Paper info

DIGITISATION IN B2B MARKETING ENVIRONMENT AND FUTURE RESEARCH AGENDA

ALEKSANDRA BAVDAZ

The paper was published at the 34th IMP-conference in Marseille, France in 2018.

Over the span of the past two decades there have been major changes in marketing due to digital. Digitization has got an evident impact on marketing as a discipline, which is currently getting shaped by digital and digital is getting shaped by marketing (markets and actors) (Stephen&Lamberton, 2016). This paper examines the existing literature on digital impact on marketing in B2B environment and will provide a detailed review in this arena. The review tackles what new technology has brought about, regarding changes in traditional marketing models and techniques. This does not only concern technology for communicating, delivering value and maintaining value, but also changes in products and services, which were not imaginable by the scholarship before. Talking about firms’ strategies and tactics referring to business-to-business (B2B) interactions, they are currently going through major transformations as well. Some of the latter include the appearance of infomediaries (e.g. eBay), a chance to mitigate competition with better options for market segmentation and B2B auctions (Yadav&Pavlou, 2014). By introducing the framework, the purpose of this paper is to get familiar with the research that has been done in the field already and propose a strong research agenda for the future work. Some of the research opportunities include making the field of digital marketing more integrated and holistic by opening the currently “black-boxed” technology and getting more insights from practice. Specifically, there is a noticeable gap that have been identified in the literature already, such as lack of focus on B2B interactions in digital marketing. Further, this explains a plethora of papers being consumer-oriented and lacking marketing managers’ perspective on digitization. Academia as well wonders if marketing practitioners in firms are skilled enough to recognize the value of new technology and therefore decide to adopt it in the process. The latter opens many more questions and new research opportunities. This detailed review, outlining research questions and opportunities, will give a clear image of what scholars have to focus upon in their work. New future produced work will then establish a bridge between academia and practice, which are now in asynchrony (Kumar, 2017). Furthermore, filling the current gaps, will add to more strategic mindset in digital marketing, which contributes to integration and more holistic approach to it. Finally, the review as well emphasises that in the moment of now, the innovation and change are ongoing and have no defined final destination (Simkin&Quinton, 2016).