Who is on the net?

We looked at social media sites in our course lab and then this week have been exploring the question of who is on the internet? The internet consumer is in general older, more college-educated and increasingly female. Seventy-five percent of adults now use the internet, with 53 percent using some form of cloud communication. Although mobile applications are increasing in the United States, especially among African-Americans, over half the population, according to the Pew Report, can be classified as more tied to stationary than mobile media. In Europe, mobile applications are more widespread. Some of our class will be attending a presentation on mobile media at a CADM meeting in October so we will learn more about it then. We looked at various models of consumer behavior, such as AIDA, Attention, Interest, Desire and Action to explain how we as marketers want to involve consumers on our web site. Attention, Acquisition, Assessment and Action explains involvement from the marketer's point of view. Once the person is on board as a customer, we want to assess their needs so we can answer them most effectively through interactive communications and offers. We also talked about new ways of finding out what the consumer is thinking, as opposed to traditinal marketing research surveys. Blog posts, customer reviews, etc. all provide insight for the marketer but are harder to control. Anyone can be responding rather than a random sample of a known population. Companies like bizrate.com use panels of consumers to solicit input and control for this problem.