A review of internet marketing

research over the past 20 years

and future research direction
Nadia Pomirleanu and John A. Schibrowsky
University of Nevada-Las Vegas, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
James Peltier
University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, Whitewater, Wisconsin, USA, and
Alexander Nill
University of Nevada-Las Vegas, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
Abstract
Purpose The 20-year review of marketing and selected business journals examines the internet
marketing literature to determine how the literature has evolved in terms of quantity, content, and
publication outlets. This article aims to provide a comprehensive review of the internet marketing
literature. It offers a big picture view of the current state of the internet marketing literature and gives
readers a sense of the quantity of internet marketing articles published, the scope of this research, and
how this research has evolved in terms of content.
Design/methodology/approach Consistent with Schibrowsky et al., a content analysis was
performed on 1,957 internet-related marketing articles identied by searching the business source
premier database. The paper reviews the internet marketing literature that has been published in the
time period 2005-2012 in marketing journals.
Findings The study revealed that 68.5 percent of the internet marketing research had been
published in the last eight years. The ndings suggest the number of internet marketing articles
nding their way into the top marketing journals has increased, and that there is a wider array of
journals publishing internet marketing articles. Areas of research that maintained high interest
included consumer behavior, internet strategy, and internet communications; new areas included
social media and networks. Three major research areas are likely to grow in the next few years: mobile
internet, social media and networks, as well as internet analytics.
Practical implications The paper reviews the internet marketing literature that has been
published in the time period 2005-2012 in marketing journals.
Originality/value The study provides both academics and practitioners with an updated reviewof
the internet marketing literature along with a sense of how internet marketing research is evolving.
This review provides marketing academics and practitioners a macro overview of the topics and
placement of articles that compose the internet marketing literature. It is an extension of
Schibrowsky et al.
Keywords Internet marketing, Mobile marketing, Online marketing, Social media marketing,
Social networks, Web 2.0
Paper type Literature review
Introduction
Over the past 15 years, the internet as a global communication and exchange medium
has witnessed meteoritic growth. Globally, the number of web sites increased from
23,000 in 1995 to more than 644 million in 2012 (Business Insider, 2012). In the USA
alone, total internet driven sales revenues have grown from a negligible amount in 1995
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/2040-7122.htm
Journal of Research in Interactive
Marketing
Vol. 7 No. 3, 2013
pp. 166-181
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
2040-7122
DOI 10.1108/JRIM-01-2013-0006
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to $256 billion in 2011 (Statista, 2013); and are expected to reach 327 billion by 2016
(Forrester Research, Inc., 2012). At the same time, online sales in Europe are projected to
reach 171 billion euros ($230 billion) by 2016, up from 96.7 billion euros ($130 billion) in
2011 (Forrester Research, Inc., 2012). The more recent growth in online sales is being
driven in part by improvements in mobile and tablet technology, and social media
(Internet Retailer, 2012). Long-term, internet marketing and e-commerce sales growth is
expected to outpace that of more traditional channels.
The launch and growth of the internet have spurred considerable interest in the
academic community. As evidence, the number of published internet marketing articles
increased froma mere three articles in 1995 to over 2000 in 2012. In one of the rst review
articles of its kind, the European Journal of Marketing published a 14-year reviewof the
internet marketing literature for the years 1987-2000 (Ngai, 2003). Over that timeframe a
total of 270 internet marketing articles were identied, or an average of 19 articles
per year. From 2001 to 2004, an additional 639 internet marketing articles were
published; an average of 160 per year and an 843 percent increase over 1987-2000
(Schibrowsky et al., 2007). Since 2004, scholars have taken a more focused approach
when reviewing the internet marketing literature. For example, reviews have covered
specic areas such as the adoption, application and impact of internet technologies
(Doherty and Ellis-Chadwick, 2010), small business research (El-Gohary, 2010), e-health
care (Mukherjee and McGinnis, 2007), and specic areas such as marketing
communications and advertising (Cho and Khang, 2006). While these reviews offer
insight into internet marketing trends, a lack of commonality in search terms and
disparate topical coverage have led to wide variation in categorization schemes. Given
these categorical concerns and the commercial importance of the internet, a consistent
overview of scholarly publications is once again warranted.
