Managing complexity in marketing: from a design Weltanschauung

Abstract

Marketing is the field of business studies that relates the firm to its wider environment, while its raison d'être is shifting to have wider societal implications beyond the limited dimension of the pure markets, wherein it was originated. The dimension of thought within the mainstream marketing is not adequate for the contemporary evolution of the design-based cyber-physical new economic-order.The current Zeitgeist of sustainability delivers many aspects that go beyond rational economics Weltanschauung, which has occupied marketing-thought by focusing on short time-horizons and the spectrum of the field's applicability based on transactional and mercantile market relations.The dissertation addresses these trends and develops a unified logical framework for marketing in the contemporary era, coined as the "Design Weltanschauung" (DWA), wherein it paves a path to conceptualize the necessary rapprochement between the fields of design and marketing designed as a course-correcting pivot within the field, called the "Design Dominant Logic" (DDL) for an integrative marketing scholarship and practice. DDL evolves marketing beyond its transactionary modus operandi towards a meaning-laden unconcealment of artefacts, which goes beyond the dimensions of a "Unique Sales and Value proposition" towards the notions of "Unique Meaning and Design Propositions", which are based on the co-evolutionary foundations of the contemporary interconnected and globalized cyber-physical-realities. While, marketing originated in a "market(ing)-to" foundation and the latest developments, were founded on a "market(ing)-with" premise, the author has introduced a new foundation of the "marketin(ing)-within", which reflects the contemporary intertwined-ness of marketing with the advancements of technology. Hence, the dissertation has paved a solid path for marketing's shifting raison d'être, wherein marketing is dominated by Artificial intelligence (AI). The dissertation has designed a marketing interpretation for AI integration and also shifted the perceptions of the role of the organizational structural embodiment and ethos for the state of theory and practice for marketers to navigate towards creating meaningladen artefacts' and innovations, wherein customers can self-actualize based on the "requisitevarieties" the firms can offer.The DWA establishes a more embracive logic for marketing replacing the pure economic view that seems to be out of touch with the challenges the firms and societies face. XTABLE OF CONTENTS PART I: RESEARCH BACKGROUND AND STRUCTURE OF THE THESIS .