International development agencies claim that commercial applications of information and communication technology (ICT) have great potential to accelerate economic growth in developing nations. This paper investigates this idea and proposes that the Internet expands the potential of marketing...

Examines whether business really is undergoing a revolution or just the latest in a series of incremental changes with the universal and seemingly exponential spread of Internet technology. While it is tempting to regard the Internet as a unique challenge through its dual role as a driver of...

Purpose – A new player has emerged to influence the buying behavior of customers – the webmaven. Marketers and product developers must take in account that webmavens now have a huge potential audience for their reviews of products and services. An active program of tracking, measuring and...

Purpose – The purpose of this article is to elaborate the picture of the processes of information use by comparing conceptualizations provided by the constructivist approach and the human information processing approach. Design/methodology/approach – The article is a conceptual analysis of...

Powerful emerging technologies, fierce competition in the marketplace, more sophisticated consumers and the relentless drive for higher corporate earnings are at the root of online consumers’ information privacy concerns. The issue of consumer privacy could be a defining element in the battle...

Lays the groundwork for a conceptual framework that might be used to study fanatical consumers and consumption. We review literature on fanatics produced by psychologists, sociologists, cultural theorists, political scientists, theologists and marketers and then place their multidisciplinary...

Within the customer value literature there is a lacuna of theoretical frameworks and models that underlie consumers’ overall product valuation. This paper addresses this limitation and presents a model integrating consumer values, product benefits, and various costs of consumption. In the...

Many of the predictions regarding future implications of new media and information technologies appear to be made with very limited supporting rationale. Too often the excitement of a novel technology is associated with the belief that “new rules” apply. Alternatively, this paper proposes...

Observes that traditional retail, catalog, and online‐only businesses face a critical decision – to accept a new, yet unrefined business model that includes multiple channels or to retain their single channel model and risk becoming obsolete and left behind by new, multi‐channel...

In this study, a framework is developed that can be used to build “Web equity”, which is defined as consumer familiarity and perceptions about a Web site. The framework is rooted in traditional brand equity dimensions (brand awareness and brand image) and is supported by four categories of...