New Digital Markets

 The recurring changes brought about by technological evolution have impacted societies and markets. Consumer culture has been changing gradually. With the increase in mobility and connectivity, consumers now have limited time to examine and evaluate brands. In a fast-paced world,our attention span tends to go down; people find it increasingly difficult to concentrate. Yet, across multiple channels—online and offline alike— consumers remain exposed to an excess of everything: product features, brand promises and sales pitches. Confused by advertising messages that are too good to be true, customers often overlook them, preferring to turn to more reliable sources of information: their social circle of friends and immediate family. 

 The change in comsumer behaviour in different societies and social groups has directly influenced the market as a whole, pressing it to meet their demands, hitherto repressed, and making it present in the most varied media and platforms. There is virtually no doubt that the digital revolution is one of the most significant influences on consumer behaviour and that the web's impact will continue to expand as more and more people around the world turn to the online world for information and services. Many of us are eager to browse the internet, and it's hard to imagine a time when texting, tweeting, using Facebook, or pinpointing interests on Pinterest wasn't part of our daily lives. In view of the above, the importance of the internet and its influence in the current global market and its social context is undeniable.

 According to a report by We Are Social (2021), web platforms are present in the daily lives of 59.5% of the world population, that is, the internet today has more than 4.5 billion connected users. In this sense, the need for companies to understand that more points of contact and higher volume in messages do not necessarily translate into greater influence. More than that, you need to stand out from the crowd and meaningfully connect with consumers at just a few crucial points of contact. One of the first business models that relate the market to the internet is the well-known e-commerce, the process of buying and selling products by electronic means, such as mobile and Internet applications, both for the retail and online shopping sector, as well as electronic transactions. With the advent of globalisation, commerce is no longer limited to going to the physical store of your choice to choose a product; with one click we can check competing offers, choose brands, see what other buyers say about the product, all in real time. The growing success of commercial transactions of this type is due to the fact that online retailers can predictably provide convenient, informative and personalised experiences for quite different types of consumers and businesses. 

 We can distinguish between entirely virtual companies, which started with a website, with no previous existence as a physical company, and virtual and real companies (brick-and-click), companies that have added an informational website and/or e-commerce option to their operations.