Abstract
The usage of digital marketing has significantly changed how firms, businesses, and marketers engage with their buyers. Digital platforms such as Facebook, Google, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, and many others are utilized in an attempt to offer different kinds of personalized campaigns that companies can use to communicate with their customers. Many companies including retail, manufacturing, wholesale, and several others are exploiting digital marketing as a component of their overall sustainable marketing strategies to attain a competitive edge over their counterparts. Therefore, this research proposes that digital marketing relates to sustainability competitive advantage. The research argues that social media green marketing, ecological marketing orientation, social media corporate social responsibility, cause-related marketing, and digital marketing have a positive relationship with sustainability competitive advantage.
TopIntroduction
The usage of digital marketing has significantly changed how firms, businesses and marketers engage with their buyers. According to Dwivedi et al. (2021), buyers utilizing digital resources in the purchasing process normally depend on social media platforms to patronize their products, goods and or services. Digital platforms such as Facebook, Google, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram and so on are offering different kinds of personalized campaigns that companies can use to communicate with their customers and the general public as well. The online platforms driving traffic synchronized with analytics allow firms to track as well as configure various options on how to attract including converting leads into new customers. Being creative and knowledgeable about digital marketing can have an impact on the outlook of the company whether is a startup business or a corporate institution (Dwivedi et al., 2021; Rizvanović et al., 2023). Hitchen et al. (2017) propose that businesses that fully explore the benefits of online or social media marketing have strategies that focus on the coevolution of innovation as well as resources whiles sharing their vision including providing a framework for innovation.
Currently, social media has a significant positive influence on business innovation outcomes thus online involvement has become a platform for exchange between learning as well as innovation (Corral de Zubielqui & Jones, 2020). For instance, digital marketing ensures digital transformation in terms of creating new or modify existing business process, changes organizational culture, and helps to improve the experiences of customers in that it helps to meet the changing business and market requirements satisfactorily and profitably. Thus, to say that digital marketing enhances efficiency and modernizes the process of doing business as well as strengthens the competitiveness of the firm. It makes it easier for firms to implement their business innovation at all levels to create value and increases the overall business performance (Melovic et al., 2020). According to de Zubielqui and Jones (2020) and de Zubielqui, Fryges and Jones (2019), digital marketing impact significantly on innovation of businesses as digitization changes the face of how organizations interact, exchange information as well as other business practices (Zhang, Liu, Li & Wu, 2023). Muninger, Mahr and Hammedi (2022) and Rizavanovic et al. (2023) collaborate to this that the use of digital marketing include social media usage leads to the effective implementation of innovation since such a process requires information, big data, and a two-way communication mechanism. They argue that digital tools are leverage to access knowledge from external actors, including customers to facilitate the business innovation process and the overall performance of firms. Similarly, Ogink and Dong (2019) add that user feedback from the various marketing digital platforms is used to stimulate innovation.
In this sense, knowing which determinants can lead to higher-value interactions activated by data analytics, including the process of gaining insight from digital channels (Kaur & Kumar, 2020), can be the key to enabling successful customer relationships in the short and long-term which can lead to sustainable competitive advantage. According to Ancillai et al. (2019), online marketing is becoming more unique in its impact as well as does not include only buying and selling but other initiatives connected with digitalization together with upcoming technologies when applied to social media marketing is a facilitator for cross-dimensional organizational impact and sustainable competitive edge. In this digital marketing competition, the firm with more resources, and effective strategies have higher availability of interpreting their data as well as targeting their buyers to achieve competitive advantage over their rivals. According to Sidek et al. (2020), de Zubielquii and Jones (2022) and Pan, Bai and Ren (2022), digital marketing is identified as a technological driver of a sustainable competitive edge, as it is the quickest as well as the most convenient method of branding products, goods, and services, including conveying information and ideas directly through the internet.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Ecological marketing: It is the promotion of environmentally friendly products, services, and initiatives.
Marketing Communication: This refers to all the messages and media adopted to communicate with the target market about a products and brands.
Competitive advantage: It refers to any unique thing that gives a company an edge over its competitors.
Digital Marketing: It describes all marketing efforts that occur on the internet/via digital channels.
Corporate Social Responsibility: It is the idea that firms integrate social and environmental concerns into their business operations
Sustainability: This refers to the ability to fulfill the needs of current generations without compromising the needs of future generations whilst ensuring a balance between economic growth, environmental care, and social well-being.
Sustainability competitive advantage: This refers to a situation where a company's sustainability practices and initiatives create a competitive advantage that distinguishes it from its competitor and enhances its financial as well as market position in the long run.
Sustainable Development Goals: It is the blueprint for achieving better and more sustainable future for all.
Green marketing communication: It is the conscientious effort made by firms to inform, incite, persuade, and remind customers about green marketing initiatives.