Disruptive Innovation and Diffusion and Adoption in Relation to Marketing

INNOVATION AND ITS DIFFUSION IN RELATION TO MARKETING
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The Date Table of Contents 1.0.     Innovation and its Diffusion in Relation to Marketing. 3 2.0.     Disruptive Innovation. 3 3.0.     Diffusion and Adoption. 5 4.0.     Evolution of Marketing. 5 5.0.     Role of Marketing in Diffusion of Innovation. 7 6.0.     Marketing Today and in the Future. 8 7.0.     Value of Disruptive Innovation and on Marketing Professional Development 9 8.0.     Conclusion. 9 9.0.     References. 11   1.0.Innovation and its Diffusion in Relation to Marketing Since the first Industrial Revolution, the business has evolved significantly through different phases of evolution as advances in all areas of life changed the way people worked and lived. Throughout this evolution, the marketing function of business has also evolved in what theorists have termed stages (Kotler & Keller, 2016). The two core forces that have underpinned the marketing function include changes in consumer needs (Felix, 2015) and innovation (Purchase & Volery, 2020). Today, the latter is just as relevant as it was during the first industrial revolution: it shaped marketing strategies, produced new tools and approaches to marketing, and transformed the creation and dissemination of marketing messages. More importantly, marketing shaped how innovation diffused while at the same time, innovation shaped how marketing delivered targeted information to a particular group of consumers. The two core concepts that I have learned in the current course are disruptive innovation and diffusion and adoption. This essay will discuss how these two concepts are interrelated and their value to my marketing professional development. Thus, I will demonstrate how they borrow and feed into each other, and in doing so, I will show how they have worked together to transform marketing and how the future of marketing looks from these lenses. 2.0.Disruptive Innovation Innovation refers to implementing ideas into new goods, services, or processes or improvements in delivering goods and services and business models (Pacione, 2015). The innovation aims to improve or disrupt existing applications and beliefs by creating newer and noble solutions to inherent problems organizations or individuals face (Tohidi & Jabbari, 2012). It is based on the purpose that innovation is classified into four types. These are incremental, architectural, radical, and disruptive innovations. Incremental innovation is slow and progressive. It relies on existing markets and technologies through improving them by adding new features or changes to designs (Li & Huang, 2019). For instance, in the smartphone market, innovation mainly revolves around updating software & hardware, adding new features, and tweaking the designs. On the other hand, architectural innovation relies on existing technologies, expertise, and skills in creating new markets. For instance, when giant tech organizations like Amazon and Google tap into the digital ecosystem, they use the current technology to deploy products and services in markets that were not exploited before. This kind of innovation opens up new markets and expands the customer base. There is a stark difference between architectural innovation and radical innovation. The latter assumes that innovation can result in new technological tools, services, or business models that open entirely new markets. Scholars agree that this form of innovation hardly occurs, and when it does, it is revolutionary. An example is the development of the airplane. The airplane innovation was a radical new technology that created a whole new market, invented an industry, and a new form of travel. All three forms of innovation have influenced the business function of marketing (Purchase & Volery, 2020). For instance, the invention of the airplane opened up entirely new avenues and approaches to marketing, especially across the oceans. The airplanes themselves also became marketing tools, carrying around colors, logos, and messages from different governments and organizations worldwide (Popp, 2016). Incremental innovation works more in the background and may not be noticed easily. However, since the era of door-to-marketing to today's Big Data Analytics, the development has been a process of incremental evolution highlighted by the development in computers, mainstream media, digital media, data analytics, and statistical tools (Kotler & Keller, 2016). However, none of the three has been as powerful as disruptive innovation. Disruptive innovation is associated with applying new technologies, disruptive business models, and processes to existing industries (Li & Huang, 2019). For instance, the emergence of Uber did not create a new sector as the emergence of airplanes did. Instead, Uber utilized newer and advanced technology to change the status quo in the already existing transport sector. This form of innovation has gained momentum in the 20^th and 21^st centuries and is poised to transform the marketing profession as it has done before (Pacione, 2015). Throughout, changes in consumer needs will also contribute to emerging marketing approaches and techniques. 