Information technology and digital marketing strategy:
A systematic literature review
Rudmer Abma S2961903 r.m.abma@student.rug.nl Supervisor: Dr. I. Maris - de Bresser Co-assessor: N. Renting 21-06-2020 Master Thesis MSc Change Management Faculty of Economics and Business
University of Groningen
Abstract
Introduction
The adoption of information technology (IT) in organizations involves changes in their structures and processes in order to become effective (Brynjolfsson and Hitt, 2000). Brynjolfsson and Hitt (2000) argue that in order for IT investments to become successful, they need to be adopted as part of mutually reinforcing organizational changes in for example work practises, strategy, products and services. Zammuto, Griffith, Majchrzak, Dougherty and Faraj (2007) argued for the importance of studying the changes in organizations caused by the adoption of information technology throughout all corners of society, because “it does not make sense to study the dynamics of human behavior within organizations without taking into account how information technologies might affect it.” (p. 760). Zammuto et al. (2007) state that, “as the relationship between IT and organization evolves, the potential for new forms of organizing is continually created” (p. 750).
Zammuto et al. (2007) call for more research on these new forms of organizing caused by the usage of IT. Studying this, will enable us to understand how the usage of technology emerges and evolves when technological and organizational features change, and new combinations of IT and organizational features are made. Digital marketing is such a new form of organizing, within the traditional marketing processes in organizations, that is fully dependent on the usage of IT. This makes it an interesting subject for studying the relationship between organizations and IT usage. Digital marketing is defined as “the process in which organizations and existing or potential customers, create and exchange value and products, through the internet” (Visser and Sikkenga, 2018, p. 14). According to Visser and Sikkenga (2018) digital marketing has got an increasingly important role in the marketing strategy, as the internet has become an important part of our lives. In the strategy, the plan of how you are going to reach your objectives, is summarized.
Leonardi (2011) argues that people perceive technology in terms of how it helps or constraints them in meeting their objectives. In the theory of affordances, ‘affordances’ and ‘constraints’ are used as concepts to respectively characterize the presence and absence of these possibilities for goal oriented action, afforded by technical objects (Markus and Silver, 2008). Therefore, these affordances and constraints influence how people do their work and meet their goals, or in other words; implement their strategy. Looking at the affordances and constraints of technologies in terms of what it enables organizations or specific user groups to do, is called an affordance approach (Markus and Silver, 2008). It enables researchers to look at the influences of IT usage in organizations in more depth, without blackboxing the technology.
best of my knowledge, no systematic literature review which uses an affordance approach has been done on this topic. The goal is to develop a model that distinguishes between the different technologies in terms of their affordances and constraints and how they are used to achieve certain digital marketing objectives. In this way, it gives insight in what these technologies, and their features, enable organizations to do in terms of digital marketing. This is different from what has been done before, in the sense that its main goal is to give an overview of specific IT functionality and usage, instead of a framework for future research. Such a review is relevant, because it helps to explain the relation between the usage of technology and the organizational changes, in terms of strategy implementation, that are caused by it (Treem and Leonardi, 2012). In sum, it gives insight into what is generally understood to be the affordances and constratints of certain information technology, and the way in which these affordances and constraints influence how organizations organise their digital marketing processes. Therefore, by performing a systematic literature review of the most recent literature regarding IT usage for digital marketing, I will answer the following question: How do affordances and constraints of IT influence digital marketing strategy implementation?
This systematic literature review aims to make a contribution to the existing literature by reviewing the state-of-the-art academic literature on IT usage for digital marketing. More specifically, the articles will be reviewed from an IT affordance perspective in order to be able to identify what affordances and constraints each IT offers for digital marketing and what consequences this has for digital marketing strategy implementation. The findings will be used to develop a model that systematically shows the affordances and constraints of the different technologies mentioned in the literature, and the implications of the usage of these technologies for digital marketing strategy. First of all, this model will give insight into what the different technologies enable organizations to do in terms of digital marketing. Secondly, it will clarify how specific functions of the technologies, influence how the technologies are deployed in order to reach specific objectives.
Relating this to the practical field, this study will give an insight into the possible functionality of IT and specifically the functionality of IT usage for digital marketing. This is relevant for managers as this overview can help them in choosing the IT that is most useful for achieving their company objectives. Also, it can help them to critically assess their current usage of IT for digital marketing. The company can for example be stuck in their perceptions of the functionality of technologies whilst they afford more. Next to this, other IT could be more effective for reaching their digital marketing goals.
presented. In the discussion the research question will be answered by means of this final model and, implications (theoretical and practical), limitations and overall conclusions on the study will be given.
Methodology
A systematic literature review is a “systematic, explicit, and reproducible method for identifying, evaluating, and synthesizing the existing body of completed and recorded work produced by researchers, scholars, and practitioners.” (Okoli and Schrabram, 2010, p. 4). The sole purpose is to review the literature in the field, instead of collecting and analysing new or original primary data (Okoli and Schrabram, 2010). According to Fink (2005) a systematic literature review must be rigorous in its methodology, explicit in explaining how the review was conducted, including all relevant literature on the topic and reproducible by others. Because of the substantial amount of literature on the topic of IT usage for digital marketing, a systematic literature review was the perfect method that helped me to map and organize what was written so far. This method is suitable for my review because my aim is to synthesize the knowledge into a model that explains IT usage for digital marketing and could possibly be used by practitioners. Because of this, all relevant literature needed to be included in order to get the full picture and ensure that the final model matches reality as much as possible. Next to this, the process of search, selection and analysis needs to be transparent and reproducible in order to guarantee the credibility of my results for researchers and practitioners. A narrative review would be too open-ended and make the claims I aim to make, too audacious and less credible.
