13. On Determining the Effectiveness of Digital Marketing in Transnational e-Commerce

The development of e-commerce—as a relatively new type of entrepreneurial activity, and in other ways—objectively requires the development of an approach to determining cost-effectiveness. When organizing sales in new markets, the most significant consideration is the charges companies levy for advertising and marketing. When entering the foreign markets, however, the seller’s tasks become more complicated, as it is necessary to take into account the influence of new factors and circumstances which are often unfamiliar to the exporter. This is why marketing staff are developing methods for evaluating these costs. To date, several approaches have been developed to evaluate the cost-effectiveness of advertising and marketing. One of the most used methods is calculating the Return on Investment (ROI), i.e. the income from incurred expenses. However, this method is not always suitable, as it evaluates the return on short-term financial investments, and not those costs that become extended over a long period. As such, other methods should be considered—in particular, those based on accounting—for finding those customers that regularly make purchases from a particular seller. The authors aim to justify this approach and prove its feasibility.