Webcare as an Integrative Tool for Customer Care, Reputation Management, and Online Marketing: A Literature Review

Abstract

Every business, everywhere, faces challenges in the market spaces and places of the 21st century and no market is immune. Competitive forces are heightening and accelerating. Governments have intervened (often with little discernible effect), and customers – the lifeblood of any business – are not more demanding and more discerning of what businesses and brands are and what they stand for. Technological progress has opened up new horizons for innovation and communication, with social media transmitting news within seconds to different parts of the world. These shifting tectonic plates of communication overlay the gravitational economic forces which necessitate integration of on and offline communications. There are no invisible companies, and what happens in one market is transmitted instantly via global media to receptive consumer VDUs – computer, television, and cell-phone screens – or is almost immediately accessible. The world of information accessibility and the concomitant demise of corporate invisibility is today's world, and it is a communications reality in the 21st century.This edited book enables readers to develop knowledge, insight, skills, and facility into integrated communications within the postmodern era – a topic of relevance everywhere. This book is based on the papers presented at a conference hosted in Turkey, a rapidly developing nation and one enjoying significant growth in the global marketplace.