During the early days of the Internet, many people believed that having an online presence would enable them to communicate with customers, cut geographic boundaries, and even boost sales. This belief in the efficacy of the Internet as a marketing tool has continued to evolve. Several new technologies and trends are changing the way we market, and marketing research will continue to evolve to keep up with these changes. Using data analytics, companies can quickly adapt their product specifications and go-to-market strategies to meet these new challenges.
In the same way that technology has changed the way we do business, the Internet has provided research opportunities for researchers for years. The number of articles published about Internet marketing has risen exponentially over the past few years. However, much of this research has not addressed the most fundamental questions about Internet marketing research. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive review of Internet marketing literature by analyzing articles published in a sample of top marketing journals. The study identifies the research techniques and methodologies that were most noteworthy, and highlights the research strategies that are likely to play a role in future studies. The results of the study provide a useful guide to Internet marketing research.
The first phase of the study included an analysis of the Internet marketing literature using Google Scholar and the WoS citation database. The citation database provided a list of the top ten marketing journals that published articles about Internet marketing. A second phase focused on analyzing the literature by research strategy. The top three research strategies accounted for over 90 percent of all articles. Some of the most noteworthy research strategies included: The Internet Advertising Landscape, The Future of Search Strategies, and The Business Models of Online Marketing. In the third phase of the study, the researchers further classified articles into research topics. The topical classification process revealed six Internet marketing research topics. These included: The Internet Advertising Landscape, The Future Of Search Strategies, The Business Models Of Online Marketing, The Internet Mobile Marketing Strategy, The Big Picture Of Internet Marketing, and The Biggest Mistakes Of Internet Marketing.
The study also compared the number of articles using each research strategy, and noted the number of articles using the “Sample Survey” research strategy. The study was conducted in three phases, and each phase focused on a different aspect of the Internet marketing literature. The findings demonstrate that the Internet marketing research literature is highly exploratory. This is not surprising given that some of the strategies used in Internet marketing research haven’t yet received wide adoption in IS research. This is a good reason for researchers to adopt a variety of research strategies and to use several different methods to collect and analyze their data.
The third phase of the study involved a brief discussion of each Internet marketing research topic. The researchers found several areas that had high levels of interest during the eight years that they studied, and several that would be of particular interest to practitioners. The results of this study suggest that Internet marketing research has not yet fully caught up with the business realities of the day. This is why it is important to periodically perform a literature review to discover new technologies and trends in Internet marketing.
