title: The Future of Marketing – An Investigation into Disruption and Innovation

authors: McDowall, James Samuel

subjects: marketing

abstract: The future of marketing, looking out as far as 2050, is envisioned in this thesis. According to a world-renowned futurist, one theory is the end of marketing as we know it. Another describes the discipline as entirely controlled by artificial intelligence, without the need for direct human interaction, while others foresee a healthy balance between humans and machines. The future of employment will therefore have a significant impact on marketing practice, as automation and machine learning may sharply reduce the need for ‘human marketers’. Despite existing research into the future, the future of marketing is largely overlooked by researchers. Exponential technological advancements are on the horizon, giving rise to the concept of the Singularity. The future is complex, perhaps chaotic, and futures studies are increasingly used in academia, business, and government as a means of coping with uncertainty.

Marketing is the practice of identifying the needs of consumers, creating and communicating value, engaging with the right audience, and ultimately, increasing sales and profitability. While these goals are likely to endure, the means at which these are achieved are constantly evolving. This is of interest to those in business, especially due to the marketing potential of current innovations, for example Big Data, machine learning, augmented reality, blockchain, Internet of Things (IoT), robotics, and more. This thesis asks, to what extent will these concepts impact the future of marketing? Further, how will the discipline evolve over the next thirty years, and what are the implications for marketing professionals today?

This discovery-oriented thesis utilises qualitative research methods, including personal interviews and comparative analysis, in a grounded theory approach. These proved applicable as new in-depth information was gained beyond what is known to the researcher, and the discussions were broad – but bounded – using moderately scheduled interviews. Twelve business leaders and senior practitioners from different industries were interviewed, and three future scenarios were developed. The results were then compared with recent papers and articles produced by research organisations, think tanks, and well-known online publications.

Three future scenarios are presented in this thesis: Possible, Probable, and Preferable. The Possible scenario embraces exponential innovation and the concept of the Singularity, i.e. a state at which artificial intelligence drives innovation. Our lives will be comprehensively tracked, and sophisticated prediction engines will map out our experiences to come. Employment in this scenario is a particularly contentious issue – while new job types will naturally arise in the coming years, they are unlikely to balance job losses. Shifting to a post-work society may be a factor, driven by the need to develop solutions that avoid an economic catastrophe. In the Probable scenario, current issues were given more weight, in the sense that inefficiencies and bureaucracy hinder the trajectory of innovation, thus delaying progress. In the Preferable scenario, the need for long-term planning was emphasised, especially with regards to larger societal and environmental issues. In this case, automation has less of an impact; it is carefully managed and supplements human work.

The future of marketing can be described as intensely personal. Marketing systems will have access to consumers’ demographic information, behaviour, affinities, and physical location at any given time. Machine learning will optimise targeting and delivery, and smart devices link our physical selves to our digital entities, providing marketers with invaluable data. This study will argue that marketing is therefore one of the most valuable applications of artificial intelligence, and that the pace of change largely depends on the factors discussed in each of the scenarios and in the discussion chapters.

text: The Future of Marketing – An Investigation into Disruption and Innovation The future of marketing, looking out as far as 2050, is envisioned in this thesis. According to a world-renowned futurist, one theory is the end of marketing as we know it. Another describes the discipline as entirely controlled by artificial intelligence, without the need for direct human interaction, while others foresee a healthy balance between humans and machines. The future of employment will therefore have a significant impact on marketing practice, as automation and machine learning may sharply reduce the need for ‘human marketers’. Despite existing research into the future, the future of marketing is largely overlooked by researchers. Exponential technological advancements are on the horizon, giving rise to the concept of the Singularity. The future is complex, perhaps chaotic, and futures studies are increasingly used in academia, business, and government as a means of coping with uncertainty.

Marketing is the practice of identifying the needs of consumers, creating and communicating value, engaging with the right audience, and ultimately, increasing sales and profitability. While these goals are likely to endure, the means at which these are achieved are constantly evolving. This is of interest to those in business, especially due to the marketing potential of current innovations, for example Big Data, machine learning, augmented reality, blockchain, Internet of Things (IoT), robotics, and more. This thesis asks, to what extent will these concepts impact the future of marketing? Further, how will the discipline evolve over the next thirty years, and what are the implications for marketing professionals today?

