The Marketing industry like many other industries have changed dramatically by information technology. The Marketing industry concentrates on understanding consumer’s needs and motivations, using insight to create campaigns that encourage people to buy those products/services. The modern-day marketing industry combines creativity with digital analytics. Digital marketing increases relevancy which reaches target demographics to offer relevant content based on data computations. Looking forward, Artificial Intelligence (AI) assistance will further transform the communication between companies and consumers.
Almost all aspects of marketing have dramatically changed, luckily there is still a need for brand loyalty. However, AI will soon change the need for brand loyalty and unconscious biases in the decision making process. The AI that I will be talking about discussed in the article “Marketing in the Age of Alexa” is a conceivable AI decision making system that will soon be brought into households. AI in marketing will revolve around intelligent machines working for humans in the purchasing decision making process. Since AI understands and can sort through vast amounts of data, AI will make decisions for consumers based on ratings, prices, deals, and other criteria. Ideally, AI is going to be used to make better purchasing decisions for consumers than they would be able to make for themselves. This technology excludes brand loyalty and previous assumptions about brands while running cost benefit analysis to find the best product while providing convenience for consumers.
Traditional marketing or offline marketing refers to the promotional strategies and tactics such as direct sales, telemarketing, broadcasting (radio/TV), direct mail, and print advertising. Traditional marketing offers tangible and hard copy advertisements, however agencies typically require outside hires in order to complete these campaigns. For example, printing materials and broadcasting advertisements will require hiring graphic designers, script writers, publishing companies, and more. Traditional marketing requires a defined budget and a timeline meaning whether the information needs to be sent out immediately or not. This method may be the only means of reaching a target audience who do not use social media or the internet and helps build a relationship between the company and its’ consumers. Before digital marketing, marketers used tactics of targeting everyone in hopes of reaching someone interested, which makes campaigns more expensive and time consuming to create. Therefore, traditional marketing is less efficient, but typically more effective than digital marketing.
Today, the reach of campaigns has increased enormously with digital marketing because of the emergence of the internet in the 90s. With digital marketing, consumer acquisition through collecting consumer data to target audiences has become very efficient. The rise of digital marketing allows information to be sent out instantly, and with so many platforms, a strong advertisement can gain interest on a worldwide scale. This increases the difficulty for campaigns to work across platforms with the never-ending bombardment of advertising and e-commerce across social media platforms. The challenge for companies is connecting to its consumer while they are being overloaded with content and information. Although there are endless platforms and options to use, it has become more difficult to grab consumers’ attention. Today’s marketing is based on understanding the consumer and appealing to their interests by tailoring content and information which increase the efficiency of campaigns.
Consumers have already begun shifting their loyalty over the past few years from trusted brands to AI assistants as they continue to colonize households. There are predictions that AI assistants will “win consumers’ trust and loyalty better than any previous marketing technology” (Dawar). Even understanding consumers’ needs and ensuring quality and consistency will be performed better by AI. Over the next decade, AI assistants will become the primary channel through where people get goods, services, and information from. AI assistants will help consumers navigate choices including routine, non routine, and time-consuming purchases. AI assistants will minimize costs, and risks while tracking purchasing patterns and product use to understand consumers criteria and goals (environmentally friendly, allergies, health improving products, etc). AI will analyze complex purchasing decisions by learning what criteria consumers are looking for while computing trade-offs consumers would be willing to make. AI will be an efficient and effective tool for consumers’ purchasing decisions.
AI technology creates new problems for marketers who will have to battle for their own consumers’ attention. This AI technology will tamper with customer satisfaction which drives “loyalty, word of mouth, market share, and profitability” (Dawar). Marketing firms will have to purchase this technology and understand the algorithms AI uses to recommend products. Firms will adjust their strategies based around understanding the relationship between consumer behavior and product innovation. For example, marketers will reconfigure strategies to determine, track, and understand customer satisfaction ratings given by AI. Today, marketers assume that repeat purchases indicate customer satisfaction thus adding to brand loyalty. Many consumers may not have considered nor had time to explore other alternatives, thus giving marketers false information about consumer loyalty and satisfaction. However, this problem will be fixed with the introduction of AI making purchasing decisions because criteria is tailored by and for each individual consumer.
Marketers need to provide compelling campaigns and be proficient in using and understanding AI technology. AI making purchasing decisions will benefit consumers and will restrict marketer’s influence on consumer behavior. AI technology will deteriorate the purpose of marketing by focusing on the products themselves, which is beneficial for consumers but not for marketers. Overall, as information technology continues to grow, new opportunities and strategies in marketing will emerge.