For the remainder of this methodology section, I will describe how I searched for, selected and analysed the literature. I will do this as explicitly as possible in order to show the rigorousness and ensure the reproducibility of the review.
Search and selection
(26.618), I used the search tool that searches for words in the abstract of title of the article. Here, I entered the search keys ‘information technology’ and thereafter ‘strategy’ which strongly relate to my research topic. After this, I refined the search by checking the boxes of the categories: Management and Business. This ensured that I ended up with articles that were published in management and business journals. At last, I refined the results by checking the boxes of the years of 2014 to 2020 in order to end up with the most recent articles. I chose 2014 as a starting point of this review because of two reasons. First of all, I wanted to review the most recent literature in order to be able to take into account all the recent developments in IT and IT usage for digital marketing. Secondly, since this systematic literature review is written as a master thesis, the amount of articles that I was able to review was limited. Enlarging the time period by moving the starting point to 2007 (when Zammuto et al. (2007) called for research), would have made the sample of articles too big for the scope of a master thesis.
Table 1. In- and exclusion criteria.
From this search path I ended up with 202 articles of which I read the abstract (if sufficiently informing, otherwise also the introduction and conclusion) and used the in- and exclusion criteria summarized in Table 1 to select the articles appropriate for this review. First, I determined if the article related to the usage of information technology for marketing. Ofcourse, the main criteria in the back of my mind was that the article could help me with answering my research question. Therefore, I did not include studies that talked about IT in general, but did include articles that focussed on specific tools used for digital marketing or specific forms of these technologies. With this last statement I mean that, for example with social media, the discussion of Twitter or Facebook was also deemed sufficient. I also did not include articles that focussed solely on internal branding or internal marketing, because these would relate more to the employee motivation (believing in the usefulness of the product or service the organization offers) than the change in marketing processes caused by the usage of IT. From this pile of 202 articles I selected 62 that were suitable for my research of which eight were not in English or non-accessible, meaning that I eventually ended up with a sample of 53 articles that were analysed.
Data analysis
Table 2. Categorization of the articles.
Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick (2019). For each question, I will explain the theory, definitions or models that were used. Also, I will elaborate on how it was used in the analysis of the articles and what I specifically looked for.
An affordance approach.James Gibson (1986) first mentioned the concept of affordance as
he argued how various animals could perceive a certain object very differently in terms of what they could do with it. He argued that animals do not perceive what an object is, but perceive the kind of uses it affords. For example, a rock can be used for sheltering by ants, while it can be used by monkeys for opening nuts. In light of Gibson’s (1986) argumentation, people do not interact with the physical features of an object without perceiving what they can do with it. The concept evolved and is now often used as a means to explain the interaction between humans and technology. Hutchby (2001) emphasized the relational character of affordances. In this characterization the affordances are constituted in the relationships between people and the features of a technological object, and not solely by humans (as with Gibson’s (1986) conceptualization). Hutchby (2001) argues that the affordances of an artifact can change across different contexts, while the features of a technological object stay the same. Namely, within these different contexts people can have different goals that causes them to perceive a technology as affording distinct possibilities for action.
Markus and Silver (2008) also use a relational approach to affordances like Hutchby, and also emphasize that having different goals can lead to perceiving a technology as affording distinct possibilities for action. Markus and Silver (2008) add to this that specific user groups, like for example marketeers, will perceive a technology as affording different possibilities for action than for example an office manager, because they have different objectives. Markus and Silver (2008) define affordances as “the possibilities for goal oriented action afforded to specific user groups by technical objects” (p. 622). I took a firm's perspective in reviewing the articles and therefore I focussed on the technologies that were described as being in the possession or under full control of the organizations in relation to its usage and implementation. Since, in line with the definition by Markus and Silver (2008), the technology affords the possibility for goal oriented action to specific user groups, which in this case is the marketing department of an organization. Therefore, only affordances and constraints of the technologies that could be controlled or possessed for the marketing practises in organizations were included in the final model.
where the functionality of the technology was discussed for organizations, but even more so for marketers or managers. I looked out for wording such as ‘capacity to’, ‘enables’, ‘allowing marketers to’, ‘permit managers to’, ‘serve as a tool for‘ etc. In this process, I tried to make a clear distinction between; what the technology enabled the organization, or specific employee, to do, and how or for what purposes the technology was used. This last dimension either relates to the strategic implementation, or the ability to achieve a certain marketing objective. For example, following the affordance approach, when a certain technology is described as a communication tool that enables to provide customers with advertisement, the main feature of this tool is that it affords communication in the sense of informing. Namely, it allows digital marketers to provide customers with information on a possible sale for example. Continuing on this, the fact that the technology is used for promotional purposes is not what the technology affords the marketeer to do, but a means through which a marketing tactic (advertisement) is communicated to customers.
The same analytical approach applies for the constraints of the technology. Except for the fact that, here, the focus was on what the technology did not enable organizations or managers to do. The key wording that I looked out for was ‘it has the constraints’, ‘is not suitable for’, ‘the barriers of’. I also experienced that, where the abilities of the technologies were discussed, the constraints of the technologies followed after ‘however’.
Digital marketing strategy implementation. In order to explain how I analysed the articles
concerning the second part of my research question, I will first give an overview of the main definitions and models I used for this analyses. After this, I will continue to explain more specifically how I analysed the articles.
