MEMOIRE - Gian Marco MELANDRI

MEMOIRE En vue de l’obtention du Diplôme de Sup de Co Reims MASTER GRANDE ECOLE – NEOMA BUSINESS SCHOOL

CYCLE MASTER

How has Information & Communication Technology changed International Marketing MEMOIRE ACCADEMIQUE PAR: Gian Marco MELANDRI

JURY: Raymond OUELLET

September 2014 1

Date:

10/09/2014

Level:

Master Thesis

Author:

Gian Marco MELANDRI

Tutor:

Professor Raymond OUELLET

Title:

International Marketing & ICT

Problem:

“How has Information & Communication Technology changed International Marketing”

Purpose:

Discover what are the main changes that affected companies nowadays after the introduction & utilization of the ICT

Conclusion: The ICT proved to be a real revolution, and since their arrival nothing is like before. The way to do Marketing has changed, the 4P’s Marketing Mix has been modified & there has been an exponential growing of Web Marketing, E-commerce & Social Networks. This revolution is still going on & constantly evolving.

Keywords:

#Marketing, #InternationalMarketing, #ICT, #Information & #Communication

#Technologies,

#SocialNetworks,

#E-commerce,

#Web,

#Changes,

#WebMarketing,

#Globalization, #4P‟s

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Acknowledgments My gratitude goes first to my Tutor Professor Ouellet Raymond for all the suggestions and feedbacks that I received while I was doing both my Intermediary Draft and Final Dissertation.

I thank Poly Pahatouridou for the final review of this English Memoire, Corinne Fertein and Agnès Grison for checking the grammar of my French Abstract.

I want to thank in addition: Federico Facelli, Giovanni Bettini, Barbara Visani, Barbara Bassi, Melissa Montalti, Valentina Vitali, Maria Florencia Baldini, Maria Strantza for all the useful companies’email contacts available to answer my Survey.

Last but not least a special thank to Professor Fabio Ancarani for some useful tips.

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Index Summary of the Thesis …………………………………………………... 2 Acknowledgments ………………………………………………………... 3 Index …………………………………………………………………….... 4 I ) Preamble ................................................................................................. 6 II ) Barbara’s Consideration ………………………………………......... 7 III ) Abstract ……………………………………………………............. 12 1. What is Marketing? ........................................................................... 15 2. Evolution of the Marketing ................................................................ 17 3. What are ICT? ….…………………………………………………... 21 4. Evolution of ICT ……………………………………………………. 23 5. Investigation Thesis & Hypotheses ………………………………... 26 6. Definitions of Hypotheses’ Terms …………………………………. 28 7. Methodology ……….………………………………………………... 30 8. Hypotheses ………………………………………………………….. 34 8.1)The Traditional Marketing has become Web Marketing ............. 34 8.2) The 4P’s Marketing Mix is no longer appropriate, ................ 43 8.3) The Conventional Selling has changed in E-commerce ............. 49 9. Conclusions ………………………………………………………….. 58 10. Limitations …………………………………………………………... 61

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IV ) Resources Utilized …………………………………………………. 62 V ) Bibliography ……………………………………………………….... 63 VI ) Webography ……………………………………………………….. 67 ANNEX 1 ) E-mail for the Survey ……………………………………... 68 ANNEX 2 ) Survey Italian Version ……………………………………. 70 ANNEX 3 ) Survey English Version …………………………………… 75 ANNEX 4 ) Survey’s Results 27 Italian Companies ………………….. 80 ANNEX 5 ) Survey’s Results 5 European Companies ……………….. 89 VII ) Author’s Contacts ………………………………………………… 98

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I ) Preamble During my undergraduate studies in Economics and Management, I realized that, among all the subjects studied, what attracted me the most was the discipline of Marketing and selling. So I decided to direct the final part of my studies and my final Memoire to focus in deep on this topic.

My idea was to learn more about the topic, improve my knowledge and create something that is at the same time extremely actual & interesting in this “Internet & Social Age� 1 . In recent years, due to the globalization, talking only about Marketing could not be enough. This is the reason why I decide to concentrate more on International Marketing. Nowadays, people are using progressively more Internet, Web & all the new Social Media. As one of these millions of people that use Facebook on a regular daily basis, I decide to concentrate my interest also on this subject. For these reasons the central theme of my Dissertation is: How has Information & Communication Technology changed International Marketing.

The Thesis will start with a quote of Barbara Visani the Owner of Biotex the company in which I did my internship. Biotex is a company that sells performance underwear for sports. I decided to start with that because it represents exactly the thinking of many companies nowadays and it summarises precisely my ideas and the purpose of my dissertation.

After a brief abstract on the subject, the thesis will be composed of 10 chapters. I will start with some definitions of Marketing and a brief history of it. Then I will continue with an explanation of the Information & Communication Technologies and their history. The central part will be composed by the Methodology, the Research Problem & the 3 Hypotheses I made. In the end I will discuss some deductions and present my conclusions.

1

Nowadays, period of time where Internet and Social Networks are revolutionizing everything.

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II ) Barbara’s Consideration: Original Italian Version:

English Translation:

“Quando guardo mio figlio di 9

“When I look at my 9- year- old

anni sfogliare un tablet, come

son browsing a tablet, while at

accadeva a me, quando alla sua

his age I was browsing my Mickey

età sfogliavo Topolino, mi è

Mouse, it is clear to me how this

chiara

leads the way

quale

strada

si

stia

for

business

aprendo per la comunicazione

communication. The Web is no

aziendale. Il Web non è più un

longer just a support for printed

semplice

alla

communication, but it has become

comunicazione cartacea, ma ne

an integral part. It is with this

diventa

awareness that I realized the

supporto

parte

proprio

integrante. con

È

questa

consapevolezza che mi sono resa

importance

that

the

online

communication has taken.

conto dell‟importanza che ha In Biotex, we have always been assunto la comunicazione on-line. working to research and develop In Biotex, lavoriamo da sempre

new technologies, in order to

per ricercare e sviluppare nuove

deliver high performance and

tecnologie, per offrire prodotti

cutting-edge products in every

performanti e all‟avanguardia in

season, to dress each generation

ogni stagione, per vestire con

with determination and trend. But

grinta

this is not enough.

e

tendenza

ogni

generazione. Ma questo non basta.

7

Perché ormai il mondo che ci

Because now the world around us

circonda sta cambiando. E quella

is

stessa passione per l‟eccellenza

passion for excellence that we

che mettiamo nella realizzazione

have made in the implementation

dei

deve

of our products, must accompany

accompagnare anche i servizi che

the services we can offer to our

possiamo offrire ai nostri clienti e

customers and our consumers.

ai nostri consumatori. Non solo:

Not

dobbiamo comunicare in maniera

effectively

efficace la filosofia che anima

philosophy behind every choice of

ogni

production and sales. We are so

nostri

prodotti,

scelta

commerciale.

produttiva Ci

siamo

e

changing.

only

And that

that:

we need

communicate

renewing

to the

così

committed

impegnati per rinnovare il nostro

corporate

sito

istituzionale,

http://www.biotex.it , in fact we

che

follow it, we take care of it and we

seguiamo, curiamo e aggiorniamo

update it with care and regularity.

con cura e costanza. Siamo

We are aware of the changes in

consapevoli dei cambiamenti che

the process of purchase by the

sta subendo il processo d‟acquisto

final consumer, as shown by the

del consumatore finale che, come

latest industry research, the final

dimostrato dalle ultime ricerche

consumer visit the manufacturer‟s

di settore , consulta il sito del

website in 47% of cases, before

produttore nel 47% dei casi,

making the final selection.

http://www.biotex.it,

to

same

our

website,

prima della scelta finale.

8

Si tratta di un dato importante che

It is an important fact that we

non potevamo ignorare. Così

could not ignore. Just as we

come non potevamo non tenere

should take into account the

conto dell‟impatto che l‟opinione

impact that the opinion and views

e pareri condivisi sul web hanno

shared on the web have on the

sulla ricerca di prodotti e novità.

product research and news. It is

Si

di

almost always experiences from

esperienze vissute da addetti ai

insiders who try firsthand the

lavori che sperimentano in prima

technology

and

persona

innovation,

perhaps

tratta

quasi

la

sempre

tecnologia

e

product even

in

l‟innovazione dei prodotti, magari

extreme climatic and physical

anche in condizioni fisiche e

conditions. And the feedback on

climatiche estreme. E i riscontri

our products is so good that we

sui nostri prodotti sono talmente

have the desire to share them with

positivi

the entire world. For this reason

da

avere

voglia

di

condividerli con il mondo intero.

we

Nascono

(http://www.biotex.it/blog)

così

il

nostro

blog(http://www.biotex.it/blog) e

create

our

blog and

the FB page ioamobiotex.

la pagina FB ioamobiotex.

