Marketing on the Internet - who can benefit from an online marketing approach?

The research builds upon the Literature in electronic commerce and past research in marketing with the objective of understanding factors that impact a product's adaptability to online marketing. A review of marketing channel choice Literature reveals a set of factors and channel choice functions that are considered important in making channel decisions. Using this as a basis, four major channel functions, namely, product customization, availability, logistics, and transaction complexity are considered relevant in understanding the implications for Internet marketing. By building upon previous research in the area of channel selection, we provide a means of classifying Internet marketing initiatives based on product characteristics. The classification scheme based on product characteristics can help analyze the significance of each factor on the success of a firm's online marketing approach. Further, the classification scheme is used to discuss decision support implications. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.