Digital marketing is defined as “the process in which organizations and existing or potential customers, create and exchange value and products, through the internet” (Visser and Sikkenga, 2018, p. 14). Visser and Sikkenga (2018) state that although digitalization has not changed the way in which marketing strategy comes into being, the importance of digital marketing in this strategy has grown. Therefore, the goals of digital marketing strategy are similar to the aims of traditional marketing strategies in growing a business through customer acquisition and retention (Chaffey and Ellis-Chadwick, 2019). Therefore, I did not only focus on the digital marketing strategy, but also the place of IT in the marketing strategy in general, while reading the articles. The Chartered Institute of Marketing (2015) defines marketing as “the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements efficiently and profitably.” (p. 2).
what objective, but also, if this objective related to marketing. For example, when articles mention that the usage of a certain technology improves the organizational performance, this is to vague to infer that it relates to marketing, let alone understand in what way it helps digital marketing practise. Therefore, the definition of marketing of The Chartered Institute of Marketing (2015) was used in order to determine if this was the case. Next to this, the 5S model from Chaffey and Smith (2017) was used, to give clarity into what are generally agreed to be the objectives of digital marketing and structure the findings related to the implementation of digital marketing strategy (see Table 3). They state that digital marketing strategy is influenced by how you prioritize your objectives (sell, serve, speak, save and sizzle) and the amount of resources available (Chaffey and Smith, 2017). A significant part of these resources are the technologies (or digital marketing tools) used to get closer to customers in order to identify, anticipate and satisfy their needs efficiently and effectively (Chaffey and Smith, 2017).
relation to achieving marketing goals, were contrasted. This exposed how the features or constraints of the digital technologies respectively helped or blocked marketing practise in relation to traditional marketing.
The results of the analysis in which these two perspectives have been applied, are presented in the next chapter.
Findings
Figure 2. Number of articles published per year.
A notable amount of studies (Li and Chang, 2016; Semeradova & Vávrová, 2016; Sun et al., 2017; Abou-Shouk et al., 2016; Yilmaz and Aytekin, 2018; Dieck et al., 2018; Kuo et al., 2019) were conducted in the hospitality or tourism industry (see Figure 3). The same applies to online retailing (Pousttchi and Hufenbach, 2014; Escobar-Rodríguez and Bonsón-Fernández, 2017; Al-Debei et al., 2015; Christino et al., 2019; Pappas, 2016). The rest of the studies are conducted in a variety of other industries, however, the before mentioned industries stand out when it comes to the attention they get. While online retail involves a wide range of products and/or services (fashion, consumer electronics, etc.), the hospitality and tourism industry is a very specific sector that is remarkably often used as a context to study IT usage for digital marketing.
Figure 3. Number of articles per industry.
As was mentioned in the methods, the articles were divided in two categories (see Table 2). Studies that took more of a strategy perspective, rendered the technology more to the background as the main focus of the study related to the consequences of the usage of (certain) technologies for the marketing of the organization's products and services. Studies that took more a technology perspective often also included the consequences of the usage of IT, but also focussed more on the functionality of the technologies for marketing processes. Being published in management and business journals, makes it logical that the majority of the studies eventually go into the practical implications for organizations. Because marketing concerns the distribution, promotion and sales of product and/or services (Chaffey and Smith, 2017), most implications revolved around these themes.
In the following sections I will first show which technologies were mostly discussed in the literature. Subsequently, I will explain for each of these technologies, the affordances and constraints that came forth from the analysis of the literature. Secondly, I will focus on the strategic implications of the usage of each of these technologies structured by the five objectives of digital marketing from Chaffey and Smith (2017).
Technology
and Yang, 2020; Yahia et al., 2018) while others discuss multiple (Chen and Lamberti, 2016; Fernandez-Cavia et al., 2017). Websites, social media, mobile technologies (applications or SMS), email and big data analytics (hereafter: BDA) were the main technologies that recurred across the literature.
An important aspect that stood out while reading the articles was the fact that these concepts are not always as straightforward as they seem. This mainly relates to the conceptualization of social media, websites and mobile applications. Some articles (Assimakopoulos et al., 2017) state that social media encompasses a wide range of online platforms where consumers can interact with each other and organizations. This includes social networking sites, but also “company sponsored discussion boards and chat rooms, consumer-to-consumer e-mail, consumer product or service ratings websites and forums” (Assimakopoulos et al., 2017, p. 534). Other studies (Chen and Lamberti, 2016; Wang et al., 2016) refer to the integration of the same social platforms (discussion boards or service ratings) in websites or mobile applications. This makes the separation between these technologies difficult and unclear. I will assign the affordances, constraints and strategic implications to the specific technologies in the same way the majority of the articles do this, and not specifically look for what feature should actually be ascribed to a different technology. This blurring of the dividing characteristics of technologies, is caused by the fact that technologies constantly develop and therefore can comprise more features over time. In other words, the technologies gain more affordances and these affordances should therefore also be ascribed to these technologies.
throughout the sample, these last two technologies are not in the possession or control of the organization and therefore fall beyond the scope of the analyses.
Table 4 gives an overview of the affordances and constraints per technology. I will elaborate on what is generally agreed to be the affordances and constraints of each technology. I will also discuss possible inconsistencies and contradictions within the literature concerning these affordances and constraints.
Websites. The two main affordances of websites are communication and performing
transactions. It can be used both as a channel to inform customers as well as create a two-way dialogue between customer and organization. Next to this, a website “is fully capable of performing transactions” (Chen and Lamberti, 2016, p. 609). According to Abou-Shouk et al. (2018), advanced adapters of e-commerce, a transaction where the terms of trade and the selling process are established online, use an interactive website with online payment. Fernandez-Cavia et al. (2017) emphasize the more static and one-to-many fashion of websites or “the lack of dynamism and personalization” (p. 269). Fernandez-Cavia et al. (2017) mainly puts the information providing capacity of website to the foreground, which lack the interactive aspect. Still, the majority of the articles expose the fact that most websites have passed the non-interactive phase with the arrival of web 2.0 technologies (Abou-Shouk et al., 2016). For example, Semeradova and Vávrová (2016) argue that customers can make reservations, maintain active dialogue or provide feedback via the website.
