Purpose

Digital technologies, digitalised consumers and the torrent of customer data have been transforming marketing practice. In discussing such trends, existing research has either focussed on the skills marketers need or broad-based approaches such as agile methods but has given less consideration to just how such skills or approaches might be developed and used in marketers' day-to-day activities and in the organisation of marketing in the firm. This is what the authors address in this paper.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper adopts an in-depth case study approach to examine an exemplary digital enterprise in transformation of their digital marketing. The insights were gathered from 25 interviews, netnography and document analysis of the case organisation in addition to 10 interviews with independent experts.

Findings

Drawing on practice-oriented approach, the authors show how organisations respond to the emerging trends of digital consumers and big data by taking a ‘hacking marketing’ approach and developing novel marketing expertise at disciplinary boundaries. The authors put forward three sets of practices that enable and shape the hacking marketing approach. These include spanning the expertise boundary, making value measurable and experimenting through which their adaptive, iterative and multidisciplinary work occurs. This explains how managing digital consumers and big data is not within the realm of information technology (IT) functions but marketing and how marketing professionals are changing their practice and moving their disciplinary boundaries.

Practical implications

This study offers practical contributions for firms in terms of identifying new work practices and expertise that marketing specialists need in managing digital platforms, digitalised consumers and big data. This study’s results show that enterprises need to design and implement strong training programmes to prepare their marketing workforce in adopting experimentations of agile approach and data-driven decision making. In addition, Marketing education should be changed so that programmes consider a review of their courses and include the novel marketing models and approaches into their curriculum.

Originality/value

This study contributes to the nascent discussions by unpacking how enterprises can develop new marketing expertise and practices beyond skillsets and how such practices form new hacking marketing approach which addresses the problem of the inability of the conventional marketing approach to show its value within the firm.

中文翻译：

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“黑客营销”：公司如何在数字时代发展营销人员的专业知识和实践？

目的

数字技术、数字化消费者和客户数据的洪流一直在改变营销实践。在讨论此类趋势时，现有研究要么侧重于营销人员需要的技能，要么侧重于敏捷方法等基础广泛的方法，但较少考虑如何在营销人员的日常活动中开发和使用这些技能或方法以及公司的营销组织。这就是作者在本文中要解决的问题。

设计/方法/途径

本文采用深入的案例研究方法来考察一家示范性数字企业在其数字营销转型中的表现。这些见解来自案例组织的 25 次访谈、网络志和文件分析，以及对独立专家的 10 次访谈。

发现

作者采用以实践为导向的方法，展示了组织如何通过采用“黑客营销”方法并在学科边界开发新颖的营销专业知识来应对数字消费者和大数据的新兴趋势。作者提出了三套实践来支持和塑造黑客营销方法。这些包括跨越专业知识边界，使价值可衡量，并通过他们的适应性、迭代和多学科工作进行实验。这解释了管理数字消费者和大数据如何不属于信息技术 (IT) 职能领域，而是属于营销领域，以及营销专业人员如何改变他们的实践并移动他们的学科界限。

实际影响

这项研究在确定营销专家在管理数字平台、数字化消费者和大数据方面所需的新工作实践和专业知识方面为公司提供了实际贡献。这项研究的结果表明，企业需要设计和实施强有力的培训计划，以准备其营销人员采用敏捷方法和数据驱动决策的实验。此外，应改变营销教育，以便计划考虑对其课程进行审查，并将新颖的营销模型和方法纳入其课程。

原创性/价值

本研究通过揭示企业如何开发技能集以外的新营销专业知识和实践，以及这些实践如何形成新的黑客营销方法来解决传统营销方法无法在公司内部显示其价值的问题，从而为刚刚起步的讨论做出贡献。