ACCEPTANCE OF INTERNET ADVERTISING BY USERS IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC

Marketing activities and e-commerce are taken among the most topical themes in the world. Advertising is commercial promotion of goods, services, companies and ideas, usually performed by an identified sponsor, and performed through a variety of media. Internet advertising is a recent phenomenon. Marketers see internet advertising as a part of an overall promotional strategy. The majority of marketing directors in the world plan to involve the internet into their marketing mix. The paper presents results of the marketing research realised by University of Pardubice in conjunction with University of Zilina. The aim of this research was find out the views of Czech internet users relating with internet advertising. This marketing research of Czech internet users was realised through so-called CAWI (Computer Assisted Web Interviewing) method, which is taken as the most up to date way of interviewing of respondent based on internet utilization. There were two basic segments defined as a target group of our research, namely business segment (i.e. firms) and non-business segment (i.e. single internet users). Characteristic sample of this marketing research was random sample of 400 respondents (200 from business segment and 200 from non-business segment) because of overall financial demands of this research and requirement on quick primary data obtaining and follow-up processing. The data obtained from the electronic questionnaire were divided into six categories to both business and non-business segments: 1. Segment identification. 2. Access to the internet and its utilization. 3. Types of internet advertising and perception of advertising by internet users. 4. Demands made on internet advertising. 5. General attitude to internet advertising. 6. SPAM. Some interesting findings resulted from this research, for example to both segments the most acceptable and efficient form of internet advertising is an animated banner. Respondents from both of these segments also thought that successful internet advertising should be credible, understandable, original and polite and also should contain important information related to advertised goods or services.