The impact of digitalization on marketing strategies: empirical evidence in BtoB and BtoC firms.

Our era is characterized by a great digital and technological disruption that is changing both the social and economic landscape. Firms have to implement new business strategies, technologies and skills to remain competitive. This process of evolution is known under the heading of digital transformation which encompasses internal and organizational changes for firms, the implementation of new skills, new digital technologies and capabilities. One of the most promising among these technologies is the Internet of Things – IoT, which is gaining additional interest from businesses and academic researchers, due to its great opportunities for both firms and people. With our work, we aim to analyze the main impacts that the digital transformation, and the IoT as part of it, are having on the relationship between the firm and its market. Making a distinction between BtoB and BtoC markets, we have studied how the marketing strategies have been changed by the IoT and data analysis. Capitalizing on a literature review, we have formulated six propositions related to our research question, involving both direct and indirect impacts of the IoT on marketing. These hypotheses have been proved with some empirical case studies. The indirect consequences are referred to the organizational and cultural changes which are inevitable for a successful adoption of IoT solutions. While the direct changes are related to two marketing areas in particular: the customer engagement/relationship and the servitization and digital servitization, which benefit the most from IoT implementation as suggested by the case-study analysis.