A systematic review of the internet marketing literature provides a big picture view
of the current state of the internet marketing literature. It provides readers with a sense
of the quantity of internet marketing articles published, the scope of this research, and
how internet marketing research has evolved in terms of content. This allows for the
implications for future research based on trends as well as gaps in the literature. It is
benecial for researchers thinking about working in this area, where other researchers
have worked and are working, the product life cycle of various topics and the volume
of research conducted in the various topic areas. The purpose of this research project is
threefold. First, we update and extend the original 1992-2004 comprehensive internet
marketing literature review performed by Schibrowsky et al. (2007) and reported in the
European Journal of Marketing. Second, our review provides readers with an historical
perspective of how internet marketing research has evolved in terms of quantity,
content, and publication outlets. Finally, with the intent of creating discussion and
interest in this critical research area, we provide future direction, particularly in terms of
research gaps and expected topical areas of interest.
Methodology
Since the goal was to update and extend the literature review performed by
Schibrowsky et al. (2007), we employed the basic approach used in the original article.
We utilized the same set of journals, electronic database, categorization method and
scheme (with a few alterations demanded by the evolution of the internet topics). Using
this method, this article, in conjunction with the original 2007 European Journal of
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Marketing piece (Schibrowsky et al., 2007), provides a consistent and complete 20 year
analysis of the internet marketing literature from its beginnings through 2012. To our
knowledge, this is the most complete current reviewof the internet marketing literature.
Array of journals
While internet marketing articles may be found in a wide variety of business, MIS,
management and social science journals, as was the case in the original review, only
articles appearing in marketing journals and a limited set of general business journals
were included in our analysis. We included all the journals with marketing, advertising,
consumer, customer, services, sales, etc. in the title. We also incorporated general
business journals such as Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review,
California Management Review, The McKinsey Quarterly, Business Horizons, Journal of
Business, and Journal of Business Research. We also added some journals that contain a
large number of internet marketing journal articles such as The Journal of Internet
Commerce, Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, International Journal of
Electronic Commerce Journal of Electronic Commerce Research, and the International
Journal of Internet and Enterprise Management Internet Research. This review
specically excludes management, MIS, and psychology journals. Moreover, and
consistent with the past review, we limited our review to scholarly publications written
in English. Admittedly, this excludes some important literature published in other
languages, but was necessary for comparison purposes.
Electronic database
While there are at least two comprehensive business literature databases, Business
source premier and ABI/INFORM, for consistency purposes we selected business source
premier, we was also used in the original study. The decision was based on consistency
rather than any specic coverage related criteria. To make sure that the database was
not materially different from the one used in 2004, we replicated the search for 2003 and
2004. The results were nearly identical with only a few more articles identied with the
new database. It appears that this was due to the addition of journals to the database
over time.
Search process. As with any electronic database search it is critical to identify
appropriate search terms. Consistent with commonly practiced database search efforts,
a key word approach was used to identify previously published internet marketing
articles. The database was queried for keywords in the title, abstract and the key word
list. Source words employed were those that signaled an internet marketing article. We
started with the key words employed by Schibrowsky et al. (2007) and added terms that
are more current. From the previous work we included terms such as internet, online,
Web, email, electronic commerce. We added newer terms such as social networks, social
media, viral, online communications, online brand communications, user content,
mobile, Facebook, Myspace, YouTube, etc. Citations from regular columns, book
reviews, editorial comments, etc. were removed from consideration.
Next, each abstract was evaluated to determine if it was in fact an internet marketing
article or just internet related. An internet-related article was dened as one that
mentioned the internet in the abstract but was not primarily an internet marketing
article (Schibrowsky et al., 2007). For example, many of the abstracts noted that the
results had implications for online or internet marketing (e.g. an article espousing the
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synergistic aspects of IMC activities with a mention of the potential impact for internet
marketing in the implications section), and were not included in the nal set of articles.
Our reasoning was that that it is common for many marketing studies to have
implications for internet marketing without actually focusing on the internet as the
primary research topic. This analysis resulted in the identication of 1,957 internet
marketing articles published in the eight year period between 2005 and 2012.
