40
Placement or Distribution
Particularly for digital products and services, the Internet gives companies access
to a global marketplace. Product distribution and markets no longer have to be
dictated by location. With efficient delivery and shipping channels, products that
are not digital can also benefit from a far wider marketplace. The Internet allows
the basic foundations of mail-order businesses to flourish online with a catalog that
is cheaper to produce and update and cheaper to distribute: a Web site. In the travel
industry, travel agents stopped issuing paper tickets as of May 31, 2008.“The End of
the Paper Airline Ticket,” USA Today, June 1, 2008,http://www.usatoday.com/
travel/columnist/grossman/2008-05-30 -paper-tickets_N.htm
(accessed June 20,
2010); “Fact Sheet: Electronic Ticketing (ET),” International Air Transport
Association, June 2010,http://www.iata.org/pressroom/facts_figures/fact_sheets/
Pages/et.aspx
(accessed June 23, 2010). Nearly all airplane tickets are now e-tickets.
Note
An API is an application programming interface. Essentially, an API gives
instructions and rules for communicating with another program or database.
This allows, for example, different companies and developers to build different
front-end systems that all communicate with the same database.
Technology such as APIs (application programming interfaces), SOAP (simple object
access protocol) services, RSS (really simple syndication), and XML (extensible
markup language) allow information and services to be distributed throughout the
world. For example, the API for a hotel reservations database, Starfish Luxury
Travel Distribution (http://starfishinteractive.com
), allows a diverse range of Web
sites to offer instant online bookings for hotels in the inventory. Partners with
booking engines includehttp://starfishinteractive.com
,http://www.spaworld.tv
,
andhttp://www.timesonline.co.uk
.
This is both a huge opportunity and a huge challenge for businesses. On the one
hand, it can allow niche products and markets to flourish in a global space. On the
other hand, it can be tempting for a marketer to try to reach too many markets at
once. A global marketplace is also not yet fully supported by national banking and
tax legislation.
Chapter 19 eMarketing Strategy
19.2 The Internet and the Marketing Mix
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