How about researching the impact of Covid-19 and social distancing on the way businesses thought about marketing? When suddenly live events and conferences were cancelled and every company in the world had to step up their digital marketing game, regardless of how well (or poorly) they were doing it before. You'd be optimally positioned at this point in time.
How about something to do with "blockchain marketing", which is trending today! Refer to the following site as a starting point: https://www.martechadvisor.com/articles/blockchain/what-is-blockchain-how-to-use-it-in-marketing/
Too many optiosn. Mainly focus on trends in digital marketing (publication soon to come, but you may check for my conference ppt in link below. Reach out as well for trends in DM published as Gartner's Hypecycle in DM.Conference Paper POST-PANDEMIC IMPACT ON THE INDUSTRY anticipating trends in ...
Are current social media enough to reach targeted audience or do they have to be supported with additional promotional means like print, tv, and radio spots? In what extent? For what kind of products or services? What is the related experience?
I might recommend studying the correlation between Covid-19 and Digital Marketing. Investigating such an issue can be considered a modern trend needed for theory and practice, and will shed the light on the importance of Digital marketing for consumers as individuals, economies and nations as well.... Conducting a cross-sectional study of some countries might bring more implications for the marketing field.
First, you need to go through the research papers and find some gaps. Then think about your interest, the question you want to answer. Compare it with the gap in the study.
Make sure that your research can be used for a long period. Short-term problems are not suitable for Ph.D.
I have exactly your situation. I am looking for a suitable topic for a doctoral dissertation. Therefore, I started reading the articles so that I could find a topic gap. I think this is the right way to review the articles.
There are many trending topics such UTAUT2 and UX. Also, you may consider the following areas in the electronic context; v-commerce, S-commerce and c-commerce.
In the field of digital marketing, I propose the following research topic for my doctoral dissertation: Analysis of the effectiveness of the instruments, applications and solutions used as part of a marketing campaign conducted through new online media, including the identification of key determinants of the aforementioned effectiveness and current trends in the application of Industry 4.0 technology in online marketing communication . As part of this topic, it is also possible to examine the key determinants of the possibility of applying the analysis of Internet users' sentiment towards the company's brand and its offer of products and / or services in the field of online market research with the use of new Industry 4.0 technologies, including Big Data Analytics analytical platforms. This topic may also include the analysis of development trends in the development of social media portals and the key determinants of the possibility of applying new viral marketing techniques, including Real-Time marketing.