Moving From Intermediaries To Apomediaries: A Study Of The Ongoing Changes In Marketing Channels

As we get to be more comfortable with incorporating our daily routines with interactive options available on the Internet, we get to influence the shapes of the businesses we deal with and the way they operate. It is no surprise that today we feel more comfortable in placing orders online than placing them on the phone. Accordingly, recognizing this trend, many businesses are now offering online options. While some may have thought that this was good enough for those businesses, some have been noticing that most of those businesses have begun to participate in social network sites such as Facebook and other product and/or industry specific blogs. Apparently, having a simple presence on the Internet was not good enough considering the ongoing trends in the marketplace. The purpose of this paper is to examine some of those trends and explore the driving force behind some of those recent online practices. It is hoped that these issues are understood properly so that one can predict the upcoming changes in consumers' routines and the business practices to cater to them. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]