How to Design an AI Marketing Strategy

What the technology can do today—and what’s next by Thomas H. Davenport, Abhijit Guha and Dhruv Grewal

From the Magazine (July–August 2021)

Giulio Bonasera

Summary.

Of all a company’s functions, marketing has perhaps the most to gain from artificial intelligence. Marketing’s core activities are understanding customer needs, matching them to products and services, and persuading people to buy—capabilities that AI can dramatically enhance. No wonder a 2018 McKinsey analysis of more than 400 advanced use cases showed that marketing was the domain where AI would contribute the greatest value.

Read more on IT management or related topics Marketing and AI and machine learning

A version of this article appeared in the July–August 2021 issue of Harvard Business Review.

Thomas H. Davenport is the President’s Distinguished Professor of Information Technology and faculty director of the Metropoulos Institute for Technology and Entrepreneurship at Babson College, a visiting scholar at the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, and a senior adviser to Deloitte’s Chief Data and Analytics Officer Program.

Abhijit Guha is an associate professor in the department of marketing at the Darla Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina. His research and teaching interests include retailing, pricing, and artificial intelligence.

Dhruv Grewal holds the Toyota Chair in Commerce and Electronic Business and is a professor of marketing at Babson College. He is a coauthor of Marketing and Retailing Management and the author of Retail Marketing Management: The 5 Es of Retailing.

Read more on IT management or related topics Marketing and AI and machine learning

How to Design an AI Marketing Strategy

Summary.

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