European Journal of Marketing

The state of internet marketing research: A review of the literature and future
research directions
John A. Schibrowsky James W. Peltier Alexander Nill
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European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 41 Iss 7/8 pp. 722 - 733
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(2013),"A review of internet marketing research over the past 20 years and future research direction",
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EJM COMMENTARY
41,7/8
The state of internet marketing
research
722
A review of the literature and future research
directions
John A. Schibrowsky
University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA
James W. Peltier
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University of Wisconsin, Whitewater, Wisconsin, USA, and

Alexander Nill
University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA

Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine the internet marketing literature to determine how
internet marketing research has evolved in terms of quantity, content, and publication outlets. In
addition, the paper identifies important trends in the internet marketing literature and provides a view
of the research gaps and expected topical areas of interest.
Design/methodology/approach A content analysis was performed on approximately 1,400
internet-related marketing articles identified by searching the ABI/INFORM database. A total of 902
peer-reviewed internet marketing articles appearing in nearly 80 different journals were identified.
The study revealed that 60 percent of the internet research had been published in the last three years.
The three most researched internet marketing areas were consumer behavior, internet strategy, and
internet communications. The topics with the highest growth over the past two years were research
issues and consumer search. Over the past 15 years, 14 articles appeared in the top three marketing
journals.
Findings The article identified important trends in the internet marketing research to provide
future direction, particularly in terms of research gaps and expected topical areas of interest. The three
major research areas that are likely to grow in the next few years are: consumer trust pertaining to the
internet, the use of the internet by consumers for marketing related activities, and where is the internet
headed in terms of integrating strategies?
Originality/value The study provides both academics and practitioners with an updated review of
the internet marketing literature along with a sense of how internet marketing research is evolving.
Keywords Internet, Internet marketing, Worldwide web, Research, Literature
Paper type Literature review

European Journal of Marketing
Vol. 41 No. 7/8, 2007
pp. 722-733
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0309-0566
DOI 10.1108/03090560710752366
Introduction
Over the past ten years, the internet as a global communication and exchange medium
has witnessed unprecedented growth. Globally, the number of websites increased from
23,000 in 1995 to more then 55 million in 2005 (Zakon, 2005). In the US alone, total
internet driven sales revenues have grown from a negligible amount in 1995 to over
$50 billion in 2004 (61 percent of which is business-to-business), and are expected to
rise at an annual rate of over 20 percent (Direct Marketing Association, 2004).
 European based internet marketers have experienced even more dramatic growth, Internet
achieving a 44 percent increase of online sales in 2004. With sales of more than e13 marketing
million ( $16.9), Europes 2004 online holiday Christmas sales outpaced the US for
the first time (Forrester Research Inc., 2005). Today, the importance of the internet to research
buyers, sellers, and intermediaries across all aspects of the relational continuum from
prospecting to customer retention is unquestioned.
The meteoritic growth of the internet has not gone unnoticed by the academic 723
community. Of significance, the number of published internet marketing articles in peer
reviewed journals increased from a mere three articles in 1995 to 169 articles in 2004. In
one of the first review articles of its kind, the European Journal of Marketing published a
14-year review of the internet marketing literature for the 1987-2000 time period (Ngai,
2003). Over that timeframe, a total of 270 internet marketing articles were identified, or an
average of 19 articles per year. In comparison, over the last four years alone (2001-2004)
we identified an additional 639 published internet marketing articles, an average of 160
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per year and an increase of almost over 830 percent from the 1987-2000 yearly average.
Clearly, the importance of the internet as a topical area of interest within the academic
community is strong and growing and signals the need to once again review the internet
marketing literature, particularly in terms of potential research opportunities.
The purpose of the current research is threefold. First, we update and extend Ngais
1987 to 2000 review of internet articles reported in the European Journal of Marketing
to include articles published from 2001-2004. Second, our review provides EJM readers
with a sense of how internet marketing research has evolved in terms of content,
quantity, and publication outlets. Finally, in the hope of sparking academic debate and
inquisitiveness, we identify what we feel to be the most important trends in the internet
marketing literature and provide future direction, particularly in terms of research
gaps and expected topical areas of interest.

