The History of IT in Contemporary Marketing Practices (CMP): The Challenges and Opportunities for Reframing the ICT Dimension within the CMP Framework

Information and communication technology (ICT) has been increasingly used by all business functions during the past 50 years. For much of this time marketing practitioners have endeavoured to find the best ways to introduce ICT successfully into their domain, while marketing academics struggled to develop appropriate explanatory and prescriptive frameworks to enable the comprehensive study of this development. The Contemporary Marketing Practice (CMP) framework (Coviello et al., 2002) and the resulting empirical research findings from these and other studies highlight the ICT challenges for marketers during the 1990s. This paper explores the developments of IT/ICT within the CMP framework aligned to the technological developments of that time and provides a historical analysis of ICT assimilation into marketing practice from both theoretical and practical perspectives. The paper is more inclusive in the range of ICTs within the CMP framework to more fully reflect both technological developments and their assimilation within business and society. It identifies and argues for the need to expand the skill set of marketers to more fully enable the use of ICT within contemporary marketing practice. Introduction The changing role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in marketing poses a substantial challenge to both marketing academics and practitioners. This paper reflects on how historically marketing academics and practitioners have struggled to conceptualize and operationalize the role of ITs as a core part of marketing. The fundamental and contemporary questions are; is ICT used in marketing practice and at what level of return to the organisation? Does ICTs add value to the company and the customer from both informational and interactional perspectives? How can we ensure that marketers have the skill set required for this ICT dominant networked globalised business environment? The central issue reflected in these question is well identified by Downes and Mui (1998) who state that “[a]s technology moves from its position as a defining element of the back office to a disruptive force in the marketplace, the problem now faced by most organisations is that there is rarely anyone, much less an organization, with the mandate and the resources to help senior management treat digital technology strategically”. While numerous academic and practitioner articles in the 1980’s and 1990’s discussed how ICTs were expected to impact on marketing practice from general and individual ICT perspectives, no usable framework to track the impacts of ICT developments and deployment on marketing practice has emerged. The substantial investments in terms of money and effort into ICT initiatives within the marketing arena have resulted in many major failures or, at a minimum, in significant technical, human and organizational challenges (Chen and Ching, 2004; Dempsey, 2000). Many efforts to gain efficiencies and profitability from the introduction of ICTs, such as the internet (Deeter-Schmelz and Kennedy, 2004; Geiger and Martin, 1999,) sales force automation (Speier and Venkatesh, 2002; Geiger and Turley, 2005), EDI (Naude and Holland, 1997; Chan and Sweetman, 2000), Marketing Information Systems (Li, 1995), databases ( Desai et al. 1998), or Customer Relationship Management (CRM) (Chen and Ching, 2004; Payne, 2001), have not lived up to initial expectations. Given the lack of a clear understanding of how ICTs impact on marketing practice, and the slow marketing uptake of technologies during the 1990s, the initial contemporary marketing practices (CMP) studies did not incorporate an explicit technology dimension. It was not until Coviello et al. (2001; 2003) added an e-Marketing (eM) component to their framework that ICTs in marketing were systemically considered. Since then, various researchers have used the Coviello et al. (2001; 2003) and other such frameworks to study the operationalisation of IT in marketing practice. Whilst initial studies during the 1990s show a low incidence of eM adoption, more recent investigations have found that not only has there been an increase in the penetration of eM in firms, but that firms adopting eM are also likely to show an improvement in marketing performance (Barwise and Farley, 2005; Brodie et al., 2006). These studies suggest that eM is “coming of age”, in large part as a consequence of its integration with the other marketing practices. In this paper we review both the historical and contemporary situation in relation to ITs within the CMP framework, and also more generally within marketing practice. We then propose some possible avenues for future exploration and development, such as the suggestions to broaden our perspective from ITs (information technologies) to ICTs (information and communications technologies), to include ITs horizontally within the CMP framework as both an IT investment and IT orientation across all five approaches to contemporary marketing practice, and the practical and research implications of the management and organisational challenges for marketers arising out of ICT deployment within a marketing framework. Defining Information Technologies There have been definitional issues with ITs since Leavitt and Whisler (1985) first introduced the term (Braun, 1998; Glazer, 1991). The complexity of this issue becomes clear when one considers both the range of relevant