Abstract
Smart marketing is a term that encompasses various forms of marketing that leverage artificial intelligence (AI) and the internet of things (IoT) to deliver personalized, relevant, and engaging experiences to customers. This research aims to provide a comprehensive literature review on smart marketing, covering its definitions, applications, advantages, disadvantages, and implications on sustainability. The chapter also discusses the benefits and challenges of smart marketing for both marketers and customers, such as improved efficiency, effectiveness, creativity, customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention, as well as ethical, privacy, security, and social issues. Furthermore, the chapter examines the impact of smart marketing on sustainability, highlighting the potential opportunities and risks for environmental, social, and economic dimensions. The chapter concludes with some suggestions for future research directions and best practices for smart marketing.
TopSmart Marketing As An Umbrella Concept
By the advancement of technology, marketing discipline has been revolutionized in the past decades. ICT technologies enabled marketers to access vast amounts of data about their customers and use analytics tools to understand their target markets, customer and consumer behavior, market changes and return on marketing investments. This technology-based approach allows for more data gathering and analysis, which leads to improved decision-making, precise targeting, informed pricing strategies, and improved campaign effectiveness.
Various trends have emerged in marketing based on information and communication (ICT) technologies. While database marketing provides an infrastructure to store customer data for future use, other technologies are efficient tools in providing more channels for interacting with customers and delivering digital goods and services to customers.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Interactive Marketing: Focuses on a customer-centric approach that creates two-way relationships with customers by engaging customers, providing relevant contents, creating personalized experiences which are integrated in different channels ( Peltier et al., 2022 AU99: The citation "Peltier et al., 2022" matches multiple references. Please add letters (e.g. "Smith 2000a"), or additional authors to the citation, to uniquely match references and citations. ).
Cognitive Marketing: Considered to be a combination of psychology, marketing and digital technologies. Based on the psychology theories, a variety of cognitive factors including perception, attention, emotions, and memory are understood which can help marketers to understand how customers process the related information and how they decide to purchase. Using cognitive marketing, businesses can monitor customer behavior and shape customized customer experience to create more competitive advantage ( Plassmann et al., 2015 ).
Smart Marketing: A broad concept which encompasses digital technologies such as databases, IoT and IoE to collect data about the customer needs, behavior, and preferences; and then AI and machine learning is used to analyze collected data to provide personalized services and customized goods based on the knowledge and intuitions. Intelligent agents and bots are also used to automate customer services and interaction with customers (Baeva et al., 2022 AU100: The in-text citation "Baeva et al., 2022" is not in the reference list. Please correct the citation, add the reference to the list, or delete the citation. ).
AI-Powered Marketing: The process of leveraging artificial intelligence to create, deliver, and measure personalized and relevant marketing content and experiences across different channels and touchpoints ( Wang et al., 2021 AU97: The citation "Wang et al., 2021" matches multiple references. Please add letters (e.g. "Smith 2000a"), or additional authors to the citation, to uniquely match references and citations. ).
Social Media Marketing or Social Network Marketing: Which can be used interchangeably, refer to use of social media and network platforms to connect, reach and engage with a large and diverse audience, raise the brand awareness, and generate word-of-mouth to promote products and services ( Kaplan & Haenlein, 2020 ; Hudders et al., 2021 ).
Mobile Marketing: Aims at mobile devices and mobile apps because of their rapid growth and broad usage. In mobile marketing, mobile devices and mobile apps are considered as the current ultimate device to deliver marketing messages and offers to customers and prospects ( Dacko, 2017 ).
Email Marketing: A subset of digital marketing and focuses on the use of email as a communication channel with customers and prospects ( Bharadiya, 2023 ), which allows marketers to deliver personalized and relevant messages that may produce leads, conversions, and sales, as well as build relationships and loyalty with customers ( Bharadiya, 2023 ).
E-Commerce Marketing: The practice of promoting websites to increase the traffic of a website and sales to enhance customer loyalty. It is also called e-commerce website marketing and encompasses pay-per-click (PC) advertising and search engine optimization (SEO), as well as email marketing and social media marketing ( Jadhav et al., 2023 ).
Influence Marketing: Is also a new trend of marketing which is empowered by social networks. Influencer marketing increases the power and credibility of influencers who can endorse products or services to their followers ( Hudders et al., 2021 ).
Digital Marketing: A broad concept which involves using digital channels and platforms, such as websites, social media, email, search engines, and mobile apps in a wide range of marketing activities ( Chaffey & Ellis-Chadwick, 2019 ).
Relationship Marketing: Refers to creating long-term and mutually beneficial relationships with customers and other stakeholders, such as suppliers, distributors, employees, and competitors ( Grönroos & Voima, 2013 ).
IoT Marketing: The application of IoT technologies to collect, transmit, and transform data into knowledge. The marketing and sales sectors are capable of using data gathered through IoT to interact with customers on an individual basis.