The effects of information technologies in marketing

• Author: Yusuf Bayraktutan/Ibrahim Arslan/Esra G. Kaygisiz/Elena Druica
• Position: University of Kocaeli, Turkey/University of Gaziantep, Turkey/University of Bucharest, Romania
• Pages: 190-196

Page 190

Introduction

The developments in the information and communication technologies have brought a lot of novelty and accelerated the present processes. Information technologies affected the organizations' work styles. The economic and social affects of this changes caused big exchanges in the structure of organization. The organizations that want to subsist, invested in information technologies and so they rendered their work styles compatible with information technologies. The exchanges have not confined with these and they have directed organizations to investments in updating, refreshing and reclamation hardware and software. Investments of organizations have rendered organization structure more flat, increased the number of employees and bureaucratic works and felt down the costs of communication, formation and saving documents. It has also been used from the undermost management level to uppermost level and supports all management levels in decision making. It has offered flexibility to the organizations which prefer central or local management and affected the organization control, communication, authority mechanism and decision making process. The IT which is used in all management levels, has been a strategic tool for business world nowadays. Information technologies contribute to organizations' basis and champion functions as marketing, logistic, selling, offering service, buying, human resource, management. It has also strengthened the value chain between organizations, customers and providers. All management levels effected from information technologies. With this new information stage, organizations have to change their marketing actions.

Page 191

The marketing action of organizations begins with a well appointed market, focuses with customer needs, and coordinates all actions for reaching the customer and by satisfying him it gains. Also it includes advertising, actions before and after selling, improving long- term relations with customers...e.g.¹. In the digital era, a new market place has appeared which it would be accessed 7/24 and the competition has been very intensive. Now the market place and the customer are not just the same; new treatments, continuously growing competition, challenges have been the special properties of the new market. Modern marketing has been formed customer focused by the effects of globalization and information technologies. In the information technologies there is a continuously change on the customer's habits, expectations and needs. The customers have been able to access to all market and they move all the time. Their sensitivities of the prices have been increased so they want more qualified, faster and cheaper products and service. Also they think the differences between the products have been decreased so their brand constancy has decreased. Now the customer doesn't search the only suitable product, he wants the most suitable product and he can find it on the internet and in other information sources. IT affected the marketing both Marketing Information Systems that support all marketing operations of business and diversifying the marketing process. We aimed to inspect these two main effects in our study.

Marketing Information Systems

Marketing Information Systems are computer-based systems that work in conjunction with other functional information systems to support the firm's management in solving problems that relate to marketing the firm's products. They have been used to collect information for marketing actions, analyses and present them to the marketing manager for making effective decisions. Marketing Information Systems are help systems that can be used to product strategic, operational and tactical decisions for the marketing management. They collect information for the level of demand, properties of demand and the effect of its components. Also they are set up by the upper level of management to learn changes of the demand, new enterprises of rivals and new distribution channels. The first definition of Marketing Information Systems was given by Cox and Good². A MIS can be thought as a set of procedures and methods for the analysis and presentation of information that is to be used in decision-making. MIS are used to support the planning and control operations. Most of the resources of MIS are consumed to support decisions related with the prices and the products. O'Brien says that the MIS are an effective tool for the conversion of row data into useful information. Statistical analysis software, logic programming languages, and...