Distributed marketing networks: The fourth industrial revolution

Interfirm networks are fundamental to market organization. The business environment is experiencing disruptive changes—uncertainty is increasing to levels of turbulence due to exponential growth in knowledge and technologies. There is a growing gap in our understanding of how all the changes are affecting the structure of interorganizational networks. This paper makes the case that networks are likely to reorganize around four strategic foci—distributed micro manufacturing, AI mediated consumption, distributed innovation, and distributed marketing. Our analysis suggests that the distributed networks will employ more polyarchic market mechanisms than the hierarchical or relational mechanisms of the past, and marketing will evolve a horizontal strategic posture, as well as reintegrate production but in a distributed micro-manufacturing framework.