Marketing Management for Consumer Products in the Era of the Internet of Things

Abstract

In the Internet of Things (IoT) consumer products like coffee machines and smoke detectors are connected with the Internet, which effectively expands the Internet to the physical world. Such products have the ability to collect and share data from the user’s environment and, thus, their broad emergence will affect well-established concepts presented in the extant marketing literature. In order to provide a distinct contribution, we focus on customer relationship management, product life cycle management, as well as business model development and discuss implications of the enhanced capabilities of IoT products in these fields. By means of an extensive analysis of current developments in theory and practice, we systematically deduce ten research propositions. The paper concludes with a synthesis of findings and an outlook to promising directions for further research in IoT-oriented marketing management.