technologies and the variety of roles they can perform on one hand, with the substantially different experiences and modes of engagement that individuals and communities can have with such technologies (Hitt and Brynjolfsson 1996; MacKenzie and Wajcman 1999). In addition, the different purposes of such definitions (Braun 1998)add to the difficulty of developing and agreeing on clear and unambiguous definitions. The lack of such definitions has resulted in major research difficulties (Preston 1997; Hitt and Brynjolfsson, 1996), particularly in the marketing arena (Glazer 1991; Leverick et al. 1997). Proposed definitions reflect a variety of perspectives including conceptions of IT as social construction, as an information provider, as an information infrastructure, and as a set of business processes and systems. For the purposes of this paper, we adopt Ward and Peppard’s (2002) updated version of suggestions from Leavitt and Whisler (1985), Porter and Millar (1985), Morton (1991), and Willcocks (1996): “IT refers specifically to technology, essentially hardware, software and telecommunications networks. It is thus both tangible (e.g. with servers, PC, routers and network cables) and intangible (e.g. with software of all types). IT facilitates the acquisition, processing, storing, delivery and sharing of information and other digital content. In the European Union, the term Information and Communication Technologies or ICT is generally used instead of IT to recognize the convergence of traditional information technology and telecommunications, which were once seen as distinct areas”. We also support the Orlikowski (2000) view of a distinction between technologies as artefacts (i.e. tangible) and in use (i.e. intangible), and the Brady, Saren and Tzokas (2002) argument that it is useful to adopt a focus “on IT as the answer to business problems, on how it supports and changes business operations, rather than on a focus on the technological aspects of IT”. This more encompassing view will be contrasted with the current CMP approach to e-Marketing which has a dominant interactions and internet focus. This more extensive development of the ICT domain is to be expected as the technological developments continue apace and the assimilation and learning challenges are overcome internally in organisations, in the interactions between firms and customers in the marketplace, and ultimately in society as a whole. ITs: The Early Years Noting the evolutionary stages of database development, Nolan (1973). developed a four stages theory for IT growth in companies that relates to three distinct eras of IT developments: data processing, micro computing, and networking (Nolan, 1973; Nolan and Segar, 1993; Nolan and Croson, 1995; Nolan, 1998). Similar to Venkatraman’s (1994) description of ‘organizational transformation’, Tapscott and Caston (1993) identified three major shifts away from the original reliance on mainframe computers: (1) from personal to work-group computing; (2) from system islands to integrated systems; and (3) from internal to inter-enterprise computing. Zuboff (1988) coined the terms automation, information and transformation to explain a similar developmental trajectory. Rockart (1988) and Cecil and Hall (1988) also predicted that ITs would become inextricably intertwined with business, moving from the back end of the business system to the front end (i.e., from accounting to production to selling and marketing to servicing). They foresaw that ITs would help link companies and their suppliers, distributors, resellers and customers into what might be termed ‘seamless’ networks of relationships and interactions throughout an industry’s entire value system. It was also predicted that such a transformation would not only add value to existing forms of products or services, but also create new forms of value (Normann and Ramirez 1993). The predicted challenges for managers in the 1990s would be to lead their organizations through the IT-enabled transformation process, and this would depend on both the degree of change that each company would deem to be necessary, and the expected payoffs (Morton 1991; Nolan, 1973; Zuboff, 1988). The growing pervasiveness of ICT in business, including among others the Internet, mobile communications, and databases, created opportunities for continuous two-way links with respect to products, services, information, processes etc. between companies and their individual customers, suppliers and other partners. This capacity for increased linkage and networking had profound effects on the “structure, strategy and competitive dynamics of industries” (Butler et al., 1997:6). The overall rubric for IT assimilation was termed e-Business, with the combination of increasing computer information processing power and high-speed telecommunications seen as driving the fundamental changes occurring in organisations (Waters, 1999). King and Clift (2000) said eBusiness “seamlessly moves data and information over open and closed networks, bringing together previously separate groups inside and outside companies. It improves company performance by connecting disparate value chains, which allows new relationships to be developed. While the definition of e-Business was all-encompassing, its subset (e-Commerce) was often used to denote an organization as having a website and/or selling products and/or services via the Internet. Beyond the somewhat limiting boundaries of the e-Commerce label, agreement developed that as new IT developments evolve basic assumptions about