Assessing the Impact of Digital Marketing in Generating a High Customer Base of Online Retailers: A Case Study of eBay

LITERATURE REVIEW

As the marketing industry evolved, organizations embraced diverse strategies and techniques to enhance their existing customer base and attract new customers (Baltes, 2015). Similarly, the retail sector recognized the potential for growth and expansion within the business landscape. Furthermore, the retail industry, which involves selling goods to consumers through various channels to maximize profit, has undergone a significant transformation with a substantial online presence, necessitating extensive digital marketing (Yasmin et al., 2015). Multinational organizations and start-ups have adopted digital marketing strategies to build substantial customer bases, leveraging its additional features for effective customer acquisition and product promotion across diverse channels (Kingsnorth, 2019).

Traditional marketing methods often incur additional costs, budget constraints, and time for product promotion (Todor, 2016). In contrast, digital marketing offers organizations a streamlined approach to showcase their products and attract consumers. The study also incorporates an assessment of the digital marketing strategies employed by eBay to understand their impact on online retailers.

• Theoretical Framework

The theory of the five D’s of DM is the overall effective digital marketing theory linked to the customers and their interaction with the brands on digital platforms. Digital devices are the stages where the customers interact with their brand of choice, such as smartphones, tablets, consoles, laptops, etc. A digital platform is where customers and consumers spend most of their time, such as Facebook, Google, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc. Digital media is the communication channel where brands engage with customers through content and DM. Digital data is acquired by organizations and companies to track and monitor their potential customer base. Digital technology is the asset that organizations use to create user experiences for customers.

• Conceptualizing Digital Marketing

In this digital age, the Internet has created considerable opportunities for organizations and businesses to promote their products online (Chaffey and Smith, 2017). Similarly, using social media also guarantees employers to earn customers for their businesses and expand the horizons of their products to attract different customers (Mogoş, 2015). Businesses have adopted the DM strategy that suits their business and allows the organizations to attain a wide range of public attention. Therefore, according to Järvinen and Karjaluoto (2015), how information is transmitted to customers through digital media enables companies to create a potential online presence.

Digital marketing is a measurable, interactive, targeted marketing technique (Yasmin et al., 2015). This marketing technique employs digital technologies to reach customers conveniently, turn them into potential leads and preserve them for long-term return on investments. However, DM is different from traditional marketing methods in various ways. Therefore, according to Durmaz and Efendioglu (2016), traditional marketing methods have challenges and difficulties in measuring generated results; in some cases, the results are not measured. Moreover, traditional marketing involves businesses promoting and advertising their products on commercials, print media, and radio. These methods are extensive and require major budgeting. In addition, traditional marketing methods consist of limited access to the customers and lack the potential to influence the buying behaviour of the consumers (Ozuem, 2016).

Website Attributes on Consumer Buying Pattern

Furthermore, digital marketing has effective inbound marketing methods such as SEO, blogs, podcasts, short ads, social media marketing, articles, content marketing, etc. These methods allow organizations to attain customers through cheap marketing budgets and less time. In addition, inbound marketing is a DM branch that turns potential visitors into leads and generates profit (Patrutiu-Baltes, 2016). Similarly, with the advancement of technology, digital marketing strategies are supposed to improve with time (De Pelsmacker, Van Tilburg and Holthof, 2018). Therefore, according to Edelman and Heller (2015), DM is similar to traditional marketing methods, but the crucial difference is the use of digital media and channels.

• Benefits of Digital Marketing

The benefits of DM outweigh the benefits of traditional marketing methods because businesses and organizations of all sizes effectively deploy social media marketing (Stephen, 2016). Furthermore, digital marketing provides businesses unrestricted access to the mass and global market of customers at an affordable price. Moreover, the methods of DM also allow companies to customize and personalize their marketing strategies according to the targeted customer base (Dodson, 2016). Compared to traditional marketing, digital marketing is considered a cost-efficient marketing method.