9

Due

canali

interattivi

che

Two interactive channels that

permettono ai ragazzi del team

allow the members of the team

Biotex di raccontare le emozioni

BIOTEX to share the emotions

vissute

experienced

indossando

il

nostro

by

wearing

our

intimo, mentre sfidano i loro limiti

underwear, and challenge their

e i loro traguardi sportivi. Infine ,

limits

abbiamo lanciato ufficialmente il

achievements.

nostro

officially launched our on-line

store

on-line

and

their

sporting

Finally,

we

(http://store.biotex.it) pensato sia

store

per i rivenditori italiani, che per

designed for both Italian

quelli esteri. La ricerca dei

abroad retailers. The search of

prodotti è semplice e intuitiva, le

products is simple and intuitive,

offerte e le novità chiaramente

the offers and the novelties are

visibili. L‟acquisto si conclude in

clearly visible. The purchase is

quattro semplici passaggi e, nella

composed of only four easy steps,

pagina account personale, rimane

and the history of orders is always

sempre a disposizione lo storico

available in the personal account

dei propri ordini. E dal momento

page . And since I love watching

che amo guardare mio figlio

my son discover the world with

scoprire

gli

the tools of his time, I wanted to

strumenti del suo tempo, ho voluto

be there amongst those pages

essere lì, tra quelle pagine on-line

online that he browses with

che sfoglia con incredibile abilità.

incredible skill.

il

mondo

con

(http://store.biotex.it) and

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Perché poter parlare a tutti è una

Because being able to talk with

grande opportunità. E ancora di

everybody is a great opportunity.

più lo è arrivare a tutti, ai

And even more reaching everyone

rivenditori

specializzati,

ai

is even better, from specialist

consumatori

finali

chi

retailers to final consumers or

semplicemente ama confrontarsi

those who simply love to deal with

con il mondo in cui viviamo. “

the world in which we live. “

o

a

Barbara VISANI,

Barbara VISANI,

Rivista In Bici, Agosto 2012

In Bici Magazine, August 2012

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III ) Abstract French Version

English Version:

Avec ce travail, nous voulons

With this work we want to

comprendre et mettre en évidence

understand

les transformations qui ont eu lieu

transformations that took place in

dans le Marketing international

the International Marketing with

avec l'avènement de ce que nous

the advent of what we can

pouvons envisager comme l'une

consider one of the greatest

des plus grandes innovations de

innovations of the last thirty

ces trente dernières années : la

years:

Technologie de l'Information et

Communication

Communication (TIC).

( ICT ).

Pourquoi parler de Marketing

First of all why International

international et pas seulement de

Marketing

Marketing?

Marketing?

Parce que, avec la mondialisation,

Because

les

domestic markets tend to be

marchés

nationaux

ont

and

the

highlight

the

Information

&

Technology

and

not

with

just

Globalization,

tendance à être dépassés, et l'

exceeded,

avenir de l'entreprise jouera de

business

plus en plus dans la compétitivité

important role in the international

internationale.

competitiveness.

Une

entreprise

and will

the

future

play

a

A

of

more

company

leader dans son marché mais qui

leader in its market if it does not

ne se développe pas à l'échelle

expand internationally, will see its

internationale, verra son marché

market

érodé

competitors,

par

des

concurrents

eroded with

by

foreign potentially

étrangers, avec des conséquences

dramatic consequences for its

potentiellement dramatiques pour

survival. So now Marketing has

sa survie. Alors maintenant, le

its maximum development in the

Marketing a son maximum de

International

développement dans la

although from time to time it will

perspective,

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perspective internationale, bien

also have to deal with the local

que de temps en temps, il devra

reality.

faire face à la réalité locale.

Secondly, why the Information & Deuxièmement,

pourquoi

la

technologie de l'information et de

Communication

Technology

( ICT )?

la communication (TIC)?

Because

this

is

an

ongoing

Comme il s'agit d'une révolution

revolution which started with

toujours en cours qui a commencé

Personal

avec les ordinateurs personnels et

continued

a continué avec Internet. On a

This led to the creation of a

alors assisté à la création d’un

network that can virtually allocate,

réseau

affecter

without any costs, everything that

pratiquement, sans frais, tout ce

is digital: data, information, music,

qui est numérique:

movies, software. In addition

qui

informations,

peut

données,

musique,

films,

Computers with

new

the

and Internet.

Communication

logiciels. En outre, les nouvelles

Technologies, like Smart-phones

technologies de la communication,

and Tablets, allow us to connect at

comme les Smartphones et les

any time and from anywhere in

tablettes, nous permettent de nous

the world. All these factors have

connecter à tout moment et de

opened up opportunities not fully

n'importe où dans le monde. Tous

explored yet and still in progress.

ces

facteurs

possibilités

ont

ouvert

pas

des

encore

complètement explorées et encore

It is not possible to consider the implications

of

ICT

in

the

International Marketing without

en cours.

first explaining, even briefly, the Il n'est pas possible d'examiner les

evolution

implications des TIC dans le

Marketing and the ICT. The paper

Marketing

will then begin retracing the

international

sans

of

the

steps

Classical

d'abord expliquer, même d'une

fundamental

of

the

également manière sommaire,

Evolution of these two elements.

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l'évolution du Marketing classique et des TIC. L’étude va alors commencer par retracer les étapes fondamentales de l'évolution de ces deux éléments.

We will try to understand what changes have taken place in International Marketing since the introduction of Information

Nous allons essayer de comprendre les changements qui ont eu lieu en Marketing international depuis l'introduction de la Technologie de l'Information et de la Communication (TIC).

and Communication Technology.

We will see the implications and we will develop in particular these three hypotheses that we believe are the main consequences: 1) Traditional Marketing has

Nous allons en voir les conséquences et nous allons développer en particulier ces trois hypothèses qui d’après nous sont les plus importantes :

become Web Marketing.

2) The 4P‟s Marketing Mix is no longer appropriate, it should be

1) Le Marketing traditionnel est devenu le Marketing Web,

modified.

2) Le " 4P " Marketing Mix n'est plus adapté et devrait être amélioré;

3) The Conventional selling has

3) La vente classique s‟est transformée en commerce électronique;

With these hypotheses we will try

changed in E-commerce.

to answer the question, object of this thesis.

Avec cette hypothèse, nous allons essayer de répondre à la question, objet de cette thèse .

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1. What is Marketing?

The first step of my thesis will be explaining the concept of Marketing.

The word Marketing obviously derives from Market and nowadays is used not only in Economy but in many other sectors like Brands, Mode, Arts, Sports, Events, Politics, Personal Branding..

There are many different definitions of Marketing, but for informational purpose I will only quote some of them and tell what is the best one for me.

The American Marketing Association defines Marketing as follow: “Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large” 2.

Another definition of Marketing from the Italian version of Marketing Management, Kotler - Keller - Ancarani - Costabile: "Coherent and coordinated set of processes aimed to produce trade and relations between individuals and organizations, always with a twofold purpose: create economic and social value to the offer; transfer value functional, symbolic, emotional or experiential for the demand. " 3 There is also a social definition of Marketing “that shows the role Marketing plays in society; for example, one marketer has said that Marketing‟s role is to “deliver a higher standard of living”: Marketing is a societal process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating, offering, and freely exchanging products and services of value with others.”4

2

American Marketing Association, ”Definition of Marketing,” www.Marketingpower.com/AboutAMA/ Pages /DefinitionofMarketing.aspx, 2007; Lisa Keefe,“Marketing Defined,” Marketing News, January 15, 2008, pp. 28–29 3 Kotler P. , Keller K. L. , Ancarani F. , Costabile M. , Marketing Management , Pearson , 2012, pp. 6 4 Kotler P. , Keller K. , Marketing Management , Pearson, 2012 , pp. 5

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In addition a Managerial definition of Marketing: “Managers sometimes think of Marketing as “the art of selling products,” but many people are surprised when they hear that selling is not the most important part of Marketing! Selling is only the tip of the Marketing iceberg.”5 And finally the definition of Peter Drucker, a leading management theorist: “There will always, one can assume, be need for some selling. But the aim of Marketing is to make selling superfluous. The aim of Marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself. Ideally, Marketing should result in a customer who is ready to buy. All that should be needed then is to make the product or service available.”6 The definition of Marketing I am in favor of which is really short and clear is the following: “Marketing is about identifying and meeting human and social needs. One of the shortest good definitions of Marketing is “meeting needs profitably.”7 What we can clearly understand from these different definitions, is that Marketing involves People and Needs. In fact analyzing all the different definitions of Marketing presented above, we can clearly see some recurrent words: Needs, People, Process & Products.

A last essential thing to remember about Marketing is that it is always a central area of every business and the most significant one. To conclude, Marketing success is extremely vital for every organization, but it is not always easy to measure as the financial one, is easier to see.

5

Kotler P. , Keller K. , Marketing Management , Pearson, 2012 , pp. 5.

Peter Drucker, Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), pp. 64–65 7 Kotler P. , Keller K. , Marketing Management , Pearson, 2012 , pp. 5 6

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2. Evolution of the Marketing Since the dawn of history, the need to exchange has grown among men in order to satisfy their own needs. First among farmers and ranchers, then breeders and artisans. Each group produced their own goods, but also needed goods produced by other groups. So “exchange” was born. The situation has been evolving until present day, where the separation between those who produce and those who consume has remained strong, but everything has become much more complex.

“The term “Marketing” was used the first time in the USA around 1910, but its origins came from the XVII century, in Japan.”8 In the actual complexity we could say that Marketing is the function that has taken on the task of optimizing the relationship between those who produce and those who consume a good. This definition only wants to have a sense of historical connection to the present and not to define the concept of Marketing that we have already explained above.

Modern Marketing was born from the modern conception of industry in the United States of America. Particularly in the early twentieth century after the industrial revolution, when the capacity of agriculture and industry met the primary needs of men. Below, we briefly summarize the main steps.

Even if we give indications of dates for the various stages, these have to be considered purely indicative, as the evolutionary processes of Marketing follow the development of industrialization, and each loop in the various nations occurs at different times, depending on the local industrial development.

8

Lepore A. , Storia del Marketing , Università di Brescia , 2007

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STEP 1 ) PRODUCTION ORIENTATION: Even after the industrial revolution of the nineteenth century, the market is still characterized by excess of demand. So the first major corporations were born in America. Singer, Coca Cola and Ford had as their objective the production of large quantity of products. The products were all the same, just to maximize economies of scale and introduce standardized products at competitive prices in the market. It was the birth of the Fordism, and the mass market. The products were sold by themselves. The Marketing concept did not exist yet, or rather was just at the beginning during these years. Its use was rare and limited to the definition of the optimal ratio between quality and price, only to inform the potential customers about product’s characteristics and main distributions. In developed countries the concept was outdated, while in developing countries it was still used. In China the Productions Giant it was encouraged by the low cost of labour. For example Haier in the field of household appliances, used the concept of production to dominate the market with products of good quality at reasonable prices.

