Empowering AI Companions for Enhanced Relationship Marketing

Rijul Chaturvedi, Sanjeev Verma, Vartika Srivastava




Empowering AI Companions for Enhanced Relationship Marketing

Image Credit | Google Deepmind

 

Abstract

Embedded with artificial empathy, artificial intelligence (AI) companions (ACs) can create, communicate, and deliver value to customers. This article analyzes current and emerging ACs in order to explore AI’s role in transforming customer journeys and establishing long-lasting customer relationships. It also identifies existing business challenges in developing user-AI companionship and offers a remedial strategy matrix. Purely functional or emotional capabilities lead to interest in the companion plummeting with time. The findings reveal the need to design holistic ACs with a hybrid of functional, emotional, and conversational capabilities to mitigate the uncanny valley problem.

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Winter 2024

Volume 66
Issue 2

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California Management Review

Berkeley-Haas's Premier Management Journal

Published at Berkeley Haas for more than sixty years, California Management Review seeks to share knowledge that challenges convention and shows a better way of doing business.

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