Christino et al. (2019) studied cashback programs in a specific form of digital marketing called; affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is a marketing practice where goods and services of an organization are promoted on the website of other businesses (affiliates) (Christino et al., 2019). When the promotion on an affiliates’ website results in a conversion or sales lead for the organization, the affiliate receives a commission (reward) from the organization. This type of marketing enables organizations to attract customers and, stimulate and preserve online shopping (Christino et al., 2019). In this form of marketing, these affiliate websites afford organizations to grow the visibility of their promotion. Because these affiliate websites are not in the possession or control of the organization, I did not incorporate this affordance of websites in the final model. However, it can be argued that websites enable this cooperation between the organization and its affiliates.
Social Media. Like websites, social media also enables full communication capabilities in both informing as well as interacting with customers (Labrecque, 2014). By means of the results of a survey under university students, Assimakopoulos et al. (2017) suggest that social media might be an effective tool to provide information to people. Dieck et al. (2018) invigorate this claim by stating that social media are increasingly used for information search by people. Fernandez-Cavia et al. (2017) state that the manager they interviewed see social media as “a more participatory tool, clearly superior to official websites when it comes to encouraging users’ participation [and] to interact with the target public” (p. 269). This quote shows that, next to the ability to provide customers with information, social media is considered to be the channel through which organizations actively interact with customers.
Secondly, social media affords visibility of customer data. With visibility of customer data, I mean that large amounts of data on the needs, preferences and opinions of customers are visible through social media. Durkin et al. (2013) use a study from the European Financial Management Association to argue that one of the primary uses of Facebook by banks is for “monitoring customer comments and complaints” (p. 947). Naeem (2019) conducted interviews with members from marketing teams of banks and argues that the user generated content on social media generates large amounts of service reviews and feedback. In general, social media enable organizations to get insight into customer information (Akcura et al., 2018).
Thirdly, social media also allows for building a community. Building a community entails organizations creating their own profile or pages, with which other users can associate themselves by befriending (e.g. Facebook) or following (e.g. Twitter, Instagram) it (Li and Chang, 2016; Assimakopoulos et al., 2017). In their attempt to characterize social media based on existing literature, Durkin et al. (2013) state that the social interface of social media allows for community engagement. Specifically focussing on Twitter, Akcura et al. (2018) state that “firms have embraced microblogging as part of their communication and community building efforts.” (p. 89). This means that these communities allow for organizations to participate and interact with organization’s community members, but also enables these community members to interact with each other. However, some articles (Fernandez-Cavia et al., 2017; Nageswarakurukkal et al., 2019) highlight that managing social media requires regular attention and expertise. Akcura et al. (2018) highlight the fact that not every community is as effective as others. This relates to the fact that communities have to be build and therefore require time and thought.
perform transactions, it emphasizes that it is not often used for performing transactions. Other articles (Saridakis et al., 2018; Yahia et al., 2018) do explicitly mention the possibility of performing transactions on social media. Yahia et al. (2018) devoted their whole study on social commerce which can be defined as “a subset of e-commerce that involves using social media to assist in e-commerce transactions and activities.” (p. 11) meaning social media can indeed be used in all stages of the purchase process. I considered that to be enough evidence that social media is certainly able to provide transactions in a digital marketing context.
The main constraint of social media is the inability to reach non-users. Not everyone has a social media account or is an active contributor to online forums, service rating websites or discussion boards. This causes that “some segments of [the] population are not reached” (Fernandez-Cavia et al., 2017, p. 270). Quite some articles (Zhang, Omran and Cobanoglu, 2017; Singh and Crisafulli, 2016; Vasudevan and Kumar, 2019; Palacios-Marqués et al., 2015; Li and Chang, 2016; Fernandez-Cavia et al., 2017) emphasize the constraint of social media being the uncontrollability of content. Because social media consists mainly of user generated content, people are free to post whatever they want on the platform which is out of the control of the organization. This is different from company websites, where companies can manage for themselves what information is shown and what is not (Fernandez-Cavia et al., 2017). Although, this is partly untrue when for example a discussion board is present on such a website. Still, a considerable amount of studies emphasize this significant constraint of social media.
Mobile technology. Mobile technology is sometimes discussed as an all inclusive concept.
Still the majority of the articles distinguishes between either mobile applications or mobile short message services (SMS). What is discussed throughout the literature as the affordance that makes mobile technology in general exceptional for digital marketing, compared to the other technologies, is “mobile technology’s distinct capacity for targeting by both location and time.” (Luo et al., 2014, p. 1738). This time and location-based contact can be attributed to both the portable and GPS-enabled smartphones (Lou et al., 2014), which enables organizations to come into contact with (potential) customers anywhere and anytime: “24 hours a day, seven days a week, anywhere on the planet” (Luo et al., 2014, p. 1740).
communication afforded by mobile applications. Dieck et al. (2018) emphasize the possibility to book and pay a hotel visit via mobile applications without intermediaries (e.g. travel agencies). This requires applications to both facilitate interaction between hotel and consumer as well as facilitate the purchase process between both.