STEP 2) PRODUCT ORIENTATION: With the increase of production, competition was increased, and as a result, the need of improving continuously the quality of the products in order to be purchased was increased too. However, it happened that companies focus too much on the product, losing sight of the market’s needs, reaching the paradox of proposing features that were not attractive or were not understood by the market. The realization of a better product not always ensures success, because the concept of “best for the company” may be different from customer’s expectations. An improved product will be successful only if supported by appropriate pricing, distribution, advertising and selling strategies.

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STEP 3) SALES ORIENTATION: After the end of World War II , until the first half of the sixties, the primary needs were satisfied almost everywhere. In what was known as the Western world, (North America, Europe and Japan ), there was a large industrial development which was generally designated by the term “economic boom”.

For the same product buyers could contact more sellers, the supply was greater than demand and the market did not absorb most of the high volume of the production. The companies exceeded capacity and were designed to sell what they produced, rather than produce what the market wants. It became important to know how to manage the sales and communication networks. For these reasons, companies created aggressive forms of promotions and sales for all the goods that consumers normally would not buy. It was born the “door to door” sales. It was a Marketing still used mainly by companies that didn’t have capacity or ability to innovate, and it involved high risks. It was based on the hypothesis that people who have been persuaded to buy a product, do not return it, do not have any objections about it, and maybe repurchase it finally. These assumptions were obviously wrong, but at the time were used for selling purposes.

STEP 4) MARKET ORIENTATION: In the mid-sixties, the mass production was in crisis. Then, with the oil crisis of the early seventies, a period of political and economic instability started , production volumes reduced, the needs evolved, the market required different answers. The mission o the Marketing moved from the sales to the idea of satisfying the needs of the customer. In practice the concept moved from searching customers to sell the products already made, to create products that customers are searching. Practically: follow customers’ needs. The production became more differentiated, more flexible, and started a wave of innovation that we might say has not finished yet.

What we can consider the maturity stage of the Marketing started. From now on we will no longer have Marketing cycles adopted almost universally by most the companies, but everyone will look for his original model,

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( Marketing holistic, relational, integrated, interior) then

the Web-

Marketing appears and from that point on everything changed.

STEP 5) CUSTOMER RELATION ORIENTATION: Finally nowadays, with the advent of Globalization, Information & Communication Technologies, Web, Flexible Production, Customer relation management... everything is changed or better everything is continually changing. This step is not different from the precedent one, but just an implementation of it. In fact Marketing nowadays is still following customer needs and working even better in this. The concentration is on customer relation management. Try not only to create products that the customer needs, but also generate a relation with him. Implement the selling, not only on the actual action of buying the products but also creating a proper relationship of trust and fidelity with him, in order to satisfy his needs also for the next purchases.

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3. What are ICT? The Information & Communication Technologies are the most recent General Purpose Technology (GPT).

“A general purpose technology or GPT is a term coined to describe a new method of producing and inventing that is important enough to have a protracted aggregate impact. Electricity and information technology (IT) probably are the two most important GPTs so far. Bresnahan and Trajtenberg (1996) argue that a GPT should have the following three characteristics: 1. Pervasiveness – The GPT should spread to most sectors.

2. Improvement – The GPT should get better over time and, hence, should keep lowering the costs of its users.

3. Innovation spawning – The GPT should make it easier to invent and produce new products or processes.” 9 ICT is the abbreviation of Information & Communication Technologies and is composed by 2 different definitions: Information Technology and Communication Technology: “Information technology (Scott Morton, 1991) is defined as a group of different elements consisting of: hardware, software, tele-communication networks, work stations, robots and intelligent parts (chips).” 10 “Today, it is common to use the term Information and Communications Technology (ICT) because it is unimaginable to work on a computer which is not connected to the network. Communication Technology (CT) implies the knowledge, skills and understanding needed to exchange information 9

“Handbook of Economic Growth”, Volume 1B., Elsevier B.V. , 2005, Jovanovic B. , Rousseau P. L. , Chapter 18, “General purpose technologies” URL: http://www.nyu.edu/econ/user/jovanovi/JovRousseauGPT.pdf 10 Jon-Arild Johannessen Kybernetes, “A systemic approach to innovation: the interactive innovation model” in Kybernetes, Vol. 38 Nos 1/2, 2009, pp. 158

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verbally or non-verbally. It is processing of information in terms of accessing information, decoding information and sending it via a medium and changer to the receivers.”11 So the terms Information Communication Technology is intended to indicate the whole of science, techniques and tools for the collection, processing and transmission of data. In practice, the set of technologies that enable the processing of information, such as hardware and software for personal computers, but also mobile phones, satellite systems, the infrastructure of the fixed and mobile telephony and, of course, the Internet .

The peculiarity of these technologies is the extreme versatility and their application in almost all activities.

11

Sahu K. , “An effective use of ICT”, URL: http://www.slideshare.net/kanhasahu980/aneffective-use-of-ict?qid=67479f14-1ddc-48d4-82b8 c8348503c440&v=qf1&b=&from_search=12

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4. Evolution of ICT As we have already said the Information & Communication Technology is the most recent General Purpose Technology (GPT) and was created by the meeting of the two most important innovations of the 1900s.

The first one is the telephone, developed in the first half of the century, and the other one is the electronic elaboration and computers science that characterized the second half of the century.

CHRONOLOGY: -1876 First patented Phone -1909 Nobel Prize to Guglielmo Marconi in physics for his contribution to develop the wireless telegraph -1930 At the world exhibition in Sydney, the lights of the town hall of the city were lighted by Guglielmo Marconi from his yacht Elettra moored in Genoa to 22,000 km away -“1940”12 The phone was in all the companies in many public places and homes of the rich -1945 Birth of the computer -1948 Birth of the transistor that makes possible the miniaturization of electrical equipment, the heart of the emerging telephony and computers -1951 The EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer becomes operational, one of the first electronic digital computers of the history, becomes operational -“1970”13 Microprocessors and semiconductor memories are placed on the market. They give a further development to the miniaturization of electrical equipment 12

Not the exact year but just an indication, it means around those years.

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-1977 Apple II hits the market, the first home computer -“1980”14 More and more technologies are transferred from the computers to the telephones -“1985” 15 The era of mobile telephony begins, it is the real birth of the ICT -“1990” 16Advent of the World Wide Web, is in fact the birth of the modern Internet From this moment on the process of integration and convergence between the two technologies (telephones and computers) will be accelerated and will give rise to an explosive mix. The scholars of economics will consider it like the steam engine and the electricity for its extreme versatility and the application in almost all activities.

-“1995” 17 Netscape and Windows 95 make the Internet usable by everyone who owns a computer and a telephone line -1997 Birth of Google that will transform the online – research.

-“2000” 18 Internet is in almost all offices and in many homes -2004 Birth of Facebook that will revolutionize the social networks -2006 Birth of Twitter that will change the concept of Media -2007 Apple launches the first iPhone. The mobile phones are now transformed into mini-PC, internet access is available everywhere, we are permanently connected to the web ICT has changed the way of life of millions of people and the way we produce and sell businesses.

13

Not the exact year but just an indication, it means around those years.

Not the exact year but just an indication, it means around those years.

15 Not the exact year but just an indication, it means around those years.

16 Not the exact year but just an indication, it means around those years.

17 Not the exact year but just an indication, it means around those years.

18 Not the exact year but just an indication, it means around those years.

14

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The changes generated by the ICT are so great that today we speak of "the information society" to emphasize the crucial role that the processing and transmission of information play in the present civilization. Today the entire spectrum of human activity depends on the power of ICT, whose use is a pre-requisite for economic and social development.

Their spectacular growth and the consequent globalization of markets has changed the concept of distance, reducing it to only a geographical concept of physical distance.

The ICT has had an explosive moment between 1995 and 2005, today its rate of innovation has slowed down a little; but still it remains extremely dynamic and in continuous evolution. In conclusion ICT represents a key factor for the achievement of business objectives, both on a strategic and operational level. They embody the main lever for change and innovation, resulting today to the decisive factor for the achievement of a competitive advantage for the success of a company.

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5. Investigation Thesis and Hypotheses With the advent of globalization, the domestic markets tend to be exceeded, and the future of business will play more and more a role in the international competitiveness. If a company, even leader in its market, does not expand internationally risks it will see its market eroded by foreign competitors, with potentially dramatic consequences for its survival. So now the Marketing has its highest expression in an international vision of its mission, even if it will deal from time to time with the local reality.

The ICT has profoundly changed global technology and has also extended into private life with computers and smart phones, affecting everyone’s habits and lifestyle.

“Companies have long taken „going global‟ to mean having a physical presence at locations everywhere. It has meant executives in transit and bricks-and-mortar facilities on the ground. … Increasing number of companies are succeeding overseas without massive foreign investment by adopting the global business model we call netchising. This new business model relies on the Internet for procurement, sales, and maintaining customer relationships, and non-equity partnership arrangements to provide direct customer interfaces and local adaptation and delivery of products and services. Netchising offers potentially huge benefits over traditional exporting or foreign direct investment approaches to globalization.” 19 Investigation Question: What changes have taken place in International Marketing since the introduction of Information and Communication Technology.

19

Morrison A, Bouquet C. and Beck J. , “Netchising : The Next Global Wave ? “, Long Range Planning, 37, (2004), 11-27

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The choice of the demand comes from the meeting of these two great revolutions of our time, globalization and the advent of ICT. The mix of these two forces has produced changes and new opportunities that transformed the International Marketing into a big challenge.

Hypothesis 1: 1)The Traditional Marketing has become Web Marketing: The advent of ICT has influenced and changed all the stages of Communication and Marketing. We will try to analyze, compare, and understand how the various stages of the process of international Marketing have changed with the advent of the ICT. Hypothesis 2: 3)The 4P’s Marketing Mix is no longer appropriate, it should be modified: The 4P’s have been since a few decades a must for the concept of Marketing mix. The advent of ICT has overwhelmed even this bastion. In fact we will analyse and try to find the new dominant model that has replaced the 4Ps Marketing Mix model.