Methodology
Array of journals
Since the amount of internet marketing research had grown dramatically since the
review conducted by Ngai (2003), it was first necessary to explicitly delineate the nature
and scope of our review procedures. Although internet marketing articles can be found in
a wide variety of academic journals, for this review only articles appearing in refereed
marketing journals and a limited set of refereed business journals were included in our
analysis. In addition to the marketing journals, business journals included in our review
efforts were restricted to the Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review,
California Management Review, Business Horizons, Journal of Business, and Journal of
Business Research. Moreover, and consistent with Ngais review, we focus on research
publications written in English. While English certainly became the dominant language
of the internet, this is not to say that there is not a considerable number internet
marketing research published in a language other than English.

Databases
An important initial decision was to select which electronic database to use for the
review. Two decision criteria were used:
(1) It had to be very comprehensive in terms to journal coverage.
(2) This coverage needed to extend across the entire timeframe under review.
 EJM With these criteria in mind, Business Source Premier was selected as the primary
41,7/8 database in that it appeared to be the most comprehensive and complete for the time
frame evaluated. As a check, for the two-year period 2003-2004 we performed the same
analysis using Business Source Premier and ABI/INFORM. The results were virtually
identical and increased confidence in the reliability of our findings. It should be pointed
out that the review covers most but not all marketing journals. As such, some internet
724 marketing articles are not included in this study, due to the limitations of the database.

Search process
As with any electronic database search, it is critical to identify appropriate search
terms. Consistent with commonly practiced database search efforts, a key word
approach was used to identify previously published internet marketing articles. The
database was queried for keywords in the title, abstract and the key word list. Source
words employed included: internet, web marketing, e-mail, and electronic commerce. In
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total, over 1,400 citations were identified. Citations from regular columns, book
reviews, editorial comments, etc. were removed from consideration.
Next, each abstract was evaluated to determine if it was an internet marketing
article or just internet related. An internet related article was defined as one that
mentioned the internet in the abstract but was not primarily an internet marketing
article. For example, many of the abstracts noted that the results had implications for
internet marketing (e.g. consideration set studies in consumer choice with a mention of
implications for internet marketers in the implications section), and were thus not
included in our review set. Our reasoning was that it is common for many marketing
studies to mention implications for internet marketers without actually focusing on the
internet as the primary research topic. This analysis resulted in the identification of
902 refereed internet marketing articles published from 1992-2004.
As a final check, we employed this review methodology to uncover journal
publications for the years 1992-2000 and compared these results to those found by Ngai
(2003) over this same time period. Of interest, although our method for identifying and
classifying internet articles differs somewhat from the previous study, as shown in
Table I, our results were similar to those found by Ngai. Specifically, we identified 263
articles as compared to 270 for Ngai. This increased our confidence in the
comparability of outcomes across the two review timeframes, even though there were
differences in methodology.

Classification of articles
Two reviewers performed a content analysis on the abstract citations to classify the
primary topical area for each of the identified internet marketing articles. As would be
expected, in a number of instances two or more topics were addressed in the article. We
then looked more deeply in the text of the article to more clearly ascertain the
primary topic under investigation. As an illustration, one citation conveyed that the
article was about the impact of trust on internet usage. In this instance, we classified
the article as being one in which the primary focus was on trust and not the more
descriptive topical area of internet usage. In a few cases, a third judge was utilized
when the reviewers could not agree on the primary topic of a specific article.
We initially started with the 21 classifications employed by Ngai (2003). However,
given the expanded literature base that had emerged, we soon found out that a more
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Journal 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999 1998 1997 1996 1995 1994 1993 1992 Total Others %

Journal of Marketing 2 1 1 4 0.44

Journal of Marketing Research 2 3 2 7 0.78
Journal of Consumer Research 2 1 3 0.33
Journal of Retailing 3 1 3 4 11 1.22
Marketing Science 5 3 1 1 5 1 16 1.77
Journal of the Academy of Marketing
Science 2 1 15 1 2 21 2.33
Journal of Advertising 4 2 9 1 1 17 1.88
Journal of Advertising Research 1 8 7 5 7 2 5 7 1 43 4.77
European Journal of Marketing 4 5 1 1 7 1 19 2.10

