Marketing in a data-driven digital world: Implications for the role and scope of marketing

Abstract We are living in a world of data abundance and rapid technological advances in the digital realm. The consequences for marketing practices have been transformative. The Marketing Edge and Journal of Business Research sponsored this special issue to address the need for research in this domain. We draw upon past literature to trace how data-driven marketing practices and adoption of digital technologies have helped transform and expand the scope of marketing from a function that was primarily related to analyzing advertisements, to crafting analytics-driven customer-centric marketing, to a function that is fiscally responsible and increasingly technology enabled. The collection of nine studies in this special issue richly describes the challenges that marketing practitioners face and highlights research issues that need to be addressed.