Towards Marketing 4.0: Vision and Survey on the Role of IoT and Data Science

Abstract

According to KPMG, Internet of Things (IoT) technology was among the top 10 technologies of 2019. It has been growing at a significant pace, influencing and disrupting several application domains. It is expected that by 2025, 75.44 billion devices will be connected to the Internet. These devices generate massive amounts of data which, when harnessed using the power of data science (DS) techniques and approaches such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), can provide significant benefits to economy, society, and people. Examples of areas that are being disrupted are digital marketing and retail commerce services in smart cities. This paper presents a vision for Marketing 4.0 that is underpinned by disruptive digital technologies such as IoT and DS. We present an analysis of the current state of the art in IoT and DS via the three pillars of marketing: namely, people, products, and places. We propose a blueprint architecture for developing a Marketing 4.0 solution that is underpinned by IoT and DS. We conclude the paper by highlighting the open challenges that need to be addressed in order to realise the Marketing 4.0 blueprint architecture, including supporting the integration of IoT data concerning people, products, and places and using DS to make efficient and effective recommendations.