Grand total premier journals 25 23 37 12 17 4 12 9 2 1 0 0 0 142

Percentage of total internet articles 15 12 21 11.3 16 9.5 24 27.3 6.9 33 0.0 0.0 0.0

All marketing journal articles about

internet marketing including HBR, Sloan,
CMR, Business Horizons, and JBR 169 185 179 106 106 42 50 33 29 3 0 0 0 0 902
Percentage of total 18.7 20.5 19.8 11.8 11.8 4.7 5.5 3.7 3.2 0.3 0.0 0.0 0.0
Cumulative percentage 39.2 59.1 70.8 82.6 87.3 92.8 96.5 99.7 100
Ngai (2003) ! all business journals (some
we did not include) 81 47 69 35 24 5 3 2 0 4 270
marketing
Internet

published
research

research has been

Where internet marketing
725

Table I.
 EJM comprehensive classification scheme was needed. Procedurally, we added new
41,7/8 classification areas as the literature review dictated. This procedure resulted in 44
classification schemes compared to 21 for Ngai. The final classifications are shown in
Table II.

The results
726 We summarize our findings in three ways:
(1) The amount of internet marketing research published.
(2) Where internet marketing research is published.
(3) Which topic areas are being published.

Each topic will be discussed separately.

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Amount of internet research published

The analysis identified a total of 902 internet marketing articles published from 1992
through 2004. As Table I shows, and consist with the introduction stage of the product
lifecycle, after a relatively slow beginning, the internet marketing literature started to
grow dramatically, in 1996 with large jumps occurring in 2000 and 2002. Of interest,
the number of internet marketing articles dropped from a high of 185 in 2003 to 169 in
2004. Although we cannot fully explain this drop in the number of articles, at least
three reasons seem plausible. First, there is a general lack of internet marketing pieces
finding their way into premier journals. This certainly serves as a deterrent for
researchers seeking tenure at tier one research institutions (discussed in greater detail
in the next section). A second explanation is that internet marketing as a research topic
is starting to reach the maturity stage of its life cycle. A final explanation and perhaps
the most compelling is that there is likely considerable amount of research in the
pipeline and it will emerge in 2005 and beyond.
While it was not included in this study, a review of the first half of 2005 revealed
that approximately 50 refereed internet marketing articles were published during that
time frame. Four appeared in the nine premier marketing journals discussed in the next
section.
Even with the marginal decline in internet marketing articles published in 2004, we
contend that the field is still relatively young and will continue to evolve. Significantly,
over 80 percent of all internet marketing literature has been published in the new
millennium. Even more revealing is that nearly 40 percent of all internet marketing
research has been published in the last two years. For researchers, this provides a
number of opportunities, but requires a constant updating of their knowledge of the
internet literature. In the same way, there is a danger that an internet marketing article
could be out of date upon publication. This is particularly true if the review process
takes a long time and/or the journal has a significant lag time between acceptance and
publication. This time-relevancy issue has important ramifications for both
researchers and editors interested in publishing the newest internet marketing
findings.

Where is internet marketing research being published?

We were able to identify over 75 peer-reviewed journals that have published internet
marketing articles. This is certainly encouraging for researchers interested in finding
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2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999 1998 1997 1996 1995 1994 1993 1992 Total

Consumer behavior
Cognitive issues (e.g.) 9 9 11 5 2 1 1 1 1 40
User demographics 2 3 5 2 3 2 1 18
Cross culture/nationality 7 8 4 3 1 2 1 26
Consumer internet search 13 8 1 2 3 2 1 0 2 32
Motivation 3 7 5 15
Online communities 3 1 2 1 1 1 9
Satisfaction 6 4 1 1 12
Internet segmentation 2 1 2 5
Trust 2 1 4 2 9
Use 13 16 12 9 7 2 2 61
Total 60 58 46 23 19 9 4 3 4 1 227
Percent published in 2003-2004 47.5 percent