Hypothesis 3: 2) The Conventional Selling has changed in E-commerce: How the conventional trade, retail and large-scale distribution is evolving with the competition of the forms of direct selling through Internet; how the Ecommerce addresses the customer supplier relationship; what are the strengths and weaknesses and what are the new implications of this new challenge.

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6. Definitions of Hypotheses’ Terms Traditional Marketing: “Traditional Marketing is a rather broad category that incorporates many forms of advertising and Marketing. It's the most recognizable types of Marketing, encompassing the advertisements that we see and hear every day. Most traditional Marketing strategies fall under one of four categories: print, broadcast, direct mail, and telephone.”20 In the question the “old Marketing” is intended to be the one used before the advent Internet and Web. Web Marketing: “Web Marketing refers to a broad category of advertising that takes many different forms, but generally involves any Marketing activity conducted online.”21 As consequence the Web Marketing refers to every type of Marketing that uses the Internet and the Web. 4P’s Marketing Mix: The classification proposed by Jerome McCarthy (1960): Product, Price, Place and Promotion: “1. Product: is a tangible object or intangible service that is produced or manufactured and offered to consumers in the market.

2. Price: is the amount a consumer pays for the product or service, normally and economic cost.

3. Place: represents the location where a product or service can be purchased, and can often be referred to as the distribution channel. This can include physical stores as well as virtual outlets online.

4. Promotion: represents the communications that marketers use in the marketplace including advertising, public relations, personal selling and sales promotion.”22

20

http://www.Marketing-schools.org/types-of-Marketing/traditional-Marketing.html http://www.Marketing-schools.org/types-of-Marketing/web-Marketing.html 22 Gordon R. , “Re-thinking and re-tooling the social Marketing mix” in Australasian Marketing Journal, Vol. 20, N° 2, 2012, pp 122-123 21

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Conventional Selling: in hypothesis 2 it is used as a synonymous of Traditional Selling. This category includes all the sales channel that are not online. For example all the retail, the large-scale distribution, etc.

E-commerce: Any initiative to support the company's commercial breakthrough through the internet is considered E-commerce. It is the selling made by computer, Smartphone, online and with internet. The online channel is the most important point to underline for the purpose of hypothesis 2.

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7. Methodology A complete research needs to be based on both quantitative and qualitative data. After reading many academic articles related to my hypotheses and my research question, I decided to create an online survey to capture all the real data and possible information from European companies about this subject in order to help me verify or deny my hypotheses.

While I was doing my intermediary draft I thought a completely different survey to send to the companies. It was too broad and not very focused on my 3 Hypotheses. After a lot of thinking and reading more about the survey creation, I found a good list 23 to follow on page 104 of Marketing Management for creating a good survey: “1. Ensure that questions are without bias. Don‟t lead the respondent into an answer.

2. Make the questions as simple as possible. Questions that include multiple ideas or two questions in one will confuse respondents.

3. Make the questions specific. Sometimes it‟s advisable to add memory cues.

For example, be specific with time periods.

4. Avoid jargon or shorthand. Avoid trade jargon, acronyms, and initials not in everyday use.

5. Steer clear of sophisticated or uncommon words. Use only words in common speech.

6. Avoid ambiguous words. Words such as “usually” or “frequently” have no specific meaning.

23

Kotler P. , Keller K. L. , Marketing Management , Pearson , 2012, pp. 104 , Adapted from Paul Hague and Peter Jackson, Market Research: A Guide to Planning, Methodology, and Evaluation (London: Kogan Page, 1999). See also, Hans Baumgartner and JanBenedict E. M. Steenkamp, “Response Styles in Marketing Research: A Cross-National Investigation,” Journal of Marketing Research (May 2001), pp. 143–56.

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7. Avoid questions with a negative in them. It is better to say, “Do you ever. . . ?” than “Do you never . . . ?”

8. Avoid hypothetical questions. It‟s difficult to answer questions about imaginary situations. Answers aren‟t necessarily reliable.

9. Do not use words that could be misheard. This is especially important when administering the interview over the telephone. “What is your opinion of sects?” could yield interesting but not necessarily relevant answers.

10. Desensitize questions by using response bands. To ask people their age or ask companies about employee turnover rates, offer a range of response bands instead of precise numbers.

11. Ensure that fixed responses do not overlap. Categories used in fixed response questions should be distinct and not overlap.

12. Allow for the answer “other” in fixed-response questions. Pre coded answers should always allow for a response other than those listed.” 24 I tried to consider all these points and I also followed the suggestions given to me by my Tutor Professor Raymond Ouellet. I gave a relevant consideration to the time factor, really important nowadays, so I have tried to make a real quick survey that can be completed in less than 5 minutes.

The survey is composed of 10 questions in total ( See ANNEX 2 ) Survey Italian Version & ANNEX 3 ) Survey English Version ). The first three questions are specifically based on my first hypothesis. Questions 4-5-6 are distinctively for Hypothesis 2, and question 7-8-9 are developed in particular for hypothesis 3. Finally question 10, the last one, will be just for having some information about the company.

24

Kotler P. , Keller K. L. , Marketing Management , Pearson , 2012, pp. 104 , Adapted from Paul Hague and Peter Jackson, Market Research: A Guide to Planning, Methodology, and Evaluation (London: Kogan Page, 1999). See also, Hans Baumgartner and JanBenedict E. M. Steenkamp, “Response Styles in Marketing Research: A Cross-National Investigation,” Journal of Marketing Research (May 2001), pp. 143–56.

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After creating the survey in Italian and English I did a first test sending it to my Internship Tutor Barbara Visani. She completed it and gave me another useful tip: many companies do not want to give specific data about the revenue so I left only the first nine questions compulsory and the last one regarding information about the company, optional.

After finalizing the survey, I also created an email to accompany it. During June and the beginning of July I sent it by email to around 100 companies.

Seeing that not many companies were answering the survey, I asked for contacts from Friends and Co-workers and by mid July I had already sent the survey to around 500 Companies.

I then waited the beginning of August to start analysing all the answers that I had received. The analysis I made is based for mostly on small and medium Italian companies, and some foreign ones, so the results are not universal or global but more just European.

As you can see from the graph below, I received 5 English surveys completed, at the beginning of July only:

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I also received 27 Italian Survey completed during July-August:

Every survey should be relevant and significant, unfortunately the low number of completed surveys that I received made my survey not particularly significant. Nevertheless we will use this data to make our analysis without considering them as extremely reliable but just as a starting point for our deductions.

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8. Hypotheses: 8.1)The Traditional Marketing has become Web Marketing: Initially the web was seen by marketers as a powerful new advertising tool, with great advantages compared to traditional media such as press, radio and television. It was seen as an innovative idea, but not strategic.

The ubiquity, interactivity, easy access to the internet anywhere at any time, and the lack of barriers, have led to its explosive growth, making it feel a revolutionary opportunity for Marketing.

It was so widely believed that the Internet would have cannibalized and replaced the traditional methods of adverting & communication. But it was an exaggeration. The ability given by the search engines to make specific proposals to individual users targeted to their specific interests, made the goal of "customer orientation" finally possible.

The exponential growth of the Internet, and its great but unknown opportunities have in many cases confused the companies causing thoughts and uncertainties.

There were several reasons for this. First of all, the Marketing people were not experts in ICT. The novelty and the potential of the new tools do not escaped them, but they were not able to govern and exploit them completely.

In addition Internet was also giving the possibility of reaching each individual user with specific offers, other opportunities / challenges: - The possibility of expanding the market without any geographic limits, increasing the number of potential customers, but also to potential competitors.

- Easy access to information about products, for customers but also for competitors.

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- The advantage to have new and more direct ways to reach customers, deteriorating the traditional sales channels, but creating unpredictable new ones (e-commerce).

- Being accessible to all, it has the trouble to keep the different offers confidential or proprietary .

- And the most important of all: the interactivity with all the different forums, blogs and social networks.

The procedures of the Marketing are changing. The operation of Marketing itself is evolving. The concept of market orientation is increased with the creation of new opportunities to better meet customers’ needs. In addition their power has been increased compared to companies’ one.

By contrast, companies got other benefits from the ICT, such as the ability to: - Collect and exchange data extremely fast facilitating the communication between suppliers, distributors, customers everywhere in the world with faster and better information.

- Collection, real-time information on sales and products with the ability to take immediate appropriate Marketing actions.

- Designing specific products based on the analysis of the mix of data collected from clients and competitors.

- Install multimedia totem in stores to show their products and features.

- Use customized messaging to maintain ongoing relationships with customers and create networks.

Now with the help of some tables and graphs I will show the results I obtained from the survey:

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The next table summarizes all the answers received from the different companies on the first three questions . (See ANNEX 4 ) Surveys’ Results 27 Italian Companies & ANNEX 5 ) Surveys’ Results 5 European Companies). In the lines there are the different answers received and in the columns the different time periods. As I mentioned before I received 27 completed surveys from Italian Companies and 5 from European companies.

The total result is in fact 32 every time.

Next table show the same results as Percentage of the total:

The following graph shows this results in a more intuitive and understandable way.

36

As previously pointed out, the percentage of responses to the tests was extremely low, so the data are not really significant. But using these data as an example from the diagram analyzed we could deduce the following considerations: Companies that do not use any kind of marketing have disappeared from the market, from 22% of the 80’s / 90’s to 13% of the 2000 / 2010 until 0% of nowadays. This means that all the companies that answered the survey are using marketing nowadays.

Companies that use only traditional marketing are declining from 19% of the 80’s / 90’s to the insignificant 3% of today.

Companies that use only web marketing, although still limited in number are increasing in the last few years as we can see from the 3% of nowadays.

The number of companies that use both types of marketing equally is growing, as we can see from the 19% in the 2000 / 2010 to 53% of today.

The data more difficult to interpret is the one related to the companies that make more traditional Marketing and less web Marketing because the trend is wavering, 9% in the 80’s / 90’s, 44% in 2000 / 2010 and 22% today. The more natural meaning seems to be an increasing of investment in traditional

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Marketing around 2000 / 2010 before the explosion of investments in web Marketing of nowadays, and a consequent repositioning of the following years.

