Deighton and Kornfield – Digital Interactivity
Posted by diana.changkuon | Filed under 06. Critical Perspectives
From: Digital Interactivity: Unanticipated Consequences for Markets, Marketers and Consumers
The original model concerning the influence of digital interaction on marketing predicted that it would allow marketers to gain a deeper understanding of consumers and their responses. This model envisioned digital interaction as a more in-depth version of direct marketing and databases. However, it did not anticipate the way in which technology nowadays allows consumers to interact with each other in ways uncontrollable to marketers. Deighton and Kornfield (2007) argue digital media has led to consumers’ “counterargument, information sharing, rebuttal, parody, reproach, and though more rarely, fandom” (p.2). Hence, there has been a major shift from meaning-making, marketer controlled (one-way) marketing to one that is controlled by consumers. The present environment portrays the “diminution of marketing’s power relative to the consumer” (Deighton and Kornfield 2007, p.8).
Deighton and Kornfield (2007) touch on five paradigms to describe digital interactive advertising in relation to marketing. These are:
1. Thought tracing: Searches conducted by consumers on pages like Google are available to marketers and lead to search-led advertising.
2. Ubiquitous connectivity: With technologies like mobile phones, netbooks, etc, consumers can be reached not only when they search on the Internet, but at all times. “The person is by default always in the market, always available to be communicated with, and always an audience” (p.12).
3. Property exchanges: Interactive technologies allow people to share and exchange goods or services.
4. Social exchange: Social interaction between consumers are “communal, instrumental, or voyeuristic” (p. 15). Online communities and groups create word-of-mouth communication.
5. Cultural exchanges: Through digital interaction, marketers can become cultural producers in their relevant consumers’ space. An example is buzz marketing, where people pass on marketing messages because they are entertaining/interesting and not for actual advertising purposes.
Deighton and Kornfield employ these five paradigms to create a new model that rates these on two separate scales: one, in their ability to make meaning, and two, on their power to mobilise identity. Based on this model, the most powerful form of new media is the one that creates cultural exchange (eg. Youtube/Facebook).
Related posts:
- 3. Web 2.0: online community and persona
- Why bother trying to access these tricky social media platforms?
- William Misloski – Marketing’s Neo-Renaissance
- 4. Cybercultures, trusted sources, virals and memes
- Product as marketing tool
druwulf on
February 18, 2010 at 7:38 pm
Well done Diana, this is spot on.