Digital Marketing Foresight: Financial Products Sector Case

The paper investigates the upcoming tendencies in digital marketing with a special focus on its implementation in the financial B2C (business to client) sector. The issue is interesting due to several factors. Firstly, with the current tendencies of globalization and digitalization, the world is experiencing shifts towards modern digital technologies and tools, new business models and approaches in a variety of areas. Marketing is one of the areas that is influenced by this trend on a substantial scale, therefore, this area is highly promising and at the same time full of uncertainties, hence, it is interesting for the research. Secondly, as for the financial area, it made considerable progress in terms of services in B2C and also has its own peculiarities and special issues in terms of digital marketing implementation, for example, legal, economic and consumers’ behavior and so on. To clarify, financial B2C services are the services related to any operations conducted with personal finance, except the basic ones (mobile bank and online payments): money management applications, stock and digital assets brokerage, investment services and robo-advising. Possessing disruptive potential along with possible obstacles, this issue is not covered fully in the recent studies and needs more research, empirical studies and recent data. The paper answers the research question on how will the effective digital marketing in financial B2C area look like within 10 years. The study is based on the Systemic Foresight Methodology (SFM) that includes several research framework steps, such as Intelligence, Imagination, Integration, Interpretation, Intervention, Impact, enabling to consider the issues related to the research in a well-rounded way. The research consists of the literature review, STEEPV and SWOT analysis, supplemented by horizon scanning to identify the current trends, drivers and challenges in digital marketing overall, and the financial products’ marketing specifically. The findings act as a basis for the hypotheses formulation that consider the factors influencing the digital marketing outcomes in the area selected and are tested via an online survey among current and potential users of the financial services, and also via interviews with experts in digital marketing. As a result, based on the information obtained from the analyses, the survey and interviews with experts, the study provides the possible scenarios of digital marketing development in the financial sector within the time horizon of 10 years, supplemented by the recommendations on the effective digital marketing strategy development. The methodology makes it possible to analyze the issue in possibility, feasibility and desirability contexts, regarding a wide range of both external and internal issues related to technological, political, social and other aspects of the topic, building up a systemic foresight approach. The research contributes to both academic discourse on digital marketing future and regards the issue from the perspective of the financial area, therefore, it can act as a solid base for further studies of digital marketing either in finance or in other areas but with the usage of the same methodology and approach. Furthermore, as the research implies an empirical part (a survey), the findings might be useful for marketing professionals aiming to develop a long term effective marketing strategy. The results might also be useful for educational purposes to generate educational programs with a set of competencies of high market demand.