A Conceptual Study on Reflected Learning and Emerging Challenges in Digital Journey

Abstract

Today, for most kind of businesses, digitalization is a fundamental agent of transition. As such, digitalization is not a unitary issue. Digitalization can be approached in various ways as it provides opportunities and threats on various dimensions. The present research paper identifies and also examines four stages of marketing’s digitalization journey till date, and also points of interest along the way. The journey of digitalization provides a narrative and metaphor through which to understand complex and persistent changes that which is occurring within the digitalization of marketing. So far, the digital journey has no final destination yet, but to a certain extent, it is possible to identify an origin as well as chart its route. The confluence of digital convergence with both social and environmental phenomena is creating new divides whose multifactorial nature can be analyzed using principles of complex adaptive systems. Reflecting on the digital journey, insights emerge, which do pose ongoing challenges for businesses and also for the marketing discipline in general. New options, opportunities, options for routes to markets, brand building, communication, relationship development, trailing pricing, sourcing, product development as well as major platform for innovation. Digitization is the conversion of atoms to bits—replacing paper with electronic files, pictures with JPEG images, music with MP3s. It is thus the transformation of all those bits into value. Through efficiency gains and reduced error rates, digitization may deliver some savings most commonly but it doesn’t change how the company does its business—how it thinks about, creates and also delivers value-laden products and services. The major implications for businesses stemming out from marketing’s digital journey are certainly detailed along with possible avenues for further research, to develop further understanding of digitization aspects. Contributions in the form of theoretical aspects made in this paper include both a novel mapping of the complex trajectory of marketing’s digitization through an articulation and significant visualization of major four gaps in current research and also practice knowledge within marketing. The gaps mentioned here focus on the need for a strategic view, the issue of technical silos, the changing conceptions of time, and the tension between empowered consumers and their over reliance on pre-filtered information. The present paper also provides a critical appraisal of the digital journey so far, thus resulting in a distilled conceptualization and a focused route map, which should help to guide future researchers working on digitalization.