Classication of articles
The same two reviewers that performed the content analysis on the abstract citations in
the EJMstudy (Schibrowsky et al., 2007) again classied the primary topical area for each
of the identied internet marketing articles. In a number of instances, two or more topics
were addressed in the article. The judges then looked at the text of the article to more
clearly determine the primary topic of the journal article. As an illustration, one abstract
suggested that the article was about the impact of user generated product evaluations on
trust in the brand. In this instance, we classied the article as being one in which the
primary focus was on user generated product evaluations and not the more descriptive
topical area of trust. Ina fewcases, a third judge was utilizedwhenthe reviewers could not
agree on the primary topic of a specic article. This occurred in less than ve cases.
We initially started with the 44 classications employed by Schibrowsky et al. (2007)
andaddednewclassications as the literature dictated. Development of the classications
followed traditional organic qualitative data analysis methods. As articles were classied
the judges realizedthat certainarticles couldnot be categorizedinto the current categories.
When this happened, new categories were added that better classied the articles. An
example of this is mobile marketing. In addition, in some cases a large number of articles
were classied under one heading. Whenreviewingthe articles inthe categoryit was clear
that they were not covering the same issues. In this case the category became an area and
the category was then divided into a number of subcategories. An example of this was
social/networks. Originally, the topic area social/network was one category, online
communities, in consumer behavior. By the time the categorization of articles was
nished, this had become an area and split into ve categories based on the articles we
were categorizing. The categories were developed based on the literature.
Given the expanded literature base that has emerged since 2004, the following new
categories were added:
.
Social media marketing strategies marketing strategies focused on using
social media as a marketing tool.
.
Product rating/evaluations articles pertaining to the use of online product
ratings to make decisions.
.
User generated content articles that focus on consumers generating online
content.
.
Social marketing research issues issues concerning how collect data using
social media.
.
Search engines research pertaining to using and manipulating search engines.
.
Mobile marketing articles about marketing to consumers via mobile devices.
.
Using online data articles about using online metrics, etc.
.
Virtual worlds articles about the use of social games as marketing vehicles.
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These additions resulted in a total of 11 areas and 53 categories. The nal
classications are shown in Table III.
The results
We summarize the ndings in three ways:
(1) the number of internet marketing articles by year;
(2) where internet marketing research is published; and
(3) topical coverage.
Each of these summary publication metrics will be discussed separately.
Number of internet research articles published
The analysis identied a total of 1,957 internet marketing articles published from 2005
to 2012 (Table I).
This combined with the previous reviewfrom1993 to 2004 (Schibrowsky et al., 2007),
provide a total census of 2,859 internet marketing articles published in the marketing
journals over the past 20 years using the business source premier database. An
examination of data found in Figure 1 underscores the increasing importance of internet
marketing as topical area. In total, the number of marketing articles increased by
19.8 percent from2005 to 2012. During that same period in time, the percentage increase
in internet marketing articles was 75.9 percent. It is difcult to imagine any area that has
grown at this rate. Specically, the average number of internet articles published per
year increased from a 19 for 1993-2000, to 160 for 2001-2004, to 196 for 2005-2012. Of all
of the internet marketing articles, we considered, 68.5 percent (1,957/2,859) have been
published in the last eight years, and nearly a third (906/2,895) were published in the just
the last three years.
Analyzing the data in ve year periods shows that 12 internet marketing articles
were published from 1993-1997, 82 articles for 1998-2002, 942 articles for 2003-2007,
and 1,328 articles for 2008-2012. Lastly, the average number of articles published over
the last three years (2010-2012) was 302 (195, 205, 206), a 44 percent increase over the
210 average for the preceding ve years (174, 201, 213, 218, 245).
Topic area 1993-2004 2005-2012
Total articles
published
Consumer behavior 218 (24%) 520 (27%) 738 (26%)
Social media/networks 9 (1%) 342 (17%) 351 (12%)
Internet strategy 208 (23%) 303 (15%) 511 (18%)
Communications 163 (18%) 274 (14%) 437 (15%)
Business to business 60 (7%) 30 (2%) 90 (3%)
Product/brand 16 (2%) 61 (3%) 77 (3%)
Distribution 49 (5%) 107 (5%) 156 (5%)
Pricing 29 (3%) 90 (5%) 119 (4%)
Research issues 48 (5%) 63 (3%) 111 (4%)
Political legal 63 (7%) 96 (5%) 159 (6%)
Other 39 (4%) 71 (4%) 110 (4%)
Total 902 1,957 2,859
Table I.
