Global focus:

ON-LINE IN EUROPE

Whereas 37 percent of U.S. households owned a personal computer in 1994, the percentage in Europe varied from 15 percent in France to 30 percent in Denmark. The real difference between American and European computer usage, however, is the fact that nearly one-half of American computers are equipped with modems-thereby enabling access to commercial on-line services-compared to only about 20 percent of European home computers. Modem ownership is low in Europe due to the expense and difficulty of connecting computers to European phone systems.

It is estimated that as of 1995 there were only around 200,000 on-line subscribers in Europe compared to over 6 million in the United States. However, the number of European on-line users is predicted to explode to 16 million by 2000. This impressive potential has led to a partnership between America Online and the European company Bertelsmann to develop and launch interactive services jointly in Europe. The joint AOL/Bertelsmann service began in 1995 with services offered in the United Kingdom, Germany, and France. The "on-lining" of Europe provides opportunities for American brand mar­keters to reach European consumers via the Web – and, of course, for European marketers to reach American consumers. The creation of home pages is made more complicated, however, by the need to use multiple languages and to appeal to different cultural interests and values. Thus the global communications potential of the Web has both advantages and drawbacks³.

The standard Yellow Pages supplement to telephone directories provides information about products, stores, and services. This information is ordered alphabetically by the type of business, and the consumer who is interested in locating a particular product or service scans the Yellow Pages in search of prospective suppliers of the product or service. Upon encountering prospective suppliers, the Yellow Pages user acquires information about the supplier's services, location, and telephone number. In similar fashion, the user, or surfer, of the Net goes to Web sites in search of specific information or merely in the pursuit of news or entertainment value. Whereas the real Yellow Pages are limited to only the printed information, electronic yellow pages allow the user, using links, to dig deeper and deeper for additional information or entertainment. Like the Yellow Pages, Web sites are effective only to the extent that they are able to both attract and hold the surfer's attention.

The Internet can also be described as a "cyberspace 800 number". Of course, 800 numbers enable telephone callers to both acquire additional information about products and services and to place orders. The great promise of the Internet is that it will serve as an electronic shopping mall whereby shoppers locate suppliers, place orders, have charges placed against their credit cards, and receive shipments of products by expedited mail service. Consumer confidence and the potential for misuse of credit-card numbers are the only impediments to the Internet serving as a major forum for transacting commercial exchanges.

Both metaphors convey the Internet and its World Wide Web shell as media for the consumer both to interact with the marketer and to transact commercial exchanges. Because the present profile of Internet and WWW users is that of a young, economically upscale, predominantly male, and computer-knowledgeable person, advertising via the Net must satisfy the nonpromotional standards that have been informally established. In other words, surfers will choose to devote their attention to those Web sites that offer informational or entertainment value. They will look to buy, but they do not want to be aggressively sold. Marketers face a challenge in making their messages accept and enjoyable while simultaneously conveying information about brand virtues without being perceived as hucksters.

Measuring Internet Effectiveness. A major concern for commercial users of the Internet is one of measuring the effectiveness of their advertising. In the early years, no research services measured Internet usage in a fashion similar to the service provided by the A.C. Nielsen Company in its measurement of television viewership. But research companies eventually evolved to measure the frequency with which Web sites are visited, the length of the visitations, and the path by which surfers arrive at particular sites. This information is invaluable to marketers in gauging the effectiveness of their Internet advertis­ing and in determining how to improve their efforts.

Interactive advertising on the Internet will not supplant the traditional advertising media, but advertisers and their agencies now have a revolutionary new medium for reaching present users of their brands and prospective customers. Just as advertising was altered forever with the introduction of television in the late 1940s, another seismic shift has occurred with the opportunity to advertise on the Net.