Scalable Digital Marketing Systems for Customer Journey Optimisation in Technology Services: An Integrative Review
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.57125/FS.2026.09.20.10Keywords:
Artificial intelligence personalisation, customer data integration, lifecycle orchestration, marketing automation, organisational capability, predictive analytics, privacy governance.Abstract
Technology service companies increasingly use connected customer data, automation, analytics, and personalisation; however, evidence remain limited across individual capabilities, journey stages, and implementation contexts. The study aimed to integrate existing research and develop a comprehensive model of coordinated marketing capabilities in lifecycle management across technological, organisational, economic, and institutional contexts. The study followed the PRISMA 2020 guidelines, identifying 946 and selecting 74 studies published between 2020 and 25 June, 2026 for an integrative review. The evidence was examined through descriptive mapping, thematic coding, cross-study comparison, and framework synthesis. The Dynamic Capabilities View provided the theoretical lens for interpreting how digital marketing capabilities support sensing, coordinated customer-facing action and continuing reconfiguration across the customer journey. Six interdependent capability clusters were identified: customer data integration, marketing automation, AI-powered personalisation and prediction, journey and channel orchestration, digital engagement management, and performance measurement and feedback optimisation. These capabilities enabled stage-specific mechanisms, including personalisation, prediction, friction reduction, timely interaction, continuity, automated engagement, and cross-channel consistency. Scalability was enabled by infrastructure, interoperability, data quality, organisational integration, analytical skills, and governance capacity, while hindered by fragmented systems, implementation costs, platform dependence, privacy concerns, and weak accountability. The resulting four-layer framework connects digital marketing capabilities, operating mechanisms, customer journey stages, and outcomes under cross-cutting contextual conditions. It provides practitioners with a structured foundation for matching customer challenges with the appropriate combination of capabilities and operating conditions.
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