The Impact of Disruptive Digital Technologies on Organizational Structures and Marketing Systems: Democratization of Marketing in the Solidarity Economy

Introduction

Disruptive digital technologies (DDTs), such as Web 3.0 and 3D printing have been instigating new organizational structures and by extension new marketing systems. The traditional marketing system under the influence of Dominant Social Paradigm (DSP) has been morphing into a “purposeful marketing system”, which has been evoked by digital commons or Global Collaborative Commons (GCCs) in recent years. The tradition-shattering purposeful marketing system is a reciprocative one based on distributive justice, which rejects the pre-established and socially constructed structures and appears to complement tradition-bound regnant marketing system, if not to replace it.

Until the onset of the new millennium, traditional chain-and-command organizations (CCOs) have been operating in the context of tradition-bound marketing system or the “received marketing paradigm”, which essentially prioritized growth, customer life-time value, targeting middle- and upper-class high value markets (Achrol & Kotler, 2012). The received marketing paradigm was also firm-centric and aimed to create value inside the business entity. Starting from 2007, these vertically integrated CCOs have adopted Web 2.0 technologies and incorporated users into their innovation and value creation activities in alignment with the new innovation paradigm, called open innovation (Chesbrough, 2003). This paradigm change has been evolutionary in its approach to value creation as it emphasized the importance of crowdsourcing and co-creation in innovating, devising, and developing creative products by drawing on external agents. Even though co-creation through Web 2.0 includes users in design and production, the process is orchestrated and controlled by the firm over a centralized platform through “value-in-access” perspective (Kelleci, 2021). This practice is a continuation of “marketing-as-usual” perspective (Sheth & Sisodia, 2006) and still entails a firm-centric approach to value creation. In firm-centric marketing-as-usual perspective, the goal is to increase sales and profitability largely on behalf of shareholders. Nevertheless, today, this approach has been shifting toward decentralized management approaches due to the advances in Web 3.0 technologies, the rise of participatory culture and, consequently, the emergence of Open Value Networks (OVNs) and Global Collaborative Commons (GCCs) respectively. These spawned organizational structures (i.e., OVNs and GCCs) stimulate a new marketing system, which capitalizes on a new type of value-creation, called “value-in-participation” (Kelleci, 2021).