Digital branding revolves around the internet as a communication medium. Deploying the internet in marketing is often cheaper than using traditional media, as it is often easier to reach the core target group online, and digital branding can capitalise on behaviour intentions right away. Examples of digital branding include affiliate marketing, email marketing and social networking. This section of the Knowledge Resource Centre contains articles about research digital branding.

More and more companies are embracing open innovation and using social networking and web 2.0 tools. These technologies enable greater brand commitment. But this also requires companies to bear several stakeholders in mind more than ever before. Bhaskar Chakravorti of the Harvard Business School recently presented a number of tools for what he refers to as stakeholder marketing 2.0.

The internet has changed our lives in many areas. Not only the way information is provided, but also market structures and the role of consumers in the market. Some consumers are very active online, while others are passive grazers. Charlene Li and John Bernoff’s book entitled Groundswell now describes a method institutions and companies can use to deal with this new reality.

Marketing professionals are turning to social media on an ever wider scale. Just think of discussions about a brand on a forum, a Facebook page with thousands of fans or the use of brand names in blogs. But on some occasions, marketing pros are not the ones taking the initiative, but enthusiastic consumers are. The question now is how to get consumers to interactively expand your brand.

Advertisers assess the effectiveness of online advertising by looking at ‘click-through rates’. The more a banner is clicked, the more effective it is deemed to be. Research now shows that that does not always hold true. When a webpage focuses on other things than the banner, you are still confronted with the commercial message. This research shows that people develop a positive attitude towards these kinds of messages, even though they do not click on it.

Marketing people try to present their products as attractively as possible to maximize the chance of people purchasing it. New research is challenging this basic principle. It shows that virtual interactive product presentations give consumers an overly positive idea of a product. This causes the actual product experience and initial expectations to be out of sync, eventually leading to dissatisfaction. Hi-tech communication is therefore not always the most desirable form of communication.