Chapter 11: Improving the Image of Marketing: AI Has the Potential to Assist in Marketing Decisions and Change Perceptions

Marketing is sometimes viewed as manipulative and as enticing consumers to live beyond their means. Artificial intelligence (AI)-powered systems can change the image of the marketing discipline and improve the marketing decision-making process. This chapter argues that embedding AI in the marketing process can help to alleviate public and consumer concerns about the marketing discipline. AI has the potential to make the marketing process transparent, but this is dependent on trust and privacy variables. Openness about using AI in the customer experience and how it is applied will put marketing on an objective framework. However, marketing decisions will be a mix of data and information mediated by intuition, reasoning, experience and empathy and these are qualities that are associated with marketers. AI customer experience requires decisions that are objective (personalisation) and those that are empathy related.