3.0.Diffusion and Adoption While people can develop new ideas or ways of doing things, what matters is how far these ideas can spread (SPHWEB, n.d.). Diffusion bridges the gap between innovation and its wide adoption. It determines how an innovation or idea spreads throughout the world and whether it will be adopted by people (Dearing & Cox, 2018). An innovation that is not widely adopted will remain unknown to many people and will only continue to serve a small portion of the global or regional population. The diffusion of innovation theory best captures this process into five stages: awareness, persuasion, decision, implementation, and continuation (SPHWEB n.d.). An innovation must undergo these stages before it can be widely accepted. Marketing is an essential tool for accepting an innovation on a global or regional scale (Frattini et al. 2012). In other words, it enhances the diffusion of an innovation. 4.0.Evolution of Marketing In tandem with the evolution of business is marketing, which has responded to the two consistent forces of innovation and changes in customer needs. According to Kotler and Keller (2016), the history of marketing, as a discipline, can be categorized into five eras. These are the production, product, selling, marketing, and holistic eras. Before the 19^th century, trade was essentially simple and evolved around local barter trade (Church, 2000). Nevertheless, the industrial revolution opened the means for mass production and provided people with the means to spend through jobs. Between the 1860s and 1820s, mass production became a priority and the basis of marketing (Kotler & Keller, 2016). The production of goods was the primary driver of sales. Between the 1920s and 1940s, production gave way to sales, and modern marketing began to shape. The 1940s to 1960s saw the emergence of branding and positioning when marketers began to articulate the importance of brand reputation and customer loyalty (Moore & Reid, 2008). The marketing era emerged between the 1960s and 1990s, in which emerging technologies transformed the interaction between organizations and the public. Today, we are in the era of holistic marketing, Kotla and Keller (2016) argue, in which the combination of production, product, sales, and marketing in addition to innovations like the orientation of marketing strategies with social justice issues like climate change, the orientation of marketing with the idea of innovation, and application of digital and mainstream media concurrently. Across these stages of the evolution of marketing, innovation is among the most consistent vital factors or forces (Purchase & Volery, 2020). There have been innovations in almost all aspects of the business, including accounting, auditing tools, management strategies (Bhat et al., 2011), leadership approaches (Hughes et al., 2018), recruitment strategies (Ramkumar & Rajini, 2019), employee and employer relationships, internal & external communications, and most importantly, marketing. Technology, however, remains the most visible form of influence of innovation on marketing (Hoffman et al., 2021). For example, each significant innovation in communications technology, ranging from fax machines, landline telephones, radio and TV, print media, computers, internet, and cell- and smartphones have transformed how organizations have marketed their products and services. Currently, we are experiencing a phenomenon in which the use of billboards is reaching a climax, digital media is taking over from mainstream media, and print media like newspapers and magazines have either shifted to digital platforms or are being phased out (Kalombe & Phiri, 2019). Compared to the mid-19^th century, where door-to-door marketing was the most reliable way to reach potential customers, today's marketing departments have a myriad of data; online behavior, purchase history, location, gender differences, individual preferences (Anshari et al., 2019). Analysis of this data provides a direct yet remote engagement of customers. These innovations can be classified as disruptive because they did not create new markets entirely, but they relied on technology to exploit the already existing yet untapped markets. 5.0.Role of Marketing in Diffusion of Innovation Where innovation has influenced the evolution of marketing, marketing has been central to the diffusion of innovation. In marketing, the diffusion of innovation process refers to how new products are adopted or not adopted by the intended audience (Dearing & Cox, 2018). This process is instrumental to designers and marketers because it allows them to evaluate why some inferior products have been more successful than others (Kaminski, 2011). Thus, the diffusion of innovation theory allows organizations to understand trends and, in assessing the likelihood of failure or success, a new introduction. The same theory can determine how innovations become widely acceptable and persistent. The central role of marketing is to communicate with customers informing them about new products, explaining the source, and...