Information Technology Journal
Year: 2006 | Volume: 5 | Issue: 5 | Page No.: 868-875
ABSTRACT
Internet is a hybrid medium which can combine all three identified communication strategies including mass communication, interpersonal communication and machine underactivity communication. However, the creative variables that are related to successful branding through internet advertisement (IA) have yet to be validated quantitatively. This study adds to the growing body of literature on brand building by examining how some facilities of Internet Advertisement which have impact on brand building. The proposed characteristics of Internet Advertise which have been selected to identify the impact on brand building namely, customization facility, purchasing facility, style of Internet Advertisement, quick feedback and image of Internet Advertisement. The data was collected from different areas in Malaysia, among different type of respondents who used internet before. A total number of 591 responses have been finalized for the analysis. Multiples regression was employed as major analysis to test hypotheses. The present investigation was demonstrated that different styles of Internet Advertisement enhance the potentiality of IA. In addition, quick feedback also has significant effect on brand building. Surprisingly, image and purchasing capabilities have negative effect on brand building. It could be due to customers reluctant to purchase instantly after watching internet advertising.
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How to cite this article
Ahasanul Haque, Arun Kumer Tarofder and Shameem Al Mahmud, 2006. Internet Advertisement: Helps to Build Brand. Information Technology Journal, 5: 868-875.
DOI: 10.3923/itj.2006.868.875
URL: https://scialert.net/abstract/?doi=itj.2006.868.875
DOI: 10.3923/itj.2006.868.875
URL: https://scialert.net/abstract/?doi=itj.2006.868.875
INTRODUCTION
The Internet is a new commnnications vehicle that is changing brand marketing in significant way. In the few years the web has been available for marketing and sales, online advertising has already changed considerably. It has extended beyond the small, static web banner to totally interactive full-screen ads. Brand marketers now have more online advertising choices that help build brand awareness, comprehension, preference and loyalty. Some traditional brand marketing techniques, including sweepstakes and sponsorships, have made their way onto the web. Brand marketers are beginning to take further advantage of the medium for branding as audio and video can be used to a greater degree. Online advertising is beginning to behave much like a website in that marketers are primarily interested in the branding impact of the user's experience with the ad. In contrast several acconnts argue that Internet Advertisements itself is effective in generating sales. Gaffney (2001), Kranliold (1999) and Schlosser et al. (1999) found that people generally trusted the commercial content of an Internet Advertisement more than an add in general.
A number of recent papers have presented the issue of brand management on the Internet (Riley and Lacroix, 2003). The basic rules of branding and essence of the brand at the same off and online are accepted by Chan (2001), de Cliematony (2001) and Clauser (2001). However, new medium such as Internet advertisement may require adjustment at the executional level, for example, in the way information is presented (Riley et al., 2003). In addition, the degree of control maintained over the brand may need relaxing, for instant, immoderate chat fonuns and commmrities built within the brands website (de Cliematory, 2001 ). Ind and Riondiono (2001) indicated a brand's presence on the web should be conceived in a way that is sympathetic to the technology and the environment; the web site should be consisted with the whole brand presentation and should reflect the overall brand identity. Brand literature like wise show how active brand commnnication helps to build and strengthen brand loyalty. Despite the potential of Internet marketing for building and maintaining brand and brand loyalty, it lias only recently started to gain impotency in corporate marketing (Merisavo and Raulas, 2004; Na and Marshall, 2005; Lace and Jomthan, 2004).
Malaysia can be considered a late starter giventhe recent spate of Internet interest. Although it has been a few years since the commercialization of the Internet, Malaysians still mainly regard it as a novel means of commrmication and entertairnnent, but not yet as a medium for commerce. A major obstruction to Malaysia’s involvement in electronic businesses is the enterprise attitude (Ng. 2000). Malaysians tend to be “followers” rather than “pioneers” or “first-movers” in creating intellectual property (Lee. 2000). Many fear failure and some dare not take the step into the Internet economy because it is an unknown space (Ng, 2000). Malaysia enterprises have to react fast to the rapidly changing envirornnent. They need to grab the opportunities and take the risk to change the Internet space for business on the Net. Many companies in Malaysia are reluctant to advertise their products and services through Internet due to failure in the market of advertising campaign. Thus, the development oflnternet Advertisement is still in initial stage in Malaysia. Therefore, it is important issue to identify whether the Internet advertisement is capable to build brand among consumers and what are the attributes of Internet advertisement might help the marketers to build brand among consumers?
