Whereas n - Sample size; Z – 1.96 at five per cent level; σ - Standard deviation of marketers’ attitude on e-marketing measured at five point scale in pilot study = 0.5899; and (D)- Error acceptance = 0.05 In the present study,

2

.05

5899 0 96 1

n







 = 534.72=535 marketers In total, 535 marketers was identified by popular web service providers namely Pronet, Satyam, Airtel and BSNL All 535 marketers have been included as the sampled marketers for the study

7 DATA ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION

In the present study, the effectiveness of online marketing have been measured with the help of eighteen performance variables These are reduction in cost of product, increase in markets share, customer satisfaction, strengthen business relationship, reduction in cost of transaction, favorable works of mouth from marketers, retaining existing marketers, increase in sales volume, marketers loyalty, strengthen the relationship among business partners, reduction in cost of general management, attractive change in price, strengthen relationship with suppliers, reduction in cost of co-ordination, increase in new marketers, increase in marketers enquiry, reduction in cost of marketing and reduction in cost of acquiring new marketers The marketers are asked to rate the above said performance measures at five point scale from highly agree to highly disagree The scores assigned on the scales from 5 to 1 respectively In order to identify the in level of performance of the marketer in each performance measures, the mean score of the performance measures have been calculated The‘t’ statistics are also computed to show the significant difference among the two group of marketers regarding their performance by e-marketing

TABLE 1

Variables in Effectiveness of Online marketing (EEM)

Sl

Mean scores among

marketers in t-statistic

1 Reduction in cost of production 2.4718 3.3091 -3.3667*

4 Strengthen business relationship 2.9641 4.1109 3.6076*

5 Reduction in cost of transaction 2.8102 3.4517 2.7547*

6 Favorable words of month from marketers 2.4568 3.8196 4.1645*

7 Retaining of existing marketers 3.1142 3.8611 -2.9945*

10 Strengthen the relationship among business

11 Reduction in cost of general management 3.2091 4.2674 -3.3771*

12 Attractive change in price 2.4511 3.4081 -3.4969*

13 Strengthen relationship with suppliers 3.1086 3.5696 -0.8044

14 Reduction in cost of co-ordination 2.8908 3.6017 -3.1965*

16 Increase in cost of marketing 2.9114 3.8087 -3.1974*

17 Reduction in cost of marketing 2.4561 4.2086 -4.2065*

18 Reduction in cost of acquiring new marketers 2.8681 3.6085 -3.1664*

* Significant at 5 per cent level

The important variables in EOM identified by LE marketers are reduction in cost of co-ordination and retaining of existing marketers since their mean scores are 3.1086 and 3.1142 respectively Among the HE marketers, these performance measures are, reduction in cost of

general management and reduction in cost of marketing since its mean scores are 4.2674 and 4.2086 respectively Regarding the perception on the variables in EEM, the significant difference among the two group of marketers have been identified in the perception on reduction in cost of production, increase in market share, customer satisfaction, strengthen business relationship, reduction in cost of transaction, favorable words of month from marketers, retaining existing marketers, increase in sales volume, strengthen the relationship among business partners, reduction in cost of general management, attractive change in price, reduction in cost of co-ordination, increase in marketers enquiry, reduction in cost of marketing and reduction in cost of acquiring new marketers since their respective ‘t’ statistics are significant at five per cent level which is similar to the findings of Donthu and Garcia (1999); Jayawardhana (2004),

7.1 Association between Profile of Marketers and their view on IEEM

The profile of the marketers may be associated with their level of view on IEEM, the present study has made an attempt to examine it with the help of one way analysis of variance All the eight profile variables and the sum IEEM are included for the present study The result of one way analysis of variance are shown in Table 2

TABLE 2

Association between Profile of Marketers and their view on Effectiveness of Online marketing

Sl

No

Profile variables

F-Statistics in

Efficiency Sales Marketers

Satisfaction Relationship

3 Level of education 2.0996 2.2041 2.6979* 2.5984*

5 Number of products 2.6547* 2.7109* 2.7886* 2.8884*

6 Business turnover 2.6673* 2.1446 2.6979* 2.8983*

7 Market coverage 2.9084* 2.7971* 2.5171* 2.6868*

8 Technology readiness

* Significant at five per cent level

Regarding the view on efficiency, the significantly associating profile variables are type of markets, personality score, number of products dealt, business turnover and market coverage whereas in the view on sales, these profile variables are type of marketers, age of the marketers, number of products dealt and market coverage The significantly associating profile variables regarding the iew on marketers satisfaction are age of marketers, level of education, number of products dealt, business turnover, and market coverage whereas regarding the view on relationship, these variables are age of marketers, level of education, number of products dealt,

business turnover and market coverage since their respective ‘F’ statistics are significant at five per cent level

7.2 Causes for Service Failure in Online marketing

It is important to analyze the various causes for service failure in online marketing for some policy implications Even though the variables related to service failure are too many, the present study confine to 23 variables The marketers are asked to rate the 23 variables at five point scale from high agree to highly disagree The mean score of each variable among the LE and HE marketers has been computed separately The ‘t’ test is used to find out the significant difference among the two group of marketers

TABLE 3

Variables in Causes of Service Failure (CSFA)

