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Part 2  Strategy and applications

Product

There are many alternatives for varying the product when a company is developing its 

online strategy.  Internet-  related product decisions can be usefully divided into decisions 

affecting the 

core product

 and the 

extended product

. For some companies, there may be 

options for new digital products which will typically be information products that can be 

delivered over the web. In some cases, the core product offering has been replaced by infor-

mation about the product. For example, a company providing  oil-  drilling equipment focus-

sing instead on analysis and dissemination of information about drilling. In some cases, an 

online version of the product may be more valuable to customers in that it can be updated 

more regularly. The advertising directory BRAD (

www.brad.co.uk

) has been changed from 

a large  paper-  based document to an online version with searching facilities that were not 

available in the  paper-  based version. The Internet also introduces options for