Information Technology Adoption on Digital Marketing: A Literature Review

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors,

These are my comments regarding your paper.

The authors are stating that „In a nutshell, big data can be defined as a large set of data that traditional data processing software cannot manage”. Is this their definition? If not, please reference it.

Overall, the introduction is not properly structured. It seems that the authors emphasize big data and digital marketing and not information technology adoption. Moreover, it is not clear the connection between the stated purpose of the study “the main objective of the study is to outline the concept of big data and understand how its use influences digital marketing strategies” and the title of the manuscript “Information Technology Adoption on Digital Marketing: A literature review”.

In the Theoretical Background section, the very first paragraph copies the recommended structure for Materials and methods for any manuscript submitted to the journal “The Materials and Methods should be described with sufficient details to allow others to replicate and build on the published results. Please note that the publication of your manuscript implicates that you must make all materials, data, computer code, and protocols associated with the publication available to readers. Please disclose at the submission stage any restrictions on the availability of materials or information. New methods and protocols should be described in detail while well-established methods can be briefly described and appropriately cited.”

The biggest flaw comes from the fact that there is a poor conceptualization of the paper. Various concepts are presented e.g. digital strategy, industry 4.0, without a proper justification in connection to the topic of the manuscript. The authors seem to equate information technology adoption with big data, which obviously is not the case.

In terms of Materials and methods, the authors should explain their choice for the inclusion criteria: articles dated between 2014-2020, available for full reading in the referenced databases, and with a focus on big data in digital strategies, especially the first and last. Why that timeframe? Second, all of a sudden there is no digital marketing strategy anymore but digital strategies?  Then, why b-on and not Scopus, for instance?

In the fourth section, I must admit that I had never seen in a literature review paper a brief presentation of all articles selected for analysis. A thorough revision of the section has to be done by pointing out common elements such as research methods, focus etc. but not the actual presentation of the papers.

Figure 2 does not have any sense because it graphically presents the evolution of production in the field since 2000. However, the authors previously selected papers from 2014-2020.

I do not understand how the references are organized. The first reference in the paper is [21], so I assumed the authors listed them alphabetically. After closer look, they are not listed alphabetically either. So, what was the logic for that organization?

The authors set themselves 4 research questions:

Q1: Are companies oriented towards industry 4.0?

Q2: How important is consumer data in predicting customer actions?

Q3: What advantages can companies expect if they implement data analysis solutions?

Q4: How can big data influence the digital marketing strategies to be adopted?

However, in their actual analysis other questions are answered:

Cluster 1: The impact of data extraction on consumer behavior.

Cluster 2: What systems are presented by companies for data analysis.

Cluster 3: What type of systems should a company present that seeks to adapt to technological changes.

Even though they attempt to answer the 4 RQs in the conclusion, their answer is not backed up by the data presented. I could not find any analysis in the paper to support their answers to the RQs.

In the end, I am puzzled by one of the authors statements: “The guiding question of this dissertation is: "What is the influence of big data on digital marketing?". I do not understand what dissertation.

Author Response

Review 1

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper indicates that the author(s) has done some extensive work, however, the organization and presentation of the paper are below the standard of academic publication. For example, the research objectives and hypotheses are unclear, and the Results and Discussion are mixed up. It is hard to grasp the logic of the paper. To improve the paper, the author(s) may read several literature review articles from top journals and pay special attention to the paper structure and logic line of the research.

Author Response

Reviewer 3 Report

The authors study the concept of big data and its influence on digital marketing.
We live in a digital era. Digital transformation is a challenging issue with a significant impact on businesses management, operation and changes in consumer behaviour monitoring to create new ways to attract them. 

The title of the article has the proper length and prepares the reader for the content of the paper. The authors discuss how they designed their review, e.g., inclusion/exclusion criteria, screening and a flowchart of the selection process.  Also, the research queries are clearly stated and answered.
 
Some important points that should be examined are the following: 
1)The abstract section needs to be rewritten. I strongly suggest the authors organize it according to the following structure:  background,  motivation, challenges, results. 
2) The Introduction section requires an extension. Also, in its current state, it lacks references to support the presented arguments. 
3)The authors could increase the number of references to allow for deeper discussion and comparisons of the state-of-the-art solutions around Business Analytics, Big Data and Digital marketing.
4) The structure of the article should be harmonized with the journal's specifications (namely, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Conclusions). For example, the 'Final Conclusion' should be renamed to Conclusions and sections 2 to 4 should be considered subsections of Materials and Methods.
5) References before 2016 should be replaced by more recent (2016 and later). 
6)  References at the end of a sentence should occur before stop punctuation. Please see section 2.1 Digital Strategy, Inbound and outbound marketing and check the rest manuscript.
7) In section 4.1, Systematic literature review, the authors should cite the corresponding study after elaborating the main idea of the reference (namely, at the end of the paragraph).
8) The authors should improve the presentation by adding in tabular form previous findings or questionnaires answers on queries similar to their own.  The tables will help to understand the research findings and avoid the monotony of the narrative approach. 
9) In the conclusions section, the authors should discuss the limitations of the current research study and how they aim to tackle them to improve the research results. For instance, do the authors intend to design a questionnaire?

Author Response

Review 3

Reviewer 4 Report

The paper is well presented, more robust justification of the methodology used needed.

Author Response

Reviewer 5 Report

The issue addressed in the paper discusses the information technology adoption on digital marketing. The authors proposed an important and interesting topic, compatible with the scope of the journal. Although this is "only" a literature review, it does not exempt the authors from formulating a research problem, hypothesis, and methodological background.

I suggest a more dilligent, comparative description of other scientific research from the literature. State of the art is cursory (very general, only partially related to the topic of the study)  and - in my opinion - insufficient.

I recommend a few corrections to improve the quality of this article:

- to precisely define the research scenario (it is very general); needed to clarify the scope of the study and consequently a clear, step-by-step, simple, synthetic research pattern; yes, the methodology is described, but I recommend more precision, as the reader should know how to repeat a similar analysis on this basis (please consistently correct and complete section 3);

- to improve the readability and description of figures (3,4 and 6 - since they are the basis for analysis verification), supplement the history of their description, a clear and not laconic reference in the paper);

- to explain briefly whether there is  need to use, for instance, other methods;

that is, supplement the summary descriptive analysis. Does the conclusion answer all the questions posed at the beginning of the paper (expressed in objectives and hypotheses)? Please complete it and also correct it. The conclusion needs to be supplemented.

I also strongly suggest that recommendations for specific, practical, not only general (and not entirely clear) applications of this research shall be provided (please complete point 5). Please assess whether, however, the verified hypotheses are not too general - and it is difficult to justify the entitlement to their practical verification (more in it suppositions / visions, dreams - than useful recommendations).

The language of this paper is relatively correct, however some descriptions would benefit from being more concise. I recommend that the authors work with a native speaker to improve the text (language) of the paper.

Author Response

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

1. Do not start a new phrase with a reference number e.g. instead of "[26] predict that the amount of data created, captured or replicated will grow from 33 zettabytes in 2018 to 175 zettabytes in 2025" use "Reisenl et al. [26]....".
2. Section 4 Discussion is enough, not Discussion of results.
3. In the Introduction do not use the research questions themselves but the research problem (without question marks).
4. I strongly recommend to proofread the manuscript by using a professional service or someone with adequate English proficiency.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your contribution to improving the article.

Review 1

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper is acceptable, however, I still recommend that the authors try to produce a more concise version.

Author Response

Thank you very much for your contribution to improving the article.

Review 1