corporate organization, structure (Hagel and Singer 1999; Child and McGrath 2001), and form (networked and virtual) (Webster 1992; 1998; Achrol and Kotler 1999) would need to be revisited. More substantially, however, were the uncertainties about the full extent of ITs' impacts and opportunities (e.g., Evans & Wurster 1997), and how ITs would enable a firm to do things it could not do before (Day 1996). Malone and Laubacher (1998) commented: “What is lagging behind technology is our imagination”. From today’s vantage point, we can also comment on the deficiency in marketers’ abilities to maximize the potential value of ICT deployment not simply because of this lag in imagination, but because of a lack of sufficient insight and skills in appropriately organizing and managing the deployment of advanced ICTs. The Role of ITs in Relationship Marketing The arrival of relationship marketing in the 1990s, which, in its simplest form, is a progression from the dominant and often criticised traditional transactional marketing mix 4p’s focus (Gronroos, 1997, Gummesson, 1987, 1998; Payne, 1995; Day and Montgomery, 1999; Baker, 2000) opened the debate between transactional and relational marketing culminating in the CMP framework (Coviello et al. 1997) suggesting a pluralistic approach incorporating both transactional and relational concerns. Throughout this debate many authors ascribed a dominant IT role in relationship marketing, (Webster, 1992, Thomas, 2000; Payne, 2001) but it has also become clear that ICT is crucial in transactional based marketing (Brady et al., 2002). The use of ICTs in facilitating marketing relevant relationships, also termed ‘electronic relations’, has been found in a number of industries (Gummesson, 1994). In discussing 30 different forms of such relationships, Gummesson (2000) notes that ‘“automated electronic relationship where the conduit is emphasised’, though increasingly prominent in some industries, are only at the beginning of their development, and that they supplement rather than cancel the need for personal or social networks. Similarly, at the intra-organisational level, ICT can help to link the technical and market functions. He suggested that the concept of networks or virtual organisations, with an emphasis on IT as the basis for such organisational arrangements, is highly correlated to relationship marketing. A range of articles in the Harvard Business Review suggest strategies for relationship marketing, particularly within the consumer market, which utilise IT extensively (Pine et al., 1995; Peppers and Rogers, 1995; Peppers et al., 1999). Peppers et al. (1999) note that relationship marketing sets specific IT demands in the guise of databases and data warehouses, integrated cross function systems, information systems containing standardised customer information, sales force automation, web sites, call centres, and integrated mass customisation manufacturing technology. Developments in IT applications which provide linkages between customers and companies, including asynchronous and synchronous interactions, widespread computer networks and ongoing and rapid information processing applications increase the role of IT in establishing and maintaining relationships. Schlegelmilch and Sinkovics (1998:166) said: “No longer is ICT used to automate well defined tasks within an organisation which can be left to ICT specialists and/or manufacturing people, but ICT is the framework and key instrument for designing and managing companies’ external relationships”. We need to develop our understanding of ICT with the CMP framework because as McKenna (1999) noted “Marketing evolves as technology evolves”. When interactive communications are matched to agile operations and manufacturing, such as in the computer industry (Shocker, Srivastava and Ruekert 1994; Kraemer, Dedrick and Yamashiro 2000), one effect is the possibility of any thing, in any way, at any time, and any where (McKenna 1991). In the process, firms become both one-to-one marketers that elicit and use information from each customer with respect to individual needs, preferences and other characteristics; and mass-customizers that provide customers with personalised goods or services (Pine, Peppers and Rogers 1995). A feature of such agile manufacturing and marketing is that the flexibility moves the focus of value creation away from the hardware technology (the product and service) and toward the interactive co-construction that combines software and networking possibilities (Port 1999), including improved customer acquisition (Hoffman and Novak 2000) and improved relationship building and loyalty (Jackson 1997; Hart, Smith, Sparks and Tzokas 1999). Arguments that the evolution of marketing practices will be driven to a significant extent by the use of IT abound, and marketing’s continuing and future development is seen as closely intertwined with technological issues (Webster, 1992; Schultz et al., 1996; Schmitz and Rovner, 1992; McKenna, 1991; Porter and Millar, 1985; Bruce et al., 1996; Deighton, 1996; Leverick et al., 1997). Academics and practitioners coined terms to try to capture this development, including ‘one to one marketing’ (McKenna 1999); ‘web based’ marketing (Loebbecke and Jelassi 1997); ‘permission marketing’ (Godin 1999); or terms which suggest that it is a new form of business (eCommerce or eBusiness); or even a type of marketing (emarketing). Brady et al. (2002) suggest that the spelling of marketing should be changed to MarkITing to reflect the widespread use of IT in