Online marketing Strategies and Competitive Advantages of Fast Food Industries

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION1

Background to the Study1

Advertising Media and Effectiveness2

Rationale for the Study2

Significance of the Research3

Aims and Objectives4

Research Questions4

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW5

Traditional and non traditional advertising5

E-marketing effectiveness6

The food industry context10

CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY13

Interview Format14

Data Collection Methods15

Data Analysis16

Data Security: Participant Anonymity and Document Retention17

Ethical Considerations18

REFERENCES19

CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

Background to the Study

With less and less people trusting and paying attention to traditional advertising, advertisers and marketers are turning to more innovative ways to reach their audiences, and online marketing is one of them. Food industry is now realizing the benefits of online marketing and is trying to integrate it into its tactics (Iacobucci, 2008, 5). There are issues that arise though for food industry managers to be associated with a marketing technique. This research aims to discover how food industry is overcoming those stereotypes and integrating this technique into their strategies. With ever changing technology, it is important to stay on top of the trends and continue to reach audiences in creative ways. The importance of this study lies in that statement.

Practitioners and academics must understand how online marketing is being implemented and transformed to better fit the intentions of food industry. Though the term has been around for several years, the marketing world's understanding of online marketing is still in its infancy. Some, even those within the advertising industry, see online as nothing more than a funny video, passed around by consumers online (Bain, 2007, 99). One Advertising Age article claimed that putting forth a successful online campaign is as simple as this; “Create something fun that appeals to the YouTube set- something that doesn't scream Buy this product!” (Bain, 2007, 99). It is this tendency to see online marketing in very narrow terms that has stunted its potential as a new way of approaching advertising. Online marketing as we have known it needs to be reconsidered. Of course, the rise of online marketing is directly linked to the pitfalls that traditional advertising has seen in recent years. No less than advertising legend Maurice Saatchi has declared “The Strange Death of Modern Advertising” in a 2006 speech, reprinted n the Financial Times of London. The first stage of the illness, they said, was sociology - the family no longer gathered to watch television. So they said, the 30-second commercial was finished. The next symptom was technology - because, they said, even if family members were all in the same house, they would not be watching the same screen. Laptops, mobile phones, iPods, games - all brought more media fragmentation, more channels more choice, more complications (Saatchi, 2006).

Advertising Media and Effectiveness

The choice of a particular advertising medium (or a combination of media) is of primary importance to the effectiveness of an advertising campaign. Lye defines effectiveness as being the dollar-to-dollar “return on marketing objective” (lye, 2002). For example, as Deans (2005) found in their study concerning the selection of advertising media, even the difference in the type of print media utilized by advertisers (between ...