How marketing will change in the future

Against this backdrop, please describe, predict, and justify what the marketing education/discipline would or should look like in the next five to ten years.

The marketing discipline will be fundamentally changed going forward and well into the future. Here the discipline will rely heavily on analytics and overall predictive ability. For one, artificial intelligence is beginning to enter the discipline as a means of predicting consumer behavior and purchasing decisions. Likewise, technology continues to evolve to allow marketers to properly pinpoint and isolate variables that are directly correlated to sales. Here, the use of social media websites, streaming viewership rates, time spent online, how people interact online and other variables now require a specific expertise as it relates to marketing. Marketing has now become an analytical science with many of its variables, easily measured and observed. The focus of this essay will be placed on marketing research and analytics and how it will evolve over the years to encompasses much more than pricing data that is reactive. Instead, the future of marketing research will be much more proactive in nature, with an ability to better predict how and when a consumer will make a purchase.

Historically, market research has been backward looking. Here researchers often review data related to sales, promotion effectiveness, and purchaser demographic use these variables to predict future marketing performance. However, this is often difficult in that many of these variables change and have different impacts on one another, thereby making predictions difficult. Research conducted by Larcker and Fornell found that many of these models do a poor job of predicting consumer behavior in highly dynamic markets. Here, fast growing markets such as Dallas, Texas or Atlanta, Georgia, often are not markets that provide ample predictive power. However, the older methods according to the research are much more applicable to slower growth, mature markets, characterized with little change in consumer demographics. (Fornell, 2021) This has changed significantly with the introduction of data analytics, artificial intelligence, big data, and other methods in which to curate large amounts of data. Here, marketers are now transitioning into the role of a data scientist with the ability to not only predict purchasing behavior but also to change pricing dynamically using multiple variables at a single point in time. This dynamism will only improve over time as analytical capabilities, systems and process improve. In addition, businesses can leverage these insights to provide more flexible pricing terms for their consumers, clients, and customers. For example, NuBank, one of the world’s fastest growing digital banks leverages these capabilities to specifically market its products to clients. Here, through market research, the company is better able to not only pinpoint the best customers in the regions in which it operates in but is also able to price loans and other products effectively. As a result, the company spends very little compared to its peers as it relates to marketing and advertising expense. Instead, its client growth has been generated almost entirely from customer referrals due in part to strong product quality and an ability to target the customers most likely to benefit from its digital products. Airlines, credit care companies and other vacation websites often use a very rudimentary form of this model to attract and retain customers. Here, market research has enabled credit card companies to not only pinpoint the most profitable customers, but to curate the product offering to better meet customer needs and pricing considerations.

Over the next five to ten years these innovations will continue to evolve to make marketing much more efficient at identifying customer needs, predicting the appropriate pricing, and providing the correction value proposition for the customer needs (Heller, 2019). Marketing research will look to leverage artificial intelligence, by using a variety of variable simultaneous to provide better insights. The overall research methodology can also be adapted to better suit a changing and much more dynamic operating environment. Here, traditional surveys and focus groups, which were often staples within the market research profession can now be replaced with much more dynamic and insightful data. Researchers instead of relying on what consumers say can now more readily assess their overall behavior which can be very different. In addition, market researchers in the future will have real time feedback that can provide insights on much quicker basis. This ultimately helps improve market responsiveness to changes in consumer behaviors and preferences. In addition, the market research of the future will supplement human insights and behaviors with artificial intelligence. Research conducted by Agrawal, provided insights into how marketing research is being used to help companies not only market to consumers but also to market to potential employees. Here, the research indicates that performance is significantly improved at attracting and retaining both consumers and potential employees. This will be improved in the future going forward, ultimately creating a much more efficient and viable market research discipline.