How do content providers perceive advantages and disadvantages of affiliate marketing in comparison with other forms of online advertising?

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER # 1: INTRODUCTION1

Background of the Study1

Organisation background3

Rationale for the chosen topic5

Statement of the problem7

Aims and objectives of the study11

Research Questions/Hypothesis11

Significant of the study11

Limitation of the study12

Structure of the dissertation13

CHAPTER # 3: METHODOLOGY14

Research methodology14

Aims & objectives of the study14

Research design15

Explorative research15

Explanatory research16

Descriptive research16

Research approaches16

Experimental research17

Action research17

Case study research17

Survey research18

Inductive & deductive approaches18

Research philosophy19

Positivism19

Interpretive20

Realism20

Research strategies21

Methods of data collection21

Primary research21

Secondary research22

Population22

Sampling frame22

Sample size23

Data analysis techniques23

Reliability & validity research instrument23

Ethical dimension24

Limitations of the study25

REFERENCES26

CHAPTER # 1: INTRODUCTION

Background of the Study

Online advertising is a new phenomenon that has gained attention from both social science researchers and marketers. Martin Giles in his article asserted that online marketing and advertising are changing the way that promoting any product or services (Brackett and Carr 2001 32). Companies such as Chrysler, Saturn and Apple have dedicated their resources to encourage online communities that are central to their brands. These actions are based on their beliefs that such online brand communities will create positive influences towards their products by getting more consumers to join and participate in their forums. These phenomena provide marketing researchers with an interesting field in which to analyze market-oriented consumers, their interactions and their influences on decision-making relating to the purchase and consumption of products.

Building online communication can be defined as one of the new marketing approaches supported by new technologies. Through online discussion boards, consumers can get help from company support staff and technicians, and can share and exchange their opinions with other consumers. Other consumers can also participate just through observing and following the conversation that is taking place online. As Devine and Egger (2009) concluded, social context is playing an important role in influencing consumer behaviour nowadays. The study analyzed consumer communication behaviours and marketing strategies applied through online communities' websites.

Devine and Egger (2009) estimates the average click fraud rate to be roughly 18.6% for the second quarter of 2008. According to Chaffey (2009), SPs commonly employ online filters that rely on click patterns to identify invalid/fraudulent clicks and charge the advertisers only for valid clicks. Many advertisers choose to examine the clicks classified as valid by the SP to verify that they are indeed valid and flag contestable clicks. These contestable clicks are resolved by the SP with the help of advanced offline tools or human experts. The advertiser pays for clicks that are identified as valid by both the advertiser and the SP. Two features of the technologies employed to identify fraudulent clicks are noteworthy. First, the SPs and advertisers do not disclose the methodologies used to identify invalid clicks for fear of the information falling into the wrong hands; as such, the qualities of the technologies in identifying invalid clicks are not directly observable and contractible. It follows that the SP and the advertiser can choose a technology of low rather than high precision to identify invalid clicks. Second, the quality/precision of the automated online filter technologies does ...