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achieved by harnessing the interactive power of the Internet and by
building one-to-one relationships with existing and new customers (Doole

and Lowe, 2008; Nykamp, 2000). Also, from the consumer’s viewpoint,
websites as a virtual shopping experience need to be safe and secure,
ease of navigation, sensitive to language differences, shipping details and

tracking services. From your own experience, some on-line sites do this
better than others! Therefore, a customer-led strategy is essential and just

like traditional methods of doing business, the company can focus on
consumer needs, satisfaction, loyalty and repeat business.

Case: Social networking sites can make or break product marketing

Social networking is having a significant effect on the way that consumers

now search for information about products and services they wish to buy.
Consequently this has implications for the international marketing
strategies of firms. Research by Yahoo in 2006 showed that seventy seven

per cent of consumers are influenced by internet research and on average
customers spent twelve hours researching a potential purchase online but

fifteen hours on research of more expensive products such as a television.
Increasingly significant, in acting as sources of information, are social
networking websites such as Digg.com, Reddit Newsvine and

Stumbleupon which rely on users to create content by sending in their own
stories or links to stories they have found on the Web. Users vote for the

stories they most like and add their own content. The most voted for stories
end up on the front page where they attract more attention and so the

snowball effect continues. Whilst on the one hand complainers from the
US on the Digg website claiming twenty million visitors a month were

saying that Steve Jobs and Apple do not produce good technology, they
produce good marketing but other contributors were more positive.
Smaran Dayal an eighteen year old from Pune, India was observing that

Apple’s computers and iPods were revolutionary products. Dayal has five
hundred friends who track his Apple stories so any recommendations he

makes carry five hundred votes and this provides a good start towards