Effectual and causal reasoning in the adoption of marketing automation

Abstract

Research on technology adoption in organizations traditionally assumes that these organizations follow rational, strategic and planned adoption processes. However, a gradually emerging view is that the adoption of technology is also characterized by entrepreneurial or effectual reasoning, primarily due to technological and market uncertainties that call for more agile and experimental approaches at the digital age. Drawing on effectuation theory, we develop a research framework to examine the managerial reasoning during the adoption of marketing automation technology. Based on the results of a comparative multiple-case study on four large-sized industrial firms, we develop a maturity model of marketing automation adoption and show that even large-sized B2B companies apply effectual reasoning, which problematizes the rationality assumption in the technology adoption literature. Second, we show that during the adoption process, organizations' dominant reasoning mode follows an iterative pattern in which the adopting organization moves back and forth between effectuation and causation. Finally, we identify five key domains of marketing automation (customer knowledge, information systems infrastructure, analytics, interdepartmental dynamics and change management) and describe their gradual evolution at different stages of the adoption process.