Management activities have experienced significant changes in the past five years driven by the inability of managers to influence and lead change. Managers are faced with new challenges that call for responsive approaches if they are to achieve the goals of the company. Managers are faced by a myriad of issues that must be considered in decision making. They must, therefore, understand the changes in their environments and the impact of issues like technology, personnel, economics, global influence, and politics. According to Peter F. Drucker a well known and influential management thinker, every business needs to transform into a change agent in order to survive and succeed. (Higgs & Aitken, 2009). The statement by Drucker shows that management must adapt to a changing environment if they are to steer the company in the right direction. Technological development has a significant effect on the managers as they try to adapt organizations to a changing environment in order to take advantage of emerging opportunities and overcome associated challenges. As managers embrace technological changes, new challenges emerge that must be addressed if the objectives of the company are to be achieved. It is common to hear managers and academicians talk about issues like cybersecurity, privacy, infrastructure management, emerging technologies, cloud computing and to bridge IT and business as having a significant influence in the 21 st century. This paper looks at the effect of technology on leaders in the field of marketing.
Technological Complexity and Marketing
Technological complexities are the components and their relationship in a system. Systems interact to come up with each other to establish a technological system. A patent, for example, is a system of knowledge that includes several claims and their interaction in which there is a codified knowledge that acts as a representation of the industrial product. Such knowledge varies depending on the level of complexity before and after it is transformed as a result of the interaction between the tacit input and the explicit outcome. High technology organizations face survival and growth issues due to the decline in new product development and an increase in research and development. The pressure for productivity and the new opportunities driven by a changing environment and information and telecommunication technologies is ensuring that such firms manage their research and development activities. Such companies are trying to expand their operations in other countries that lack the technological ability held in the home country (Malik & Yun, 2016). Marketers are therefore finding it hard to innovate or enhance their products due to the changes that have a significant effect on their budgets and new product development. Similarly, technology has increased the level of competition, as most of the products can easily be replicated or copied to produce generics that attract lower prices.
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Technology and Disruptive Innovations
Technology gives an organization the ability to innovate and to respond to the changing environment. However, its ability to enhance the competitiveness of a company can lead to disruptive innovations. Managers are not only thinking about how to innovate in order to remain in business and continue growing but are also considering disrupting others using their innovations. Companies must therefore disrupt or be disrupted (Baiyere & Salmela, 2013).Some organizations have business models and structures that cannot combat emerging challenges caused by disruptors. Information system, for example, is central to the core of the design of an organization as companies strive to innovate, be flexible and adapt to the changing environment.
Responding to the competitive needs in a disruptive and dynamic environment through information technology is changing the focus of the manager on how to design responsive businesses that meet their objectives (Baiyere & Salmela, 2013). Information, for example, is a valuable resource to the marketer now and in the future since it can be a defining differentiator for the success of a company. Information technology and systemsare core to the operations of a business and its ability to harness the information at its disposal, which enhances its decision-making abilities and the quality of knowledge.
Management decision and knowledge play a significant role in the pursuit of disruptive innovations. A decision on disruptive innovations can break or make an organization where new companies can rise, dominate the market and knock out a leading incumbent. Technology can, therefore, diminish the importance of a company or completely destroy it. Such extreme outcomes call for an understanding of how technology can enhance disruptive technology. The way an organization approaches disruptive innovation can be understood by appraising its capabilities and disabilities. The resources, processes, and value of an organization are the main facets that affect its ability to manage change (Vinson, 2013). The flexibility of an organization and its ability to adapt to a changing environment enables it to compete effectively and overcome disruptive pressure from innovations.
Marketing in the Technological Era
There is a widening gap between the capacity of most organizations and the accelerating complexity of the market. The market continues to fragment and organizations continue to experience widespread change. The widening gap can be attributed to increased internet usage. Issues like the big data, social media, shifting consumer demographics and the proliferation of channels are the biggest challenges faced by organizations in the digital era. Channels, big data, and social media correspond to the development of digital marketing. The internet, for example, has emerged to be an essential marketplace for goods and services (Leeflang, Verhoef, Dahlström & Freundt, 2014). Online consumer spending continues to expand which is also the case in the demand for products like informational goods. Companies like Amazon and Alibaba continue to record impressive performance from online transactions which has changed the ways that companies engage their customers. Currently, more companies are embracing online platforms to reach more customers and to take advantage of the opportunities created by the platform. Online platforms have led to the growth of the business to business, business to customers and customers to customers markets that have reported considerable success. Online communication is also gaining widespread usage where organizations use different platforms to reach their customers, suppliers, and distributors.
