Furthermore, while the traditional approach has been a mass-market one, the Internet offers interactions with individual customers. The traditional consumer has evolved from a passive recipient to an active designer in the entire process. For most of this century, consumers have been either "product takers" or "price takers".

However, the developments in online systems that allow consumers to choose their own product characteristics and companies to develop customised products have changed the entire scenario. The customer today is getting into a stage of getting what he wants, when he wants and how he wants.

Consumers not only have more access to information but also more channels for getting it. The Net complementing other communication mediums like the television, radio etc has brought down the information barriers. Consumers want the best offer and will go to the next best one. They are even willing to be flexible about brands and product features in exchange for low pricing. Thus it is imperative for a company to offer a genuine value proposition to attract and transact with this new Avtar. Thus, in the Internet age, the question we need to ask is whether customer loyalty is a reality or wishful thinking. Why should customers be loyal to manufacturers? Doesn't the very nature of their relationship warrant conflicting interests?

Therefore to succeed, business processes need to be geared from a consumer perspective rather than a manufacturers' perspective. The focus too needs to shift to empowering the consumer to make the right choices and decisions.

Customers are increasingly demanding multiple options to interact with a company and the ability to integrate the various channels of communication into seamless automated processes creates a very valuable point of differentiation for a company.

Marketers not only need to analyse customer behaviour across multiple touch points, but they must also deliver marketing programmes across multiple channels. Proactive e-CRM systems, that allow personalised interaction, thus need to be designed fundamentally from a customer's perspective, and with a holistic approach to integrating lead generation, lead conversion and the consumer fulfillment processes.

The mantra now indeed is end-to-end management from initial interaction through fulfillment. All information about the customer and his or her transaction history should be available to anyone in the enterprise who needs to have access to it The role of distribution is to make products available at the right time at the right place and in the right quantities.

Companies till now were focused on maximising benefits from their sub-optimal distribution riyasats. The ability to process orders electronically and increased speed of communications via the Net provides marketers an excellent opportunity to reduce physical distribution costs, speed communication and delivery times, and improve customer service. The interactivity allows firms to develop closer working relationships with members of their supply chain. Networking supply chain members and selective disinter mediation helps reduce inefficiencies, costs and redundancies in the entire marketing channel.

Digital marketers should give due attention to the consumers' online experiences for the simple reason that it is this experience - good, bad, or indifferent - influence consumer perceptions of a product or a brand. The Web offers companies ownership and control of all interactions with customers and thus creates both the ability and the need to improve their overall experience. Building a brand and getting people to buy depends not only on blaring ads, but also squarely on creating a seamless buying experience that spurs people to tell others about it. On the Web it is the customer experience that creates the brand. A company's ability to promise - to deliver what the consumer wants, when he wants it and where he wants it - depends on how well the knowledge of consumer needs is integrated with the company's design and manufacturing systems. Through neural technologies and data mining, real time demand forecasting and integration of consumer demands with manufacturing practices has become a reality todayThe new age demands bulls eye marketers, who focus on consumers and use the Web to streamline tangled old business processes and make the trains - and the goods - arrive on time. One needs to bear in mind that there is a sharp dividing line between companies that cling to the past and those that invent the future. That line, increasingly is no longer between older established companies and spanking new ones. It's between those organisations that are using the web to spike innovation and those that aren't. Surprisingly what distinguishes many of the most web savvy companies is not their technical prowess but their imagination. Everyone has access to Net technology. The crucial question is who has the brains, creativity and guts to take full advantage of it.

RK Caprihan is the CEO of Jaldi.com