Portals-Gateways for Marketing

Marketers need to understand the role portals play in the search behaviour of consumers for various products and services over the Internet. Portals, which simply mean gateways to the Internet, are slowly reaching a mature phase of the product life cycle. Many claim that their roles are changing to become more or less like very large “aggregators” for the marketing of products and services. There needs to be a good understanding of the importance and value portals can bring to the marketing function in terms of advancing the concept of relationship marketing, and also understanding key consumer behaviour habits at Web sites, in order to design real “user-friendly” portal models for marketing.