Two decades of internet
marketing research:
1993-2012
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A closer look at the eight years covered by this review shows that much of the increase
in the quantity of literature is the result of the growth in social media and social
networking research. The data support the prediction by Schibrowsky et al. (2007) that
the internet marketing literature was in position for another growth phase in 2005.
While the growth of the internet marketing literature has plateaued over the past three
years, the large number of publications and changing technologies will likely contribute
to future interest in the internet marketing literature, suggesting a potential newgrowth
phase. In this quickly emerging, high volume literature, researchers must be cognizant
that their manuscripts and research streams might become obsolete even before they
are completed. This time-relevancy issue continues to have implications for both
researchers and editors interested in publishing the newest internet marketing ndings.
Where internet marketing research is published
One clear trend that we identied is that an increasing number of internet marketing
articles are nding their way into non-marketing journals. Specically, we found a large
number of internet marketing articles in MIS, management, entrepreneurship, business,
communication and even social science journals. Recall that the data collection
procedure we used eliminated these articles from consideration. As a result, we believe
that this study under estimates the real growth in internet marketing literature. In terms
of marketing journals, we were able to identify over 75 different outlets that published
internet marketing articles over the past eight years. This nding is encouraging for
researchers seeking outlets for their internet marketing manuscripts.
Compared to our last review, the number of internet marketingarticles appearinginthe
marketing journals has increased dramatically. As shown in Table II from 1993 through
Figure 1.
Articles published
by year: 1993-2012
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2004 a total of 51 internet marketing articles were published in the ve premier
marketing journals. In contrast, over the past eight years a total of 132 articles appeared in
these ve journals, an increase of 159 percent. Equally noteworthy, 72 of the 183
(39 percent) internet marketing articles in print in the top ve marketing journals were
published over the past three years. As Table II indicates the percentage of internet
marketing articles that are published in the top journals has remained relatively constant
at around 6 percent. However, the positive nature of these results needs to be tempered by
the increase in articles published in the top journals. In 2004, 13 of 234 (5.5 percent) articles
that were published inthe top ve journals were internet marketingarticles, while in2012,
25 of 311 (8.0 percent) of the articles published in the top journals were internet marketing
pieces. So while there were 12 more internet marketing articles published in the top
journals in 2012 compared to 2004, these top journals published a total of 77 more articles.
These results contrasted with the fact that the internet has become dramatically more
important for marketers and consumers alike, suggests that the number of internet
marketing articles appearing in the top journals is lower today than might be expected.
Among these top journals, the leading outlet for internet marketing research was
Marketing Science, with 52 total articles followed by the Journal of Marketing Research
(29 articles) and the Journal of Marketing (27 articles). At the opposite end of the spectrum
is the Journal of Consumer Research which has published a total of 13 internet marketing
articles over the past 20 years. Over the past two years, only two of the 160 articles JCR
published were categorized as internet marketing articles. It is difcult to imagine that a
marketing topic as important and inuential as the internet has generated so little interest
inthe premier consumer researchjournal inour eld. We suspect that this trend is likelyto
change signicantly over the next few years.
1993-
2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
2005-
2012
Grand
total
Journal of Marketing 4 2 2 4 3 5 4 1 6 27 31
Journal of Marketing
Research 7 1 3 2 0 1 1 13 8 29 36
Journal of Consumer
Research 3 2 2 0 1 1 2 1 1 10 13
Journal of the
Academy of
Marketing Science 21 1 5 2 0 0 2 3 1 14 35
Marketing Science 16 4 7 2 4 6 9 11 9 52 68
Total internet
marketing articles
published in the top
ve journals 51 10 19 10 8 13 18 29 25 132 183
Total internet
marketing articles
published 902 174 201 213 218 245 295 305 306 1,957 2,859
% of the internet
articles that appear in
the top marketing
journals 5.7 5.7 9.5 4.7 3.7 5.3 6.1 9.5 8.2 6.7 6.4
Table II.
