The Internet as a Marketspace — The Percepton of the Consumers

Abstract

Marketing people are facing a new challenge — being successful in the marketspace. Technical development and unprejudiced consumers have created new marketing opportunities, leaving no industries unaffected. According to many researchers tourism and the Internet are a fruitful combination, but no matter how much potential marketing people see in the new channel, the core concept of marketing must not be forgotten, i.e. to satisfy consumers’ needs and wants. In this study we are interested in the consumers’ perception of the marketspace created on the Internet. The marketspace has its own characteristics, advantages and disadvantages, but the final success is determined by the users. The consumers of today use the Internet mainly as an information source or for fun, not for buying. We asked potential consumers about their use of the Internet as a marketspace and elicited the perceived barriers of consumers for not using the Internet as a channel for commerce. We used a hermeneutic approach in this exploratory study and the results presented originate from three different studies. The results of our first, pre-study show that consumers demonstrate an obvious cautiousness towards using the Internet as a marketspace and that the barriers are of the cognitive, affective and behavioural type. The weak structure of barriers found in our first study was extended in the main study. A categorisation of the reasons for not using the Internet as a marketspace show that there are four main types of barriers: scepticism, perceived uncertainty, security and personal service. The elicited structure was supported in the follow-up study. Our results can easily be translated into tactical marketing operations. Companies should confirm bookings not only by e-mail, but also by letter. The structure of the site and the booking page must be logical, and tactics to get the consumers to use the booking page for the first time should be introduced.