Last week, I was ordering some supplements online. I had a question about one of the products, so I did what we are increasingly encouraged to do: I asked the chatbot. After a couple of fruitless interactions, the chatbot eventually told me that it could not answer questions about the products (only about orders); and … Continue reading Beyond “Sorry, I Didn’t Understand” – How to Handle Chatbot Errors
Category: Marketing in everyday life
Data quality as a situated and relational attribute
One (good?) thing about moving houses is that we move stuff from its usual place, open boxes and drawers that had not been opened in a long time and find stuff that we had forgotten about. One such find, in last month’s move, were notes for work that Jan Kietzmann and I did about 15 … Continue reading Data quality as a situated and relational attribute
When We Say “AI”, What Do We Actually Mean?
One of my pet peeves is to hear people use the broad term “marketing” to refer specifically to “advertising”. They will say thinks like “I don’t do marketing” when what they mean is that they don’t do paid advertising. If they have a product or service, if they devise a price strategy, or consider how … Continue reading When We Say “AI”, What Do We Actually Mean?
AI scenarios 2030
Today I would like to draw your attention to the report “AI Scenarios 2030: Helping policy makers plan for the future of AI”, published by the Government Office for Science, last month. As the title suggests, this report presents five scenarios for what AI systems might look like in 2030. The scenarios were developed to … Continue reading AI scenarios 2030
How mobile apps can strengthen customer stickiness
The paper that I am writing about, today, is one of those where the first time we read it, we think: “Well, that's obvious.” The paper in question is entitled “Unpacking task-technology fit: how hotel booking mobile applications’ agility and resilience strengthen trust and stickiness” by Ferry Tema Atmaja, Lizar Alfansi, Effed Darta Hadi, Muhartini … Continue reading How mobile apps can strengthen customer stickiness
The Guilt Paradox: How a Negative Customer Emotion Can Drive Positive Outcomes
We naturally assume that negative customer emotions result in negative outcomes for a business. Fear, for instance, leads to avoidance, while anger leads to negative word of mouth. However, according to a study by Anne-Madeleine Kranzbühler, Alfred Zerres, Mirella H. P. Kleijnen and Peeter W. J. Verlegh, there is a negative customer emotion that, under specific … Continue reading The Guilt Paradox: How a Negative Customer Emotion Can Drive Positive Outcomes
When more is more – the value of AI explanations for credence products
The quality of credence products, like car repairs or medical treatments, is very difficult to assess before purchase because those products contain many intangible attributes that are difficult to observe and understand. For example, I can’t really see the components that make a vaccine effective – I need to trust (hence the descriptive “credence”) that vaccines are … Continue reading When more is more – the value of AI explanations for credence products
LLMs can flatter you into being wrong
Much has been written about the dangers of LLMs’ hallucinations. Hallucinations occur when the model confidently presents an incorrect answer. This happens because LLMs are not knowledge systems. For example, when Co-Pilot made up the existence of a fictitious match between Maccabi Tel Aviv and West Ham. But hallucinations are not the only epistemic risk linked to … Continue reading LLMs can flatter you into being wrong
The Reputational Risk of Disclosing AI Use
I am currently marking coursework where students were allowed to use generative AI, but they have to detail how they used it and include screenshots. And this reminded me of a paper that I read some time ago, entitled "Competence Penalty Is a Barrier to the Adoption of New Technology". This paper reports a study … Continue reading The Reputational Risk of Disclosing AI Use
New white paper: Balancing Responsiveness and Reliability – Liquid Innovation in Practice
The same qualities that make Generative AI agents valuable can become liabilities when this technology is deployed without appropriate controls. Their adaptability may produce inconsistent guidance across similar situations, while its fluency obscures the poor quality of the reply due to missing or wrong information. For many organisations, the operational advantages of deploying AI are … Continue reading New white paper: Balancing Responsiveness and Reliability – Liquid Innovation in Practice
