Marketing in Hypermedia Computer-Mediated Environments: Conceptual Foundations

This paper addresses the role of marketing in hypermedia computer-mediated environments (CMEs). Our approach considers hypermedia CMEs to be large-scale (i.e. national or global) networked environments, of which the World Wide Web on the Internet is the first and current global implementation. We introduce marketers to this revolutionary new medium, propose a structural model of consumer behavior in a CME that incorporates the notion of flow, and examine the set of consequent testable research propositions and marketing implications that follow from the model. Marketing in Hypermedia Computer-Mediated Environments: Conceptual Foundations 1) Introduction Firms communicate with their customers through various media. Traditionally, these media follow a passive one-to-many communication model whereby a firm reaches many current and potential customers, segmented or not, through marketing efforts that allow only limited forms of feedback on the part of the customer. For several years no...