Companies that use more web marketing compared to traditional marketing are growing exponentially from 3% to 6% of the 80’s / 90’s and 2000 / 2010 till the 19% of today.

In conclusion, all the companies tested are investing in Marketing and the investments on web marketing are increasing more and more.

As a confirmation of this analysis, the following diagram will exhibit with reliable data (from IAB Internet advertising report; PwC) in an unequivocal manner the steady growth of web marketing at the expense of traditional media:

25

25

http://www.ebookextra.it/funziona-davvero-la-pubblicita-online/

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This occurs because even though until today, essentially strategic processes and advertisements are the same on all media and the ultimate goal is always the satisfaction of the client, the web Marketing has some indisputable advantages: addressability, memory and interactivity.

The addressability is the ability to identify a potential customer since his first access to the website. Utilizing the information collected through the web, companies are able to focus on individual customers with extreme precision through targeted messages.

Memory is the ability to access to database containing the characteristics of individual users, and to use these data in real time to customize their offerings for a specific customer.

The interactivity element, characteristic of web Marketing allows users to access information and be able to express needs and comments through company website, forum, blogs and social network.

How to materialize the actions of web Marketing: The first level, the simplest is the e-mail Marketing. It is a more evolved form of the traditional direct Marketing. Compared to the traditional system presents the advantage to be more focused, but especially even able to know the number of e-mails delivered. It can do so without having a company website but just relying on specialized companies. An example could be the service offered by MailChimp.

Mailchimp: is an email Marketing provider that has more than 6 million26 people using it for sending email Marketing campaigns.

At one level a bit higher, we have the creation of a company website. For its creation there is the need of specific communication and technology skills. Many small businesses, that do not have these skills internally, rely on specialized companies. It is the most direct channel of communication 26

http://mailchimp.com/

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between the company and its customers. It is the image of the company and it contains all the information that the company wants to give about itself and its products to all customers and stakeholders. Many companies also use it to sell their products, but generally there are specialized sites for this and created specifically for e-commerce.

The most common form of online advertising is the Banner. It consists of an advertisement that appears when you open a web page. It is a real advertising insertion that can take many forms, just a text, but also images, sounds and videos. It can also be interactive (provide a click on in order to obtain information or visit the website advertised). But the most important thing is that it can be addressed to a target well-defined, taking advantage of addressability (explained earlier).

In addition to the banner other types of online advertising that are growing, are the sponsored links. A form of advertising normally perceived as less invasive and with an addressability even more thrust, since it allows to connect the sponsorship information to the searching in the network. To give a real example: in case of visiting a website of tourist information, a link of restaurants or hotels in that area appears, too.

Sales Systems based on these types of advertising refer to two criteria: impressions27 and click through rate (CTR)28.

The impressions are usually sold in packages that provide a predefined number.

The click through rate provides for the payment of a fee based on the percentage of visits made.

These are also the methods through which most of the Web sites, and social networks are self-financing themselves.

27 28

Represents the number of times the advertising is displayed by Internet users.

Represents the number of times the advertising is clicked by Internet users.

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Just a few years ago with the arrival of forums, blogs, "second life", it has began the run-up of the companies through the Marketing to be present and to make the best use of these new channels, making possible to bring their products and have questions about their online reputation. Today, most of us cannot remember even "second life", and forums and blogs have gone into the background compared to the Social Networks that are the new frontier of conversational Marketing.

Facebook: is the world's largest and most popular social network, able to attract the attention of a wide audience. There are more than 1 billion users and everyone can interact, like and share almost everything (thoughts, pictures, links, videos, music‌).

Twitter: is an online social networking and micro blogging service. It travels on the instant according to a principle of live blogging. If you have a thought, a picture, a phrase, an emotion, a little video to share, Twitter is the way to do it. It is widely used and always kept under control by insiders.

Linkedin: is the world’s largest professional network, with more than 300 million members 29 and the best way for companies and employees to be connected to each other.

YouTube is a video-sharing website that allows people to upload, watch or share videos. It is really used all over the world with more than 1 million users30.

Instagram: is the online mobile photo sharing dedicated to images with the App for Smartphones. It allows to share the pictures with other social networks directly from the mobile app. It is really useful because it works a lot with the #hashtags: content aggregators. Around #hashtags there is the creation of real community of users.

29 30

https://www.linkedin.com/company/linkedin https://www.youtube.com/yt/press/statistics.html

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Flickr: is the social network of the images for excellence, it hosts images and videos and is property of Yahoo. People can easily share pictures, create albums and connect all with tags.

Pinterest: is a visual discovery tool that you can use to find ideas for all your projects and interests31. It 's very useful for business purposes. It can be integrated with blogs and other social networks and allows you to create areas of interest "pinning� pictures, videos and reference content.

31

http://about.pinterest.com/it

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8.2) The 4P’s Marketing Mix is no longer appropriate, it should be modified: The 4Ps Marketing mix has been a milestone and a key element for the Marketing theory and practice of the past century. Lately it has become a matter of discussion and without any doubts it is been impacted by changing, above all the Web. There are several new theories about how to implement and adapt it for the new era. We should distinguish two different approaches between the researchers: the first(conservatives) assert that the 4P’s may continue to be the dominant paradigm of Marketing mix in digital contexts, the others (revisionists) suggest that the 4Ps’ framework is now obsolete and propose to add other elements and /or to change the elements of the mix. Some of the revisionists think of adding to the 4P’s also other elements with a customers’ focus, other instead proposing entirely different mixes. The Conservatives think instead that the 4P’s framework is perfectly able to adapt to the diffusion of digital technologies. The most relevant changes are: 1)personalize the product with the active help of the consumers. 2)The price should be redefined as everything given by the acquirer in terms of money, time and effort given to obtain the product. 3)Place should be defined today as: everything that is done and necessary to smooth the process of exchange.

4) Promotion has to be redefined in order to include: all the information that is transmitted among parties.32 The 4P’s Marketing mix model has different criticisms: - The Mix does not consider customer behavior but is internally oriented.

- The Mix regards customers as passive; it does not allow interaction and cannot capture relationships.

32

Dominici G. , “ From Marketing Mix to E-Marketing Mix: a Literature Overview and Classification” in International Journal of Business and Management, Vol. 4, N° 9, 2009, pp. 19–20

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- The Mix is void of theoretical content; it works primarily as a simplistic device focusing the attention of management.

- The Mix does not offer help for personification of Marketing activities.

- The mix does not take into consideration the unique elements of services Marketing.

- Product is stated in the singular but most companies do not sell a product in isolation. Marketers sell product lines, or brands, all interconnected in the mind of the consumer - The mix does not mention relationship building which has become a major Marketing focus, or the experiences that consumers buy.

- The conceptualization of the mix has implied marketers are the central element. This is not the case. Marketing is meant to be customer-focused management”.33 In order to meet the new expectations of Marketing, companies have to adapt their on-line strategy to customers’ needs. Because of the differences that exist between the virtual and the physical commerce the 4P’s Marketing Mix is unable to promote the personalization required by modern Marketing.

As a result different new frameworks come up and the physical strategy would be easily adapted to the fast changing of online conditions. The WebMarketing Mix model applies the main strategic, operational and organizational issues in a complete new way so as to be suitable for the online competition. The “launch” of the 4S’s model (Scope, Site, Synergy, System) could be a strong “weapon” for the companies in order to maintain the competitive advantage of online organization.

33

Chai Lee G. , “A review of Marketing Mix: 4Ps or More?” in International Journal of Marketing Studies, Vol. 1, N.1, 2009, pp 4

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Scope is about the strategy that every company has to follow regarding doing market analysis, understanding the potential customers and analyzing the internal values.

Site is all about the web experience that the customers will enjoy entering the company’s web page.

Synergy is the integrating processes necessary to realizing the virtual organization’s objectives; these synergies could be developed between the virtual and the physical part but also between third parties for affiliating networks for example.

Finally, System is referring to all the technical requirements that are needed.

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In addition to the 4S’s other models were defined. Many of them still including the 4P’s.

One model proposed by Lawrence35 is based on the 4P’s and has in addition other two P’s: People and Packaging.

Furthermore “in the Italian literature, Prandelli and Verona (2006) propose a 3 Cs model, where each C contains some key elements: content (Web site and platform), community (interaction platform and relational capability), commerce (including the 4 Ps: product, price, place and promotion);”36

34

Constantinides E. , “The 4S Web-Marketing Mix model” in Electronic Commerce Research and Applications 1, 2002, pp 57 –76 35

Dominici G. , “ From Marketing Mix to E-Marketing Mix: a Literature Overview and Classification” in International Journal of Business and Management, Vol. 4, N° 9, 2009, pp. 18 36

Dominici G. , “ From Marketing Mix to E-Marketing Mix: a Literature Overview and Classification” in International Journal of Business and Management, Vol. 4, N° 9, 2009, pp. 18

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And finally even a model with 8P’s, the first four are the traditional 4P’s and the other four are the following: “- Precision refers to the increased accuracy of the selection process of the target segment and to market positioning in digital contexts, thanks principally to database management systems; - Payment systems must be secure and easy for customers to use; - Personalization concerns the possibility to create a flexible interface, which is able to adapt to customers‟ needs and wills; - Push and Pull regards the choice of trade-off among active communication policies (push) and communication on users‟ demand (pull).

“37 Now with the help of some tables and graphs I will show the results I obtained from the survey: The next table summarizes all the answers received from the different companies on questions 4-5-6 . (See ANNEX 4 ) Surveys’ Results 27 Italian Companies & ANNEX 5 ) Surveys’ Results 5 European Companies). In the lines there are the different answers received and in the columns the different time periods. As I wrote before I received 27 completed surveys from Italian Companies and 5 from European companies.

The total result is in fact 32 every time.