Furthermore, marketing and advertising costs are the most expensive part of business planning (Cacciolatti and Lee, 2016). Similarly, multinational corporations might have the budget and time to afford such costs, but start-ups and small to medium enterprises need a more effective marketing method (Heinze et al., 2016). Therefore, marketing through digital mediums offers organizations a relatively cheaper method than traditional marketing methods and provides a diverse impact. The digital presence of brands online gives customers a certain level of interaction with the brand. The interactivity of online users allows customers a certain level of freedom regarding initiating contact and engagement with the brand (Cacciolatti and Lee, 2016). At the same time, the engagement and interaction of customers with the brand or an organization determine the sustainability factors of that company. Similarly, DM allows companies to create a proper brand image online among their target audience and customers. In addition, digital marketing assists organizations in building their brand reputation online (Piñeiro-Otero and Martínez-Rolán, 2016).

One of DM's most integral benefits and advantages is that it encompasses a global reach and allows businesses to explore new markets and make their trade global with a limited amount of investment. Moreover, according to Dodson (2016), due to digitization, the world is now a global village; thus, digital marketing allows ad campaigns to become perceptible and visible in any part of the globe, thus providing start-ups the opportunity to create an international image and gain exposure.

• Impact of DM in Generating a High Customer Base

The impact of digital marketing can be analyzed by judging its potential to reach customers and consumers in any part of the world (Sauraat al., 2017). DM impacts people's daily activities and can influence their buying behaviour. Similarly, digital marketing affects people's purchases, interactions, work and habits. Moreover, research studies have found it more supportive towards the hypothesis that Digital marketing creates a loyal customer base than traditional marketing (Piñeiro-Otero and Martínez-Rolán, 2016). Therefore, it is also considered important for digital marketing agencies to appropriately implement marketing strategies in the digital universe to create a brand image and generate a larger customer base.

The impact of DM is that it makes the customers feel connected with the brand of their choice and enables the companies to turn potential customers into profitable leads. Similarly, the engaging content produced by the brand or an organization tempts potential customers to try the organisation's or business's product or service. Therefore, according to Vien (2015), every company must implement strategies through which Digital marketing creates a loyal and strong customer base. Similarly, the impact of DM can be analyzed by assessing customer brand awareness. Furthermore, the brands now enjoy a high following on social media (Edelman and Heller, 2015).

Similarly, digital marketing has been an effective tool in creating the brand image of companies among their potential customer base. Therefore, the impact of DM on generating a higher customer base has been influential and extremely effective (Vien, 2015). Furthermore, compared to traditional marketing methods, digital marketing has allowed businesses and organizations to engage with their clients, customers or consumers globally.

• Factors Pertinent to DM Having a Direct Impact on the Customers of eBay

With eBay being an online store, its business is based on the trading of goods and services at a global scale (Blake et al., 2016). Online businesses require online marketing; thus, the approach of eBay is also based on different marketing strategies, such as customer-centric and channel-centric (Neto et al., 2016). Furthermore, the channel-centric strategy strongly focuses on the customer, thus providing customers with relevant and personalized marketing methods. Similarly, eBay has successfully created ad experiences for their customers by communicating in a personalized manner (Comberg and Velamuri, 2017). Therefore, tracking the customer is essential in how digital marketing creates a loyal customer base because it provides details regarding the potential customer base. eBay has successfully attained innovation in its business model through e-commerce and DM (Le-Nguyen and Guo, 2016). Therefore, digital marketing enabled eBay to build a quality shopping experience for the customers, for instance, by providing product details in the items list and creating a detailed user experience.