Building a successful major brand, whether for a company or a new product, requires strategic planning and a major investment. The new company then spent millions of dollars to create awareness and position this new brand. According to Drmcan (2002), the basic steps in building a brand are shown in the following list. Although these brand building steps are numbered progressively, then often overlap, especially the second third and fourth creating awareness, positioning the brand and creating a brand image. The steps are: a) Select a name and symbol to represent the company or product; b) Create awareness/brand identity of name and symbol (if used) and what the product is or does; c) Position the brand to begin differentiating it from competing brands; d) Create a brand image to help further differentiate the brand and to make it easier to recognize and recall and e) Create trust in the minds of customers, prospects and other stakeholders about the brand by maintaining consistency and delivering on expectation.
Advertising can be classified into two categories: brand building and directional (Fernandez and Rosen, 2000; Lohse and Rosen, 2001). Brand building advertising is synonymous with product advertising and is commonly seen in traditional mass media, including TV, radio, magazine and newspaper. Brand building advertisements tend to be product/service (or retailer) oriented with the purpose to establish a positive image and creating demand for a product or service that leads to eventual of advertising has covered studies from both advertisers and consumers' perspectives.
PROCESS OF ONLINE BRAND BUILDING
While the resources and value proposition of company has been clearly confirmed, the next stage is to commmricate the value of brand and then reinforce brand association to start the process of usage and experience and keeps it turning. Fig. 1 provides guideline of online customers' choice pipeline, while represents the customer purchasing process as a series of distinct resource, each represents a different stage and relationship to brand (Internet Branding. 2003).
Unaware: This is the first stage that the potential customers have not any idea about the brand. The main frmction of this stage is to make aware of those potential customers.
Aware: All of these potential customers are aware about the new or extended brand in this stage, but they do not access the website or purchase the product in this stage.
Browsers: In this stage, customers are showed their interest and browse the website. They can refuse to browse also. On the other hand they can purchase product of the brand and become a cment customer of the brand or discord the offering and become refuters.
Loyal: This stage includes all of the customers who want to purchase again. These customers can be an important source of positive word of mouth, which usually accormts for the lion's share of customers visit to a web site. Then the company can commnnicate with these loyal customers through e-mail lists, websites and chat rooms etc, which are the more positive attributes of Internet.
Refuses: It includes all of the customers who do not buy or buy only one time because they are dissatisfied with product or services.
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| Fig. 1: | Online customer choice pipeline http://www.actonvision.com/Internetbrandinig /4.htrn |
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| Fig. 2: | Driving customer through pipeline http://www.actonvision.com/Intemetbranding/4.htrn |
The accumulation of refuses depends of brand ability to fulfil expectation. Companies must consider and carefully measured how they can influence the flow rates between stages, particularly where bottle necks occur.
The most significant step where is the main fnnction to aware the customers about the brand's value proposition. And it is the more difficult for the online that the offline, due to lack of physical presence. Company can commmricate through the online including e-mail notification, Internet Advertisement etc. but the Internet Advertisement is the most effective way then e– mail notification. Innovation and creativity are also important factors in gaining attention into day’s online emporium. Attracting customers is only the first step in building an online brand. There are 8C’s that are affected on all of these steps. Figure 2 showed how and where these 8C’s are affected (Internet Branding. 2003). The 8C’s are Convenience, Commmrication, Customers, Consent, Content, Commnnity, Customization and Connectivity. Companies should take more initiatives for the customers before they move on. The key factors of this stage convenience beside to develop the value proposition. And this convenience should embed with attractive content. The content must be meaningful and have the capability to realize attraction to the customers. In this point, the goal of the company is to increase conversion rate and engaging them on an on going basis result in increased product purchase opportunities. Other muggy applications include comities and customization.
Internet has the capability to keep track of the potential customers. Company can obtain information about the Internet purchase and refuse as well. By using all of the information that collect, can create extra value for the customers and easily they can satisfy the customers. This will encourage the customers to spend more time and money on the site. Furthermore, changing content and effective customers care help to create switching barriers and encourage customers to return and repeat the cycle. This study gives emphasis on the brand building through Internet Advertisement, which has great impact on first which attribute of the Internet Advertisement has more impact on building brand, then it will be easy for the marketers to make and set the Internet Advertisement according that.
