Graesch, Jan Philipp

English

This dissertation explores the impact of digital transformation on marketing and sales. Digital transformation is influencing customer behavior across the board, creating new sales channels and improving customer communication. At the same time, more and more digital products are being added to existing products. This thesis adds IT as a third actor to the existing base of marketing and sales studies from the literature and is the first to show that marketing is dependent on IT developments as new marketing measures emerge, some of which were not designed for marketing at all (e.g. social media), and as a result marketing and sales need to coordinate in order to better design the customer interaction. A case study of four business units of a large corporation operating in different customer segments worldwide examines the responsibilities and alignment of the three actors Marketing, Sales, and IT ("M-S-I") throughout the customer journey. The research design emphasizes the fact that the respondents in each of these subsidiaries are represented by a marketing manager, a sales manager, and an IT manager. This process of a matched triad or group of three ensures, first, that the statements are consistent and, second, that confounding variables such as culture, leadership style, etc. are eliminated. This dissertation contributes to the theory by adding IT to the field of M-S alignment and shows that the digital transformation of customer interactions is in its ongoing process and that IT actors are already perceived as highly responsible for customer interactions. It makes new contributions to the inter-organizational design of operational processes, also through its novel research design regarding the consideration of all perspectives of all actors. Furthermore, the COMPLY framework as a central result empowers managers to shape the alignment of their interdisciplinary actors and contributes to the literature on how alignment is constructed by demonstrating dimensions and attributes.  Finally, the research question "HOW CAN MARKETING AND SALES IMPROVE CUSTOMER INTERACTIONS DURING DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION IN B2B?" is answered by the fact that these actors need to coordinate with IT actors and there needs to be a common alignment

University of Twente Research Information

Digital transformation of customer interactions:Aligning marketing, sales and IT

https://ris.utwente.nl/ws/files/319977573/thesis_J_Graesch.pdf

Digital transformation of customer interactions:Aligning marketing, sales and IT

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University of Twente Research Information