Marketing tools in the era of digitization and their use in practice by family and other businesses

Abstract

This article addresses Marketing 4.0 as an exceptionally dynamic field for company competitiveness that is evolving rapidly. The main goal of this article is to evaluate and compare the overall level of use of modern marketing tools in practice by family and non-family businesses, and subsequently to measure the dependence between the extent of Marketing 4.0 activities and number of employees, volume of sales, field of business, and year the company was established. Primary and secondary data was analyzed using basic and advanced statistical methodologies, including the testing of six hypotheses. The study showed that for both family and non-family businesses there has not been any significant increase in overall marketing vitality in the years studied. Indeed, the long-term focus of companies on values provided to customers and relationships with customers was confirmed. The results further showed that from the perspective of marketing vitality, one of the currently more significant weaknesses of smaller companies in particular of both family and non-family types is a missing or insufficient strategy for realization of marketing activities. This study confirms the dependence of the level of overall marketing vitality on sales volume and company size by number of employees, but on the other hand no dependence was proven between marketing vitality on field of business or year company established. This study evaluates the liminality and states that family businesses above all others address what is for them the more important strategic question, namely that of succession. The study is unique in that it compares the results of three studies carried out between 2016 and 2019. The context of this study is framed by an appeal to eliminate barriers to change and rapid response by companies to the needs, requirements, and expectations of customers operating in the online world.