Advertisers in the offline world realize that consumers may not have an immediate need to purchase a product or service at the moment it is being advertised. Realizing this aspect of consumer behaviour, a common advertising strategy is to build awareness of a product and form positive associations between that product and a consumer over time so that when the need arises to purchase from a given category, a consumer is more likely to consider that advertiser’s product. While popular in the offline world, this notion of an nnconscious association between brand and consumer has not been readily adopted in the online advertising strategies of brand– oriented advertisers. These advertisers are blinded by click-through even though it connterintuitive to branding philosophy (Briggs and Rallis. 1999). A banner’s ability to support a brand, create brand associations, as well as change attitudes toward a brand (all measures of effectiveness in the offline world) was also quantified. Others (Leong et al.,1998) also recognize that click– through may be limited in its application of effectiveness. Recognizing that banner advertising can have an impact on branding, it would be helpful for those designing online advertising to nnderstand the characteristics of an online ad that are related to its success on brand-oriented metrics. In order to hypothesize what some of these characteristics might be, it is helpful to review some learning theories smonnding consumer behaviour.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
A structured questionnaire was used to collect the necessary data whereby it was served as primary data to answer the research questions and objectives pertaining to brand building through Internet advertisement. The survey questionnaire consists of 15 distinct sections, each of which contains question pertaining to different parts of the study. A convenience sampling method is used to collect data mainly from the cment Internet users in Klang Valley which has the highest concentration of Internet users. Even though the sampling method adopted has limitations in terms of generalisibility as compared to other method of sampling, it is assumed that the sample represent the whole population of Internet users in Malaysia. The study sample consisted of 591 from different places in Malaysia. This survey had mainly conducted by the self administrated. To ensure more respondents, e-mail surveyed also conducted for the study. Survey had been conducted for six months started and last reminder was sent after six weeks. A list of e-mail users currently registered with TMNet was obtained from Telekom Malaysia and the survey questionnaire was only e-mailed to those Internet users who agreed to participate in the survey. This step was taken to avoid complaints from the Internet users and also to increase the number of respondents. Apart from the ability to reach large target respondents and inexpensive way to conduct the survey, the survey through e-mail also enabled respondents to easily provide extensive responses to open-ended questions in describing their experiences in respect of brand building through Internet advertisement. This is particularly important because Internet shopping in Malaysia is till new and at the infancy stage, extensive responses from open-ended questions that provides valuable input to the study so that a better rmderstanding of brand building in Malaysia can be achieved.
Total 650-sample sizes are formd to be adequate for this study, of which 600 questionnaires were received. Each of the response received was screened for errors, incomplete and missing responses. Efforts were also taken to contact the affected respondents through e-mail for clarification and corrections, especially for missing or blanks responses. However, those responses that had more than 25% of the questions in the survey questionnaire that have been left unanswered or incorrectly answered were discarded from data analysis. For those responses that had a few blank answers (less than 25% of the questions) and which involve 5-point interval-scaled questions were assigned with a mid-point scale of 3. After the screening process was carried out, only 591 responses were considered complete and valid for data analysis. This represents a success rate of 90%, which is considered to be good in view of time and cost constraints.
HYPOTHESIS OF THE STUDY
Brown and Stayman (1992). Stone et al.,. (2000) found that when consumers like an advertisement about a brand, they are more likely to develop a linking for the brand and are more predisposed to buy it. This study focuses on five facilities of Internet Advertisement that have impact on brand building such as customization facility of Internet Advertisement, quick feedback, Image of Internet Advertisement, purchasing facility through Internet Advertisement and Style of Internet Advertisement.
on customers’exact needs. It offers higher selectivity than any other media. The individual actively expose himself to the advertisement. The user customizes the advertisement to his own needs by choosing hyperlinks to negative him arormd. So, it helps the advertisers to navigate and provide a content which attracts the user to spend as much as possible on the site, by which advertise can in term about the brand to the current and new customers which indicates significant impact of this variable to build a strong brand name.
H1 : giving customization facility on Internet Advertisement is expected to increase potentiality of Internet Advertisement to build brand.
Quick feedback: Internet Advertisements have a big advantage that it can interact with its users. Interaction with user could include answering specific individual question which are not answered in FAQ. General custom is 12 h replay time (Uppgren. 1995). This changing time frame has implications for resources allocation and consumer loyalty (0. gunsheye. 1996). However. the research showed that it is very important role on building brand. This is poor service customer service, if customers go through the trouble of filling out a form and e-mail it; customers expect to get feedback if not. Customers get negative perception of the brand of a company. Thus, this study takes this variable as important component for building brand and test the effect on the brand building.
