A Thematic Exploration of Digital, Social Media, and Mobile Marketing: Research Evolution from 2000 to 2015 and an Agenda for Future Inquiry

Abstract

Over the past 15 years, digital media platforms have revolutionized marketing, offering new ways to reach, inform, engage, sell to, learn about, and provide service to customers. As a means of taking stock of academic work's ability to contribute to this revolution, this article tracks the changes in scholarly researchers’ perspectives on three major digital, social media, and mobile (DSMM) marketing themes from 2000 to 2015. The authors first use keyword counts from the premier general marketing journals to gain a macro-level view of the shifting importance of various DSMM topics since 2000. They then identify key themes emerging in five-year time frames during this period: (1) DSMM as a facilitator of individual expression, (2) DSMM as decision support tool, and (3) DSMM as a market intelligence source. In both academic research to date and corresponding practitioner discussion, there is much to appreciate. However, there are also several shortcomings of extant research that have limited its relevance and created points of disconnect between academia and practice. Finally, in light of this, an agenda for future research based on emerging research topics is advanced.

Diálogos bilaterales entre investigadores de la Glasgow Caledonian University (Reino Unido) y la Universidad de Alicante (España). Estudios interdisciplinares

“…Nevertheless, despite the rapidly growing number of published articles, the current literature still lacks of some answers. Academics noted that future studies should highlight social media strategy and its key elements, but also the balance between both online and offline marketing approaches (Pomirleanu & Schibrowsky, 2013;Lamberton & Stephen, 2016). This justifies the assumption, that social media marketing research will continually grow and develop in future (Ngai, 2003).…”

“…As noted by Lamberton & Stephen (2016), the transformation in the subject has paralleled various technological innovations (for example high-speed broadband and mobile devices); as a result, it penetrated the directions of the academic interest in the last years. The academic literature appears to prove that; only in the last 20 years it grew in the enormous number of publications.…”

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“…Essa evolução foi possível graças ao surgimento da Internet como mídia, que modificou a forma como as empresas se conectam com seus consumidores (Hoffman & Novak, 1996) e abriu espaço para novos comportamentos, baseados em interações e experiências (Lamberton & Stephen, 2016). Uma implicação teórica desse movimento é o questionamento acerca do futuro da propaganda tradicional (Kumar & Gupta, 2016;Schultz, 2016), uma vez que as empresas devem lidar com um público-alvo cada vez mais disperso, organizado em pequenas comunidades nas redes sociais virtuais.…”

Digital economy and (non) incremental changes in tourism and retail business model

“…Analysis of five leading scientific marketing journals for the period 2000-2015 revealed that in 160 analyzed articles actually three areas were most frequently covered: digital, social media and mobile marketing (DSMM). In these articles, three directions of DSMM technology influence were most frequently analyzed: a) on consumer self-expression and communication; b) on decision-making process as a powerful tool; c) on market intelligence as an increasing source of confident data [24].…”