Content of corporate Web pages as advertising media

and provided some electronic publication of technical details and specifications. UTC Carrier decided to leapfrog their competitors with the intention of providing more value to customers. UTC Carrier's approach to CDSS used two primary facilities. First, they set about creating a comprehensive guide to the HVAC world called the Carrier Resource Center. The center contains links to industry organizations , universities where HVAC research is conducted, trade shows that maintain an online presence, and so forth. They also present items that are unique to Carrier and their customers: white papers, press releases, industry speeches, and so forth. This provides a focus for information search and, in particular, something that people in the industry can be pointed to by search engines, directories, and word of mouth. Second, and more importantly, Carrier analyzed the decision-making processes of its existing and potential customers. They identified a broad category of critical customers called " specifiers. " These are people who are responsible for planning a HVAC system and defining the system requirements , but may not know much about HVAC per se, and be unaware of specific brands and products. UTC Carrier thought there was a significant opportunity to start the sales cycle earlier with these people: a visual navigation system was designed that walks specifiers through the design and selection process. By choosing a generic building type, like school, college, or auditorium, the user is presented with a variety of systems that can be used to heat and cool that type of structure. A quick click on one of the building types brings up a description of the system and the chance to gather more information The Internet allows marketers to target and communicate with highly involved and interested consumers worldwide. If consumers do not find information helpful for making a purchase decision at a company Web site, they are likely to visit and eventually buy products from competitors who happen to provide the necessary information. Here, we focus on the information content of corporate Web pages as advertising media and we examine how well corporations are using the Internet to effectively inform consumers. A well-established classification system in the marketing and advertising literature, developed by Resnik and Stern [2], is utilized to understand the type of useful information provided by corporations through their Web sites [1]. It classifies advertising information based on 14 criteria or cues that represent categories of information potentially …