The importance of the web marketing strategies for the nurseries and gardening companies in the Southern Italy

Abstract

In the last years, the integrated use of internet in the company marketing strategies has brought about deep changes in the economic sector of the countries. The World Wide Web has become the most important way companies share business information with other enterprises (B2B) and with consumers (B2C). Consequently, the companies have modified the processes making significant changes, mainly in the fields of communication and sales. The study presented here is to be situated in the category of the B2C relations and is specifically addressed to the nurseries and gardening companies in the Southern regions of Italy that use the Internet as a communication and promotion tool. The goal of this paper is, on the one hand, to evaluate the website quality and, on the other hand, to verify the entrepreneurs’ perception of the role that the web-marketing strategies have on the companies economic performance. The results show that the websites are well-framed and with a well-groomed design, but lacking in the some essential functions able to improve the usability of the website. Moreover, the surveyed companies give a little importance to the customer and community services, in fact few of them have a chat or a forum. The adoption of the website as sales channel is hardly diffused. The website stimulated sales that were ultimately transacted both via phone, fax and email, and in the place of business. Finally, the increase of the business profits depends mainly on the additional customers.