Business to business
Supply chain 3 6 2 1 1 13
Business communications 1 2 3 0 1 7
Business effectiveness 1 2 4 3 2 3 2 2 2 21
Sales management 2 2 3 7
Business relationships 2 3 4 3 12
Total 9 15 16 7 4 3 2 2 2 60
Percent published in 2003-2004 40 percent

Strategy
Strategy 4 1 2 4 5 4 3 23
Relationship marketing 4 4 6 2 2 18
Reputation 2 3 5
Target markets 2 1 2 5
International marketing 3 1 5 2 1 3 3 2 20
Profits 4 3 1 4 12
Competition/competitive advantage 1 4 3 2 2 1 1 14
Best practices 6 14 23 9 16 3 4 4 5 1 85
(continued)
marketing
Internet

research

727

research by topic areas

internet marketing
Classification of the
Table II.
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EJM

728
41,7/8

Table II.
2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999 1998 1997 1996 1995 1994 1993 1992 Total

Services 9 7 4 2 1 1 1 1 26
Total 35 37 44 21 27 3 14 14 12 1 208
Percent published in 2003-2004 34.6 percent

Communication
Communication effectiveness 7 14 13 8 11 5 8 2 1 69
Integrated marketing communications 7 5 6 7 5 2 3 2 37
Information presentation/creative 5 7 9 3 6 4 1 35
E-mail 2 2 1 5
Web site visibility 1 3 4 1 9
Banner ads 3 1 4 8
Total 22 29 33 21 24 10 15 5 4 163
Percent published in 2003-2004 31.3 percent

Product/brand
Branding and brand loyalty 2 4 1 4 1 12
New product development 1 1 1 1 4
Total 3 5 1 1 5 1 16
Percent published in 2003-2004 50 percent

Distribution
Distribution integration 6 6 11 4 4 5 1 1 38
Store loyalty 1 1
Retailing 1 2 2 1 1 2 1 10
Total 8 8 13 5 5 7 1 2 49
Percent published in 2003-2004 32.7 percent

Pricing
Auction 3 2 4 0 4 13
Pricing issues 4 5 3 1 2 1 16
Total 7 7 7 1 6 1 29
Percent published in 2003-2004 48.3 percent
(continued)
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2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999 1998 1997 1996 1995 1994 1993 1992 Total

Research issues
Secondary data 2 1 1 4
Online data collection 6 2 4 3 3 1 6 1 2 1 29
Online survey issues 5 4 3 3 15
Total 13 7 4 7 3 4 6 1 2 1 48
Percent published in 2003-2004 41.7 percent

Political legal
Ethics 1 1 2 2 1 7
Fraud 2 1 1 4
Legal 4 7 3 3 3 1 1 2 24
Privacy 1 6 7 5 5 1 25
Tax issues 1 1 1 3
Total 6 14 13 10 10 5 3 2 63
Percent published in 2003-2004 31.7 percent

Education 6 5 2 10 3 6 4 3 39
Percent published in 2003-2004 28.2 percent

169 185 179 106 106 42 50 33 29 3 902

marketing
Internet

research

729

Table II.
 EJM an outlet for their internet marketing manuscripts. However, the picture is not quite as
41,7/8 positive when one looks at the number of internet marketing articles making it into the
top journals. Table I displays the number of internet marketing articles that were
published at nine of the premier marketing journals. A total of 141 internet marketing
articles have appeared in these nine journals. This constitutes 15.7 percent of all the
internet articles published. The best year for internet marketing among these journals
730 was 2002 when a total of 37 internet articles were published in these top journals. This
was due in large part to a proliferation of special issues among these journals devoted
to internet topics. Among these top journals, the leading outlet for internet marketing
research has been the Journal of Advertising Research, which has published 43 articles.
The journals with the fewest articles are the Journal of Consumer Research (three
articles), the Journal of Marketing (four articles) and the Journal of Marketing Research
(seven articles). That is a total of 14 articles in 13 years at arguably our fields three
leading journals. Some optimism exists in that six of these articles were published in
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the last year. None-the-less, it is difficult to imagine that a marketing topic as important
and influential as the internet has generated so little interest in these recognized
tier-one marketing journals.

