Over the last years, marketing and especially marketing communication have experienced an evolution. Briefly said, it has developed from the mass media to data- based systems and now to digitally driven, interactive approaches enabled by technology advancements and social developments (Malthouse et al., 2014, p. 233). According to Kaufman and Horton (2014), it can be also referred to the transition from outbound (organization to customers) to inbound marketing (customers to organization) (Kaufman et al., 2015, p. 100; Chaffey et al., 2009, p. 33). 2.4.1 The Shift from Traditional to Digital Marketing Before the Internet revolution, companies had the whole control over the entire marketing systems: identifying the products to be produced, choosing …show more content…
They open up new forms of interaction between organizations and consumers as well as new ways of information exchange. There is no need for customers to rely on the information of outbound marketing. With the help of the Internet they can research about brands and purchase online, etc. (Kaufman et al., 2015, p. 100). It is the customer who seeks information about the brand and starts to search on the web site or on social platforms. To put it differently, this new approach to marketing is also known as inbound marketing or using “pull media” (Chaffey et al., 2013, p. 34). It pulls consumers towards a product or services by providing personalized, relevant information and content aligned with consumers’ needs with the focus of constant customer engagement. Amongst authors such as Shah, Halligan (2009), Kaufman and Horton (2015), the creation of content, search marketing and social media are techniques of inbound marketing and are useful to generate demand (Kaufman et al., 2015, pp. 100-101). The new, interactive communication approach is not based on the stimulus-response model as it was in outbound or traditional marketing. It has shifted into a two- way dialogue. So, inbound marketing is a two- way communication system that is mainly