Marketing machines at work: performing e-commerce by assembling, adjusting, and maintaining a complex market device
Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: This paper aims to explore and conceptualise the marketing work of e-commerce managers. It draws on an ethnographically inspired study involving 21 e-commerce managers and approaches marketing work as a set of socio-material practices. The analysis shows that the marketing work of e-commerce managers centres on assembling, adjusting, and maintaining ‘marketing machines’ – complex market devices designed to perform marketing work. These heterogeneous arrangements comprise digital technologies, staff and their competencies, and organisational procedures. When put together, these marketing machines work to calculate demand, develop a product assortment, advertise and promote products, sell and deliver products, and provide customer service. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of the device-focused analysis of marketing work for our understanding of the digitalisation of marketing.
Source: Journal of Marketing Management
Authors: Christian Fuentes, Patrik Stoopendahl
Institutions: Lund University, Stockholm School of Economics
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Funder: Handelsrådet
OpenAlex ID: W4409479210