KOREASCHOLAR

With the buzzword "conversational marketing", especially in the course of a further technological upgrade of marketing management via chatbots, messaging apps etc., the central idea of dialogue-oriented marketing, as has been required since the late 1970s/early 1980s, has received a significant upgrade. However, mostly with a quite narrow focus on the management of transactions and in the sense of a customer-centric and dialogue-driven approach for driving customer engagement, improving customer experience along a very narrowly interpreted customer journey, and growing revenue. There is no question that the consistent use of all available technological options to optimize the exchange processes with customers represents an important challenge. However, conversational marketing should not be interpreted too narrowly. On the one hand, it is important to expand this approach with reference to all stakeholders and not only to refer to 1:1 interactions, but also to explicitly include complex exchange processes within and between relevant stakeholder groups in the consideration. On the other hand, the focus should not be solely on the management of transactions. At the same time, targeted relationship and reputation management as well as consistent context management must be explicitly included in the consideration. This is not least because firstly Marketing measures always tend to have corresponding effects in all three areas, i.e. possible transaction, relationship and reputation as well as context effects must be taken into account and controlled in a targeted manner. Secondly, the developments in market and society are increasingly contributing to the fact that the demands on companies are constantly increasing. On the one hand, this affects the expectations of all stakeholders that companies make significant contributions to the sustainable development of society as a whole through not only the economically successful handling of all their business processes but also consistently pursuing ecological, social and cultural goals. In order to meet these demands, companies must also try to exert a targeted influence on the relevant framework conditions in the market and society and their further development. The range here is extraordinarily large and colorful: from the creation of infrastructural conditions for smart problem solutions (e.g. smart mobility) up to ensuring the sustainable development of social value systems. The latter found its expression, e.g. in various approaches of brand activism ("black lives matter", "everyone is awesome" or the conveyance of a new self-understanding of men in the case of Gillette’s “we believe” campaign).

• Klaus-Peter Wiedmann(Leibniz Universität Hannover, Germany, Germany)