Book Review: On Great Service: A Framework for Action

web simply because it is becoming one of the most convenient places to get information. For example, I recently purchased a laptop personal computer (PC) and was able to get answers to questions about product features by visiting Dell's website (www.dell.com) that were unavailable either in Dell's advertisements or from the salespeople at Dell's local microcenter. Prepurchase sales information appears to be a major part of a website's value to customers if the product and market characteristics are appropriate. For example, it would be difficult for the customer to view a many-featured product in all its possible attribute combinations in a retail store. However, it is possible to provide some idea of even the wildest product attribute combinations in cyberspace. For example, a person might be considering a car with a particular paint job plus other options, but he or she may not be sure what it would look like. Color swatches in a traditional brochure and some imagination are all that have been available until recently. Now it is possible for automakers to construct sites where all color combinations, wheel types, door configurations, and so on, can be selected, and customized cyber-representations are generated immediately. Likewise, a better sense of price for multicomponent products or ones that change price frequently can easily be provided on-line. The approach used by Cyrix (www.cyrix.com) to facilitate shopping for a PC is especially nice if a person knows the features he or she wants. Competitors' sites may enable a person to "build" a custom PC and then contact a sales representative to discuss the price; at the Cyrix site the preferred options can be selected, and a price is immediately calculated. If little external search is engaged in by the target audience, the promotion strategy still depends on the typical promotion components (advertising, personal selling) seeking out the audience, rather than expecting the audience to seek them out. But, even in these cases a web site might make sense for other reasons. For example, a homepage might be used to provide postsale technical support and customer service valuable in reducing postpurchase dissonance. Also, there are audiences beyond ultimate consumers, who routinely share data with the company, such as channel members and salespeople who could find the easy access (24 hours a day, seven days a week) to be preferable to other means of getting information and leaving messages. The web has tremendous value as a public relations (PR) tool too. People can post their own "news" whenever they want to. Journalists are increasingly gathering information from stories posted at companies' websites. This was considered to be such an important use of the web that Settles surveyed journalists about their suggestions for using cyberspace in PR. (Description of that survey's results as well as a follow-up are available at www.successful.com/ report.html.) A rule of cyberspace marketing, however, is that good news travels fast; bad news travels faster. Given that, PR specialists must monitor e-mail, newsgroups, and web versions of trade magazines aggressively in search of bad news. They must be able to "nip it in the bud," as Barney Fife (www.mayberry.org) used to say, rather than being the last to know when the news finally hits the newsstand. Settles talks a lot about B BSs, file transfer sites, gopher sites, list servers, and news groups (i.e., those bits of the Internet that handle text-based communications). These were the building blocks of cybermarketing in the early years. However, their value is in doubt as marketers head into the late 1990s and beyond. Anything that is text-based or has limited multimedia capabilities is destined to become the back alley of the Internet, useful in some cases but unlikely to be part of main street in a cybermarketing strategy. Consumers raised on multimedia communication are unlikely to spend much time visiting sites that are visually boring or difficult to use when more exciting and user-friendly sites exist. Much is also said in the book about the important roles played by on-line services (America On-line, CompuServe, Prodigy) in the pre-web days. As the web has grown, however, their relevance is being jeopardized. Although they offer a wide variety of information, the same or similar information can be had for less cost through an ISP (Internet Service Provider). The ISP simply offers an on-ramp to the information superhighway, whereas the on-line services provide a smorgasbord of services (electronic shopping malls, databases, libraries), with web-access being just one service. Access to the Internet is already dominated by the many ISPs (> 1000) as opposed to the few large on-line services (< 4). That number of ISPs is expected to drop in the next few years as the communication giants (AT&T, MCI, Sprint) offer low-cost, highspeed Internet connections bundled with telephone (local and distant) and television services. With such a scenario it appears that on-line services will be tightly squeezed on one side by the small discount ISPs, which simply offer web-access, and the giants on the other side, which can bundle several important communications products. For those interested in the book, buy it soon before the information becomes less relevant. Fortunately, Settles realized that any book on this topic would need to be updated frequently to maintain its relevance, so he has set up a complementary website (www.successful.com/cmindex.html). At this site, Settles regularly updates information in the book, provides hot links to sites that illustrate and exemplify particular activities, and offers a forum for interested readers to share their ideas about cybermarketing. Indeed, consistent with the theme of the book, part of it (the past) is on paper, while another part (the present and future) is available in cyberspace. In the final analysis any who are well versed in marketing and familiar with the web will not find much in Settles' book they do not already know. On the other hand, "traditional" marketers (academics and practitioners) who know little about cyberspace will find a good guide here. In addition, experienced web surfers who know little about business can learn a great deal in Cybermarketing on how to use their technical knowledge to make money. Even for those like myself, who feel they have a good grasp of both worlds, the discussion stimulates thinking about what is known about marketing and on how it will be forever changed by the web.