Marketing 4.0: Moving from Traditional to Digital

Abstract

The book, “Marketing 4.0: Moving from Traditional to Digital” is a product of an effort that has focused on a different dimension of marketing. The traditional one-way communication has been challenged by digital media, along with social media, which can be considered the future of marketing. Nevertheless, the book argues that blending old and new (traditional and digital) with the fine art of convergence is the future of marketing. The book discusses areas such as discovering the new rules of marketing, standing out and creating WOW moments, building a loyal and vocal customer base, and learning who will shape the future of customer choice. Furthermore, it attempts to provide a solid framework based on a “real-world vision of the consumer” as it is today, and as it will be tomorrow. The authors argue that customers in this century have less time and because of that they devote little attention to a ones’ brand and they have many options available with choices. Hence challenges for marketers are to identify their preferences, attract them with strategies, and deliver the message/s effectively through different modes aligning to given contextual factors. This book can be considered as one of the publications to “Market” the subject of “Marketing”. In 2010, Kotler published Marketing 3.0, which described how marketing has evolved from product-driven marketing (1.0) to customer-centric marketing (2.0), and further to human-centric marketing (3.0). Many books have now been written on the subject of marketing, and different dimensions (product to customer to human to digital) can be seen from the different versions of Marketing 1.0, Marketing 2.0, Marketing 3.0, and Marketing 4.0. A closer look at product-driven marketing (1.0), customer-centric marketing (2.0) and human-centric marketing (3.0), reveals a clear paradigm shift in marketing over the years. However, Marketing 4.0 is something that can be observed in isolation, and because moving from the “traditional to digital” is a “process in decades”, this transition is not a “Paradigm shift”. The following is a comment by Philip Kotler (Author, researcher and the S.C. Johnson & Sons Distinguished Professor of International Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University) about the book, “in a nut shell the/In a summary the message of the book is that, any company that wants to survive has to turn to these new tools of social media and use digital media to facilitate the management of their business, but it will still be a blend of old and new”, he said. “We’re not dropping traditional marketing. We’re blending traditional and digital.”