Managing complexity in marketing - from a design weltanschauung
Due to the COVID-19 crisis measures the PhD defence of Qeis Kamran will take place online.
The PhD defence can be followed by a live stream.
Qeis Kamran is a PhD student in the research group Product-Market Relations (PMR). His supervisor is prof.dr.ir. J. Henseler from the Faculty of Engineering Technology (ET).
Marketing is the field of business studies that relates the firm to its wider environment, while its raison d’être is shifting to have wider societal implications beyond the limited dimension of the pure markets, wherein it was originated. The dimension of thought within the mainstream marketing is not adequate for the contemporary evolution of the design-based cyber-physical new economic-order. The current Zeitgeist of sustainability delivers many aspects that go beyond rational economics Weltanschauung, which has occupied marketing-thought by focusing on short time-horizons and the spectrum of the field’s applicability based on transactional and mercantile market relations.
The dissertation addresses these trends and develops a unified logical framework for marketing in the contemporary era, coined as the “Design Weltanschauung” (DWA), wherein it paves a path to conceptualize the necessary rapprochement between the fields of design and marketing designed as a course-correcting pivot within the field, also coined as the “Design Dominant Logic” (DDL) for an integrative marketing scholarship and practice. DDL evolves marketing beyond its transactionary modus operandi towards a meaning-laden unconcealment of artefacts, which goes beyond the dimensions of a “Unique Sales and Value proposition” transcending towards the notions of the “Unique Meaning and Design Propositions”, which are based on the co-evolutionary foundations of the contemporary interconnected and globalized cyber-physical-realities customers and firms face today. While, marketing originated in a “market(ing)-to” and “to-market (ing)” foundation and the latest developments, were founded on the modus of “market(ing)-with” premise, the author has introduced a new foundation of the “marketin(ing)-within” dimension of firm and market relations for the field, which reflects the contemporary intertwined-ness of marketing with the advancements of technology and a good corporate citizenship for the globally operating firms. The dissertation has paved a solid path for marketing’s shifting raison d’être, wherein marketing is dominated by Artificial intelligence (AI). Furthermore, it has designed a marketing interpretation for AI integration and also shifted the perceptions of the role of the organizational structural embodiment and ethos for the state of theory and practice for marketers to navigate towards creating meaning-laden artefacts and innovations, wherein customers can self-actualize based on the “requisite-varieties” the firms produce in terms of designing better artefacts for a better world. The dissertation establishes a more embracive logic for marketing by replacing the pure economic view that seems to be out of touch with the challenges’ firms and societies contemporary face.
