Online Marketing in Firms with Professional and Legal Services: A Local Study

Joan Francesc Fondevila Gascón, Ana Beriain Bañares, Josep Lluís del Olmo Arriaga, David Andreu Domingo, Swen Seebach, Silvia Calviño Pérez
(Universitat Abat Oliba CEU (UAO CEU), Barcelona, España, Spain)

Abstract: The use of communication technologies as tools for effective and efficient communication seems to be essential for all kinds of public and private entities in current society. Small and big companies, public and private institutions, and those companies and professionalized individuals that overtake a part of the tasks of public and private bodies they all experiment with different technologies and developed over the last years different communication strategies in order to hold up with the demands of the markets and in order to promote themselves successfully. However, not all sectors adept to the rising importance of communication technologies in the same way, instead some are rather slow adaptors. This article focuses on the in Spain widely spread figure of the administrative business agent, a person who overtakes professionally all kinds of administrative tasks for different companies. We have carried out our research with firms with professional and legal services in the Spanish province of A Coruña. By the help of a quantitative analysis, we analyzed the spread and uses of new communication technologies in these small firms and tried to figure out whether and how they adapted to new technologies. Our results show that they are rather slow adapters that make only a very limited use of newest communication technologies.

Key words: online marketing; administrative business agents; administrative business agencies; technology; communication; A Coruña

JEL codes: M, M3