Modern digital technologies are increasingly used in the corporate sector as a source of new competitive advantages. Digital and information and communication technologies are the main focus of business survival strategies in today’s high-risk environment. Corporate strategy designers increasingly rely on technological innovative advantages of business development. Developers of corporate strategies try to project business development beyond the current capabilities of the organization and a highly competitive environment, try to assess the range of opportunities and potential of innovations that stimulate business success in the market.
The challenges of today’s corporate sector are complicated by their high level of uncertainty, which is why companies’ strategic management relies on the development and offering of technology platforms, artificial intelligence and advanced business, online analytics, not only to identify risks, but also to determine the alignment of internal and external strategic forces in the market, to monitor the results of management decisions.
The use of digital solutions and technologies makes it possible to transform the process of developing and implementing strategic decisions of company management from a time-consuming process into a continuous dynamic process of planning and forecasting company strategy.
Increasingly, the corporate sector of the economy uses cloud technologies that allow to unlock the digital potential of business, lead to savings in economic and financial resources. For many business companies, the migration of technologies to the cloud and the choice of new benchmarks for strategic management, modernization of business processes on this basis allows you to build an economically verified model of business support. Digital trends in the reengineering of traditional business models are increasingly based on outsourcing mechanisms, more and more representatives of the corporate business sector are migrating existing databases to modern digital platforms. New approaches to the use of cloud technologies and artificial intelligence are creating a different business climate, which is determined by a high level of uncertainty of socio-political economic risk, but the use of innovative approaches allows you to build a new business model in the corporate sector of the economy based on increasing the values of existing core assets.
In strategic marketing, the use of digital technologies is increasingly being observed, both in research and assessment of the competitiveness of the market for segmentation of customers, differentiation of goods and services, and logistics. Research conducted by the well-known consulting company Deloitte in 2020 in the field of corporate top management executives, in terms of the results that business intends to achieve in 2022-2023, shows (Fig.1.) that most CEOs believe that it is necessary to improve the productivity and efficiency of companies.
43%, improve customer interaction by 30%, accelerate the transition of companies to digital platforms / technologies by 31% [3].
Research shows that manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers, and distributors are focusing their business and strategies on transforming cost centers and supply chains into customer-centric value creation. Modern business strategies increasingly rely on customer-centric databases. Current business processes in the corporate sector are based on the use of a set of customer databases, monitoring, analyzing and transferring customer information from internal corporate supply chains. Increasingly, modern strategic marketing tools are focused on using the capabilities of drones, image recognition robots in order to activate the interaction of the physical supply of goods / services, increase the efficiency of logistics.
In order to improve customer satisfaction and safety for employees, modern corporate strategic marketing models increasingly rely on complex models of machine learning and using the potential of artificial intelligence for industrial purposes, which contributes to more effective identification of market patterns and anomalies, more informed formation of predictive data and development of management decisions. Generating analytic data based on artificial intelligence is becoming a key factor in improving the effectiveness of strategic marketing and the future business model of the organization, a certain obstacle to the implementation and implementation of such approaches is the complexity of the process of deploying digital technologies within the organizational and management model of the organization.
Researchers have identified barriers to collaboration between the development team and the organization’s management staff and database specialists. Modern processes of artificial intelligence development allow for new discipline among employees of the organization and more effectively scale the merits of artificial intelligence and database management in order to gain the benefits of the organization in the market.
In the context of a pandemic and coronavirus infection, machine learning processes are active, which contributes to changes in corporate operations and management decision-making processes, and increases the efficiency of using the data model and information infrastructure established in the organization.
The activity of trends in the deployment of new technologies and approaches contributes to the growth of the potential for the use of databases, the identification of new areas of analytics to determine the links between data within the information flows of the organization, which allows you to form cloud storage of data and technologies for promising management decisions and more complex modeling of business processes.
In such conditions, the task of ensuring cybersecurity becomes important for business, which will protect the corporate environment from negative impacts. Universal digitalization has significantly reduced the level of trust in the corporate environment between users, between suppliers and contractors, and the perimeter of the security of the corporate environment has significantly narrowed.
