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Introduction
Over the past 15 years, the internet as a global communication and exchange medium has witnessed meteoritic growth. Globally, the number of web sites increased from 23,000 in 1995 to more than 644 million in 2012 ([1] Business Insider, 2012). In the USA alone, total internet driven sales revenues have grown from a negligible amount in 1995 to $256 billion in 2011 ([14] Statista, 2013); and are expected to reach 327 billion by 2016 ([6] Forrester Research, Inc., 2012). At the same time, online sales in Europe are projected to reach 171 billion euros ($230 billion) by 2016, up from 96.7 billion euros ($130 billion) in 2011 ([6] Forrester Research, Inc., 2012). The more recent growth in online sales is being driven in part by improvements in mobile and tablet technology, and social media ([7] Internet Retailer, 2012). Long-term, internet marketing and e-commerce sales growth is expected to outpace that of more traditional channels.
The launch and growth of the internet have spurred considerable interest in the academic community. As evidence, the number of published internet marketing articles increased from a mere three articles in 1995 to over 2000 in 2012. In one of the first review articles of its kind, the European Journal of Marketing published a 14-year review of the internet marketing literature for the years 1987-2000 ([9] Ngai, 2003). Over that timeframe a total of 270 internet marketing articles were identified, or an average of 19 articles per year. From 2001 to 2004, an additional 639 internet marketing articles were published; an average of 160 per year and an 843 percent increase over 1987-2000 ([11] Schibrowsky et al. , 2007). Since 2004, scholars have taken a more focused approach when reviewing the internet marketing literature. For example, reviews have covered specific areas such as the adoption, application and impact of internet technologies ([4] Doherty and Ellis-Chadwick, 2010), small business research ([5] El-Gohary, 2010), e-health care ([8] Mukherjee and McGinnis, 2007), and specific areas such as marketing communications and advertising ([2] Cho and Khang, 2006). While these reviews offer insight into internet marketing trends, a lack of commonality in search terms and disparate topical coverage have led to wide variation in categorization schemes. Given these categorical concerns and the commercial importance...