Sl.No Variables in CSFA

Mean score among marketers in t – statistics

1 Lack of personalized service 3.9845 3.1446 3.1285*

2 Poor presentation of product at site 3.7961 3.0891 3.1667*

5 Navigational problem at site 3.8908 3.0445 3.2016*

6 Difficulties in collection 3.9985 3.1408 3.3068*

8 Credit card related problem 3.6568 2.9698 2.6771*

9 Insufficient information at site 3.8243 3.2646 2.6079*

13 Misrepresented merchandize 3.6173 3.7233 -0.2265

14 Delivery of damaged product 3.9694 3.7142 0.5046

16 E-mail address released to e-marketers 3.5844 3.6861 -0.3291

20 Incorrect lost of products 3.8545 3.1546 3.0217*

21 Confusing account problem 3.9697 3.1025 3.4664*

22 Incorrect information at site 3.9908 3.0411 3.5086*

*Significant at five per cent level

The Table 3 exhibits the mean of various variables related to service failure among the LE and HE marketers and its respective‘t’ statistics The highly viewed variables among the LE marketers is difficulties in collection and incorrect information at site since its mean scores are 3.9985 and 3.9908 respectively Among the HE marketers, these variables are credit card fraud and delivery of damaged goods since their mean scores are 3.8142 and 3.7233 respectively

Regarding the perception on variables in service failure, the significant difference among LE and HE marketers have been noticed in the case of 18 variables out of 23 variables since their respective‘t’ statistics are significant at five per cent level In total, the perception on variables related to service failure is identified as higher among the LE marketers than the HE marketers

7.3 Expected Service Quality (ESQ) in Online Marketing

The success of marketers in the online marketing rest on their service quality in the market It

is called as expected service quality in online marketing The marketers view on the expected service quality needed by the marketers have been measured with the help of 22 variables The marketers are asked to rate these variables at five point scale according to the order of importance The mean of each variable among the LE and HE marketers have been computed separately

TABLE 4

Expected Service Quality (ESQ) by the Marketers

Sl.No Variables in ESQ

Mean score among marketers

*Significant at five per cent level

The Table 4 illustrates the mean score of the variables in service quality among LE and HE marketers and its respective‘t’ statistics The highly viewed variables in expected service quality of marketers (ESQ) among the LE marketers is customer service and human interactivity since their respective mean scores are 3.8145 and 3.8084 Among the HE

marketers, these two variables are navigation and links; and attention to detail since their mean scores are 2.9943 and 3.9905 respectively Regarding the perception on variables in ESQ, the significant difference among the LE and HE marketers have been noticed in the perception on

16 variables out of 22 variables in ESQ since their respective ‘t’ statistics are significant at five per cent level

7.4 Marketers view on IESQFs

The marketers view on important service quality needed b them are examined with the help of the mean score of the five IESQFs The score of each IESQFs is derived by the mean score of the variables in it The mean score of each IESQFs among the LE and HE marketers have been computed separately The ‘t’ test has been administered to find out the significant difference among the two group of marketers regarding their view on IESQFs The results are summarized

in Table 5

TABLE 5

Marketers’ view on IESQFs

Sl.No IESQFs Mean score among marketers in t – statistics

*Significant at five per cent level

The highly viewed IESQFs among the LE marketers is content and originality since their mean scores are 3.5896 and 3.4551 respectively Among the HE marketers, these are functionality and professionalism since their mean scores are 3.8996 and 3.9032 respectively Regarding the perception on IESQFs, the significant difference among LE and HE marketers have been noticed in the case of perception on design, functionality and professionalism since their respective ‘t’ statistics are significant at five per cent level

8 SUMMARY OF FINDINGS

1 Impact of Service quality of Effectiveness of Online Marketing: The significantly

influencing service quality factors on the level of effectiveness of online marketing as per the view of LE are reliability, case of use, responsiveness, convenience, creditability, access and security whereas as per the view of HE, these are communication, personalization, convenience and continuous improvement

2 Causes for Service Failure in Online Marketing: The causes for service failure in

online marketing is examined with the help of 23 variables The highly viewed variables

in it by LE and HE are difficulties in collection and credit and fraud respectively The significant difference among the LE and HE have been noticed in their view on 18 out

of 23 variables The important causes for service failure identified by the factor analysis are navigation, delivery, customer service, sanity, collection and others

3 Expected Service Quality in Online Marketing: The expected service quality in the

online marketing for the total success is studied with the help of 22 variables The highly viewed by LE and HE are human interactivity and navigation and links respectively The significant difference among LE and HE have been noticed in their view on 16 out

of 22 variables in it The important expected service quality factors in online marketing

identified by the factor analysis are design functionality, content, originality and professionalism

9 SUGGESTIONS

Based on the findings of the study, the following suggestions are drawn

1 Response on Service Failure in Online Marketing: One of the important

determinants of the effectiveness of online marketing is the response on the service failure among the marketers The service failure of marketers is mainly caused by the delivery problems and navigational problems Hence, the marketers should avoid these two problems in order to enrich their effectiveness Apart from this, they have to establish successful logistics plans and also the improved interaction between service personnel and their online clientele The personalized messages and customized recoveries may provide a better customer trust and commitment

2 Continuous Important in the Effectiveness of Online Marketing: The

effectiveness of online marketing is visible in the present study But there is a need for continuous enrichment in the effectiveness of online marketing For that purpose, the marketers are advised to develop the business model as per the requirement of the present scenario They are advised to frame the marketing strategies to enrich their performance continuously

10 CONCLUDING REMARKS

The present study conclude that the level of EE adoption have a significant impact on the rate

of implementation of online marketing The important antecedents to implement online marketing are convenience, merchandize, interactivity, reliability, navigation, and promotion The important service quality delivered by the marketers are reliability, ease to use, communication, responsiveness, personalization, convenience, credibility, courtesy continuous, improvement, access and security The identified important hurdles in implementation of online marketing agriculture inconvenience, risk, in store effect, environment and cost The narrated important effectiveness of online marketing are efficiency, sales customer satisfaction and relationship The service quality has a significant positive impact on effectiveness whereas the hindless are having significant negative impact on effectiveness in online marketing If the marketers in online marketing overcome the hindless

is online marketing, they will succeed in the market since the scope of the online marketing is higher

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