contemporary marketing practice. Mintzberg et al. (1995:7) observed that after marketing strategy has remained the same for generations the arrival of IT will bring fundamental change. Holland and Naude (2004) argue that marketing should be viewed as an information handling problem due to the central role of IT. Bruce et al. (1996) contend that IT effects will be widespread and encompass changes to the structure and organisation of marketing. Venkatesh (1998) is of the view that there will be a radical new marketing era courtesy of IT, with the emergence of cyberspace or the networked world, changing how marketing is practiced, but leaving marketers with the challenge of how to practice marketing without being able to rely on traditional conceptions and practices. Automation, Information, Transformation: Why Marketing did not Embrace IT For much of the past two decades, empirical studies reveal that marketing was slower than other functions to adopt IT, and that IT use in marketing was predominantly for productivity or automational purposes focused on routine or tactical activities (Palidawandana and Delfino, 1994; Domegan and Donaldson, 1994; Leverick et al., 1998; Bruce et al., 1996; Peattie and Peters, 1997; Ranchhod and Hackney, 1996; Hewson and Hewson, 1994; Fletcher and Wright, 1997). Shocker et al. (1994, p.151) said that ”technology can be leveraged to gain competitive advantage. Or technological change can be resisted by entrenched interests to their own detriment”. Despite the hype in the popular press during the 1990s about the revolutionary possibilities of IT-enabled transformation, it appears IT assimilation in marketing has occurred in a more evolutionary and measured fashion. As noted earlier, Zuboff (1988) coined the terms automation, information and transformation to explain the progressive impacts of ITs, and throughout much of the late 1980s and the 1990s IT was deployed to automate previously manual tasks. Zuboff’s framework might suggest that as the benefits of automation in other departments are realized, and information becomes pivotal to organisational operations (see also Holland and Naude, 2004), we are moving from the informational to the transformational stage, and thus an increased use of IT by marketing should occur now and into the future. As Mazur (1994: vii) argued: “Most companies have experience installing computers in areas such as finance and production, where their ability to speed up production and eliminate waste can be measured accurately. But now as the focus shifts towards the recognition that information is the most precious of modern corporate resources and its exploitation the key to competitive survival, the spotlight falls on marketing; what it is and what it should be doing”. Marketers were challenged by the emerging technological possibilities and as Mitchell (1994:185) noted ‘marketing is the last bastion of management to embrace IT.’ We believe that the reasons for this are partly to be found in concerns about the vagary of the impact of IT use for customer relations and market success. As Day (1996, p.151) pointedly asked: “Does interactivity represent the greatest marketing opportunity of all time or 101 ways to lose money?” Similarly, Jap and Mohr (2002, p.24) cautioned that “establishing successful B2B on-line strategies can be tough and complicated”. We also believe, however, that it is not just uncertainty about the implications of technology use that have impeded marketers, but also a distinct gap in their typical skill set: integrating ICT successfully in marketing requires marketers to take an active managerial role far beyond their traditional areas of competence and authority. Successful deployment of ICT requires integration not just of technology but also of technologists and other organizational functions into coherent and concerted strategic and operational approaches to offering and delivering on value propositions for customers. (Fellenz & Brady, 2006) Nolan (1998) also noted that it was apparent that most companies could manage the automation nature of the extant computerisation, but that strategic use of IT and higher-level decision making was creating major problems. This situation was compounded in the marketing department by the level of uncertainty as to the optimal technologies for marketing operations (McDonald, et al., 1993; McDonald and Wilson, 1999). Many IT investments lacked a strategic dimension (Willcocks, 1996; Holtham, 1994), and focused on the rational/engineering perspective (Feeney 1997). The more transformational potential the considered and deployed ICTs possess, the more difficulties emerge in implementation and in assessing their ultimate benefits (Brady et al., 2002; Moriarty and Swartz, 1989; Shaw, 1994). Transformation takes time (Melody, 1997) and before transformational ICTs can be fully integrated into a firm’s marketing efforts, a large and often dramatic shift in organisational culture may be required (Bruce et al., 1996). It was further argued that the automational and informational developments of ICT deployment need to occur before transformational use is possible (Brady et al., 2002). Concurrent with the increasing but slow ICT assimilation during the 1990s, some viewed marketing practice as in a state of change, redirection, and refocus. It was described as searching for relevance and applicability, in need of a radical overhaul, and fragmented with a variety of different approaches, methods, and theories abounding (Reichheld, 1995; Brown et al., 1996; Brownlie and Saren, 