CfP for Special Issue on 'Internet Marketing'

Guest Editors:

• Christopher P. Holland, University of Manchester, United Kingdom
• Andreas Herrmann, University of St.Gallen, Switzerland
• Kristin Diehl, University of Southern California, USA

Research Themes
A special issue on the broad topic of Internet marketing will seek to publish the best papers that address the research themes outlined below. We welcome a range of research methods and approaches including theoretical papers and all forms of empirical studies, e.g. statistical surveys, case studies, design science and online methodologies. Each research theme is described briefly to give guidance on the range of topics that are of interest. However if you require further information or have any questions regarding the suitability of a proposed paper, please contact the special issue Editors.

Business Models of Online Marketing
What are the new business models of online marketing for pure Internet companies and multi-channel companies? How should companies evaluate their investments into online marketing? For most established companies, the Internet has become an additional marketing channel that is a critically important aspect of their overall marketing. What are the business models that should be used and how should business performance be measured in a multi-channel environment? Why did the pure-play grocery and bank companies in the US fail so spectacularly? Was it their business models or was it their market timing? Are the business models of the Internet-giants eBay, Amazon and Google sustainable? How can competitors attack the Internet giants?

The Future of Search Strategies
Search has dominated both mind-share and share of online spending to date because it is easy to understand and to measure. However there are some dissenting voices that argue search is losing its pre-eminence because of web 2.0 where consumers prefer to trust and act on the recommendations of friends and online acquaintances rather than just relying on search. In addition, some firms are beginning to question the validity of the economics of paid search results because they argue that customers would have found their products and services anyway through natural search or other advertising mechanisms. What is the future of search? Should companies be more conservative in their paid search strategies and start to allocate their online budgets to other areas such as affiliate marketing, or banner advertising? Given the huge commercial significance of paid search there is surprisingly little academic endeavour in this area.

The Internet Advertising Landscape
There are many new types of companies that have emerged since the dot-com boom, e.g. Google's AdSense and a myriad of online advertising competitors whose role is to match up online publishers who have access to consumers with advertisers who need a distribution network to place their advertisements. What are the Internet advertising options open to companies and how should they allocate their advertising budgets in the Internet channel? How important are the new online advertising and marketing companies? How will this market develop and evolve in the future - will 'traditional' advertising companies be able to embrace digital marketing or will the new breed of digital marketing agencies and technology companies continue to dominate the Internet landscape? In addition to the simple pay per click model, new sales-based forms of advertising have evolved such as affiliate marketing campaigns. Will sales-based models of marketing continue to become more important? What is the role of general advertising? Case studies and examples of solutions in practice, analysis of new online advertising companies and evaluation of new Internet technologies are encouraged.

Commercial Exploitation of Web 2.0 in Consumer Marketing and in an Organizational Context
The rapid growth of web 2.0 is easily demonstrated by the usage statistics and by judging the relative size of social networking websites such as Facebook against the online websites of major commercial companies. However, it is more difficult to demonstrate the commercial value of web 2.0. It is also difficult to know what types of proactive measures can be taken to exploit web 2.0 developments such as blogs, social networking and media sharing websites. Research into these areas that develops insights into how companies should approach web 2.0 are encouraged. In addition, web 2.0 technologies are also being employed on a 'closed' basis, i.e. membership is restricted to say, an individual firm, or a network of related companies or individuals. Examples include Boeing, IBM and McDonalds who have all used social networking technology to improve internal communication within their companies. How do theories from sociology or business networks contribute to our understanding of communication and behavior in social networks? What is the empirical evidence of business innovation in this area?

Evaluation of Online Performance
Companies often focus the evaluation of their online performance based on internal measures. For example they will measure growth of unique visitors, increases in online sales and monitor closely the number of customers who register for online services. But the acid test from a competitive strategy perspective is how are they performing relative to their competitors? It is clearly insufficient to just measure an increase in online visitors without comparing the growth to that of competitors. What are the variables that should be measured? How should they be compared? What is the importance of dynamic analysis of online performance? How should companies develop a technical strategy to exploit online measurement software and data? The use of software such as Omniture and Google analytics creates a wealth of new opportunities for customer analytics and generates new research opportunities in the areas of technical strategies, online customer behavior and online market dynamics. This is a fast evolving new area of research and one where academics can play an important role and contribute to business practice.

Other Topics
Examples of other topics include but are not limited to:

• Online customer acquisition and retention
• Allocation of online investments
• E-service innovations, e.g. in banking and telecoms.
• Segmentation of online markets.
• Vertical market studies and case studies of Internet marketing strategies, e.g. banking, insurance, retailing, grocery and telecommunications presented in a theoretical context.
• Use of online analytics to evaluate website design.
• Economics of the Internet.

All papers will be peer reviewed and should conform to Electronic Markets' publication standards. All papers must be original, not published or under review elsewhere. Papers must be submitted via the electronic submission system. Instructions are available at http://www.electronicmarkets.org/authors.
If you would like to discuss any aspect of the special theme section, please contact the editors.

Methodological and theoretical pluralism is part of the journals policy. We welcome submissions using qualitative or quantitative methods. We also would like to encourage submissions of interdisciplinary work by authors from different areas. If authors have any questions regarding suitability of their work for this special issue, whether topical or methodological, they should not hesitate to contact (one of) the co-editors.

Contact addresses:

• Christopher P. Holland: chris.holland@mbs.ac.uk
• Andreas Herrmann: andreas.herrmann@unisg.ch
• Kristin Diehl: diehl@marshall.usc.edu
• or editors@electronicmarkets.org

Important deadline

• Submission Deadline: October 30, 2011