Leveraging Intelligence

This thesis investigates how premium B2C brands can strategically leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance their marketing efforts throughout the customer journey (CJ). AI as a technology develops from invention to innovation, offering several implementation opportunities for marketers. To stay relevant in the market and gain a competitive advantage, brands need to leverage these affordances. This research project examines the broad opportunities of AI-enabled innovation within marketing, answering important strategic questions. By interviewing 13 experts from various fields like user experience (UX) design, digital innovation and CJ management, a cohesive view of the topic could be achieved. The interview’s analysis reveal several findings helping B2C premium brands to strategically leverage AI for their marketing efforts, closing a research gap. AI’s foundational affordance lies in advanced data analysis, facilitating faster, more objective insights for real-time adjustments in content and strategy. Real-time content generation and personalization, driven by generative AI, enable hyper-personalized experiences. Real-time strategy adjustments, assisted by AI, allow for dynamic CJ mapping and predictive capabilities, enhancing responsiveness, automation and thus, customer satisfaction. Conversational agents are disrupting the CJ, offering seamless, language-based interactions that shorten the CJ and elevate the recommendation algorithm’s and the brand’s significance. Human-like UX becomes an objective achievable by brand-owned conversational agents. This research offers strategic insights for AI’s successful implementation for B2C premium brands. To ensure consistency, these brands must align AI innovations with their identity, necessitating a comprehensive large language model (LLM) strategy and strategic AI deployment. High-quality data and strategic data collection, achieved through cross-functional collaboration and AI-enabled CJ mapping, play a critical role in this process. For data sourcing, LLM training, and ownership of the customer experience, collaboration with other companies is considered crucial. Brands should address consumers' desires for newness and choice, integrating these considerations into their recommendation algorithms. The findings highlight AI’s crucial role in marketing and emphasize the importance of an AI-enabled unique value proposition beyond operational efficiency. Given AI’s novelty and rapid evolution, this research provides a foundational base for numerous promising paths of further exploration.