Computers and Marketing

Overview Computers have historically played an important role in marketing.  Computers provide useful tools for analyzing market trends, statistics, and sales figures.  The Internet has allowed marketing to become more targeted to the audience, but also provided an onslaught of spam, banner ads, autodialers, spyware and other unwanted ads.

General Information Marketing statistics and surveys may have been the first use of computers in marketing. Today, marketing statistics, surveys, and sales figures are extremely useful when adapted to target marketing.  One company, Plunkett Research Ltd. provides "The market research, industry analysis and business prospects you need, in the specific industries you want". The Computer Almanac Website provided by the Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science gives you access to many different categories of computer-related statistics, facts, and computer-use trends, most of which could be useful for marketing to specific groups of computer users. The EmailLabs Website provides many examples of email-based marketing research and statistics. Additional Internet statistics resources can be found at www.allaboutyourownwebsite.com/statsdemos.shtml.   The NetReflector Website belongs to a company that provides surveys and feedback tools for marketing purposes.

Online marketing strategies and techniques affect anyone who uses the Internet.  Learn more about Internet marketing strategies at this About.com page. It includes articles and other resources that contain specific marketing techniques information that every online shopper and e-commerce site owner should read.  This International Internet Marketing Association resources page contains links many different Internet marketing organizations that range from  privacy groups to consumer watch groups. 

More specific uses of computers in marketing can be found all over the Internet in the form of banner ads, spam, spyware, and e-commerce. Many resources can be found online about Internet marketing tactics that use these tools such as the Clickz web site. Pop-up (or pop-under) ads are another popular way of marketing online.  Check out the PayPopup.com site to see what types of technologies are being used for this popular and sometimes annoying marketing tool. Read more about spam and how it is a growing problem at this Federal Trade Commission web site. 

Autodialers, frequently used by telemarketing companies, are also another use for computers in marketing.  When used in conjunction with calling list databases, autodialers can be extremely efficient, effective, and some may say annoying way of marketing products to many people. The Global Sources Website provides information about autodialer equipment. New computer technologies are allowing for the development of more and more sophisticated autodialers such as smart autodialers, predictive autodialers, and autodialer software.  Read more about it at the DatabaseSystemscorp web site.