Summary of internet
marketing publication
outlets
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Key topical areas within the internet marketing literature
The analysis of internet marketing article published between 2005 and 2012 reveals a
number of noteworthy trends (Tables I and III). First, consumer behavior (520 articles,
27 percent), internet strategy (303 articles, 15 percent), and communications (274 articles,
14 percent) continued to capture a large percent of scholarly interest. Combined, these
three topical areas represented 56 percent of the internet marketing articles for
2005-2012, down from65 percent for 1993-2004.While the percent of consumer behavior
articles showed an increase over 1993-2004 (24 percent vs 27 percent), the percent of
internet strategy (23 percent vs 15 percent) and communications (18 percent vs
14 percent) articles decreased over this timeframe. It is important to note, however, that
the number of articles in all three areas has grown since 1993-2004. It seems logical that
the number one area of internet research is consumer behavior related since most of the
marketing literature is also consumer behavior related and many scholars are trying to
apply consumer behavior theories to internet marketing. Second, the fastest growing
and the next largest area of interest for 2005-2012 is social media/network (342 articles,
17 percent); with the majority of articles being published over the past ve years
(87 percent). In the past two years alone, there have been 196 articles published on social
media/network marketing, a trend that we expect to continue. Third, business to
business marketing is the only topical area to see a decline in the number of articles
between 1993-2004 and 2005-2012 (60 articles/7 percent vs 30 articles/2 percent). This
decline comes at a time when businesses are striving to nd ways to use social media
as part of their communication platform with their suppliers and business clients. We
thus encourage more research in this area. Lastly, while the number of articles published
in the remaining topical areas has grown since 1993-2004, their placement in the
publication hierarchy has remained relatively constant. These areas should continue to
deserve focused research attention. Moreover, with greater emphasis being placed on
information privacy and its implications on online spending (Spake et al., 2011), research
exploring how internet marketers in general and social media marketers specically
should address key privacy issues is especially warranted.
Table III highlights publication trends relative to specic topical issues. In the
consumer behavior area, the largest area was cognitive issues (165 articles) followed by
internet usage (94 articles). In a social networking context, the leading areas were online
communities (136 articles) and user generated content (89 articles). In the internet
strategies area, the largest categories of articles were strategy (79 articles) and mobile
marketing (52 articles). In the communications area, communication effectiveness was
more than twice as large as the next largest category. In the distribution area, the fastest
growing category was internet retailing.
When onlythe past two years are considered, the most researched topics include online
communities (67 social media/networking articles), user generated content (60 social
media articles), social media strategies (48 social media articles), cognitive Issues
(38 consumer behavior articles), and communication effectiveness (36 communication
articles). Taken together, these ndings spotlight the fact that as with many expanding
elds of inquiry, andespeciallythose drivenbyinnovation, topical interest will continue to
evolve as new internet technologies emerge and new applications are identied.
Although small in numbers, the data show that some individual areas of research
are receiving more attention than others (Table IV). Using the vernacular of the WEB,
we nd that the trending topics include: online survey issues, using online data,
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1
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(
c
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t
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e
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)
Table III.
JRIM
7,3
174
1
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6
4
(
c
o
n
t
i
n
u
e
d
)
Table III.
Reviewof internet
marketing
research
175
1
9
9
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6
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2
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9
5
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8
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2
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1
2

3
2
Table III.
JRIM
7,3
176
search engine research, virtual worlds/online games, internet education, and a plethora
of social media/networks topics. Conversely, topics that have gone quiet include:
online auctions, privacy, customer relationship marketing, and consumer internet
search. It should be noted that while these are the current trending and going quiet
topics, the list tends to change rapidly in this quickly evolving research eld. Note that
our analysis for trending and going quiet is reective of the past two years
(2011-2012) compared to the preceding six years (2005-2009). This is the spirit of whats
hot right now.
