Sales Network

Online selling means selling products through the internet — in essence, using the internet as a sales tool. Like many emerging disciplines, “internet marketing” has no universally accepted, fully developed definition. Broadly speaking, any marketing activity that uses internet marketing as its main means to reach a marketing objective can be called internet marketing; in other words, internet marketing runs through the whole process of a company’s online business.

Views on internet marketing differ. Some researchers and practitioners focus on the technical means of the network itself; some on website promotion techniques; some equate internet marketing with direct online selling; others include the online sales models of emerging e-commerce companies within its scope.

A number of monographs and many professional articles on internet marketing theory and methods have been published in China, with more material appearing on internet-related websites. Looking across the various viewpoints, none of them yet forms a complete system. Faced with so much information, people are left unable to see the wood for the trees.

To grasp the whole picture it is worth giving internet marketing a reasonable definition. From a marketing perspective: internet marketing is a component of a company’s overall marketing strategy — a marketing means built on the internet that uses the characteristics of the internet to achieve defined marketing objectives.