Assessing Challenges and Opportunities of Marketing Automation in B2B Firms: An Integrated Approach

In the current era of digitalization, extensive research has focused on the impact of marketing automation on businesses and marketers. Despite the recent surge in studies, there remains a notable gap in understanding the obstacles to implementation and the potential benefits for businesses, marketers, and customers. This study addresses the gap by thoroughly examining the challenges and opportunities associated with marketing automation in B2B firms. The study aims to prioritize and establish a contextual and hierarchical correlation between the identified challenges and opportunities. Utilizing the Technology–Organization–Environment (TOE) framework and Stakeholders theory, challenges and opportunities are identified through an extensive literature review and validated by expert opinions. The Best–Worst Method (BWM) prioritizes and establishes hierarchical relationships among challenges. At the same time, the Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) analysis ranks opportunities as strategies to overcome challenges. The results highlight key challenges such as “sales and marketing alignment,” “business case and ROI estimates,” and “data privacy and security,” along with top opportunities including “personalization and contextual content” and “increasing customer satisfaction.” These findings serve as a foundational guide for B2B companies to address obstacles hindering the adoption of marketing automation, fostering effective market competition. Furthermore, the paper contributes to establishing a framework for future research in this critical area.