Yesterday, my sister was voicing her dissatisfaction about the lousy customer service at a department store. She was planning to purchase clothes for his son. When she placed her order, she received a message from the sales personnel that the items were no longer available and that the catalogue they posted online was not updated. My sister was extremely frustrated that she invited me to her home to listen to her sentiments. Since we are both CPAs, she shared her thoughts about inventory management system and the future of retail. In response, I expressed how I envisage the future of retail: we will no longer have to get out of our homes to shop. Instead, with the use of augmented reality, we’ll simply need to wear a headpiece and get immersed in a virtual department store where we can do our transactions. Everything will feel real. Timely enough, the article Marketing in the Age of Alexa bolstered my imagination about artificial intelligence (AI) applied in marketing.
Indeed, with the advent of AI, consumers will shift their allegiance from trusted brands to a trusted AI assistant. Instead of investing their time and energy to listen to a salesperson promote a product with a well-rehearsed script incorporating ethos, pathos, and logos, watching an advertisement, answering a product-related survey, or browsing through an online catalogue as in the case of my sister, busy people would prefer relying on an AI assistant who would make purchasing decisions on their behalf. In effect, they can focus their time more on less menial and more meaningful activities like performing their duties at work and bonding with family members.
However, I believe that brands will still matter. After all, AI is not a product of a miracle. It’s created by human beings. Companies need to gain a deep understanding of the purchasing criteria that the AI uses to make a decision. I’m thinking of a feature in the platform where the consumer/user can instruct the AI assistant not to make a decision for a certain product. For example, if a consumer is highly loyal to the brand of Shampoo X, having been a satisfied user for 25 years, he/she can command the AI assistant to purchase Shampoo X and not decide on his/her behalf.
From the perspective of the AI platform developers, maintaining privacy is the hardest to ensure among the three imperatives for platforms. With the increased scrutiny by the international community of regulators on data privacy and security, it will be a challenge for these disruptors to convince the regulators that they handle the data that their users provide with utmost confidentiality. I can clearly recall my research on our first pre-MBA case regarding Google’s Fitbit acquisition where the European Commission and American and French data privacy regulators required Google to submit a compelling, comprehensive, and actionable plan to address their concerns.
Lastly, I believe the major drawback of overreliance to AI assistants is sacrificing one’s privacy. In order for the AI-assistant to make accurate decisions aligned to one’s needs and wants, it needs as much data as possible. One of the 10 economic principles states, “People face trade-offs.” We have to choose. For now, I am not willing to give up my privacy to obtain convenience. Marketing in the Age of Alexa may seem like utopia for some with convenience at its core, innovation at its mantle, and technology at its crust. Once abused, however, we will have to suffer its dystopic consequences.
Losing Grip 