Mobile applications and websites often enable customers to rate or give feedback on products and/or services. This enables organizations to get insight into customer needs, preferences and opinions (Wang et al., 2016; Semeradova and Vávrová, 2016). However, this needs to be distinguished from the visibility of consumer data afforded by social media. When referred to the generation of consumer information, social media is often linked to the generation of large amounts of data as it is also often related to big data analytics (Naeem, 2019; Wright et al., 2019). While with mobile applications and also websites, researchers characterize it more to receiving customer feedback or ratings in active dialogue with customers. This refers more to the affordances of being able to interact with customers.
Alike the technologies discussed above, the main constraint of mobile applications are that they are unable to reach non-users. The fact that mobile applications requires downloading the application on your mobile device before you can use it (Kim et al., 2019), makes this constraint even more relevant to this technology.
Then moving to SMS, the predominant affordance is communication, specifically in the sense of informing. This branch of the mobile technology is chiefly used “to deliver practical information” (Chen and Lamberti, 2016, p. 609). Dix et al. (2016) emphasize the customizability and addressability of the message in SMS. Both these aspects together allow for the provision of personalized information. Although Nageswarakurukkal et al. (2019) remarks that SMS can be used by charitable organizations to receive donations, the literature generally agrees that SMS are not used for performing transactions. Chen and Lamberti (2018) even state that SMS are in general not capable of conducting transactions. Unlike the other technologies that afford communication, the literature does not emphasize the fact that SMS constrains the ability to reach non-users. The fact that receiving SMS can be regarded as inherent to owning a mobile phone, could explain why this is not highlighted in the literature.
Email. Email is discussed in the same vein as SMS and some articles even discuss them
email is used for informing customers on for example discounts, and because email accounts can be identified as individuals, Chen and Lamberti (2016) state that “it gives the firm opportunities to tailor the information for relationship management.” (p. 609). In summary, this means that email enables organizations to impart information in a personalized manner.
Similarly to SMS, one of the constraints of email is that it is not able to perform transactions (Chen and Lamberti, 2016). Besides this, as the quote by Mahmoud et al. (2019) above already implies, only internet users with an email account can be reached. This relates to the constraint of email of not being able to reach non-users.
One study by Singh and Crisafulli (2016) poses that email is also used for interaction with customers. Their study focuses on online service recovery, resolving a service failure by contacting the customer via online channels, which connects with the service side of marketing. Because the vast majority of the studies did not point out that email is being used for interactional purposes in digital marketing, I chose not to incorporate this as an affordance in the model. Still, it can be argued that the technology does enable businesses to interact with customers and therefore could be used as an interactive tool in digital marketing.
Big data Analytics (BDA). Within the studies, researchers are quite straightforward when it
comes to what BDA applications enable organizations to do, namely; “storage, administration, and analysis of the heterogeneous data” (Wiencierz and Röttger, 2017, p. 260). Three articles within the sample focus specifically on the usage of BDA in a digital marketing context and mention storing, prioritizing and analysing as the main features of BDA. Wiencierz and Röttger (2017) focus specifically on the significance of big data in and for corporate communication. Wright et al. (2019) studied the adoption of big data technology for innovation and business to business marketing, and define BDA as “the process of transforming big data into actionable results to improve organizational performance.” (p. 283). This simply means that large amounts of raw data are transformed into useful information for the organizations.
Strategy
Table 5. Model of affordances and constraints of IT and their implementation in digital marketing
Sell.All technologies are argued to assist organizations in reaching their objective of growing sales. Chaffey and Smith (2017) define this objective as wider distribution, promotion and sales, either via prescribing to new markets or through the development of new products. Websites, social media, mobile applications, SMS and email, all afford communication in the sense of informing and are generally stated as being used for promotional purposes. For example, Dix et al. (2016) study the effectiveness of SMS advertising and Mahmoud et al. (2019) do the same for email. Mobile technology gives an extra dimension to advertising due to the ability to contact consumers at the right time and location, which, according to Luo et al. (2014) increases its effectivity: “induces consumers to mentally construe the promotions more concretely, which in turn, increases their involvement and purchase intent” (p. 1754).
Next to the communication affordance, websites and mobile applications also afford performing transactions which leads to organizations not only using them for promotional, but also for transactional purposes (Kim et al., 2019; Escobar-Rodríguez and Bonsón-Fernández, 2017). In this sense, the constraint of SMS and email of not being able to perform transactions, are somewhat more retraining in meeting this objective of growing sales compared to technologies that do have this affordance (website, social media and mobile applications).
Social media is generally considered to be the most effective and most used tool for creating wider promotion. Namely, from the articles that took more of a strategy perspective, a recurring topic was the constraint of the IT that afford performing transactions (websites, social media and mobile applications), of not being able to naturally provide consumer trust. Since online sales depend on the fact that consumers trust that the online platform is secure (Pappas, 2016), developing consumer trust is an important means to achieve the objective of growing online sales. The inability of websites to provide the real life experience relates to this constraint. When buying products online, consumers cannot touch or smell products, or have face-to-face contact with a sales employee which causes the lack of initial trust (Al-Debei et al., 2015; Yahia et al., 2018). This can withhold customers to make the purchase.
“Through WOM dissemination and advocacy on [social networking sites (SNSs)], enterprises can promote their products, reinforce users’ commitment, enhance users’ willingness to browse their websites, let users participate in the promotional activities on their SNSs and further achieve the behavior of WOM exchange and interaction” (p. 939).
This quote explains that community building can cause other customers to advise or promote products and services of a specific organization, to other customers. Because consumers trust other consumers’ opinions more than advertising provided by organizations themselves (Zhang, Omran and Cobanoglu, 2017), these communities are the perfect environment for increasing consumer trust and with that online sales. However, one of the constraints of social media is the uncontrollability of the content. The fact that consumer trust other customers more than organizations, could be attributed to the fact that customers are free to post whatever they want about their experience with a certain product or service. This means that negative eWOM can also be generated within these communities which can highly affect the reputation and attractiveness of the organization (Zhang, Omran and Cobanoglu, 2017). In contrast to positive eWOM, negative eWOM can negatively influence the online sales (Vasudevan and Kumar, 2019).
