From the Preface: In the past few years the Internet has gone through several phases -from obscurity to hype all the way to being a simple fact of life today. Almost as soon as the Internet was privatized, marketers staked their turf and sought to use the medium to further the goals of the firm in various ways. While there are numerous practitioner books on the subject of marketing using the Internet, all tend to be practitioner-oriented and focused solely on computer nuts and bolts. This book discusses many of those same nuts and bolts, but places them in the context of marketing strategy, consumer behavior, advertising, and the other business topics that make marketing different than computer programming.
In fact, the title of this textbook, Internet Marketing, neatly sums up the two disciplines it brings together. The book has both an Internet component and a marketing component. No doubt instructors will vary how much Internet coverage they'll include in a course. This book is therefore designed to let the instructor add as little or as much of the Internet piece as he or she feels comfortable including. Wherever possible, the technical details of networked computing have been segregated to allow the instructor to omit them if desired. For example, when the HTML page-creation language is discussed in terms of its impact on the consumer, those discussions are contained to a side box. In addition, Chapter 2, "What Exactly Is the Internet?," Chapter 5, "How to Create Web Pages," and Chapter 14, "The Mechanics of Electronic Commerce" can be skipped without any loss to the overall narrative.
The printed textbook is really just one-half of the materials for this course-the companion Web site is a critical component. The text and the Web site have been designed from the start to complement each other. While some books have supporting Web sites, the site and this book play a nearly equal role in Internet Marketing. Our aim in developing the set was to capitalize on the strength of each medium. The textbook most efficiently teaches the key concepts and provides a serial narrative on the topic. The interactivity of the Internet, on the other hand, makes it ideal for providing student activities such as hypertext cases and homework questions. The Internet is also unsurpassed in its ability to point students to live examples of the main points. And finally, the dynamic nature and timeliness of online publishing makes it perfect for producing pointers to current events that relate to class materials.
A URL is provided at the end of each chapter in the text. After reading each chapter, students should visit the Web page given at the end of that chapter to gain further insight into the topic at hand. The examples and questions contained in the chapter Web pages make excellent starting points for class discussion. Unique among marketing topics, Internet marketing is a subject that allows students to explore actual consumer and competitive environments from their own dorms or apartments, or a computer lab. And with an appropriately configured classroom, these illustrative Web sites can be seamlessly integrated right into the lecture.
In learning about marketing on the Internet, there is no substitute for being immersed in the Web. Therefore, all of the homework and cases provided with the text appear on the Web site. The Instructors' Manual provided with the text covers these homework exercises and cases. In addition to covering the homework exercises and cases, the Instructors' Manual provides guidelines on teaching with technology, as well as dealing with computer labs. Often, instructors approach technology with some trepidation, but most of the pitfalls associated with using a computer in the classroom, or with visiting a computer lab, can be easily avoided.
This book is arranged into five sections. The first section provides an introduction to the Internet. Subsequent sections focus on communications, selling, content development and creation, and network functionality. This final section serves as a catch-all for several miscellaneous topics.
Acknowledgments
In developing any textbook, no one person is responsible for putting it all together. I would like to thank the folks at Digital Springs, including Rick Leyh, Steve Welch, and Sara Schroeder for their assistance in guiding me through the process of converting a set of class notes into a textbook. I would also like to thank my wife, Linda Vaughn, for her patience with my compulsion to be connected to the Internet, any time of night or day. And finally, I would like to thank Jamie Murphy for numerous discussions about the topics included in this book. His ability to analyze the Internet, as well as his enthusiasm for doing so, is first rate. And while I am thanking Jamie for his help with the book, I can't help but mention the assistance he has provided with my bicycle racing.