Which topic areas are being published?

The analysis of published internet marketing research topics yielded a number of
interesting findings (see Table II). The three most researched internet marketing areas
were consumer behavior with 253 articles (27 percent of all articles), internet strategy
with 210 articles (22 percent of all articles), and internet communications with 155
articles (17 percent of all articles). These three topic areas account for approximately
two-thirds of all internet marketing research published between 1992 and 2004. Of
these general areas, consumer behavior experienced the most significant recent growth
with nearly 50 percent of the articles published in the last two years. The quantity of
consumer behavior articles is not surprising given the large number of dissertations
that are consumer behavior-based and overall research interest in this area. Two other
smaller areas with recent growth include pricing and product/brand loyalty topics.
In terms of individual topics, best practices lead the way with 86 articles, followed
by communication effectiveness with 69 articles, internet usage with 65 articles,
consumer cognitions with 48 articles, education with 39 articles, distribution
integration with 38 articles, integrated marketing communications (IMC) with 37
articles, website design, information, and creative with 35 articles, and consumer
search with 34 articles. The topics with the highest growth over the past two years are
research issues and consumer search.

The future of internet marketing and internet marketing research

While the data are interesting, it is important to step back and view these results in
terms of the future of internet marketing research. First and foremost it is easy to
conclude that internet marketing research is thriving. While the total amount of
research has declined slightly over the past year, the amount of research reaching the
top journals is slowly increasing. In addition, the review of the internet marketing
topics reveals that the internet impacts virtually every area of marketing. Interestingly,
internet marketing research seems to be shifting away from descriptive types of
studies (e.g. who is using the web for search and purchasing) towards research related
 to improving the effectiveness and efficiency of marketing by employing the web and Internet
understanding how and why consumers use the internet. It appears that editors and marketing
reviewers are pushing internet researchers to take this research stream to the next level
of understanding. research
A review of the topics currently being researched indicates that some areas of
research are receiving more attention than others. Table III lists the hottest topics
and those topics that have lost momentum. Currently, the hottest area of research is 731
consumer behavior. Within consumer behavior, hot topics include consumer
cognitions, motivations, search behavior, and satisfaction. As a note, much of the
current research is traditional consumer behavior topics with an internet twist. In
business marketing, the hottest topics are supply chain issues, sales management, and
relationship building. In the area of strategy and the four Ps, hot topics include
profitability, services, brand loyalty, communication effectiveness/IMC, website
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design, distribution integration topics and pricing. Other areas currently attracting
attention include legal and education issues along with research issues, especially data
collection and survey design issues.
Topics that have received considerable attention in the past but are currently
attracting little attention include demographics of users and non-users, international
related topics, best practices of internet marketers, banner advertising, ethics, and
privacy. It should be noted that while these are the current hot and not hot topics,
the list tends to change rapidly in this quickly evolving research field.
It is important to review where the internet marketing literature has been and where
it is currently; however, it is equally important to explore where this important topic is
headed. Arthur Hughes (2003), a long time proponent and consultant in the areas of
internet and database marketing recently noted that the internet has not fulfilled its
promises. He argues in his 2003 book titled, The Customer Loyalty Solution, that the
internet marketing has turned out to be a relative good ordering tool but a poor sales
tool. The evolution of the internet will be interesting to observe as is unfolds. Clearly,
marketers and consumers are still experimenting with their usage of the internet. The
importance of the internet, along with the many questions facing its future continues to

