The Impact of Technology on Marketing

Predicting the impact of technology on marketing is a hopeless task. By the time this paper is typed, new technologies will have emerged which ultimately will impact marketing in ways we simply cannot imagine no matter how creative a process we follow. My comments are an outgrowth of brainstorming sessions held near the end of the "Electronic Marketing and the Consumer" Conference on the University of Texas, Austin, campus in October 1996. This paper is drawn directly from the text of a chapter in the book cited at the end of this paper, and my co-author Bill Keep deserves half or more of the credit. Predictions are organized around eight major headings. Each heading highlights a generalized implication of predicted changes. No attempt has been made to sequence them in their order of importance or impact, as clearly that is a debatable issue. Needless to say, however, some are likely to have a greater impact than others.