Special Session: Marketing Research Automation and Robotization (M-RAR): A Chance for Marketing Practice and a Risk for Marketing Science/Scientists? An Abstract

The digitization in business and society has already progressed significantly, and is poised to revolutionize marketing and exchange processes with different stakeholders through increased automation and robotization to a greater extent. By leveraging modern information and communication technologies, many companies are already closely networked with their customers throughout the customer journey, as well as with their cooperation partners, competitors, and other stakeholders. With the advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning, as well as the expansion of the web from the web of communication to the web of context (semantic web, smart interface) and the web of things (e.g., communication-enabled products) to web of thoughts (collective intelligence, artificial brain, direct brain link, digital aura, etc.), forms of human-machine communication as well as machine-machine communication are becoming increasingly important. Very far-reaching scenarios indicate that this could lead to a marketing perpetuum mobile (marketing perpetual motion) in which customer needs and demands are constantly being identified, monitored and addressed through feedback systems, without any human intervention. In-depth research of customer needs is conducted through feedback systems that track customer brain activity, behavior, usage patterns, and product engagement along the customer journey. This process enables practitioners as well as researcher to understand what customers are thinking and feeling, how they interact with products, and what their unmet needs are. The data is used to design customer-centric solutions that improve customer experience and increase customer engagement, retention, and lifetime value. Even though marketing practices may be more or less distant from implementing such a scenario in many industries, it is still necessary to investigate how increasing digitization in the economy and society will affect the design of market and, more generally, marketing research. The effects of increasing automation and robotization on market research are expected to be far-reaching, affecting not only the practice of market research, but also scientific marketing research. Marketing research is confronted with many questions due to all these advancements that might bring new opportunities.