2. Projective techniques

Such techniques are based on respondent's performance of certain tasks given by marketer. The purpose is to have consumers (respondents) express their unconscious beliefs through projective stimuli; to express associations towards various symbols, images, signs.

Cooper (1996) suggested that projective techniques can be successfully employed to: - indicate emotional and rational reactions;

- provide verbal and non-verbal communication;

- give permission to express novel ideas;

- encourage fantasy, idiosyncrasy and originality;

- reduce social constraints and censorship;

- encourage group members to share and "open up".

Projective market research techniques can take following forms, presented below.

Collages – used to understand lifestyles and brand perceptions, respondents are asked to assemble a collage using images and symbols from selected sets of stimuli or from magazines and newspapers of their choice.

Picture completion – certain pictures can be designed to express and visualize issue under study and respondents have to make associations and / or attribute words to given pictures.

Analogies and metaphors are used when a larger range of projection is needed, with more complexity and depth of ideas and thoughts on a given brand, product, service, organization. The respondents are asked to freely express their association and analogies towards object being studied; or they can be asked to select from a set of stimuli (e.g. photos) those that fit examined subject.

Psycho-drawing is a technique that allows study participants to express a wide range of perceptions by making drawings of what they perceive brand is (or product, service).

Personalization consists in asking respondents to treat brand or product as if it is a person and start making associations or finding images of this person. This technique is especially recommended in order to understand what kind of personality consumers assign to a brand / product / service.

3. In-depth interviews

These techniques of marketing research put an accent on verbal communication and they are efficient especially when trying to discover underlying attitudes and motivations towards a product or a specific market / consumption situation.

Individual in-depth interviews are performed on a person-to-person environment and interviewer can obtain very specific and precise answers. Such interviews are common in B2B practices of market research, for example when a company conducts a research about a product among their existing corporate customers.

Interviews can be conducted by phone or via internet-based media, from a centralized location: this can greatly reduce costs associated with market research and results are pretty much as accurate as face-to-face ones. The only disadvantage would be lack of non-verbal, visual communication.

Focus groups are basically discussions conducted by a researcher with a group of respondents who are considered to be representative for target market.

Such meetings are usually held in an informal setting and are moderated by researcher. Videotaping sessions is common these days, and it can add more sources of analysis at a later time.

Focus groups are perhaps ideal technique, if available in terms of costs and time, to test new ideas and concepts towards brands and products; to study customers' response to creative media such as ads and packaging design or to detect trends in consumers' attribute and perception. One of important advantages of focus groups is presence of several respondents in same time, providing a certain synergy. Disadvantages refer mainly to costs involved and scarcity of good professionals to conduct interviews and discussions.

To conclude, we have to keep in mind just how important non-survey data collection techniques are in today's market research. Not only they provide more depth of analysis but they can be performed in significantly less time than surveys and they're more suitable to be employed during exploratory phases of international marketing research.

7. Implementation and control: consist in series of activities that must be performed in order to run marketing plan in accordance to objectives set by marketer. At this stage, it is critical to gain support of all members if organization, especially when marketing plan is due to affect organization from its grounds.

8. Performance measurement: constitutes last but not less important stage of marketing plan, since we can achieve only what we can measure. In order to measure performances achieved through marketing plan, we need to constantly monitor each previous stage of plan.

The marketing plan that has a feedback cycle, from 8th stage back to 4th. That is because sometimes during planning process, we might need to perform stages 4 to 8 several times before final plan can be written.

III. The e-marketing plan

The e-marketing plan is built exactly on same principles as classical plan. There is no different approach, but there might be some formal differences given by uniqueness of internet environment. Many of these differences come from necessity to ensure a high rate of responsiveness from customers, since e-world is moving faster and requires faster reaction from its companies, compared to traditional offline marketplace.

Even though it is perfectly acceptable and is a common practice to use 8-stage classic model for e-marketing plan as well, you might want to consider simplified version proposed by Chaffey, who identifies four major steps to build e-marketing plan:

1. Strategic analysis: consists in continuous scanning of macro- and micro-environment. The accent should fall on consumers' needs that change very rapidly in online market, as well as on surveying competitors' actions and evaluating opportunities offered by new technologies.

2. Defining strategic objectives: organization must have a clear vision and establish if media channels will complement traditional ones, or will replace them. We must define specific objectives (don't forget to check if they are SMART!) and we must also specify contribution of online activities to organization’s turnover.

3. Formulating strategies - we do that by addressing following essential issues:

- develop strategies towards target markets;

- positioning and differentiating strategies;

- establish priorities of online activities;

- focus attention and efforts on CRM and financial control;

- formulate strategies for product development;

- develop business models with well-established strategies for new products or services, as well as pricing policies;

- necessity for some organizational restructuring;

- changes in structure of communication channels.

4. Implementing strategies: includes careful execution of all necessary steps to achieve established objectives. It could refer re-launching of a website, promo campaigns for a new or rewritten site, monitoring website efficiency and many more.

Note: a common strategy to achieve e-marketing objectives is communication strategy. The steps to built a coherent communication plan will be presented within a further article.

IV. The e-marketing plan (sample titles)

1. Executive Summary a. overview upon present conjuncture; b. key aspects of strategic e-marketing plan.

2. Situational Analysis a. characteristics of e-market; b. possible factors of success; c. competitors’ analysis; d. technological factors; e. legal factors; f. social factors; g. possible problems and opportunities.

3. The e-Marketing Objectives a. product profile; b. target market; c. sales objectives.

4. The e-Marketing Strategies a. product strategies; b. price strategies; c. promotion strategies; d. distribution strategies.

5. Technical Issues a. website content; b. website "searcheability"; c. logging security (for customers and staff); d. customer registration procedure; e. multimedia; f. autoresponders; g. order forms and feedback forms; h. access levels to online resources; i. credit card transactions; j. website hosting; k. website publishing; l. technical staff (size, requirements)

6. Appendix

7. Bibliography