Innovative Marketing in the Context of Industrie 4.0

Innovative marketing is a process that fosters the innovation of products and services based on the wishes of existing and potential customers. In the environment of Industrie 4.0, this mainly means marketing innovation based on a connection between the virtual cyber world and the world of physical reality. The article is based on research of marketing innovation and Industrie 4.0. The research was used to compile a scenario for a primary qualitative study. The focus group study was composed of representatives from 32 Czech companies chosen from the database of firms that publicly acknowledge the use of Industrie 4.0. The groups were divided based on the size of the companies. An evaluation using the method of content analysis produced a list of twelve main attributes that can be identified as essential marketing innovations connected with digitalisation. These determined attributes were briefly explained and electronically compared among the representatives of the participating companies, a necessary step given that the composed attributes uncovered latent information learned from the focus group. The responsible company representatives approved the resulting list and they also added a scale of importance. Following a statistical evaluation, a ranking of importance was compiled and subsequently statistically tested. The tests demonstrated that statistically significant differences exist among three attributes; the tests concerned the dependence of responses on the size of the companies. The results from the study showed that the representatives of companies with headquarters in the Czech Republic are aware of the content of Industrie 4.0. It also revealed that marketing innovation accompanies these great changes.