H2 : quick feedback facility of Internet Advertisement is expected to better result on building brand.
Image of internet advertisement: Image of Internet Advertisement appeal more to customers emotional than rational sense. Informative advertisement can be combined with image advertisement. An Internet presence has to some extend effect the brand image, as the media is part of the message. Internet presence indicates that the company is dynamic, innovative and moving with the times. Advertisers with low audience and product fit choose mainly an image strategy, as defined in general fit. As users have low interest in the product as such advertising have to attract visitors by adding value to the consumer through an innovative novel web site. This has been done through advertising (www.bbdo.dk.1996). Thus, the present study takes this image as an important factor for building brand and measure its’ impact on building brand.
H3 : increase the quality of image on Internet Advertisement is expected result to increase potentiality of Internet Advertisement to build brand.
Purchasing facility through Internet Advertisement: One of the great innovation and advantage of Internet Advertisement is customers can give order and purchase through Internet Advertisement that other media do not offer. Customers can shop from home and select items they like and purchase. This facility provides great consistent for the customers. It reduces time as well as travel cost for the customers. Even non-general mail order companies can benefit from this extra distribution channel. Therefore, it was tested the impact of this facility on brand building.
H4 : providing purchasing facility through Internet Advertisement is expected to increase potentiality of Internet Advertisement to build brand.
Style of internet advertisement: The potential context effect that could affect brand building is the style of Internet Advertisement. Two studies have examined that effect of competing advertising on reception of Internet Advertisement, but all have focused on the effect on advertisement click through rather than brand building, which is a more appropriate measure for an advertisement that is Internet Advertisement has effectiveness or not (Block and Morwitz. 1999). Hoffman et al. (1996) showed that bllilller ads containing simple yet efficient copy could improve the click through rate of banner advertising. In a subsequent study. Hoffman et al. (1996) showed that increasing the number of other ads armmd a banner ad on a web site has no affect on click through rates. In this study I have tested the effect of Internet Advertisement's style on building brand
H5 : different styles of Internet Advertisement might provide better result to build brand through Internet Advertisement. The following model is developed for above hypotheses.
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Here, X1 is Customization facilities, X2 is Quick feedback, X3 is Image of Internet Advertisement, X4 is purchasing facility through Internet Advertisement and X5 is Style of Internet Advertisement. Dependent variable is Yi which represents the brand building through Internet Advertisement. A multiple regression analysis is carried out in order to determine the factor those described in hypothesis have significant impact on building brand.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Table 1 showed that female in Malaysia are similar with male in term of Internet use. The male and female percentage of our respondent were 50.9 and 49.1, respectively.
| Table 1: | Respondents demographic profile |
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Since, all of the respondents have used Internet before. Among all respondents, ymmg age from 21-25 were more followed by age 31-35 were dominating. On the other hand, major respondents have done their bachelor (45.9%) andgraduate (49.9%). Based on the occupation analysis of the respondents 35.9% were students followed by business men (27.4%) and IT professional (22%) dominating second and third position respectively. Moreover, most of our respondents are using Internet more than three hours per day and all of the respondents were seen Internet Advertisement on Internet. To more thoroughly test the hypothesis multiple regressions was employed. The findings from this analysis are shown in Table 2-4.
HYPOTHESES TESTING
Results indicated that 58% of variance of brand building through Internet advertisement was explained by this five independent variables with a significant ‘F’ value of 159.353 being significant at p<0.000 (Table 2 and 3).
| Table 2: | Model summary |
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A Predictors: (Constant), purchasing capabilities, style oflntemet Advertisement, customize, image, quick feedback | |
| Table 3: | ANOVA (b) |
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a) Predictors: (Constant), purchasing capabilities, style of lA, customize, image, quick feedback, b) Dependent Variable: lA has capability build brand | |
| Table 4: | Coefficients (a) |
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a) Dependent Variable: lA has capability build brand | |
Therefore, there is an evidence that these five attributes of internet advertisement are significantly affected the process of building brand through Internet advertisement. The hypotheses of this study are concerned with the individual effect of five attributes of Internet advertisement on the process of brand building through Internet advertisement. The test of these hypotheses leads to accomplish the objective of this study. The strength of influence of each of the independent variables would have on the process of brand building through Internet advertisement being addressed and results were shown in the Table 4.
