The Growing Importance of Software as a Driver of Value Exchange

Abstract

Given that value exchange in virtually every sector of the economy is increasingly dominated by software, the goals of this chapter are to bring software to the attention of the academic marketing community, to discuss the unusual product attributes of software, and to therefore suggest some research topics related to software as a product attribute. Software allows service to be physically stored and allows physical objects to perform services. Managing products that have evolved into software products creates difficult challenges for managers as software does not resemble either tangible goods or intangible services in terms of production, operations, cost structure, or prescribed strategy. Every time a business replaces an employee with an e-service interaction, and every time a business adds a line of code to a previously inert object, the nature of that business changes. And as software gets more capable, its nature as a product changes as well by adding unique product characteristics summarized as complexity, intelligence, autonomy, and agency.

Citation

Hofacker, C.F. (2019), "The Growing Importance of Software as a Driver of Value Exchange", Marketing in a Digital World (Review of Marketing Research, Vol. 16), Emerald Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 85-95. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1548-643520190000016007