A01 chaf6542 06 se fm indd

3 

Investment in different online promotion techniques. For example, how much to pay 

for banner advertising as against online PR; how much to pay for search engine registra-

tion. (These and other  traffic-  building techniques are described in Chapter 9.)

People, process and physical evidence

People

, 

process

 and 

physical evidence

 are particularly important for service delivery. Since 

service delivery is an important aspect of e-commerce sites this is referred to in the ‘Focus on 

Excelling in e-commerce service quality’ in Chapter 9; managing organisational change is 

the focus of Chapter 10; and  user-  centred design is in Chapter 11. Enhancing service is also 

an important element of online branding which is described in the next Focus on section. 

Physical evidence could be applied to site design or the accompanying packaging when prod-

ucts are delivered. Alternatively, these could be interpreted as part of the extended product.

Smith and Chaffey (2001) suggest that online, part of the consideration for the people 

element of the mix is the consideration of the tactics by which people can be replaced or their 

work automated. These are some of the options:

● 

Autoresponders. These automatically generate a response when a company emails an 

organisation, or submits an online form.

● 

Email notification. Automatically generated by a company’s systems to update customers on 

the status of their order, for example, order received, item now in stock, order dispatched.

People variable

The element of the 

marketing mix that 

involves the delivery of 

service to customers 

during interactions with 

customers.