Hot topical areas Consumer behavior: especially consumer cognitions, motivations, search
behavior, and satisfaction
Much of the current research is traditional CB topics with an internet twist
Business-to-business: sales management and relationship issues
Strategy topics including: profitability, services
Communication topics: creativity, web site design, online communities,
experiences, e-mail issues
Brand loyalty and equity building on the web
Distribution integration topics
Pricing
Low interest areas Demographics of users and non-users
International
Best practices Table III.
Ethics Whats hot in internet
Privacy marketing research
 EJM grow. After reviewing the academic and popular business press literature there
41,7/8 appears to be three major research areas that are likely to grow in the next few years.
First, there is an overriding issue of consumer trust pertaining to the internet. Trust
in the safety and reliability of internet transactions is an unwavering prerequisite for
the whole e-business industry. With recent increases in phishing, identity theft, spam,
and consumer tracking activities, consumers are becoming less trusting of all activities
732 related to the Web. Indeed, there is an exponential growth of fraudulent activities on
the internet with ever more sophisticated and better organized virtual thieves
(Richmond, 2005). In this light, it is surprising that legal and ethical issues were only
covered by four publications in 2004. More research is thus needed that addresses the
ever-widening nature of trust and its impact on internet usage. Related to the trust
issue is government regulation and how this will impact internet marketing,
particularly in terms of how consumer protection, or the lack thereof, is seen as a
barrier to growth. Unfortunately, few marketing scholars are equipped to work in this
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area and even fewer have research experience with these topics.
The second area of future research is the issue of how consumers will use the
internet for marketing related activities in the years to come. When we use the term
consumer here we mean both individual and organizational consumers. For consumers
interested in becoming more knowledgeable shoppers, the internet can be an extremely
powerful buyer-controlled tool. We believe the next big area of research in this area will
involve consumer search issues such as flow.
Finally, the most intriguing internet marketing questions are strategy related. The
literature on internet marketing begs the question, now what? Where is the internet
headed? Will it simply evolve into a communication and distribution vehicle or will it
really alter the way all marketing is done. This issue was discussed in two recent
commentaries in the European Journal of Marketing. Holbrook and Hulburt (2002)
suggested that the new technologies like the internet will change marketing as we
know it today. In his reply to Holbrook and Hulburt (2002), McCole (2004) made a
compelling argument that the internet is simply a new and evolving marketing channel
that will find its place into the marketing mix of some, but certainly not all
organizations. At the 2005 Direct Marketing Associations annual conference, much of
the buzz from internet practitioners pertained to multi-channel consumer strategies
seemly supporting this point of view. Like all interested observers, we do not know
what impact of the internet will eventually have on the evolution of marketing.
However, we wonder if the field is being somewhat myopic in its view of the marketing
potential of the internet.
The analogy might be the invention and evolution of the automobile. When it was
first conceived, it was referred to as a horseless carriage. Most of the early
development and designs were based on this view. While its invention was significant,
it was not until Henry Ford combined the advancements of the combustible engine,
assembly line technology, and advancements in the manufacturing process that the
true potential of the automobile was realized. Perhaps the use of the internet as a
marketing tool is poised for bigger and better things. Only time will tell.

Summary
In summary, the future of internet marketing is bright. We have begun to understand
how the internet will affect the future of marketing. However, we believe the best
 research is yet to come. Many more issues remain unresolved than have been Internet
answered. We encourage the brightest and best researchers to explore its current usage
and evolving future.
marketing
research
References
Direct Marketing Association (2004), Economic impact: US direct and interactive marketing
today, special report, London. 733
Forrester Research Inc. (2005), available at: www.forrester.com/Research/Document
Holbrook, M.B. and Hulburt, J.M. (2002), Elegy on the death of marketing, European Journal of
Marketing, Vol. 36 Nos 5/6, pp. 706-32.
Hughes, A.M. (2003), The Customer Loyalty Solution, McGraw-Hill, New York, NY.
McCole, P. (2004), Marketing is not dead: a response to Elegy on the death of marketing,
European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 38 Nos 11/12, pp. 1349-54.
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Ngai, E.W.T. (2003), Internet marketing research (1987-2000): a literature review and
classification, European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 37 Nos 1/2, pp. 24-49.
Richmond, R. (2005), Hacker attacks grow; more key to identity fraud, The Wall Street Journal,
March 21, p. B5.
Zakon, R. (2005), Hobbes internet timeline 1993-2005, available at: www.zakon.org/robert/
internet/timeline/

Corresponding author
John A. Schibrowsky can be contacted at: john.schibrowsky@unlu.edu

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