Study limitations
While the study provides insight into the past and hopefully future of internet
marketing research, there are some limitations that need to be mentioned. First, while
the business source premier database is robust, it does not contain all marketing
journals. As such, the study is limited to those marketing journals included in the
database. Second, while we attempted to be exhaustive in including search terms, it is
likely that articles were not included due not being recognized using the search terms
we employed. Third, we did not include non-marketing journals in the database. This
could have led to some biases in the results. Finally, it is possible that we made
categorization errors when classifying nearly 2,000 articles.
Conclusion
While the data itself is interesting, it is important to step back and view these results in
terms of the future of the internet and internet marketing research. First, this review
clearly demonstrates that the marketing research eld is reactive to what is going on in
the marketplace. As the use of internet has evolved, internet marketing research has
followed. The most obvious example of this is the growth in the use of the internet as a
social network. As more people have joined one or more social platforms and used the
internet to communicate with friends, family, and other consumers, marketing scholars
have responded by quickly making this one of the most researched areas in all of
marketing. This is a positive phenomenon, indicating that marketers are working to
stay current in this quickly evolving eld.
Second, the acceptance of internet marketing as a eld of marketing is evidenced by
the ever widening array of journals that are publishing internet marketing articles, the
quality of these journals, and the expanding variety of marketing topics published.
Together these trends create vast opportunities for creative researchers to build their
own unique research streams. Moreover, the growth of internet focused journals like
Trending Going quiet
Social media marketing strategies Online auctions
Online communities Privacy
Product rating/evaluations Customer relationship marketing
Internet education Internet international marketing
Virtual worlds/online games Protability
Online survey issues Consumer internet search
Using online data
Search engines
Table IV.
Trending internet
marketing research topics
Reviewof internet
marketing
research
177
the Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing, Journal of Interactive Marketing,
Journal of Internet Commerce, International Journal of Internet Marketing and
Advertising, Internet Research, among others, further highlights the increasing
prominent place internet marketing has in scholarly endeavors. Although our review
focused only on marketing journals, these research opportunities are readily available in
non-marketing journals as well.
Interms of gaininga thoroughunderstandingof anyspecic areas of internet marketing
we need to reviewthe literature in these internet specic journals. Apartial list of journals
that contain signicant numbers of internet marketing articles are shown below:
.
Electronic Commerce Research and Applications.
.
International Journal of Electronic Commerce.
.
International Journal of Internet and Enterprise Management.
.
Internet Research.
.
Journal of Direct, Data and Digital Marketing Practice.
.
Journal of Electronic Commerce Research.
.
Journal of Interactive Advertising.
.
The International Journal of Internet Marketing and Advertising.
.
The International Journal of Online Marketing.
.
The Journal of Interactive Marketing.
.
The Journal of Internet Commerce.
.
The Journal of Internet Marketing.
.
The Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing.
It should be noted that not all of these internet and interactive journals are contained
in all of electronic databases. In some cases it will be necessary to go directly to their
web sites to determine what has been published. This is critical since these journals are
publishing much of the cutting edge research in internet marketing. For example, of the
43 articles published in the Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing since 2010,
23 are in trending areas, suggesting that this is a journal that is publishing in the
fastest growing internet marketing topic areas.
Third, while most of the articles we reviewed had some mention of marketing
implications, one clear trend in the internet marketing literature is an increase in articles
that are centrally focused on strategic aspects of the internet, such as articles
investigating how to use social media to increase sales and brand equity. There were
105 such articles in 2005-2007 and 192 such articles in 2010-2012; an 83 percent increase.
internet marketing research continues to mature, movingawayfromdescriptive types of
studies and towards research related to improving the effectiveness and efciency of
marketing efforts and understanding howand why consumers use the internet. Editors
and reviewers are pushing internet researchers to take a more pragmatic approach to
their research. This applied focus closely ties it to the practice of marketing, bringing
practitioners and academics closer together. This is clearly demonstrated at the Direct
Marketing Associations Annual Exhibition and Conference (the largest annual
convocation of internet marketers) and their Annual Direct Marketing Educators
JRIM
7,3
178
Research Summit, where internet practitioners and academics in the eld get a chance
to share research ndings, data and interests.