This discovery-oriented thesis utilises qualitative research methods, including personal interviews and comparative analysis, in a grounded theory approach. These proved applicable as new in-depth information was gained beyond what is known to the researcher, and the discussions were broad – but bounded – using moderately scheduled interviews. Twelve business leaders and senior practitioners from different industries were interviewed, and three future scenarios were developed. The results were then compared with recent papers and articles produced by research organisations, think tanks, and well-known online publications.

Three future scenarios are presented in this thesis: Possible, Probable, and Preferable. The Possible scenario embraces exponential innovation and the concept of the Singularity, i.e. a state at which artificial intelligence drives innovation. Our lives will be comprehensively tracked, and sophisticated prediction engines will map out our experiences to come. Employment in this scenario is a particularly contentious issue – while new job types will naturally arise in the coming years, they are unlikely to balance job losses. Shifting to a post-work society may be a factor, driven by the need to develop solutions that avoid an economic catastrophe. In the Probable scenario, current issues were given more weight, in the sense that inefficiencies and bureaucracy hinder the trajectory of innovation, thus delaying progress. In the Preferable scenario, the need for long-term planning was emphasised, especially with regards to larger societal and environmental issues. In this case, automation has less of an impact; it is carefully managed and supplements human work.

The future of marketing can be described as intensely personal. Marketing systems will have access to consumers’ demographic information, behaviour, affinities, and physical location at any given time. Machine learning will optimise targeting and delivery, and smart devices link our physical selves to our digital entities, providing marketers with invaluable data. This study will argue that marketing is therefore one of the most valuable applications of artificial intelligence, and that the pace of change largely depends on the factors discussed in each of the scenarios and in the discussion chapters.

year: 2018

title: Narrative approaches in counselling supervision

authors: Crocket, Kathie

abstract: This thesis is an account of a project that investigated the possibilities for counselling supervision offered by the philosophical positions that produce narrative approaches to counselling. Thus, the research was positioned as a social constructionist project. It drew on the work of five local counsellors who met together regularly over a year to engage in reflecting team supervision and to reflect on the practices thus produced. The project recognised, too, that local professional cultures have produced supervision in particular ways. 
Out of this project I have come to tell some supervision stories differently. Most recent mainstream approaches to counselling supervision construct supervision as a generic activity, and an activity that is best produced independently of particular metaphors of counselling practice. I argue that such approaches appear to be constrained by their inattention to the epistemology of practice. Aspects of dominant supervision discourse place an overriding emphasis on supervisor responsibility, producing an apparent dependence upon instrumental practice. When the emphasis is on supervisor responsibility, counsellors tend to be produced at the margins of the very activity that the profession constructs as critical to their effective and ethical counselling work with clients. 
In contrast, the focus of this analysis is on the possibilities for a supervision where responsibility is relationally exercised and dialogically produced, whether in dyadic supervision or in a professional community of concern such as offered by the reflecting team used in this study. The analysis demonstrates a shift to an understanding of supervision as having a moral and ethical focus: from asking the instrumental question, what to do with Client X? counsellors and supervisors ask what are the effects for practice of thinking this way? What are the effects for clients of practising these ways? With this shift, the discourses of counselling practice and the positions for counsellors within those discourses are available for rigorous investigation, with an emphasis on the politics of practice. I argue for a politics of supervision practice that responds to the location of supervision itself as a site of professional governance, and takes responsibility for the kinds of professional self the practices of supervision are called to produce. Professional truth claims, both those that construct supervision and those that construct counselling, are shown to be open for examination and negotiation in a constructionist supervision practice. In the dialogical examination and negotiation of professional truth claims in supervision, a storying counsellor professes the moral and ethical authority by which they produce their work. 
At the same time as it is a serious practice of ethical responsibility, supervision also depends, I propose, upon counsellors and supervisors taking up the imaginary. When we ask what counts as professional truth, when we ask how things might be otherwise than they are, we take supervision dialogue into other dimensions. When we take seriously our responsibilities to profess, to story our own professional identities in action, we generate also, I argue, possibilities for storying the pleasures of our counselling work. To take supervision talk into the domain of the imaginary and of pleasure, is to produce supervision otherwise.