The new requirements for business architecture should be based on zero trust in queries across all available data points, including user identification, location, device and many other variables and factors on which business decisions are made. Designing an organization’s information environment with zero trust can help create a high level of security, simplify the management of the security of the enterprise environment. Zero trust requires significant efforts for the organization, it requires the resolution of the main problems in the field of cybersecurity, the formation of a new digital landscape of the organization.
Research shows that in the recent post-pandemic period, there has been strong growth in retail, network retailers, and these trends are irreversible. The crisis has accelerated the transition to digital platforms and caused an explosive growth in online sales. Experts predict that by 2024 most citizens will be shopping offline – 78% compared to 22% in 2019. Research shows the activity of retailers, retailers represented on social networks, on digital platforms on the Internet. Research in Europe and the United States predicts that by 2024, more than half of retail revenues will be generated by digitally advantaged business models in leading digital-marketing countries, with retailers accounting for more than two-thirds of projected revenue in the United States or the United Kingdom, for example, and retailers in France also expected to grow significantly by 2024 to 46%. The strategic perspective of the e-commerce ecosystem is diverse because it builds on the potential of digital technologies to diversify businesses and introduce new formats to business models, and the survey shows that over the next three years, most markets will move to the digital environment, open new marketing channels, and modernize customer-friendly outlets, shopping malls and shopping malls. Researchers estimate that in the next 3 years, 35 to 65% of sales will be generated through e-commerce, in various countries, and from 65 to 100% of sales will be generated through e-commerce. Research conducted by the well-known consulting company Deloitte in 2020 shows that most consumers are actively choosing digital shopping channels, it is expected that consumers among young people are more active online shopping; Thus, social media platforms are used – 41% of respondents from the group aged 18 to 25 years, 39% of respondents aged 26 to 45 years, every tenth consumer uses a virtual reality headset when making online purchases – 11% of respondents aged 18 to 25 years, 10% of respondents aged 26 to 45 years, 3% of consumers aged over 46 years (see figure 2).
Omnichannel marketing strategy is important for marketers, as it allows businesses not only to take advantage of the growing opportunities of digital marketing to attract and retain customers, but also to increase sales.To influence customer behavior on the organization’s website or on social media platforms, strategic business efforts are aimed at analyzing the current wide range of innovations in the communication system, digital interaction with the consumer to engage the latter in content. Recent research shows that new formats that became popular in 2022 are used to increase the engagement of the target audience: immersive 3D visual effects, design for the speed of the site or platform based on the analysis of Google Core Web Vitals metrics. Research conducted by the well-known consulting company Deloitte in 2020 suggests that consumers have two factors most in the attention spectrum when making a purchase: price and quality. The results of a sociological survey of consumers show that, to a large extent, when buying various product categories, the price factor influences the decision to buy by respondents: clothes and shoes — 83%, personal hygiene and beauty — 80%, items
household use – 78%, electronics – 77%, etc. (see Fig. 3).
The study of possible causes of changes in consumer behavior reveals the following factors that affect the purchase decision: price, quality, speed of delivery, the ability to customize service solutions, the materials / methods used, the seller can ensure a safe purchase, the product brand commits to combat social inequality, the brand supports the community, the seller provides high standards of personal data protection.
The analysis of the data shows that the majority of respondents are more loyal to brands that seek to eliminate social inequality – 57% of respondents, which emphasizes the importance of social factors that influence the perception of a product and the decision to buy it; the category among young people – 25 years and younger – consider environmental friendliness the main criterion for buying beauty and personal care products – 33% of respondents; almost one in four respondents consider data privacy as the main criterion for buying banking products and services – 23% of respondents. Interpretation of the findings of the Deloitte Group sociological study highlights the importance of reorienting business strategies in the digital economy towards integrated goals that stimulate market interest in fast-growing new business brands (Figure 5).
The analysis of the data shows that the majority of respondents to top management of corporations prevailed about the positive trends in choosing and reorienting strategies, for example, the position that the organization’s goal “formulates a set of values that guide employees in decision-making” will achieve 10%, business growth – 65% of managers, and 34% of managers believe that negative growth is likely. 52% of managers believe that the goal of the organization is to manage the investment strategy of corporate social responsibility (see figure 5).