37

Dominici G. , “ From Marketing Mix to E-Marketing Mix: a Literature Overview and Classification” in International Journal of Business and Management, Vol. 4, N° 9, 2009, pp. 19

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Next table shows the same results as Percentage of the total:

The following graph shows these results in a more intuitive and easy way.

As previously pointed out, the percentage of responses to the tests was extremely low, so the data are not really significant. But using these data as an example from the diagram analyzed, we could deduce the following considerations: The number of companies that do not have a Marketing strategy is going down.

The 4P’s Marketing Strategy is still really used by the companies in fact between 2000 and 2010 more than the 50% of companies that answered the survey shows to use it and even nowadays almost the 50% is still using it.

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With the arrival of the web marketing the use of the new strategy of the 4S’s is growing, unknown in the 90 but reaching today almost 30% of the use.

Finally we can affirm that even if the 4P’s are remaining really important for marketing strategies, the use of new technologies in marketing brings with it also the use of new strategies.

In this case, we could not find more confirmatory data or tables, because the data are of academic interest rather than commercial therefore not monitored by independent market surveys.

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8.3) The Conventional Selling has changed in E-commerce: The advent of ICT has undermined the traditional concept of the market.

Internet, "virtually" bringing the goods where the customers are, has defeated the distances and has broken down the need for a physical place to be exposed.

Initially assimilated to electronic commerce (e-commerce), it was later revealed as much more powerful and versatile, with lots of possibilities.

Among the many features, three are the most used: the ability to make purchases (e-commerce), exchange ideas (network) and the ability to draw information (accessibility-information).

These features, added to the digitization and to some already described for the web-Marketing (addressability, interactivity, memory) proved to be the most powerful facilitators for the explosion of the e-commerce.

The digitalization: the ability to have a product, or some of its benefits in digital form has been the engine of success of e-commerce.

The success of the e-commerce initially rewarded those who, aware of the potential of ICT, have focused on these, with the sale of digitized products: data, music, pictures, movies, entertainment, books, and services: ticketing, hotel reservations , brokerage real estate, financial services and insurances.

Then the sale of physical goods was also affirmed. Initially perceived as the market for products with low price, then it also established branded products.

There were problems, mainly due to existing laws and regulations that were not prepared to face this new market.

In addition to the traditional categories of business: - business to consumer (B2C) refers to a transaction between a company and a private user,

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- business to business (B2B) refers to a transaction between two companies, is increasing in importance of: - consumer to consumer (C2C) in relation to a transaction between users, the e-commerce is developing the : - consumer to business (C2B) in relation to a transaction in which the private user suggests the price that the company can accept or reject the offer.

The C2B is a novelty due to competition from e-commerce to traditional commerce. In cases where a customer shows on his Smartphone the same product offered online at a lower price, some large chains of electronic products, reserve the right to accept that price.

The C2C, before the Internet, was limited only on trade in the local markets.

Today, with the auction sites online purchases between individuals have passed the continental borders. The Birth of sites for car-sharing or rent houses online are revolutionizing the traditional markets and the limits to their development are mainly due to bureaucratic problems.

Before the birth of ICT this was unthinkable.

Today, all businesses have their own website, even those that use traditional sales channels. Given the relatively low cost of production for an online catalogue, many companies have tried to sell their products through e-commerce, in addition to traditional sales channels.

But not all have been successful.

This is mainly due to the poor knowledge of ICT. Facing the new challenge with the concepts of traditional sales, many companies thought it would be sufficient to transfer their online catalogues online and they also had the

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illusion that the internet was a paradise where everything was easy and at low cost. But it was not like that.

The marketplace gave the opportunity even to those who did not have sufficient knowledge of ICT to have a good visibility on the internet. Thus giving the opportunity also to small, medium sized businesses and even customers to address this market with a good chance.

This has created a new phenomenon.

In traditional sales, the space has a considerable cost, so it is necessary to expose only products whose sales generate adequate returns, products with low or very low returns are not profitable. In the e-commerce there is an opposite phenomenon. Low exposure Cost, high visibility, potentially global, so it is possible to sell also unique items, or products with a low number of sales that traditional stores cannot afford to keep. So the opportunity for many companies to sell / buy products exploded, something that was impossible or difficult to commercialize before. The new phenomenon socalled “Long tail� was born. “The theory of the Long Tail is that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of "hits" (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail. As the costs of production and distribution fall, especially online, there is now less need to lump products and consumers into one-size-fits-all containers. In an era without the constraints of physical shelf space and other bottlenecks of distribution, narrowly-target goods and services can be as economically attractive as mainstream fare.

One example of this is the theory's prediction that demand for products not available in traditional bricks and mortar stores is potentially as big as for those that are. But the same is true for video not available on broadcast TV on any given day, and songs not played on radio. In other words, the

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potential aggregate size of the many small markets in goods that don't individually sell well enough for traditional retail and broadcast distribution may rival that of the existing large market in goods that do cross

that

economic

bar.

The term refers specifically to the yellow part of the sales chart above, which shows a standard demand curve that could apply to any industry, from entertainment to hard goods. The red part of the curve is the hits, which have dominated our markets and culture for most of the last century.

The yellow part is the non-hits, or niches, which is where the new growth is coming from now and in the future.

Traditional retail economics dictate that stores only stock the likely hits, because shelf space is expensive. But online retailers (from Amazon to iTunes) can stock virtually everything, and the number of available niche products outnumber the hits by several orders of magnitude. Those millions of niches are the Long Tail, which had been largely neglected until recently in favor of the Short Head of hits.�38

38

http://www.longtail.com/the_long_tail/2005/09/long_tail_101.html

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Now with the help of some tables and graphs I will show the results I obtained from the survey: The next table summarizes all the answers received from the different companies about question 7-8-9. (See ANNEX 4 ) Surveys’ Results 27 Italian Companies & ANNEX 5 ) Surveys’ Results 5 European Companies). In the lines there are the different answers received and in the columns the different time periods. As I wrote before I received 27 completed surveys from Italian Companies and 5 from European companies.

The total result is in fact 32 every time.

Next table show the same results as Percentage of the total:

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The following graph shows these results in a more intuitive and easy way.

As previously pointed out, the percentage of responses to the tests was extremely low, so the data are not really significant. But using these data as an example from the diagram analyzed we could deduce the following considerations: Companies that make use of only traditional sales channels are declining gradually from 44% to 41% to 34% today.

The companies that use e-commerce channels only, are substantially stable at 3%, most likely because they were born between 2000 and 2010 and currently we are just 2014; The companies that use both types of sales channels equally in recent years are already at 25%.

The data more difficult to interpret because the trend is wavering, are related to the companies that make more traditional selling and less e-commerce.

This is probably because in the 80’s / 90’s the e-commerce was just starting and between the 2000 – 2010 was spreading so the number has increased and nowadays is decreasing because companies are starting to use always more and more e-commerce.

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Even companies that make greater use of e-commerce compared to traditional sales channels are a novelty of these recent years and they are positioned at 6%.

In summary, companies that use only traditional trade channels are in steady decline, there is a small reality of companies that only sell through the new channel of the e-commerce, but the most important fact is that companies which have added this new channel to traditional sales channels, are in large growth.

As partial confirmation of these deductions, the following diagram will exhibit with some reliable data from which the steady growth of the ecommerce will be highlighted in an unequivocal manner.

39

This graphs unequivocally show the increasing of the revenues of the ecommerce and the perceptual variation from the data take in an analysis of 3000 of Italian companies made by http://www.casaleggio.it/ .

39

http://www.ebookextra.it/funziona-davvero-la-pubblicita-online/

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The following data will also give confirmation of the importance of the growing e-commerce. They come from the http://www.ecommerceeurope.eu/home .

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From these data we can have an idea of the growing importance of the Ecommerce, considering that it has less than twenty years of life.

However, some problems still remain. Payment security, delivery problems, and returns. Especially for clothing, this last issue still limits the ability to generate profits in line with the revenue for some enterprises. These problems are still looking for solutions.

To solve the first one nowadays, new ideas are coming up like more sophisticated platforms for the safely treatment of electronic payments with fingerprint recognition or the pupil.

To solve the deliveries and returns problem , combining e-commerce with traditional commerce has been thought of. In this case, the customer places an order online and picks it up at the arranged store. The customer can even continuously track the shipment in every step of the way and be notified upon arrival. The same method can be used also for the eventual return.

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9. Conclusions From the analysis, we cannot say that our 3 assumptions are fully confirmed.

The traditional Marketing has not become only web Marketing, as well as the traditional selling is not completely changed in e-commerce because there are still traditional sales networks, and finally the 4P’s are still one of the cornerstones of Marketing, even if they are changing.

However, we must emphasize that the ICT proved to be a real revolution, and since its arrival nothing is as it was before.

It has helped companies to improve the speed, the accuracy and efficiency of the services, and it has allowed marketers to have available accurate and detailed report on their reputation and their products.

With the mass of information available, however, ICT has strengthened the power of the customers. With the arrival of the forums, the blogs and "second life", there was the run of companies to be present and to make best use of these new interactive channels that allow to offer their products and have information about their online reputation. Today, most of us cannot even remember "second life", and forums and blogs have gone into the background compared to the social networks that are the new frontier of conversational Marketing, in which the consumer can discuss with the companies and about them.

On Web Marketing there is still much to do, because there is still a lot to discover on the ICT. Its full potential is not yet completely known and exploited.

The Marketing of the future will always use more and more the ICT; even if it continues to live with the traditional Marketing.

The Conventional Selling and Traditional Marketing still have their own space because the number of those who have low knowledge of ICT is still high, although steadily decreasing.

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The Web Marketing will never replace completely the traditional one, such as e-commerce will never replace the conventional selling, but the ICT will be increasingly important and the mix will be constantly evolving to adapt to the constant changes that ICT will bring.

The 4Ps are still the core of Marketing, and even if many people say that are still appropriate and fully adapt to the new era, they are no longer sufficient because the concept of customer satisfaction (the new frontier of Marketing) with the advent of ICT has further widened.