The results showed that customization facilities emerge as the important factor affecting the process of brand building through Internet advertisement. A significant positive effect of customization facility on brand building is seen from Table 4. The standardized coefficients is 0.244 and we also fmmd that ‘t’ calculated value is more than it's significance value at 5% level of significance. This result supports our first hypothesis. No other media gives this customization facility except the Internet. Even it helps the advertisers to provide contents which attract the consumer to spend as much as possible on the site. Therefore, it helps the consumers to learn and recall the brand which will help to build brand among them. Based on this positive coefficient of the customization, this study concludes that there is a significant positive effect of customization on the process of brand building. regarding image showed that it has negative impact on the process of brand building. Regression result shows a negative effect of this variable on brand building and its standardized coefficients is -0.160. It could be because the consumers are more concern on other facilities such as information incentives, etc. rather than image. Especially the Malaysian consumers are more concern on incentives. Purchasing facility through Internet advertisement also formd the negative effect on the process of brand building through Internet advertisement. Result described form Table 4 and indicated negative effect of this variable on brand building and its standardized coefficient is -0.084. It is may be Malaysian consumers like store shopping rather than online shopping. But they surf the Internet advertisement to collect more information about the product and services before going to purchase. Thus hypothesis H4 is not supporting in this respect.
According to our result for Hypothesis H5 , last and the most important attribute for the brand building through Internet Advertisement is style of Internet advertisement. The findings with respect to the anticipated effect of style of Internet advertisement on brand building through Internet advertisement was supported the estimated regression results was highly significant at p<0.000 level indicated that there is strong influence of style of Internet advertisement on process of brand building where standardized coefficient is 0.489 (Table 4). This result also supported by the earlier literature of Block and Morwitz (1999). Hence H5 is accepted.
CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLEMENTATIONS
There is indication that building brand is influenced by different styles of internet advertisement. This might be due to the consumers being able to see the Internet Advertisement in a different view. Through out this paper concluded that Internet Advertisement can be an effective branding vehicle. Thus this study examined factors that might impact on brand building. Those factors which have been proposed for this study are included customization facility, different style of Internet Advertisement, quick feedback. quality image and purchasing facility. The key finding is that different style of Internet Advertisement is a strong determinant of brand building. Stated that if a customer watch different styles of Internet Advertisement more and more and get when ever they need, it could help marketers to build brand. To build brand quick feedback and customization facility is also need. Finally, for building brand it seems that quality image and purchasing capabilities are not necessary. Hence, greater Internet Advertisement effectiveness can be gained when it is more available by using different ways to customers and provide above mention services such as customization facility, quick feed back. Internet is a hybrid medium which can combine all three identified commnnication strategies including mass commmrication, interpersonal commnnication and machine nnderactivity commmrication. That is why new advertising strategies are needed in this medium. The Internet is a two way interpersonal commnnication flow. The key distinguishing features are the interpersonal feedback and interaction process in real time, which traditional advertising nnable to provide. This interaction process provides relevant customer information in order to serve those more effectively in the future. User can also interact with the Internet medium itself through machine nnderactivity. Compare to traditional media the user is fully change of the information pull. So, marketers should more concern on new strategies of Internet Advertisement.
The results of the present research suggests that brand can be built through Internet Advertisement among the consumers. According to results different styles of Internet Advertisement has more impact on brand building. Thus advertisers try to lannch their advertisement as much as possible in a different ways. Quick feedback and customization facility are also have impact on brand building through Internet Advertisement. Therefore, when advertisers place their advertising on the Internet should concern about these variables, because one of the effectiveness of Internet Advertisement is building brand which have an exciting future in front of us.
LIMITATIONS AND FUTURE RESEARCH
As with any experience, there are number of limitation presents in the current study which was restricted this research to the selection of advertising on the World Wide Web. Clearly, a variety of choice situation must be investigated before generalize comments can be made to guide the development of Internet based advertisement. Another limitation of the present study is the size and composition of the group which participated in the study. Only Internet users from the Malaysia were recruited for testing. So, generalization about the entire population of Internet Advertisement uses is inappropriate. It would be value to conduct similar research on other nationalities to obtain a clear picture of online consumer attitude through Internet which is, essentially, a global medium. In addition, limitation concerns the complex relationship between marketing commmrication allocation and out comes, mainly other variables are related to brand performance. And this study is restricted only one commnnity. Future research is needed to extend the result of this study. Future multinational research extensions might elucidate similarities and difference between nations population including demographic significance. Likewise, future research is needed to determine nnder what circumstances Internet Advertisement beliefs, attitudes and demographics characteristics lead to online purchasing versus online information accumulation.
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