text: Narrative approaches in counselling supervision This thesis is an account of a project that investigated the possibilities for counselling supervision offered by the philosophical positions that produce narrative approaches to counselling. Thus, the research was positioned as a social constructionist project. It drew on the work of five local counsellors who met together regularly over a year to engage in reflecting team supervision and to reflect on the practices thus produced. The project recognised, too, that local professional cultures have produced supervision in particular ways. 
Out of this project I have come to tell some supervision stories differently. Most recent mainstream approaches to counselling supervision construct supervision as a generic activity, and an activity that is best produced independently of particular metaphors of counselling practice. I argue that such approaches appear to be constrained by their inattention to the epistemology of practice. Aspects of dominant supervision discourse place an overriding emphasis on supervisor responsibility, producing an apparent dependence upon instrumental practice. When the emphasis is on supervisor responsibility, counsellors tend to be produced at the margins of the very activity that the profession constructs as critical to their effective and ethical counselling work with clients. 
In contrast, the focus of this analysis is on the possibilities for a supervision where responsibility is relationally exercised and dialogically produced, whether in dyadic supervision or in a professional community of concern such as offered by the reflecting team used in this study. The analysis demonstrates a shift to an understanding of supervision as having a moral and ethical focus: from asking the instrumental question, what to do with Client X? counsellors and supervisors ask what are the effects for practice of thinking this way? What are the effects for clients of practising these ways? With this shift, the discourses of counselling practice and the positions for counsellors within those discourses are available for rigorous investigation, with an emphasis on the politics of practice. I argue for a politics of supervision practice that responds to the location of supervision itself as a site of professional governance, and takes responsibility for the kinds of professional self the practices of supervision are called to produce. Professional truth claims, both those that construct supervision and those that construct counselling, are shown to be open for examination and negotiation in a constructionist supervision practice. In the dialogical examination and negotiation of professional truth claims in supervision, a storying counsellor professes the moral and ethical authority by which they produce their work. 
At the same time as it is a serious practice of ethical responsibility, supervision also depends, I propose, upon counsellors and supervisors taking up the imaginary. When we ask what counts as professional truth, when we ask how things might be otherwise than they are, we take supervision dialogue into other dimensions. When we take seriously our responsibilities to profess, to story our own professional identities in action, we generate also, I argue, possibilities for storying the pleasures of our counselling work. To take supervision talk into the domain of the imaginary and of pleasure, is to produce supervision otherwise.

year: 2001

title: "Kia Mauri Tau!" Narratives of recovery from disabling mental health problems

authors: Lapsley, Hilary

subjects: Maori

abstract: A bicultural research team at the University of Waikato successfully applied for funding from the Health Research Council to do a qualitative research project in the area of ‘pathways to wellness’. The Mental Health Narratives Project set out to gather forty narratives of mental ill health, recovery and life after recovery by interviewing Maori and non-Maori women and men who once had a disabling mental health problem. We aimed to describe journeys to mental health, identify key themes in accounts of the recovery process and describe the impact of the experience of mental ill health on life after recovery.

text: "Kia Mauri Tau!" Narratives of recovery from disabling mental health problems A bicultural research team at the University of Waikato successfully applied for funding from the Health Research Council to do a qualitative research project in the area of ‘pathways to wellness’. The Mental Health Narratives Project set out to gather forty narratives of mental ill health, recovery and life after recovery by interviewing Maori and non-Maori women and men who once had a disabling mental health problem. We aimed to describe journeys to mental health, identify key themes in accounts of the recovery process and describe the impact of the experience of mental ill health on life after recovery.

year: 2002