1997; Murray et al., 2002; O’Driscoll, 1998; Brownlie et al., 1999; Day and Montgomery, 1999; Wensley, 1999; Saren, 2000). Brookes et al. (2004) suggest that progress has been slower than predicted because ‘learning by trial and error’ was seen as acceptable by marketing practitioners. Managers enumerate various cognitive-affective responses to their firm’s efforts, which at one extreme may include expressions of disappointment, pessimism and skepticism concerning their firm's investments in ITs for reinforcement purposes. (Orlikowski, 2000) Another finding is that as managers categorize their own firm's investments in ITs according to three different categories (Orlikowski, 2000). Thus, leadership support is seen as ranging from guarded to hostile, reflecting a ‘risk-avoidance’ culture’; funding is often inadequate; and set-backs may be seen as a way to justify a halt to future initiatives. At the other extreme are expressions of anticipation, optimism and confidence concerning their firm's investments in ITs for transformation purposes, such as to ‘change the rules of the game’. This latter group also appears to be proceeding on the basis of what Lynn, Monroe and Paulson (1996) term a ‘probe and learn process’. They have the full support of their organization in terms of top leadership encouragement, reflecting an ‘opportunity/change seeking culture’; the ready provision of necessary resourcing; and IT setbacks may be seen as part of the learning/advancement process. It appears clear that the latter environment enables marketers to not only develop a deeper knowledge and appreciation of the technical potential and the marketing utility of ICTs, but also to extend their understanding and skill set regarding the intra-organizational coordination and management activities required for full integration and deployment of ICTs into the organization’s product and service offerings. e-Marketing and IT within the CMP Framework As discussed in article one of this special issue, Coviello et al.’s CMP framework was developed in 1997. Though they did not include IT as a separate dimension for all stages, it is implicit in many of the dimensions and is included at the database stage related to formality of relational exchange and managerial investment. In their research the use of IT and the impact of IT, both organisationally and within the industry sector, was included in the questionnaire and their companies were divided by technology base (high versus low technology). Findings from their research highlighted that services firms noted an increase in use of technology for advertising and communications (Coviello et al., 1997). They also found industry specific dominant marketing practices related to the level of sophistication of a company’s technology. They observed that those large, older consumer goods companies with more sophisticated use of technology had a transactional perspective or a database perspective. Industrial goods firms with low turnover usually had an interactions perspective, while joint or foreign owned companies with sophisticated use of technology operated a network perspective. Therefore, IT appears related to the level of development of relationship marketing. These findings in particular indicate the need for sophisticated IT as a prerequisite for network development. Commenting on their research findings, they observed that the impact of IT on marketing practices needed further research. It should be noted that at that stage the general term ‘technology’ as opposed to ‘information technology’ was used. Subsequently, Coviello, Milley and Marcolin (2001) reviewed and amalgamated other frameworks (e.g., Day, 1998; Iacobucci and Hibbard, 1999) and interactive marketing themes (e.g., Berthon et al., 1999). In their review of the literature they identified four differing schools of thought on the impact of the internet and interactivity on marketing practice. One view captured by Gates (1999) and Venkatraman (2000) is based on the argument that the Internet changes everything. A second school of thought is that new ITs are tools to support or augment traditional approaches to marketing and strategy (Porter, 2001). A third view is that interactive technologies offer basically a new channel to the market (Ghosh 1998). A fourth, more holistic school of thought is that IT-enabled interactivity offers firms different opportunities according to their contexts (Cairncross 2000). Coviello et al. (2001) incorporated a general technology dimension in the framework related to the different levels of IT integration in the organization (Orlikowski, 2000). When ITs are used to support/preserve current marketing efforts they reinforce the status quo; when ITs are used to extend/ improve existing marketing efforts they enhance the status quo; and when ITs are used to redefine/drive the marketing efforts they transform the status quo. A potentially important but still underexplored aspect of these dynamics is the role of users’ affective connections with technologies which can “offer richer explanations for the range of structural responses enacted by users as they engage with technology in practice”. (Orlikowski, (2000, p.423; see also Huy, 2002). After reviewing the IT/marketing interface literature, including the conceptual work of Blattberg and Deighton (1991) and others, and pattern-matching the findings of their content analysis back to the dimensions of the original framework of four marketing practices, Coviello, Milley and Marcolin (2001) added a fifth aspect of marketing