Furthermore, the factors that affect eBay's DM strategy are the target market, budget, talent, technology, and time (Neto et al., 2016). Therefore, the target market allows eBay to effectively implement digital marketing strategies to attract customers and improve sales (Gregg and Parthasarathy, 2017). Similarly, targeting enables the organization to determine the customers’ behaviour to understand their choices and buying behaviour. Moreover, the aspect of budgeting is extremely crucial in the planning of a DM campaign to generate a higher customer base. Therefore, digital marketing also requires capital for investment in the marketing budget, but relatively cheaper than traditional marketing methods. In addition, eBay is a billion-dollar organization with extensive marketing budgets, thus creating effective techniques to generate and improve its customer base (Neto et al., 2016). The talent factor requires the company to hire skilled marketing professionals to execute DM strategies. It is also important to implement technology to initiate digital marketing services (Edelman and Heller, 2015). Therefore, eBay has also invested in high-quality servers and equipment to run flawless campaigns.

Similarly, time is also considered an essential factor that guarantees the success of a DM campaign (Blake et al., 2016). Planning and monitoring digital marketing strategies require a certain commitment of time. Hence, eBay has trained professionals who monitor and plan marketing campaigns.

• Summary

The literature review chapter highlights the important aspects of assessing how Digital marketing creates a loyal customer base for an online retailer. Furthermore, the literature review briefly introduces the topic, which discusses digital marketing and its importance in detail. The section on conceptualizing DM describes digital marketing techniques and underlines its usage in retail industries. The benefits of the DM are discussed, various advantages of digital marketing are mentioned, and how different organizations are reaping benefits from the DM. Moreover, the impact of digital marketing in generating a high customer base emphasizes the various impacts that affect the customers' buying behaviours. Furthermore, the literature review also covers the factors pertinent to DM that directly affect the generation of a high customer base; thus, this section describes the various factors that affect the customers eBay. In addition, the literature review mentions the theoretical and conceptual framework that figuratively focuses on the different conclusions of the research.

METHODOLOGY

This chapter briefly discusses the appropriate manners used in this study to conduct the research effectively. Furthermore, the methodology that has been employed in this study is qualitative. Similarly, the research used the interpretivism philosophy, the research design used in this study is qualitative, and the approach used is deductive. Moreover, the data collection method is the primary method. The chapter discusses that the researcher used thematic analysis to derive the study results by using the snowball sampling technique and interview questionnaires.

• Research Philosophy

The research philosophy employed in this learning is the interpretivism philosophy. This philosophy incorporates human interests into a study (Potrac et al., 2014). Similarly, the current study also used the interpretivism philosophy to study the qualitative data in detail. Furthermore, this theory requires qualitative analysis (Potrac et al., 2016). The advantage of engaging the interpretivism philosophy in the current research is that the process of how Digital marketing creates a loyal customer base can be assessed in a descriptive and detailed manner.

• Research Design

The research design is the collection of different techniques and methods which can be used to deal with the problem of the research effectively (Lewis, 2015). In addition, the study used the qualitative research design, which applies to the philosophy of interpretivism and permits the researcher to explore the horizons of the research area. Moreover, the qualitative research design can extract important data in a non-numeric form (Rahman, 2017). Furthermore, the qualitative research design was suitable for this study because it is exploratory, and the chief concern of qualitative research design is to obtain relevant insights regarding the reasons and motivations of the research area. Similarly, the benefit of applying the qualitative research design in this study is that, unlike quantitative research, qualitative research was versatile in exploring the interviews of the participants.

• Research Approach

The study used the inductive research approach. This method allows the researchers to make observations through modern approaches (Woo et al., 2017). Moreover, an inductive approach was considered valuable for this study because it supported the assessment of how Digital marketing creates a loyal customer base for online retailers. This practice enables researchers to explain various rules and processes quickly and efficiently (Jebb et al., 2017). Furthermore, the inductive approach is used in this study because it enabled the researcher to make time to use and apply data effectively. According to the study of Woo et al. (2017), the inductive approach is used to create detailed observations and revolves around certain ideas and generalizations. Similarly, the study applied the inductive approach because it allowed the researcher to develop practical generalizations and categorize the relationships throughout the research process. Furthermore, the inductive approach produced meanings from the collected data and identified the patterns to build a theory.

