Internet of Things (IoT) as an Instrument to Improve Business and Marketing Strategies. A Literature Review.

Creative destruction used by German sociologist Werner Sombart in 1913, and later known as Schumpeter's gale, could be considered the first conceptual stage of what happens nowadays in all industries "forced" to use the digital environment. First three industrial revolutions experienced by the humanity happened in over three centuries with tangible results that improved immensely the day-to-day life of people. The fourth one happened in decades, and it was characterized by the use of information and communication technology in various industries. As the literature review has revealed, Internet of Things (IoT) is part of Industry 4.0., linking industries and consumers in a smarter way through sensors and other devices, collecting valuable data and helping companies. This article proposes a navigation throughout the literature to demonstrate that IoT is a new and modern solution that has a big potential for development to help businesses to take smarter and swifter decisions from data gathered indirectly from consumers. Given that the papers analyzed are quite recent, we would say that this topic of IoT is only lightly investigated, and it opens many subjects of discussions, not only on the business and marketing side, but also economically, socially, and of course, technically. Various questions have arisen during the research: Is there a limitation in using this instrument in business and marketing strategies? Either technical or legal? The ethics of this process is under question and both companies and governments dedicated a lot of time to understand the implications of IoT in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]