The changing role of marketing: Digital transformation of marketing

Digitalization affects every aspect of a firm’s business model–from front-end to back-office, from how firms create value for their customers to how they capture value– and doing so can reshape every facet of the firm. By adapting their business models to the possibilities of technology, firms are facing an accelerating transformation of their activities, offering new opportunities for “out-of-the-box” development of new processes and tools, which effectively challenge deeply engrained functional silo- based thinking. Despite the ubiquity of digital transformation, much academic research still seems to take a functional view (Verhoef et al. 2019), where information systems look into the development and adoption of specific technologies (Nambisan et al. 2017) or analytics schemes (Davenport and Ronanki 2018), strategic management research focuses on understanding the role of new digitalized business models (Foss and Saebi, 2017), and marketing research focuses on what is generally called “digital marketing” or the development of an omni-channel environment (Verhoef et al. 2015; Lamberton and Stephen 2016; Kannan and Li 2017).

https://edoi.org/orp/index.php/joprem/article/view/3

The goal of this paper is to conduct a detailed review of research on foreign market entry alliances mediated by information technology (IT). This paper offers the conceptual structure of cross- border IT interactions and performance effects that is technically aware. It combines resource-based view (RBV) viewpoints and transaction cost economics (TCE), arguing that developing IT interface capabilities improves the commercial efficiency by enhancing interfirm relationship governance in the host location of the foreign partner. More relevant modulators are often known as IT-related threats and contextual limitations. It proposes concepts of IT capabilities, enhanced IT interfirm governance and improved IT marketing efficiency. Building from RBV and TCE, IT capital, relevant human resources, and IT integration, the capacity of companies to better manage the connection through joint control, interfirm collaboration, organizational formalization and hybrid centralisation is improved by the combination of RBV and TCE. These advantages contribute to increased marketing efficiency at the host place upstream and downstream. IT capabilities also lead to mitigating potential contextual constraints and threats. The paper presents a range of research ideas based on theory and literature that will be empirically evaluated in future studies. Top managers of companies currently or intend to enter into foreign market entry partnerships should consider carefully improving inter-company IT capabilities with regard to hardware and software preparation, human resources and organizational assets.

A comprehensive framework of Self-service technology in marketing

Self-service technology is growing enormously across the globe, but there is no clear theory that unites us in order to understand this type of service. It suggests an extensive conceptual frame, which includes numerous well known attitude theories, to illustrate how attitudes have a central role to play in shaping self-service intentions and behaviour. The system enables better consumers’ decisions to be understood and forecast through the detailed analysis of customer expectations towards the use of a technology-based auto service. You use the Internet to explain how our system can be used to research customer conduct relating to a certain self-service technology. Takes perspectives on technology-based self-service from the current literature and also integrates several specific features of the internet that influence theory. Discusses the practical effects of our marketing model and offers recommendations for future studies on technology-based self-service in general and the Internet in particular. It also contributes to attitudinal literature with its integrative approach to theory.

A Strategic Marketing Intelligence Platform

The authors develop a three-stage framework for strategic marketing planning, incorporating multiple artificial intelligence (AI) benefits: mechanical AI for automating repetitive marketing functions and activities, thinking AI for processing data to arrive at decisions, and feeling AI for analyzing interactions and human emotions. This framework lays out the ways that AI can be used for marketing research, strategy (segmentation, targeting, and positioning, STP), and actions. At the marketing research stage, mechanical AI can be used for data collection, thinking AI for market analysis, and feeling AI for customer understanding. At the marketing strategy (STP) stage, mechanical AI can be used for segmentation (segment recognition), thinking AI for targeting (segment recommendation), and feeling AI for positioning (segment resonance). At the marketing action stage, mechanical AI can be used for standardization, thinking AI for personalization, and feeling AI for relationalization. We apply this framework to various areas of marketing, organized by marketing 4Ps/4Cs, to illustrate the strategic use of AI.

