The Application Of E-Marketing On Catering Sector

With the emergence of e-commerce in China in late 90's of 20th century, the e-marketingcame into being, and has become prevalence in industries. It is well known that the cateringindustry is labor-intensive and with less technology applied. The objective of this paper is todiscuss how to apply the existing information technology in the traditional catering industry,so as to make e-marketing work in the catering industry.In 2005, the total turnover of the catering industry achieved RMB888.69billion, theprojection for 2006 would be over RMB 1000billion. Nowadays, the trend shows the cateringindustry is toward to leisure, nutrition, business meal focused, e-commerce, personalization,which implies more growth space in term of development of catering industry. Meanwhile,marketing in catering industry has been developed, many innovative marketing methods havebeen emerged, the application of e-marketing in catering industry grew in this context.E-commerce develops dramatically in China. Statistic shows that the market ofe-commerce reached RMB68billion in 2005 in China, and can be expected to RMB 170billionin 2007. With the tremendous development of e-commerce, e-marketing, as a mean ofmarketing in e-commerce era, has been broadly applied in various industries.In catering industry, e-marketing focuses on on-line meal booking and customerrelationship management. The vast information of on-line meal booking, as well as goodinteractivity provide probability to customer relationship management, many big cateringcompanies maintain their customer relationship via internet. On-line Meal Booking is novel,interactive, and convenient, which also pushes itself develop greatly.Currently, there have been many ways of on-line meal booking. This paper summarizesvarious ways of on-line meal booking for the first time, discusses about the issues currently inways of on-line meal booking, came up with model and provides solutions on how to developon-line meal booking business. The paper analyzes the catering industry current situation and trend of development,gives a brief introduction on e-commerce and e-marketing; Based on the overview ofe-marketing in catering industry, the study analyzes the application models of e-marketing incatering industry. At last, the paper focuses on the application of on-line meal booking.