practice associated with IT-enabled interactivity. Coviello et al. (2001:26) termed this e-Marketing (eM) and defined it as “using the Internet and other interactive technologies to create and mediate dialogue between the firm and identified customers”. Through this definition eM was characterized as being reliant on technology to enable interactivity. However, they argue that the use of the term eM avoided the term ‘interactive’ in order to minimize possible confusion with one of the original aspects of marketing practice, namely ‘Interaction Marketing’, which had been defined as ‘developing personal interactions between employees and individual customers’. A feature of this definition, say Coviello et al. (2001:26), is that “e-Marketing encompasses one-to-one marketing and allows for mass customisation”. A fuller description of the e-Marketing dimension is shown in Table 2. Table 2 e-Marketing Approach Classified by Exchange and Managerial Dimension e-Marketing Purpose of Exchange Information-generating dialogue between a seller and many identified buyers Nature of Communication Firm using technology to communicate “with” and “among” many individuals (who may form groups) Type of Contact Interactive (via technology) Duration of Exchange Continuous (but interactivity occurs in real time) Formality in Exchange Formal (yet customized and/or personalised via interactive technology) Managerial Intent Creation of IT-enabled dialogue Managerial Focus Managing IT-enabled relationships between the firm and many individuals Managerial Investment Internal operational assets (IT, website, logistics). Functional systems integration Managerial Level Marketing specialists (with) technology specialists and senior managers Source: Adapted from Coviello et al., (2001) Adding e-Marketing(eM) to the four types of marketing practice in the original CMP framework (Transaction Marketing [TM]; Database Marketing [DM]; Interaction Marketing [IM]; and Network Marketing [NM]) was the platform for further examination of the extent to which eM had become integrated with the other practices and/or had evolved to where it was becoming a discrete practice. In a follow-up study of firms in New Zealand and the UK, Coviello, Brodie, Brookes and Palmer (2003) show that e-Marketing is clearly associated with Database, Interaction and Network Marketing. They further confirm that all five approaches can have an IT dimension, along stages of IT development perspective, though they also suggest that only the e-Marketing approach has the potential to use IT to transform their practices. Further analysis of the relationship between the strategic role of IT in the firm, as defined by Orlikowski (2000), show that more limited the roles of IT in the firm are associated with lower levels of eM in practice, and vice versa. For example, 63% of firms with low levels of eM use ITs in a reinforcing role, whereas 80% of firms with high levels of eM use ITs to either reinforce or transform their organizational status quo. Coviello et al. (2003:873) conclude that while the application of e-Marketing may not ‘drive marketing practice’, it may be seen as a boundary spanning function and could reflect the possibility “that information technology’s ability to enable marketing practices is related to the role that ITs play in the firm as a whole”. In a qualitative study of the same database, Brookes, Brodie, Coviello and Palmer (2004) provide further evidence of the extent to which IT’s are shaping marketing practices. Regardless of the industry type, a majority (49%) of firms still use ITs in a reinforcing capacity, with 31% stating that ITs are mainly used to enhance the status quo, and 20% saying ITs are being used for transforming purposes. This correlates well with recent empirically research in the hotel sector in Ireland which showed that 40% of firms view ICT as reinforcing the status quo, 47% are of the view that it enhances the status quo, and 13% view ICTs as transforming the status quo (O’Connor & Brady, 2006). This evidence once again indicates the low frequency with which ICTs transform operations, but also confirms that firms are gradually moving beyond an ICT emphasis on reinforcement matters (see also Brady et al., 2002). Brookes et al. (2004) found that consumer goods companies are more heavily weighted toward the use of ITs in reinforcing or enhancing roles, while business-to-business firms are slightly more heavily weighted toward the use of ITs in a transforming role. This correlates to the fact that eM penetration is higher for B2B service firms and export firms (Brodie, 2000; see also Coviello et al., 2003, and Brookes et al. 2004). These empirical results show that only a small proportion of firms consider themselves to be high users of technology, and few see themselves as having reached higher levels of IT-enabled business transformation. The results of this study also suggest that no one view of IT prevails. Whilst half the firms in the study currently use ITs as reinforcement tools, this could be considered the start of a longer process of change. It may also mean missed opportunities, especially if some firms currently have customers or other stakeholders who are more 'technology-ready' and willing to interact through ITs. The move to the transformational or enhancing stage is challenging for marketers though it should be noted that virtually all firms anticipate they will be heavier users of ITs in the future. Brady et al. (2002) suggest that while efficiency gains are acceptable, marketers still