How the Internet has Affected Marketing

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How the Internet has Affected Marketing
	The internet has highly affected the business process worldwide, and the external communication of organizations, normally referred to as marketing.  The marketing process of an organization is the passing information about products and organization objectives to the customers, prospects and other organizations. The marketing activities of a company are normally directed towards the identification of customer’s needs, then designing, promoting and selling products and services that are meant to satisfy the identified needs (Armstrong and Kotler 24). For this process to happen smoothly any organization involved in the process of producing and selling products should have a good marketing information system, which helps in attainment of a viable market information. The process of marketing has been affected by the internet in a substantial way (Seighalani, et al. 471). This paper analyses how the internet has affected the marketing process of companies.
	Use of Internet and advancement in technology has highly affected the marketing of product for companies. This is due to companies’ realization that there are millions of individuals online daily, who qualifies to be an untapped source of revenue. The marketing process of a company consist of different elements referred to as the marketing mix, which blends four strategic elements in order to meet consumer needs and tastes of the target market. Successful combination and implementation of these strategies leads to successful marketing efforts. The four variables are product itself, price, promotion, and the place (Barker 138). An organization should develop marketing strategies, which includes the four variables in order to place its operations in accordance with the target market needs. The internet has had a major impact on the way organisations apply the elements of the marketing mix, to produce the estimated results.
Product 
	The internet has enable companies to pass information concerning their products to customers in different geographical locations. Products come with supporting components like packaging, warrant and emotional components such as convenience, brand loyalty, security, self-esteem and status. The product should be attractive to consumers. An organization should innovate and constantly improve the existing products to gain a competitive advantage over other competitors (Barker 139). With the internet, information and graphical representation of the products are easily availed to the customer for reference.
	The product element are the tangible and intangible features, or attributes that an organization offers to the consumer through the products. Using the internet, companies have been able to market their products through websites and the social media. The companies have been able to display the products in an attractive manner, drawing more customers to order. Some highly innovative companies have gone further and made it possible for customers to customize their products and make a customized order through the internet. Companies making cars such as the BMW Company have been able to do this allow customers to customize the interior of the car before making the order.
Price
	The internet has enabled the companies to communicate their prices to the prospective customers. Through company websites and advertisements, customers are able to compare prices between products offered by different companies in order to settle for a company.  The price of a product is the total value, which sellers and buyers, assigns to a product. Consumers should get a reflective value of the price on the goods or services that they receive.
	The pricing methods depend on the competitors, market environment and production costs (Barker 139). Pricing has been made easier with the internet as the companies are now able to easily know the pricing of the competitor products. This has assisted companies in decision making when determining on the appropriate pricing strategy to use. The internet assists in comparing competitor’s prices to determine the positioning of the company products and the marked price for products.
Promotion
	With the internet, promotion of a company product has become easy, and companies are able to reach high number of targets. Promotion are the organizational methods of communication, in order to offer the customer information about the existence of a product. Promotion communicates the main messages and persuades the target customers to buy the product(s) (Barker 140).

	With the advancement in technology and communication systems, people are able to talk and share information worldwide in real time. Organizations have realized the need to develop means of using the internet to tap in to the market of the internet users. This has led to the creation of websites through which organizations launch products, make their advertisements and accept or