Market structures have always been dynamic, changing in emphasis as one segment or another enlarged or decreased. In the twentieth century an especially rapid change in the basic age distribution has taken place. Within the past few years a change in age distribution has resulted from the rapid growth of that segment of the population which is 65 years of age and older. During the past sixty ye...

The Internet provides marketers with an expanded set of communications vehicles for reaching customers. Two of the most important and fast-growing elements of this new communications mix are online advertising and electronic word-of-mouth. While these vehicles provide new opportunities, they are also challenging marketers to understand how consumers respond and to develop new metrics for assess...

The distance shopping system has a long history of development from the traditional mail-order catalogue to the interactive online shopping platform of today. However, developing a new form of distance shopping does not mean digitizing product catalogues or uploading product information online, retailers and marketers should pay attention to the effective use of virtual technologies, in particu...

Social network games (SNGs) are part of the highly evolving marketing and e-commerce channel of social network sites (SNSs). Marketers in SNGs offer economic incentives of game currency or virtual goods in exchange for consumer interactions with ads, often encouraging consumers to forward marketer-generated messages broadly to social networks. This study investigates factors that lead consumers...

Electronic Commerce environments increasingly witness a conflict on the subject of e-privacy: While marketers want to maximize their customer knowledge and grasp the identity of their online users, consumers often want to stay anonymous and not reveal private information. The conflict suggests that ‘private consumer information’ should be respected as a new search cost for consumers in EC envir...

Purpose – In MIP, Vol. 25 No. 1, Mike Saren argued that academic marketers need to move beyond our “traditional managerial and business confines”. This paper aims to suggest that the discipline is already on the move in that direction, and that social marketing is in the vanguard. Design/methodology/approach – Commissioned as a viewpoint, with permission to “think aloud”. Findings – The paper s...