While the primary purpose of this literature reviewwas to identify where the internet
marketing literature has been, it is equally important to explore the future of this
research area. Recall that the original purpose of the World Wide Web was to build a
network for researchers at various universities and think tanks to share information and
create a research community. The evolution of the internet back to a social network
where individuals can share information and communicate with friends, family, and
other consumers is still evolving. In fact, the pace of change and the future evolution is
still in question. Marketers and consumers are still experimenting with their usage of the
internet. As many marketers are still trying to gure out howto incorporate the internet
into their business model and marketing plans, more research is needed to help
marketers sort this out. From the consumer standpoint, we nd that smart phones are
creating a new, more mobile internet. This allows consumers to stay connected nearly
24/7, and means the internet is likely to pervade the average persons life even more in
the future. The importance of the internet and internet marketing research along with
the many questions facing its future continues to grow.
After reviewing the internet marketing literature for the past eight years and the
related popular press, there appears to be four major research areas that are likely to
grow in importance. First, there continues to be a concern by consumers pertaining to
trust and privacy on the internet (Peltier et al., 2009). This includes trust in the safety and
reliability of internet transactions as the efforts of scam artists becoming increasingly
sophisticated. There is also an issue of trust and privacy concerning users of social
media platforms such as Facebook. The most recent case concerning instagrams picture
sharing controversy demonstrates that privacy and trust as it applies to social networks
and platforms is an area that needs more work. This makes the recent reduction in
internet privacy studies somewhat puzzling. We still see this area as underdeveloped.
More research dealing with nature of trust and its impact on internet usage is needed.
The second area of future research is the issue of howconsumers will use the internet
for purchasing-related activities in the years to come. We believe the key to this research
area is mobile internet access. Just look around you. Everyone is xated on their smart
phones and tablets. With the ability of on the go consumers to instantly access product
reviews, compare prices, andorder products we believe there is a needfor research inthis
area. This need extends to all forms of mobile communication platforms as they arise
and academicians have already noticed the need for research in this area (Dix, 2012).
The third area of internet research that appears to be underdeveloped is in the area of
business to business internet research. While the majority of the internet commerce is
still business to business, there is very little being written inthis area. Specic topics that
might be addressed include the internet as part of the supply chain, business to business
relationship building, use of the social media in business to business marketing,
improving service via the WEB, and identifying effective ways to integrate the internet
into business to business communications.
Next, we were surprisedbythe general lackof internet analytics-related studies. As the
amount and sophistication of internet-related analytics has increased it seems that there
would a major jump in articles studying both the usefulness of the data, and the impact
that it has on the adaptive marketing strategies available for internet-based marketers.
Given the importance of customer data, sophisticated research in this area is warranted.
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Fifth, without question the need for social media and network marketing research
will continue to grow. While this topic area provides many research opportunities, it
does require that researchers keep up with the work being done. In just the last two years
more than 190 articles just in marketing journals have been published in this area. This
is the fastest evolving area of all of marketing. We need to go beyond user demographics,
perceptions and attitudes, and usage research to better understand the role that social
media plays in the integrated marketing communications mix, developing effective
communication strategies and tactics, and creating and nurturing customer engagement
(Schultz and Peltier, 2013).
Finally, we continue to believe the most interesting internet marketing questions are
strategy related (Schibrowsky et al., 2007). The past 20 years of the evolution of the
internet begs the question, Where is the internet headed? Will it continue to evolve as
social medium or will it evolve into something completely different? If history is any
indication, one thing is for sure; it will not be the same as it is today. It is likely that the
instant access via mobile technologies like smart phones, tablets, and other devices will
greatly impact the future of the internet and the future of the internet marketing
research. Our number one recommendation is to observe what is happening in terms of
internet usage and then research that area.
Summary
In conclusion, we think the real value of this literature reviewis in the eye of the beholder.
Readers will get the most value from this study if they spend some time reviewing the
tables and drawing their own conclusions. The continued growth in the internet
marketing literature seems secure. Even after 20 years the internet is still in its infancy in
terms of how it will be integrated to ones daily life. As this evolution continues, so too
will the need for more creative internet marketing research. We believe the best research
is yet to come and we encourage the brightest and best researchers to explore its current
usage and evolving future.
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