need to move toward the transformational or what Nolan calls the ‘network’ era. Coviello et al. (2001c)also show that the e-Marketing approach is not widely practiced ‘at a high level’, with firms concentrating on more traditional marketing practices, and that where it is practiced, it occurs in conjunction with, rather than as a separate marketing approach They suggest that the practical application of interactive technologies is in its infancy. They did find a strong positive relationship between database and e-Marketing practices and noted that database marketing was the only practice correlated with all other practices and may be viewed as the start of e-Marketing. Figure 1 links database marketing and e-Marketing approaches to IT practices, across the range of approaches, which is a similar approach to the focus taken by Brady et al. (2002) that will be discussed in a later section. Figure 1 Direct Marketing and e-Marketing Relative to Other Aspects of Marketing Transaction Marketing Interaction Marketing Network Marketing Database Marketing -------------------------e-Marketing Source: Coviello et al., (2003) These findings reflect the challenges in assimilation IT into marketing developments while the inclusion of these questions meant that the framework included a major IT dimension which was reflective of the situation when the researchers developed the research instrument. The authors were aware of the development aspects of IT and suggest that “decisions as to the implementation of eMarketing will require a clear understanding of both the firm’s capabilities to implement and support ‘e’ operations and their customer’s preferences/capabilities to participate in electronically-interactive relationships” (Coviello et al. 2001: 24). In the latest CMP study of e-Marketing penetration involving 212 US-based firms in 2002 and 139 US-based firms in 2005, Brodie, Winklhofer, Coviello and Johnston (2006) observed that, comparing the 2002 results with the 2005, they can concur with Barwise and Farley’s (2005) argument that eM is ‘starting to come of age’. In particular, they believe that, with an increase from 63% to 71% of firms reporting ‘medium’ or ‘high’ levels of eM, “it can be concluded that eM is no longer ‘new’ but rather, is becoming an established marketing practice within the majority of firms. While this level of penetration is not as high as for the other marketing practices, it is approaching a comparable level, especially for DM and IM”. (Brodie et al., 2006) Consistent with Day and Ben (2005) and the more recent CMP studies, Brodie et al. (2006) also find that eM is emerging as a practice that is highly integrated with, and thus enhancing and supporting, existing marketing practices, rather becoming an independent practice. Though Porter (2001: 64) was only referring to the internet he did support this contention of the technology aligning with the established business to be viewed as an enabling technology. Consistent with findings from Wu, Mahajan and Balasubramanian (2003), Brodie et al. show a strong positive relationship between eM penetration and performance, especially ‘acquisition’ performance (such as sales growth and new customers gained) and customer retention performance with Brodie et al. (2006), concurring with Day and Ben’s (2005) conclusions that firms adopting eM will perform better”. ICT and Marketing Practices: A Research Agenda Following our evaluation of the collective and cumulative results from the IT component of the CMP we believe that the research agenda would benefit from increased additional attention on the following three areas: 1. An Extension of the CMP Framework to include the full range of ICTs available to marketers; 2. An Extension of the CMP framework to include IT along the Horizontal as well as the Vertical 3. Inclusion of ICT Management Skill Set in Marketing An Extension of the CMP Framework to include the full range of ICTs available to marketers; Despite the advances in ICT there is little understanding of the range of ICTs in marketing and the interrelated and connectivity of the ICTs. The sheer range of systems and software that can be classed as ICT usage in marketing is extensive (Brady and Saren 2005; Leverick et al. 1997). However, many marketing ICTs were not designed for or by marketing, and many of them are nonspecific to the marketing department. Some attempts have been made to comprehensively identify them. McDonald and Wilson (1999) took an application perspective to show which marketing practices would be affected rather than the ICTs in use in marketing. Brady et al. (1999) originally suggested that there were 19 major ICTs in marketing (Brady et al., 1999) growing to 56 in 2002 and 106 at the current iteration and divided into a framework encompassing both the internal (informational) and external (interactional). (Brady et al., 2002; Brady and Saren 2005) (See Appendix 1). While understandable, the narrow focus on the internet during the late 90s and early 2000 needs to be broadened to include the full range of ICTs now available to marketers. It is crucial that contemporary CMP frameworks explicitly incorporate a comprehensive technology dimension that can reflect the continually growing impact of a broad range of ICTs on CMP. One aspect of this may be to rethink labels such as e-Business, e-Commerce, m-Commerce, or e-Marketing. While they were appropriate and enabling at the time, for example by generating attention and debate, they have in many ways become quite limiting because they fail to recognise