Designing a Digital Marketing Model in Iran's Banking Industry

Abstract

In today's business world, digital technologies continue to advance at an increasingly rapid and revolutionary pace, often referred to as the Fourth Industrial Revolution. No aspect of business has remained untouched by its surging waves, leading to significant changes, adjustments, and modifications in business operations. Marketing is one of the vital and critical sciences in management and business that has been profoundly impacted by information technology, with digital marketing being a prominent example. The aim of the present study is to design a digital marketing model in the banking industry of the country. The study participants included 14 experts and university professors in the field of marketing, banking specialists, and informed individuals, selected using purposive (judgmental) sampling based on the principle of theoretical saturation. To identify meaningful phrases and sentences from the semi-structured interview texts with experts, the qualitative technique of thematic analysis was employed. In the first stage, through the combination of the obtained concepts, 85 key themes were identified. In the second stage, by recognizing similarities in the underlying structure of key themes, 21 integrating themes were extracted. Finally, by merging similar structures of the integrating themes, these themes were categorized into six major themes: digital customer orientation, digital market orientation, digital marketing strategy, digital value co-creation, digital branding, and digital banking management.