ABSTRACT
Over a decade later we have some idea of that impact, but so dynamic are the technologies, the practitioners and the environment in which it is used that we are still unsure of what the future will bring to Internet marketing in both consumer (B2C) and industrial (B2B) trading as well as not – for – profi t and public sector environments. Furthermore, we are equally unsure as to how much more the Internet will change society – for change it has. For marketers this is signifi cant as it is society that makes up our customers. Back in the mid 1990s, predictions of how the Internet would change the way we do business were manifold – and they were largely ignored by those businesses that would be affected by that change. Opinions, however, have softened over the years and the Internet is now accepted by business leaders. Or is it? Speaking in an article in the Sunday Times , Google’s president for Europe, Middle East and Africa, Nikesh Arora, commented that:
‘ The change in consumer behaviour is so fundamental that in the future one of the dividing lines between fi rms that succeed and those that don’t will be the ones that have embraced the Internet. ’
