¶ … E-Marketing in Terms of Visual Communication Given the increased use of the Internet in past few years, e-marketing has had an indisputable progress within the past decade. Generally, daily activities and the variety of internet have created interest of consumers as many websites are creating virtual designs in order to strengthen their relations with customers. These developments have not only contributed to the creation of visual communications but have also increased e-marketing and contributed to the need for effective strategies. Therefore, an analysis of effective strategies in terms of visual communications is an important topic of study, which is the focus of the article. The main goal of study in this thesis is to analyze e-marketing websites by evaluating interaction and adverts in relation to the customer perceptions they create. Moreover, the thesis evaluates the definition of e-marketing, the development of this form of marketing, new trends in e-marketing, and the most appropriate strategies to conduct it.

Table of Contents:

Introduction 5

Problem Statement 6

Purpose 7

Significance of the Study 7

Research Questions and Hypothesis 8

Literature Review 8

Methodology 13

Analysis Plan 15

Validity and Reliability ..16

Assumptions 17

Scope and Limitations 17

Results 18

Analyses 18

Conclusions 22

Discussion 23

Recommendation 26

References 27

The increased use of the Internet in the past several decades has contributed to the indisputable use of e-marketing. The Internet has provided a way in which e-marketing strategies create interest of customers across daily activities and varieties. As a result of the increased use of the Internet in daily activities, many companies are building their virtual designs in attempts to foster interactions with their customers. The significance of e-marketing strategies in the modern business world is evident in the fact that business-to-business and business-to-consumer companies use this service. Furthermore, this service is used because it has the ability to reach many customers within a short time period unlike traditional marketing techniques.

Since visual communication incorporates the illustration exhibition of information, it's an important part of marketing, especially e-marketing strategies. The significance of visual communication is attributed to its increased use by marketers to backup their messages in efforts to generate increased sales. In most cases, marketing strategies and techniques consist of combination of visual elements with text messages. As the use of Internet has increased in the past decade, visual communication is incorporated into e-marketing strategies because it's one of the most powerful to attract customers into buying behaviors. Actually, e-marketing strategies have continued to rely on visual communications because of several reasons including attracting people's attention, provision of essential support to key messages of products or services, and enhancing a firm's image ("How to Improve Your Visual Communication," 2010).

Generally, the visuals used in the business world to support text messages are usually developed by photographers and graphic designers. In light of using visual communications in e-marketing strategies, many companies are increasingly developing virtual designs that foster customer interactions. The process of creating virtual designs by these companies has mainly been based on creation of e-marketing websites and adverts that influence customer perceptions regarding the company's image as well as products and/or services. Since e-marketing has become an integral part of today's business world, companies use various techniques such as segmentation, branding, and differentiation to e-market in order to enhance their abilities. Notably, the increased use of e-marketing strategies implies that there is need to analyze the most effective e-marketing strategies in terms of visual communications.

Problem Statement:

The main challenge associated with the increased use of e-marketing strategies is identifying the most effective e-marketing techniques in terms of visual communication. The identification of the most effective strategy for e-marketing is a vital in determining the success and profitability of the company. When carrying out this process, the company should examine the model or strategy that fits its business objective and trends. Without an understanding of these important elements, an inappropriate e-marketing strategy would be very costly and ineffective for the company. Nonetheless, a company may use more than one e-marketing strategy depending on some major factors in its e-business model.

It's important to examine the most effective e-marketing strategies because not every strategy will be effective for all companies. The success and effectiveness of an e-marketing strategy depends on the type of company using the technique. The most common e-business models that require different strategies include business to business, consumer to consumer, peer-to-peer, and business to consumer. The need to identify an effective strategy is also attributed...

Therefore, the identification of an effective strategy will help the organization to avoid unnecessary expenses and potential losses in its e-market plan.
Purpose:

The goal of this study is to provide a new understanding of effective e-marketing strategies in terms of visual communications. This study seeks to achieve this through examining the most common e-marketing strategies used in the business world based on their strengths and weaknesses. This will be followed by analyzing the efficiency of these strategies in terms of visual communications based on their impact on consumer perceptions.

Significance of the Study:

The main difference between success and failure of an organization's e-marketing plan is strategy. Generally, an e-marketing strategy obtains its direction from the company's broader approach to marketing that is based on the firm's overall business strategy objective. Therefore, e-marketing strategies are effective when they integrate the benefits of the Internet as a channel of marketing with the present online and offline initiatives of the company (Dann & Dann, 2011).

This study is important to conduct because it provides a bigger picture of a company's development options through focusing on how the firm can use the Internet to achieve it broader organizational goals. In this case, the analysis focuses on examining the most effective way of aligning online activity or digital marketing in order to achieve organization-wide business objectives. As a result, this study is important to the business world because it evaluates the value and necessity of developing clear and practical objectives in e-marketing in order to accomplish organizational objectives. Since marketing a very challenging task for many organizations, this analysis will enable firms to identify the most effective strategies that would help foster customer interactions in light of the changes in the current business world. This implies that a firm would improve interactions with customers and enhance its image.

Research Questions and Hypothesis:

The main objective of this research is to develop a model for understanding and interpreting the effectiveness of e-marketing strategies in terms of visual communications based on their effect on customer perceptions. In order to realize this objective, several research questions and hypothesis have been developed to be analyzed during the research process. Some of the major research questions to be tested during the research process include; What is the relationship between e-marketing strategies and visual communication? Which e-marketing strategy enhances marketing performance based on this link? What is the impact of e-marketing strategies on customer perceptions? The main hypothesis to be tested is the significant relation between an e-marketing strategy and the company's overall marketing performance.

Literature Review:

As part of conducting the study, the researcher identified a series of literature that focused on investigating several concepts regarding e-marketing. The identified literature is mainly from journals that covered topics like theory and practice of e-marketing, conceptual study on e-marketing, overview of e-marketing, and use of organizational capability to evaluate e-marketing. These journals were selected because they focus on the main areas under examination i.e. The concept of e-marketing and effectiveness of e-marketing strategies.

In examining the overview of e-marketing as a technique used by many companies, Jamehshooran, Danesh, Teimouri & Heydari (2011) examine the past, present, and future of online marketing (p.585). These authors state that the emergence of worldwide web provided a great opportunity for manufacturers and customers to carry out their activities in real time and directly without involving a middleman or broker. These developments have contributed to the emergence of e-business models like business to business and business to customer because the technology enables people to respond very fast. Generally, there is an agreement in today's business world that digital media have significantly influenced the way a marketer reaches modern consumer, especially through the emergence of e-marketing strategies. Consequently, e-marketing is a great opportunity for firms that want to obtain a competitive over their rivals in the market.

Dehkordi et. al. (2012) states that the Internet is not only a networking media and but also a platform for consumers to carry out their transactions on the global market (p.114). These authors proceed to describe e-marketing as a new attitude and modern practical involvement with the sales of products and/or services through digital means and the Internet. However, through reviewing literatures on this concept, one of the major challenges is that the definition of e-marketing, e-business, and internet marketing is unclear for authors and researchers alike. Many researchers and authors tend to wrong use equal meaning and descriptions for these terms. This is despite of the obvious differences between the actual meaning and application of the terms. While e-business…