The Technologies of the Internet of Things
The internet of things which is a system of interrelated devices with unique identifiers that communicate with each other without the need for human interaction is changing the business landscape. It combines different complementary development technologies that offer unique capabilities that bridge the gap between the physical as well as virtual world. The internet of things is becoming an important issue in traditionally non-digital products. Marketers are engaging in new developments on a daily basis as they try to enhance their market reach and in order to counter competition (Klein, Pacheco & Righi, 2017). The internet has significantly impacted goods and services and is becoming a critical consideration for marketers as they try to meet the needs of the customers. The internet of things has managed to incorporate digital and physical industries to produce a hybrid solution that brings together physical and digital products.
The internet of things is relevant to different areas of the supply chain of an organization. It creates new opportunities for new product development, increased productivity, improved decision making, process efficiency, enhanced user experience and address social problems. Internet of things allows for radical changes in the current business models as companies try to enhance their product and service offerings. Marketers, however, are not fully utilizing the capabilities of the internet of things. They are unable to develop the right business models that capitalize on available technology. Some have great technology but poor business models while others have a mediocre technology and therefore cannot benefit from the advantages accrued from employing modern technology in an organization (Klein et al., 2017). Marketers are unaware of how the internet of things can change the business model of their company while others do not know how to generate appropriate business models. Some are even unaware of the digitized business environment and how models can be constructed to fit into the overall objective of the company. The internet of things has significant benefits to an organization but also brings with it uncertainties like increased complexities and enhanced competition.
Recommendations
The ability to stay on top of technological change can enhance the operations of a company. Marketers must, therefore, capitalize on social media, internet, automobile innovation, blockchain technology, internet of things, automate intelligence, virtual reality, automation, data visualization and digital companion (Olenski, 2018). Marketers must also develop flexible organizations that can easily adapt to the changes in the external environment. Organizational design should consider external shocks and the ability to adapt business models to the changing technologies. Similarly, they should be on the forefront when it comes to innovation in order to disrupt competitors’ activity. They should also harness the capabilities of information technology and information system in order to make informed decisions and to generate knowledge that can give them a competitive edge over their competitors.
Marketers must, therefore, establish appropriate strategies that can help them address the challenges posed by technology if they are to be successful. They should understand the impact of technology on an organization and how they can capitalize on technological advancement to enhance the wellbeing of an organization. Marketers should be aware of technological developments in the home countries and in other markets that are likely to affect their future operations.
References
Baiyere, A., & Salmela, H., (2013). Review: Disruptive innovation & information technology –Charting a path. Proceedings of the 24th Australasian Conference on Information Systems.
Higgs, M., & Aitken, P. (2009). Developing change leaders: The Principles and Practices of Change Leadership Development . Oxford: Routledge.
Klein, A., Pacheco, F., & Righi, R. (2017). Developing business models for the internet of things-based products: Process and Challenges. Journal of information systems and technology management , 14 (3), 439-461. doi: 10.4301/s1807-17752017000300009
Leeflang, P., Verhoef, P., Dahlström, P., & Freundt, T. (2014). Challenges and solutions for marketing in a digital era. European Management Journal , 32 (1), 1-12. doi: 10.1016/j.emj.2013.12.001
Malik T., & Yun J,. (2016). Technology complexity and open organization: Foreign innovation projects in the biopharmaceutical sector in China. Journal of Entrepreneurship & Organization Management , 05 (01). doi: 10.4172/2169-026x.1000164
Olenski, S. (2018). 12 Technology trends CMOS should capitalize on. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/steveolenski/2018/02/23/12-technology-trends-cmos-should-capitalize-on/
Vinson, C. (2013). Book Review - Disruptive innovation in technology and engineering education: A Review of Three Works by Clayton Christensen and Colleagues. Journal Of Technology Education , 24 (2). doi: 10.21061/jte.v24i2.a.7