In the E-commerce, firms do not sell only what they can produce, but what they can offer, regardless of who produces it and where. The know-how, the contact with the market, and logistics are key skills.

The Largest site in the world of e-commerce, Alibaba, with a turnover of over $ 4 billion per year, is a Chinese B2B website that made possible, for thousands of small and medium traders across the world, to have access with affordable prices to the immense market of cheap goods produced by the emerging countries of' the Far East, without the need for expensive onsite travel, importers or wholesalers.

The Innovations generated by the ICT will lead to other changes in habits, life styles and new innovations.

The car sharing, with its development will create a new type of mobility, which will change the transportation habits and cause car companies to produce types of cars aimed at this use.

The three-dimensional printing is destined to redefine the entire production chain. For many products will be what has been the digitization of music, creating products directly where they will be used.

Soon Digital native will play an important role in companies positions of responsibility. Their arrival will mix the cards again and lead to further innovations.

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The ICT, applied to traditional business without the necessary innovative thinking and an adequate knowledge of the new media, however, has not always led to the desired results, even if they have introduced elements of improvements and innovation.

In the publishing, e-books and on -line newspapers are born. Almost all publishing companies have got involved in this new business. For many who have faced this challenge in a way not innovative enough, the consequence has been the decline in sales of printed copies and weak growth on-line, not enough to cover the costs of the investments made in this new field.

These are reflections we have to start from when we think about the Marketing of the Future.

Today we are witnessing the protests of the taxi drivers against Uber, the complains of tour operators against sites that allow you to rent houses directly at home for any location in the world and even writers and intellectuals against Amazon which calls for the reduction of copyrights to reduce even more the price of e-books. These disputes are unhistorical, as the strikes of the carters against the engine transportation have been in the past. They can’t stop the progress and all the changes that are happening.

Those who oppose to innovation will delay the development for a few months, maybe delaying their use, but they will result defeated and the progress will continue.

The only way to be winners is to understand the new technologies, study them, know them, discover their potential and apply them in an original and creative way before the competitors ,in order to gain a competitive advantage.

And of course continue to study and make analysis and

innovations to keep this competitive advantage and even improve it.

The first determines the standard: Google, Apple, Amazon, Yoox, Nespresso, Facebook and many other ... are just a few examples of it.

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10. Limitations The main problem encountered while doing this thesis was finding companies available to answer the survey I made. In fact I received only 27 Italian surveys completed and 5 English surveys completed, out of around 500 surveys sent.

As I discovered the percentage of answering has been really low in fact only the 6% answered the survey online. This data at the beginning was really depressing for me but after some research I discovered that it is normal. For example the research institutes that made surveys before the elections to private citizens have a percentage of answering that is around 10%. In concrete data an example: for the Italian elections of the 2013, to have around 1000 completed surveys, they had to send 10000 surveys. I was disappointed, in fact I was expecting that companies would be more collaborative to answer an online survey. Especially because sometimes companies themselves are the first to make online surveys and use the results obtained for their analysis. But nobody can obligate anyone to fulfil a survey, especially nowadays when there are a lot of the kind and

in

particular mostly Marketing surveys. Because dedicating a little time for every single survey means losing a lot of time even if the survey is really quick and intuitive.

Even when I just e-mailed to some research companies, they gave me no answers back. Some research companies did not respond to my e-mail to get consistent data to use for my research. There has been the opportunity to buy some data, but without having an example of what I will have received and having the uncertainty if these data will be useful for my analysis. For these reasons I supported my analysis with the best data and graphs that I found on reliable websites available online.

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IV ) Resources utilized: We are in the Internet-era and everything we need can be easily found online. In order to be coherent with the theories exposed here, most of the articles that I read and most of the concepts that I discussed, come from the web. In particular online databases of the Universities, Websites & Social Networks. In fact after establishing the research problem, I have consulted several sources, articles and academic papers from three different University’s databases: 1)Reims NEOMA BUSINESS SCHOOL: 1. http://libraryreims.neoma-bs.fr/trouver_livre.php 2. http://www.scholarvox.com/catalog/ 3. http://pmb.rmsrbs.fr/rms/ 2)Bologna UNIBO: 1. http://www.biblioteche.unibo.it/portale 2. http://search.proquest.com/abiglobal/index?accountid=9652 3. http://bigiavi.biblioteche.unibo.it/risorse-disciplinari/banche-dati/ 4. http://bigiavi.biblioteche.unibo.it/risorse-disciplinari/workingpapers-e-archivi-aperti/ 3)Milano BICOCCA: 1. http://symphonya.unimib.it/ From these databases I found my articles and academic papers and other bibliography that I assumed interesting for my thesis. Finally I also used some books from the libraries.

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V ) Bibliography 1. Anderson C. , La coda lunga, Codice Edizioni Torino, 2008 2. Anderson C. , “The Long Tail” in Wired, 2004 3. Boario F. , Marketing Internazionale per entrare nel mercato globale, Il sole-24-ore, 1999 4. Brady M. , Fellenz M. R. , Brookes R. , "Researching the role of information and communications technology (ICT) in contemporary Marketing practices" in Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, Vol. 23 Iss: 2, 2008, pp.108 – 114 5. Brynjolfsson E. , Hu Y. J. , Smith M. D. , “From Niches too Riches: Anatomy of the Long Tail” in MITSLOAN Management Review, Vol. 47, N. 4, 2006, pp 67-71 6. Chai Lee G. , “A review of Marketing Mix: 4Ps or More?” in International Journal of Marketing Studies, Vol. 1, N.1, 2009, pp 2-15 7. Chan K. , Strategia Oceano Blu , ETAS , 2005 8. Collesei U. , “L’evoluzione del ruolo della comunicazione nell’approccio di Marketing” in Sinergie riviste di Studi e Ricerche, N. 29, 2012, pp 25-31 9. Constantinides E. , “The 4S Web-Marketing Mix model” in Electronic Commerce Research and Applications 1, 2002, pp 57 – 76 10. De Felice L. , Marketing conversazionale: dialogare con I clienti attraverso I social media e il real time web di Twitter, FriendFeed e Facebook, Gruppo 24 ore, 2010

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11. Dominici G. , “ From Marketing Mix to E-Marketing Mix: a Literature Overview and Classification” in International Journal of Business and Management, Vol. 4, N° 9, 2009,

pp. 17–24

12. Elsevier B.V. “Handbook of Economic Growth”, Volume 1B., 2005, Jovanovic B. , Rousseau P. L. , Chapter 18, “General purpose technologies” URL: http://www.nyu.edu/econ/user/jovanovi/JovRousseauGPT.pdf 13. Ferguson R. , Hlavinka K. , “The long tail of loyalty: how personalized dialogue and customized rewards will change Marketing forever” in Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 23, N° 6, 2006, pp. 357–361 14. Gordon R. , “Re-thinking and re-tooling the social Marketing mix” in Australasian Marketing Journal, Vol. 20, N° 2, 2012, pp 122126 15. Hangel J. III, Armstrong A. G. , Net gain: expanding markets through virtual communities, Harvard Business School Press, c1997 16. Kotler P. , Keller K. , Marketing Management , Pearson , 2012 17. Kotler P. , Keller K. L. , Ancarani F. , Costabile M. , Marketing Management , Pearson , 2012 18. Kybernetes Jon-Arild J., “A systemic approach to innovation: the interactive innovation model” in Kybernetes, Vol. 38 Nos 1/2, 2009, pp. 158-176 19. Lambin J. J. , Changing market relationships in the internet age , Presses universitaires de Louvain, 2008

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20. Lambin J. J. , “Il concetto esteso di orientamento al mercato” in Cambiare le relazioni di mercato nell’era di Internet, McGraw-Hill, 2010, pp 29-67 21. Lepore A. , Storia del Marketing , Università di Brescia , 2007 22. Leyland F. , Berthon P. , “Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the Web: Marketing meets Web 2.0, social media, and creative consumers” in Business Horizons, Vol. 54, 2011, pp. 181183 23. Maci L. , “Chi trova un amico trova un biz” in Corriere delle comunicazioni, N.3, 17 February 2014.

24. Mangold W. G. , Faulds D. J. , “Social media: the new hybrid element of the promotion mix” in Business Horizons, Vol. 52, 2009, pp 357-365 25. Marino V. , Casi di Marketing Internazionale , Giappichelli , 2010 26. Morrison A, Bouquet C. and Beck J. , “Netchising : The Next Global Wave ? “, Long Range Planning, 37, (2004), 11-27 27. Pelliccelli G. , Il Marketing internazionale: mercati globali e nuove strategie competitive, ETAS, 2010 28. Porter M. , Competitive Advantage: creating and sustaining superior Performance , Free Press, 1985 29. Rossi C. , “L’Impatto delle ICT sui Fondamenti dell’Economia: Produttività, Occupazione, Crescita” , Milano, 2006 30. Sahu

K.

,

“An

effective

use

of

ICT”,

URL: http://www.slideshare.net/kanhasahu980/an-effective-use-ofict?qid=67479f14-1ddc-48d4-82b8 c8348503c440&v=qf1&b=&from_search=12

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31. Seongmin J. , “Long Tail in Online Daily Deals: The Effect of Email and SMS Notification Preference on the Concentration of Sales” in Gachon GCCR Working Paper Series, N. 14-2, 2014 32. Shankar V. , Rajeev B. , “The growing influence of Online Marketing Communications” in Journal Of Interactive Marketing, Vol. 23, 2009, pp 285-287 33. Valdani E. , Bertoli G. , Mercati Internazionali e Marketing , EGEA, 2006 34. Varadarajan R. , Yadav M. S. , “Marketing Strategy in a InternetEnabled Environment: A retrospective on the First Ten Years of JIM and a Prospective on the Next Ten Years” in Journal of Interactive Marketing, Vol. 23, 2009, pp 11-22 35. Winer Russell S. , “New Communications Approaches in Marketing: Issues and Research Directions” in Journal of Interactive Marketing, Vol. 23, 2009, pp 108-117

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VI ) Webography: 1. http://www.nyu.edu/econ/user/jovanovi/JovRousseauGPT.pdf 2. http://www.techterms.com/definition/ict 3. http://www.pism.uniroma3.it/9-introduzione-alla-informationcommunication-technology-ict 4. http://www.Marketing-schools.org/types-of-Marketing/traditionalMarketing.html 5. http://www.Marketing-schools.org/types-of-Marketing/webMarketing.html 6. http://mailchimp.com/ 7. https://www.youtube.com/yt/press/statistics.html 8. https://www.linkedin.com/company/linkedin 9. http://about.pinterest.com/it 10. http://www.longtail.com/the_long_tail/2005/09/long_tail_101.html 11. http://www.casaleggio.it/ 12. http://www.ebookextra.it/funziona-davvero-la-pubblicita-online/ 13. http://www.ecommerce-europe.eu/home

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ANNEX 1 ) Email for the Survey: This is the email (in Italian and English) sent to the companies to accompany the Online Survey: Italian Version:

English Version:

Gentile Signora/Signore,

Dear Sir/Madam,

Grazie in anticipo per la sua

Thank you in advance for your

attenzione.

attention.