• Data Collection Methods

The method of data collection used in this study is the primary method. Furthermore, the study used the interview questionnaire method to acquire the data necessary for this research. Moreover, the primary data collection method is considered relevant for the study because it aims to produce accurate results according to the researcher's curiosity. The primary data collection method allows the researchers to extract data from the interviews and surveys easily (Thomas, 2015). Moreover, the various primary data sources include surveys and interview methods.

Similarly, the primary data can be qualitative as well as quantitative. Thus, the researcher can use data according to their need or preferences (Sutton and Austin, 2015). Secondary data will also be gathered to complete the literature review and support the study's findings.

• Sampling Method, Technique and Size

The study employed the non-probability method because the researcher did not have a complete population list for random sampling. In the non-probability method, the selection of each unit is minimal (Rahi, 2017). Moreover, the study preferred the snowball sampling technique because it allowed the researcher to gather participants who were hard to find. Snowball sampling technique can be used for qualitative research with a population which is hard to locate (Etikan et al., 2016). Furthermore, the snowball technique was performed by forming a sample group in which the subject provided referrals, which were then used to create a complete sample group. This technique also allowed the researcher to make unprejudiced valuations from the snowball samples under different conditions. Furthermore, the sample size is a noticeable factor in the data analysis (Rahi, 2017). Therefore, this study chose 30 digital marketing employees of eBay for an interview questionnaire to assess whether Digital marketing creates a loyal customer base for online retailers.

• Data Analysis

The data analysis in this study allowed the researcher to develop different concepts on how digital marketing enables eBay to perform in the online retail industry. Moreover, the study employed the use of thematic analysis to create interpretations from the results. This analysis offers a consistent, precise and credible source of results (Nowell et al., 2017). Moreover, the thematic analysis is considered the trustworthy method of analysis, which can be effectively adopted in the qualitative method because it can be employed in analysing large data sets of qualitative research methods.

• Research Limitation

The research was limited in some cases because the researcher was following the primary data analysis. Using primary data limits the scope of creativity in research because it is considered expensive and limited to time, participants, and location. Moreover, the research was limited because the results were based on the participants' interviews. Furthermore, the limitations in the researcher's creativity stunted the research's growth, thus creating restrictions on the data and creating uncertainty in the study's research. Furthermore, due to the data being qualitative, the study also required time and effort from the researcher. Moreover, the interviews also posed some restrictions and limitations because the researcher ensured that the participants did not feel uncomfortable or threatened during the interviews.

• Ethical Consideration

The researcher followed the ethical constructs for this study to ensure that the data has been referenced properly according to the author's study. The researcher conducted the interviews for the primary research. Similarly, the interviews were conducted properly, so the respondents felt that their integrity was maintained throughout the interviews. Furthermore, the interviews are important study procedures, and the researcher planned out the key questions before the interviews. In addition, it is also the researcher's responsibility to ensure their safety when conducting interviews. Moreover, the researcher also made sure to respect the participants' confidentiality and ensure that the participants' privacy remained intact.

• Summary

The chapter on the methodology briefly and descriptively highlights the different research paradigms used to perform this study. In addition, it introduces the topic, mentioning the various research methods employed in how Digital marketing creates a loyal customer base for online retailers. The section on research philosophy highlights the importance of interpretivism philosophy, which was used in this study. Moreover, the section on the research design mentions the research design used in this study, which is the qualitative research design. In addition, the research approach mentions the inductive approach and its importance in the current study.

Furthermore, this chapter also includes the study's primary data collection method. Therefore, the thematic analysis method is used due to the primary and qualitative data analysis methods highlighted in the study. Furthermore, the chapter also discusses the limitations of research that occurred during the research. Thus, the research methodology provides a detailed section of ethical considerations that the researcher kept in mind.