The combination of social media and BDA makes the development of new products possible which can also lead to growth in sales numbers. BDA allows organizations to “generate critical insights and understanding of customer needs and identification of innovation opportunities.” (Wright et al., 2019, p. 282). However the main constraint of BDA is that it is unable to generate data and therefore needs a complementary technology that can deliver this data. The large amount of data on customers generated on social media, and the possibility of storing, prioritizing and analyzing this data with BDA, enables organizations to identify customer needs and potential demand for new products (Wright et al., 2019).
Serve.All technologies are in some way or another involved in improving customer service.
Websites, due to their communication affordance, are considered very useful for providing always up-to-date online information or answer consumer questions, for example through “online help pages, frequently asked questions (FAQs) and discussion forums” (Singh and Crisafulli, 2016, p. 766). Although most articles relate email as being used for advertising purposes (Wang, Yang and Brocato, 2018; Li and Kannan, 2014), others also emphasize the usage of email in delivering practical information such as for example the status of an order (Chen and Lamberti, 2016) or service recovery (Singh and Crisafulli, 2016).
the community as a resource for solving their problems [and] disseminating information and communal interactions” (Akcura et al., 2018, p. 91). Also, BDA is used to analyse the large amounts of data on social media to get insight into customers and understand their behaviour (Dong and Yang, 2020). Organizations can use these insights to improve their customer service: “to achieve the communication objective of personalizing and expanding service” (Wiencierz and Röttger, 2017, p. 263). This makes social media and the combination of social media and BDA, very useful for improving customer service.
When it comes to improving customer service, mobile technology seems to stand out from the rest due to the fact that it affords time and location-based contact with customers. Most articles highlight the location-based service as the main half of the affordance that enables the provision of context-aware services to the customer (Pousttchi and Hufenbach, 2014; Kim et al., 2019; Wang et al., 2016). The combination of being able to impart information to, or even interact with customers (through mobile applications), and the context-awareness, gives organizations the opportunity to provide better service quality. Semeradova and Vávrová (2016) illustrate this specifically for the hospitality industry where this combination of affordandances enables tourism organizations to “provide better navigation and trip planning services.” (p. 280). In general, organizations can provide consumers with context-aware and up-to-date information 24 hours a day, seven days a week and almost anywhere in the world (Dieck et al., 2018). Specifically mobile applications also enable this (24/7 and from anywhere) in terms of performing transactions (Dieck et al., 2018).
Speak. Because the objective of getting closer to customers entails the creation of a two-way
dialogue, it is no surprise that the technologies that enable interaction with customers (websites, social media and mobile applications) are the main tools used for this purpose (Jocevski et al., 2019; Nageswarakurukka et al., 2019; Chen and Lamberti, 2016). Between these three, websites and social media are the most regularly linked to getting closer to customers by offering “facilities for ordering, product feedback, and product and/or quality surveys.” (Saridakis et al., 2018, p. 59). Al-Debei et al. (2015) use the interactivity of websites as one of the pillars that influence consumer attitudes toward online shopping. Proving the interactivity of social media, Labrecque (2014) studies how brands can keep the one-to-one character of interaction provided by social media, while dealing with the growing amount of these interactions.
SMS and email are not found valuable for this objective. Although from own experience one might expect that SMS and email also enable interaction, these technologies were not found to be of value for interaction within digital marketing practise. The fact that in order to be of value for this objective of getting closer to customers requires a two-way dialogue between customer and organizations, explains that without affording interaction, these technologies are not deemed of value for reaching this objective in the literature.
Save.The vast majority of the articles emphasize the costs that are saved with the usage of IT.
Multiple studies state this by referring to IT in general (Durkin et al., 2015; Nageswarakurukkal et al., 2019; Semeradova, T., & Vávrová, 2016; Chen and Lamberti, 2016). Others refer to a specific technology. For example, Moral-Pajares et al. (2015) who argue that the usage of websites as a sales channel saves costs as it “reduces the intermediation costs considerably” (p. 1510). Huang et al. (2019) argue that the usage of mobile applications can reduce administrative and communication costs for spreading information. In terms of contacting customers, Luo et al. (2014) even state that mobile technology in general comes with less costs than traditional mediums. Concerning email, Mahmoud et al. (2019) notice that email is “a fast, convenient, and inexpensive communication tool” (p. 227). From this can be concluded that email also saves costs in terms of communicating information to customers. Semeradova and Vávrová (2017) mention cost savings that come with the usage of BDA due to the low-cost of demand analysis enabled by it.
Multiple studies mention the cost savings in promotion and customer interaction through the usage of social media (Assimakopoulos et al., 2017; Zhang, Omran and Cobanoglu, 2017; Shi et al., 2018; Naeem, 2019; Palacios-Marqués et al., 2015). Interestingly, social media also enables cost savings through ‘web-self-serve’, where customers answer queries through online content (Chaffey and Smith, 2017). Namely, as social media affords the possibility for organizations to build online communities (Assimakopoulos et al., 2017; Nageswarakurukkal et al., 2019), community members can share their experience and with that help other members solve their problems (Akcura et al., 2018; Lia and Chang, 2016). This can for example reduce the pressure on the customer service departments, whilst customers help each other out with, for example, the problems they face with the usage of a certain product.
visiting the website, not having a social media profile and not having downloaded the mobile application, prevents these technologies to be able to reach these consumers. Therefore, these technologies are not able to grow sales, improve service, get closer to customers, extend the brand online and therefore, save costs. The same applies for not having an email account, except for getting closer to customers, which was not found valuable for achieving this objective anyway.
