Use of the World Wide Web for Marketing Purpose : A Comparative St

Nowadays, both large and small business organizations have been using the Internet in general or the World Wide Web in particular to cope with the global competition. One of the major purposes that these business organizations utilizations utilize the World Wide Web is to support their marketing activities. In this study, we compared the uses of the World Wide Web, for supporting seven different categories of marketing activities, among three different groups of companies: the Top US corporation, the Top Non-US corporation, and the Top Web site groups. Results of the study showed that companies in the ToP US corporation and the ToP Non-US corporation groups primarily focused on Public Relation, while companies in the Top Web site group emphasized Encouragement. The Top US corporations also focused on the Interactive Brochure and the Top Web site companies were significantly different from the Top Non-US corporations with regard to Direct Sales and Customization. We discussed the potential reasons for these similarities and differences. The study also provided the extension for future research and discussed its limitations.