Sono uno studente dell’Università

I am a student at the University of

di

sta

Bologna (Italy) completing my

completando la sua Tesi di Laurea

Master Thesis for the NEOMA

per la NEOMA Business School

Business School (France).

Bologna

(Italia)

che

(Francia).

My

Master

Thesis

is

Marketing

on

La mia Tesi di Laurea riguarda

International

and

l’International Marketing e gli

Information & Communication

Information & Communication

Technologies.

Technologies.

I would be very grateful if you or Le sarei molto grato se Lei o

your Marketing department could

qualcuno del reparto Marketing

spare a few minutes to complete

potesse dedicare pochi minuti per

my

compilare

questo

short

survey.

breve

questionario.

The survey is composed of only Il

questionario

è

composto

10 multiple choice questions, and

solamente da 10 domande a

it will

risposta

minutes to complete it.

multipla,

e

la

sua

take no more than 5

compilazione non richiederà più di 5 minuti.

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La Sua disponibilità a rispondere

Your availability to answer the

alle domande mi sarà di grande

questions will provide huge help

aiuto per completare la Tesi di

for the completion of my thesis.

Laurea.

Thank you very much for your La ringrazio sentitamente per il

time.

suo tempo.

The link for completing the short Il

link

per

completare

questionario

è

il

survey

il

following: https://it.surveymonke

seguente: https://it.surveymonkey

is

the

y.com/s/JNBCSYQ

.com/s/77PFHSM Cordiali Saluti / Kind Regards / Cordiali Saluti / Kind Regards /

Sincères Salutations

Sincères Salutations Gian Marco MELANDRI Gian Marco MELANDRI

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ANNEX 2 ) Survey Italian Version The following is the Italian version of the online survey, sent specifically to the Italian companies: 1. Che tipo di Marketing veniva utilizzato dall'Azienda durante gli anni 80'/90' ?

L'azienda non utilizzava Marketing L'azienda non esisteva ancora Solo Marketing Tradizionale Solo Web Marketing Marketing Tradizionale e Web Marketing in uguale misura Pi첫 Marketing Tradizionale e meno Web Marketing Pi첫 Web Marketing e meno Marketing Tradizionale Non so Altro (specificare)

2. Che tipo di Marketing utilizzava l'Azienda tra 2000 e 2010?

L'azienda non utilizzava Marketing L'azienda non esisteva ancora Solo Marketing Tradizionale Solo Web Marketing Marketing Tradizionale e Web Marketing in uguale misura Pi첫 Marketing Tradizionale e meno Web Marketing Pi첫 Web Marketing e meno Marketing Tradizionale Non so Altro (specificare)

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3. Che tipo di Marketing utilizza l'Azienda attualmente?

L'azienda non utilizza Marketing Solo Web Marketing Solo Marketing Tradizionale Web Marketing e Marketing Tradizionale in uguale misura Pi첫 Web Marketing e meno Marketing Tradizionale Pi첫 Marketing Tradizionale e meno Web Marketing Non so Altro (specificare)

4. Che strategia di Marketing veniva utilizzata dall'Azienda durante gli anni 80'/90' ?

L'azienda non utilizzava strategie di Marketing L'azienda non esisteva ancora "4P" Marketing Mix (Product, Price, Place, Promotion) "4S" Marketing Mix (Scope, Site, Synergy, System) Non so Altro (specificare)

5. Che strategia di Marketing veniva utilizzata dall'Azienda tra 2000 e 2010 ?

L'azienda non utilizzava strategie di Marketing L'azienda non esisteva ancora "4P" Marketing Mix (Product, Price, Place, Promotion)

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"4S" Marketing Mix (Scope, Site, Synergy, System) Non so Altro (specificare)

6. Che strategia di Marketing utilizza l'Azienda attualmente?

L'azienda non utilizza strategie di Marketing "4P" Marketing Mix (Product, Price, Place, Promotion) "4S" Marketing Mix (Scope, Site, Synergy, System) Non so Altro (specificare)

7. Quali canali di Vendita venivano utilizzati dall'Azienda durante gli anni 80'/90' ?

L'azienda non utilizzava canali di Vendita L'azienda non esisteva ancora Solo Vendite Tradizionali Solo E-commerce Vendite Tradizionali ed E-commerce in uguale misura Pi첫 Vendite Tradizionali e meno E-commerce Pi첫 E-commerce e meno Vendite Tradizionali Non so Altro (specificare)

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8. Quali canali di Vendita venivano utilizzati dall'Azienda tra 2000 e 2010 ?

L'azienda non utilizzava canali di Vendita L'azienda non esisteva ancora Solo Vendite Tradizionali Solo E-commerce Vendite Tradizionali ed E-commerce in uguale misura Pi첫 Vendite Tradizionali e meno E-commerce Pi첫 E-commerce e meno Vendite Tradizionali Non so Altro (specificare)

9. Quali canali di Vendita vengono utilizzati dall'Azienda attualmente?

L'azienda non utilizza canali di vendita Solo E-commerce Solo Vendite Tradizionali E-commerce e Vendite Tradizionali in uguale misura Pi첫 E-commerce e meno Vendite Tradizionali Pi첫 Vendite Tradizionali e meno E-commerce Non so Altro (specificare)

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10. Si prega di inserire le informazioni richieste nelle seguenti caselle di testo: Nome dell'Azienda: Posizione Lavorativa ricoperta dalla persona che ha compilato il questionario: Settore di attivitĂ dell'Azienda: Numero di dipendenti: Fatturato annuo dell'Azienda (*non obbligatoria): Fine

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ANNEX 3) Survey English Version The following is the English version of the online survey, sent to foreign companies: 1. Which kind of Marketing was the company using during the 80's / 90's ?

The company didn't use any Marketing The company didn't exist then Only Traditional Marketing Only Web Marketing Web Marketing & Traditional Marketing equally More Traditional Marketing & less Web Marketing More Web Marketing & less Traditional Marketing I don't know Other (please specify)

2. Which kind of Marketing was the company using between 2000 and 2010 ?

The company didn't use any Marketing The company didn't exist then Only Traditional Marketing Only Web Marketing Web Marketing & Traditional Marketing equally More Traditional Marketing & less Web Marketing More Web Marketing & less Traditional Marketing I don't know

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Other (please specify)

3. Which kind of Marketing is the company using nowadays ?

The company is not using any Marketing Only Web Marketing Only Traditional Marketing Web Marketing & Traditional Marketing equally More Web Marketing & less Traditional Marketing More Traditional Marketing & less Web Marketing I don't know Other (please specify)

4. Which kind of Marketing strategy was the company using during the 80's / 90's ?

The company didn't use any Marketing strategy The company didn't exist then "4P" Marketing Mix (Product, Price, Place, Promotion) "4S" Marketing Mix (Scope, Site, Synergy, System) I don't know Other (please specify)

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5. Which kind of Marketing strategy was the company using between 2000 and 2010 ?

The company didn't use any Marketing strategy The company didn't exist then "4P" Marketing Mix (Product, Price, Place, Promotion) "4S" Marketing Mix (Scope, Site, Synergy, System) I don't know Other (please specify)

6. Which kind of Marketing strategy is the company using nowadays ?

The company is not using any Marketing Strategy "4S" Marketing Mix (Scope, Site, Synergy, System) "4P" Marketing Mix (Product, Price, Place, Promotion) I don't know Other (please specify)

7. Which kind of Selling was the company usign during the 80's / 90's ?

The company didn't sell anything The company didn't exist then Only Traditional Selling Only E-commerce Traditional Selling & E-Commerce equally More Traditional Selling & less E-Commerce

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More E-Commerce & less Traditional Selling I don't know Other (please specify)

8. Which kind of Selling was the company using between 2000 and 2010?

The company didn't sell anything The company didn't exist then Only Traditional Selling Only E-commerce Traditional Selling & E-Commerce equally More Traditional Selling & less E-Commerce More E-Commerce & less Traditional Selling I don't know Other (please specify)

9. Which kind of Selling is the company using nowadays ?

The company doesn't sell anything Only E-commerce Only Traditional Selling Traditional Selling & E-Commerce equally More E-Commerce & less Traditional Selling More Traditional Selling & less E-Commerce I don't know Other (please specify)

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10. Please enter the information required in the following boxes: Name of the Company: Working position of the person who has completed the survey: Industry sector of the Company: Number of employees: Annual Revenue of the Company [*not compulsory]: Done

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ANNEX 4 ) Survey’s Results 27 Italian Companies

80

81

82

83

84

85

86

87

88

ANNEX 5 ) Survey’s Results 5 European Companies

89

90

91

92

93

94

95

96

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Gian Marco MELANDRI Linkedin:it.linkedin.com/in/gianmarcomelandriMarketing/en E-mail: gianmarco.melandri@gmail.com Mobile: +39 3932698720 (Italy) Skype: Gian.Marco01

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