Technology and marketing: a multidisciplinary outlook

New technologies have revolutionized nearly every aspect of human existence, including the ways that firms market products and services to consumers. Along with now familiar innovations like the Internet, greater computing capacity, mobile devices and applications, and social media, more radical innovations are emerging. Related to artificial intelligence (AI) (Davenport 2018), the Internet of things (IoT) (Hoffman and Novak 2018), and robotics (Mende et al. 2019), these technological advances are exerting profound effects on the practice of marketing. Thus, it should come as no surprise that firms across nearly every business sector (e.g., retailing, manufacturing, healthcare, financial) keep steadily increasing their technology spending, driven to reach various objectives. For example, many manufacturing firms seek cost savings through mechanized and robotic production processes, which both limit labor costs and increase production efficiencies. Retailers and service firms devote more spending to online, mobile, and social media platforms in attempts to better communicate and connect with customers (both current and potential), thereby increasing their revenues. Early adopters of each new technology change the rules of the game (e.g., Grewal 2019). Consider Amazon as an example: It leads the pack in adopting a host of technological innovations. Its fulfillment centers feature robotic technologies to assist workers, increase efficiencies, and drive down costs. Amazon is actively experimenting with drone delivery (a service it calls Prime Air). Furthermore, it is known for its predictive analytic capabilities, uses AI to establish and maintain its sophisticated personalized recommendation system, and has developed an innovative, patented, one-click ordering system. Ride-sharing firms like Uber and Lyft similarly have revolutionized traditional taxi and limousine industries, as well as providing novel work opportunities and greater customer control over their rides. Such groundbreaking shifts also depend heavily on the available technology, including geofencing and social media ratings capabilities. Newer options, such as autonomous vehicles, are on the horizon and likely to shake up the ride-sharing industry and ultimately the entire transportation industry. Waymo (Google’s self-driving vehicle), Tesla, and Volvo are all racing to introduce the first driverless test vehicles to create value for consumers and business customers.

The role of marketing and innovation in services

Big data technologies and analytics enable new digital services and are often associated with superior performance. However, firms investing in big data often fail to attain those advantages. To answer the questions of how and when big data pay off, marketing scholars need new theoretical approaches and empirical tools that account for the digitized world. Building on affordance theory, the authors develop a novel, conceptually rigorous, and practice-oriented framework of the impact of big data investments on service innovation and performance. Affordances represent action possibilities, namely what individuals or organizations with certain goals and capabilities can do with a technology. The authors conceptualize and operationalize three important big data marketing affordances: customer behavior pattern spotting, real-time market responsiveness, and data-driven market ambidexterity. The empirical analysis establishes construct validity and offers a preliminary nomological test of direct, indirect, and conditional effects of big data marketing affordances on perceived big data performance.

A comprehensive framework of technology in marketing: Theory and applications

The goal of this paper is to conduct a detailed review of research on foreign market entry alliances mediated by information technology (IT). This paper offers the conceptual structure of cross- border IT interactions and performance effects that is technically aware. It combines resource-based view (RBV) viewpoints and transaction cost economics (TCE), arguing that developing IT interface capabilities improves the commercial efficiency by enhancing interfirm relationship governance in the host location of the foreign partner. More relevant modulators are often known as IT-related threats and contextual limitations. It proposes concepts of IT capabilities, enhanced IT interfirm governance and improved IT marketing efficiency. Building from RBV and TCE, IT capital, relevant human resources, and IT integration, the capacity of companies to better manage the connection through joint control, interfirm collaboration, organizational formalization and hybrid centralisation is improved by the combination of RBV and TCE. These advantages contribute to increased marketing efficiency at the host place upstream and downstream. IT capabilities also lead to mitigating potential contextual constraints and threats. The paper presents a range of research ideas based on theory and literature that will be empirically evaluated in future studies. Top managers of companies currently or intend to enter into foreign market entry partnerships should consider carefully improving inter-company IT capabilities with regard to hardware and software preparation, human resources and organizational assets.