Sizzle. According to Chaffey and Smith (2017) extending the brand online is achieved
through providing new propositions, new offerings and new experiences online. All technologies that provide communication, at least in the sense of informing, are described as being used for extending the brand online. This only leaves BDA out of consideration for achieving this objective. Vasudevan and Kumar (2019) explore brand awareness in the context of Indian websites, and come to the conclusion that websites and social media are great sources for creating brand awareness. Mahmoud et al. (2019) argue that direct email marketing can be used for sharing brand stories in order to create more brand awareness. Concerning mobile technology, Lou et al. (2014) state that mobile promotions can generate positive word-of-mouth and potentially result in brand advocacy. Specifically for SMS, Dix et al. (2016) argue that SMS advertising can create positive brand awareness by functioning as a communicator of the brand value.
Huang et al. (2019) study the attitude of hotel consumers toward mobile app usage. They state that mobile applications can “enhance brand awareness, enrich tourist experience and overall tourist satisfaction and increase customer loyalty” (p. 958). Compared to the other technologies, Huang et al. (2019) add that mobile applications not only enhance brand awareness, but enrich the customer experience. Therefore, mobile applications can definitely extend the brand online.
Discussion and conclusion
The goal of this review was to develop a model that distinguishes between the different technologies in terms of their affordances and constraints, and give insight in what these technologies enable organizations to do in terms of digital marketing. Therefore, the research questions that guided this study read: (1) What affordances and constraints commonly emerge from the usage of IT for digital marketing? And, (2) How does the usage of these technologies influence the digital marketing strategy implementation?
The topic of IT usage and digital marketing is gaining attention in the academic field. This seems logical because of the fact that technology becomes more and more important in organizations nowadays, and new (features of) technologies open up new possibilities for organizations, for example for achieving their digital marketing objectives. Almost all articles are empirical studies mainly using quantitative data. This suggests that the field of research on IT usage for digital marketing has been quite theoretically developed and therefore hypotheses, based on the theory, are tested. However, a significant amount of articles still take a predominantly strategic perspective in studying IT usage for digital marketing and render the technology to the background. With the usage of the affordance approach, this literature review adds value to academic research by providing a model that gives a more refined picture of the affordances, constraints and role(s) of each specific technology that is not industry-specific, but generalizable.
which can also be regarded as satisfying customer requirements. Namely, these technologies can be used for improving customer service and with that satisfying customer requirements.
The last part of the definition of marketing states that the process is attempted to be executed as efficiently and profitably as possible. Relating to this, saving costs is also one of the digital marketing objectives for which all technologies are used. Studies emphasize the quick, cheap and easy communication abilities of SMS and email (Chen and Lamberti, 2016), the interactional and transactional abilities of websites, social media and mobile applications (Fernandez-Cavia et al., 2017) and the quick analytical abilities afforded by BDA (Dieck et al., 2018). The literature also emphasizes the efficiency and profitability that can be gained with the community building property enabled by social media, through ‘web-self-serve’ and positive eWOM. However, some articles (Fernandez-Cavia et al., 2017; Nageswarakurukkal et al., 2019) highlight that managing social media requires expertise. Acquiring this expertise will most likely cost money.
For some technologies, affording communication mainly means the action of informing (SMS and email), while for others also the ability to interact (websites, social media and mobile applications). These affordances enable organizations to contact both existing and potential customers in order to grow sales, improve customer service or to extend the brand online. The time and location-based contact afforded by mobile technologies gives organizations the possibility to provide customers with context-aware information which creates an extra dimension to providing online service or promotion. The technologies (websites, social media and mobile applications) providing the ability to interact with customers, affords organizations to get closer to them through a two-way dialogue that enables organizations to learn about those customers. These technologies also make it possible for organizations to perform online transactions which are also used to grow sales. Specifically social media enables organizations to get insight into large amounts of customer data. Here BDA comes into play, as the combination of the visibility of customer data provided by social media, and the affordances (storing, prioritizing and analysing) of BDA, enable organizations to learn about customer preferences and needs and develop new products that can eventually also lead to growth in sales. The convenience, quickness and generally low price of all technologies causes that they are used by organizations to save costs.
technologies that also afford interactional communication, only one article (Singh and Crisafulli, 2016) indicates that email can be of value for interaction with customers. Other articles (Chen and Lamberti, 2016; Dix et al., 2016; Mahmoud et al., 2019) only highlight the usage of SMS and email in the sense of delivering advertising or practical information. It could be that the other technologies (websites, social media and mobile technologies) are more often used for interaction with customers in contemporary digital marketing practice. Next to this, the article by Singh and Crisafulli (2016) studies the interactional purposes of email for online service recovery, which can perhaps be regarded a niche of marketing and therefore email is not considered of value for interaction by the other articles.
