Answer to Question 1
A good first step in building a customer-based marketing strategy is to identify groups of customers who share common characteristics. Creating a Web site that acknowledges those groups and treats each differently can make the site more accessible and useful to each group. This is often difficult for organizations to accomplish because most managers, quite naturally, think about their Web sites as models of their activities, and they view those activities from their own internal perspective. Instead, Web sites should be constructed to reflect the external perspective of each different user group that might use the site.
Answer to Question 2
The issue of place (also called distribution) is the need to have products or services available in many different locations. The problem of getting the right products to the right places at the best time to sell them has plagued companies since commerce began. Although the Internet does not solve all of these logistics and distribution problems, it can certainly help. For example, digital products (such as information, news, software, music, video, and e-books) can be delivered almost instantly through the Internet. Companies that sell products that must be shipped have found that the Internet gives them much better shipment tracking and inventory control tools than they have ever had before.