the comprehensive nature in which not just marketing, but other individual organisational functions as well as general management thinking must approach ICT deployment to maximise the realisation of its potential value promise. Our suggestion is that a holistic overview of a range of individual ICTs would prove fruitful for the future. ICT is now viewed as a normal part of business operation, and there are difficulties in isolating IT from company process (Collis, 1994; Barney, 1991; Willcocks, 1996; Webber, 1993; Furness, 1996). Due to the interrelatedness and connectivity of IT, companies have difficulties ‘unbundling’ ITs (Heskett et al, 1990; Kench and Evans, 1991). IT could productively be viewed as a whole system rather than as separate technologies (Thomas et al., 1994; Ford and Saren, 1996; MacKenzie and Wajcman, 1999; Galliers, 1995). Isolating an ICT and attempting to measure its contribution to company level effects like growth rate, ROI and so on may pose difficulties, as these aggregate variables are insensitive to the effect of one ICT (Sethi and King, 1994), and causal links may be difficult to identify and confirm (Glazer, 1991; Leverick et al., 1997). ICT is viewed by managers in 'clusters', and it should be researched in that format (Clarke et al., 1995). Willcocks and Lester, (1996:32) observed that in reality this does not happen, and concluded that “only 20% of organisations surveyed included the totality of systems availability and capability and the needs of the organisation and department in their assessment”. This is a pivotal issue for marketing, where, due to the multioperational nature of ITs and marketing operations, a singular IT resource can be used for a variety of marketing operations and across various departments (Barnes, 1993). Brady and her colleagues (Brady et al., 2002; Brady and Saren, 2005) developed a framework for the totality of ICTs within marketing (see appendix 1). The expansion of the original Coviello et al. (2001) technology questions could thus include sector specific ICT questions so both the holistic and the individual IT resources could be researched. An extended IT/ICT CMP questionnaire has been empirically tested (see O’Connor and Brady 2006) allowing for a full range of ICTs and their level of assimilation to be studied. The findings illustrate the horizontal role that ICT plays within marketing and shows evidence of ICTs use to support the current marketing effort, especially in relation to analysis and planning, database management, communications (internally and externally), plus sales-related activities. ICTs particularly extend/improve the marketing effort in relation to customer relationship management and self-service activities, and are also used to redefine/drive the marketing effort, particularly in relation to research. In terms of the marketers usage of ICTs they used many operational ICTs, and some marketing and sales-related ICTs. Supporting other research findings, the more automational ICTs are used extensively, including: online booking system, finance and accounting system and front office reservation system. The most commonly used marketing ICTs were email, website, Internet and a customer database. For sales, the most commonly used were mobile phone, laptop and customer database. Further analysis reflected that marketers view ICT as both a variety of separate applications and as a communication/promotional medium. However, while the preliminary findings suggest that marketers are embracing ICTs, particularly in relation to automational hotel operations, many respondents indicate a lack of a marketing dimension to their systems. As further evidence of their lack of sophisticated use many respondents ICT and the Internet were almost synonymous In summary, in the CMP work to date the focus of the IT dimension has largely been on interactivity and emarketing and the internet reflecting the dominant technology of that time. We suggest that a development of the CMP framework to include a wider ICT infrastructure reflective of the rapid technological developments and keeping pace with the range of ICTs available to marketers. An Extension of the CMP framework to include IT along the Horizontal as well as the Vertical Another methodological issue is the inclusion of IT across the marketing approaches reflective of the reality of ICT use in marketing practice. For example marketing has a dominant information processing role (Holland and Naude, 2004) across all domains of business and this is not specifically addressed in the CMP studies which have a more interactive orientation. Further, as noted in the last section, developments in IT suggest that firms may need to think beyond a functional marketing-centric interactivity perspective. As Day and Montgomery (1999:7) noted, a wider perspective on interconnectivity is required: “No one will be immune from the second-order consequences of interconnectivity for exchange processes, market structure, competitive processes and organisational activates”. One suggestion is to include ICT within the relational exchange and managerial dimensions (see table 3). The next stage would be to operationalise the questions to form the bases for this construct within the research instrument. Table 3: An ICT Dimension to the Marketing Approaches Classified by Relational Exchange and Managerial Dimension Transactional Perspective Relationship Perspective Transaction Marketing Database Marketing Emarketing Interaction Marketing Network Marketing Relational exchange dimensions