Overall, there is little discussion within this field of research. This can be explained by the fact that researchers do not go into great detail when talking about the technologies. Therefore, the functionality of the technologies are generally quite straightforward and accepted. However, some inconsistencies exist, for example, concerning the conceptualization of the technologies. This mainly relates to the integration of social media platforms into websites and mobile applications. The definition of social media provided by Assimakopoulos et al. (2017), involves company sponsored discussion boards from which companies can gain feedback on their products or service(s). Others (Al-Debei et al., 2015; Semeradova, T., & Vávrová, 2016) argue that websites and mobile applications enable customers to rate, provide feedback and create eWOM. The generation of eWOM involves customers sharing their experiences with each other (Zhang, Omran and Cobanoglu, 2017). Here, it can be argued that the affordance of social media, interactional communication, is used to balance the actual constraint of websites and mobile applications. One can state that the otherwise more static (non-interactional) character of websites and mobile applications is compensated or balanced by the integration of social media in these technologies in order to be able to meet certain objectives. Furthermore, the articles taking more of a strategic perspective add the constraint of the lack of initial trust provided by the technologies that enable to perform online transactions. According to some of them (Palacios-Marqués et al., 2015; Li and Chang, 2016; Nageswarakurukkal et al., 2019; Vasudevan and Kumar, 2019), the community building affordances of social media plays a key role in the creation of consumer trust.
marketing objectives. Therefore, an in depth understanding of the influence of the usage of these technologies on digital marketing strategy implementation.
Theoretical implications
This systematic literature review answers to the call of Zammuto et al. (2007) for more research on new forms of organizing caused by the usage of IT. Specifically focusing on digital marketing as such a new form of organizing, the key findings of the review were summarized in the final model (Table 5). This model gives insight into what is generally understood to be the affordances and contraints of certain information technology, and the way in which these affordances and contraints influences how organizations organise their digital marketing processes. More specific, it shows how a particular technology is matched to a certain digital marketing objective. Therefore, this model can be used in future studies on digital marketing as a reference to the functionality and usage of each specific technology. Using this model to empirically study digital marketing processes within organizations, will give insight into how organizations make choices concerning which technology they choose in order to reach a certain objective. The model can also be used to see if the affordances or constraints of technologies, and the objectives they can meet, have changed or evolved. Next to this, it can be used to compare the affordances, constraints and strategic implications of the same technologies, for different organizational functions, as for example supply chain management.
that technologies require integration with other technologies in order to balance their constraints, and might require more investment than solely ‘purchasing’ the technology.
The model also shows the broad spectrum of affordances that in particular social media possesses. All of which relate to the main characteristics of identifying, anticipating and satisfying customers’ needs and wants (Chaffey and Smith, 2017). The characteristic ability of social media to build communities, is of great importances for the generation of positive eWOM, and with that, the development of consumer trust in making purchases online. Therefore, positive eWOM is regarded to be of great importance for growing online sales (Li and Chang, 2016). Some articles (Fernandez-Cavia et al., 2017; Nageswarakurukkal et al., 2019) emphasize the need of attention and expertise that is needed in order to effectively manage social media. What is not elaborated on, is how these communities are or can be managed in order to become effective. For future research it could be particularly interesting to study how the generation of positive eWOM is being, or can be stimulated, and the development of negative eWOM prevented.
Managerial implications
Relating my findings to the practical field, this study gives insight into the affordances and constraints of different technologies for digital marketing. This can help managers with choosing the technology that is most useful for achieving their company objectives. Also, it can help marketers to critically assess their current usage of IT for digital marketing. The final model of this review gives a clear overview of what possibilities for action particular technologies afford or constraint, and how these affordances and constraints influence the objectives that can be met with that technology. However, some affordances might need some extra caution or explanation in order to assure positive organizational performance. These will be discussed in the following paragraphs.
In particular, the importance of creating consumer trust, and the affordance of social media for community building that can help to achieve this, is very interesting for the practical field. Namely, the creation of positive eWOM is regarded to have significant effects on the growth of consumer trust and with that the growth in online sales (Li and Chang, 2016). Communities form the perfect environment for the creation of eWOM. However, eWOM can also be negative and therefore negatively influence online sales (Zhang, Omran and Cobanoglu, 2017). In order to create positive eWOM and prevent negative eWOM, organizations should dedicate attention and resources to the management of social media. Managers should be conscious of the fact that time and expertise is needed in order to benefit from this affordance of social media.
need to be aware of this need for integration. Considering the large amounts of data generated on social media, Palacios-Marqués et al. (2015) argue that the value of BDA depends on the quality of the data that is analyzed. Therefore, managers also need to keep in mind that more data does not necessarily mean higher quality data.
Limitations
This study has several limitations. Because I only used the Web of Science search engine for the search process of the articles, my search result were limited to this database while other published articles could have been applicable. Also, the fact that this is a master thesis and the amount of articles that I was able to review was limited, caused me to make the decision to set my starting year at 2014 while interesting articles on this topic could have been published before this. In the data analysis, the affordances and constraints of certain technologies were based on my judgment based on the affordance literature. Other researchers could have come up with different concepts relating to the possibilities for action afforded or constraint by technology.
Conclusion
This review has provided a model that gives a more refined and generalizable overview of the affordances and constraints of the technology for digital marketing. This gave not only an overview of the differences between distinct technologies, but also a deeper understanding of how these technologies can be used to achieve a particular digital marketing objective. Websites enable full communicational abilities (informing and interacting) and the ability to perform transactions that enable them to grow sales, improve service, get closer to customers and extend the brand online. The same applies to mobile applications that, however, add an extra dimension to improve services and promotion with their ability to contact customers time and location based. This also applies to social media, though, social media also affords the visibility of customer information and community building. The visibility of customer information and the affordances of BDA enable organizations to forecast and adapt to (future) customer needs and preferences. This enables organizations to grow sales and improve customer service. Here, the inability of BDA to generate data is balanced by the affordance of social media. The community building affordance enables organizations to create consumer trust that can lead to online sales growth. However, the uncontrollability of the content on social media can also have a negative effect on consumer trust.
interactional communication is needed as two parties are involved. Again, mobile technology, in this case SMS, enables organizations to deliver context-aware practical information or promotion with the possibility of time and location-based contact.
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