The top management of large international companies in the world, as the results of the study show (see Figure 6), when answering the question about the reasons for investing in digital technologies, note that the main reasons are: greater personalization of products / services – 48%, offering more inclusive opportunities – 45%, “digital offers cannot provide a holistic experience” – 44%, the possibility of innovative proposals – 43%. The results of the study and evaluation of the interpretation of respondents’ positions allow predicting market changes, determining competitive segments and market shares. For different retail formats, the study suggests that by 2024, France will see a significant decrease in the physical retail market share, a significant increase in the share of complex retail sites, similarly, the decline in retail outlets and retail space will be observed in the United States by 15%, Spain by 12%, the Netherlands and Denmark by 10%, respectively, while there will be a similar increase in online marketplaces.
The research demonstrates that wholesale and retail businesses need to prepare accordingly for changes, analyze the behavior of future buyers and consumers, develop an appropriate marketing strategy, as buyers move to online platforms, then 86% of sales growth in the next 3 years will be in multi-channel formats and marketplaces [1]. As a result of the pandemic, shoppers choose more flexible shopping strategies, with 73% of shoppers making no distinction between online and offline purchases, preferring a set of integrated services and convenience of shopping from the chosen marketing communication channel.
A study of various digital platforms shows the activity of online trade in Russia, more than 2.5 trillion rubles are spent annually by Russian citizens when ordering services via the Internet, more than 1 billion orders of services using the Internet are made by Russians annually. In 2021, the number of online orders increased by 104%, the volume of e-commerce market in ruble equivalent increased by 52%, the share of online sales increased noticeably, in Russia in 2021, online sales accounted for 12% of the total retail market and 26% of the non-food retail market. The main growth is provided by the segment of large universal marketplaces, in 2021 their share increased from 62 percent to 49 percent of all online orders.
Marketplace is not just a trading platform where sellers and buyers contact and communicate, in 2021 the audience of Russian e-commerce companies amounted to 130 million people, the total number of businessmen and entrepreneurs presenting their goods on e-commerce marketplaces exceeded 800,000 participants. Marketplace is not just an online store, it is a complex of logistics services and product support services. The largest marketplaces in the Russian Federation are Wildberries, Ozon, Yandex.Market, Sber MegaMarket.
It is possible to distinguish different models of marketplaces — it is either just a showcase, when a company acts exclusively as a trading platform; or this model of a showcase plus delivery, when goods are sold from its own warehouse; or the Ozone model — a combination of a showcase, delivery and placement of goods.
In the digital economy, the marketplace is also an information intermediary that provides appropriate information on the Internet, realizes potential opportunities not only for placing information necessary for the consumer, provides an appropriate opportunity to access material on the Internet for users.
A modern marketplace is also an information aggregator, as it is the owner of a personal computer program or the owner of a website that provides the consumer with an appropriate opportunity to familiarize themselves with the seller’s offer to enter into an online sales contract with him. According to research, the most effective strategy in 2019 was social media marketing, followed by content marketing, and the least popular use was data management. No digital marketing strategy will be effective if the management of companies does not have an understanding of who the target audience is.
In marketing and product development, often so much attention is paid to the product and the “digits” (profits) surrounding it that they often overlook the need that the product satisfies.
There are many ways to generate leads, but a proven method is to provide valuable written content and distribute it appropriately. When a business builds an omnichannel strategy by integrating blogs and promotional articles with a specific offer through a landing page, conversion efficiency significantly improves marketing efforts and potential. According to research, bloggers are 13 times more likely to have a positive ROI. When a brand’s messages are shared by employees on social media, 561 percent more reach than the same messages are officially shared by the brand’s social media channels. Brand information is reposted 24 times more often than the brand owner’s official social media channels. For these reasons, more and more business marketing strategies rely on the analytical tools of the digital environment, which allows you to concentrate the organization’s resources, significantly expand the target market segment, optimize marketing communication channels.