Organizations should embrace AI to boost performance, says marketing professor

Companies and corporations that are quick to adopt artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are more likely to boost performance and reap rewards, research from Edith Cowan University (ECU) has shown.

“The future is now. Companies in today’s market are not competing with other brands but competing against companies which know how to leverage AI to bolster their performance,” ECU professor of marketing and service science, Professor Sanjit Roy said.

“AI-enabled technologies allow firms to strategically nurture customer relationships by supporting pervasive customer communication, capture customer knowledge with the growing availability of customer data, and enhance the ability to understand dynamic market environments.”

Professor Roy’s research investigating the use of AI in shaping the future of customer relationships found that AI is a potentially transformative force if applied correctly, able to propel a business into a new era of marketing by cultivating and sustaining meaningful and personalized relationships with customers.

The work is published in the Journal of Business Research.

For businesses, AI capabilities go beyond chatbots integrated into websites, with the technology capable of accurately anticipating customer needs, desires, and preferences, thereby enabling hyper-personalized customer relationships.

AI creates customer connections

In addition to maintaining established customer relationships, AI also has the potential to establish connections with new customers, acting as a catalyst and enabling organizations to identify potential leads and segment audiences.

“Through predictive analytics and machine learning, companies can pinpoint the prospects most likely to engage and tailor their outreach accordingly,” Professor Roy said.

By analyzing the data of existing customers, AI algorithms could also identify patterns indicative of potential churn, allowing organizations to intervene proactively in customer retention, and to potentially offer loyalty initiatives tailored to the individual preferences and behaviors of customers.

Professor Roy added that despite the potential benefits, several barriers impede the effective implementation of AI, with organizations often struggling to navigate the myriad of AI solutions on offer.

Ethical concerns surrounding the use of AI and the use of customer data still remain a challenge.

“The barriers of entry revolve mainly around trust, which is often perceived differently depending on which end of the spectrum of technology readiness a company or an individual falls,” Professor Roy said.

“But the truth of the matter is that the companies who embrace machine learning and AI will not only be doing better in the future but are in fact doing better now. The future is now.”