December 8, 2023 • 9 mins
This is the first Christmas shopping season in which shoppers may consult with artificial intelligence to make their buying decisions. A University of South Florida marketing professor says that AI can help both consumers and retailers make better choices about purchases and inventory. We speak with Dr. Dipayan "Dip" Biswas.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Gordon Bird here beyond the News.It is, of course the holiday shopping
season, and people are shopping.They're shopping at brick and mortar stores,
and they're shopping online. Overall,there are some changes to the way people
shop and the way companies market tothem because of the use of artificial intelligence.
And here to give us the overviewon that is to Pine Biswass.
(00:22):
Doctor Biswass is Professor of Marketing atMUMA College of Business at the University of
South Florida in Tampa. Doctor Biswass, a good day, and thank you
very much for joining us on Beyondthe News. Thanks for having me,
Gordon, all right, if youcould start kind of give us the overview
here as to how artificial intelligence ischanging the relationship between the consumer and the
(00:46):
retailer as we go through this holidayseason. Absolutely, so, this year
is the first year where AI,artificial intelligence is being used on a large
scale by both customers and by companyfor the holiday season. Now, why
this year? What's so special aboutthis year? So, this is the
(01:06):
first year where we have this large, large language model artificial intelligence systems where
you can interact or communicate with AIlike you would interact with a human being.
So artificial intelligence has been around fora long time, but till this
year, it wasn't widespread as anatural language processor where they would understand natural,
(01:29):
normal English that human beings talk about. So that has changed the landscape
where we have different platforms Open aisChat, GPT was a pioneer, but
they are not only one. Thereare several others out there. Google has
won out their board and a fewothers have been lined up. Google has
another improved version, Gemini that's inthe pipeline. So basically what's happening is
(01:52):
these tools are being used by customers, not everyone, but by a pretty
large number of customers. They're usingAI to decide what gifts to give.
I actually talk to some customers.These are students at USF, so I
had like one on one interactions discussionswith them. So there are people who
(02:14):
are using AI to decide a giftfor someone. Like one person told me
that she asked AI what kind ofgift she should give to her dad,
So she described her dad his life'sinterest is age, et cetera, and
then asked AI, chadchipt, whatshould I get as a gift for my
(02:37):
dad who has these This is hispersonality and Chad ChiPT made a recommendation.
So this is like just to highlightan example of something happening on a larger
scale. People are using it tobuy gifts for their young niece nephews.
So people this is a very commonphrase this year. People are asking what
should I give my six year oldnephew six year old needs, So that's
(03:00):
where people are using AI to decidethe gifts. Now, what would be
the likely implication? So the assumptionhere is AI has a better understanding of
the general feeling, general pulse,Like they have a better idea of what
like someone in their fifties might wantor a six year old might want in
(03:21):
a gift, so you don't haveto guess or speculate. You outsource it
to the AI system. So onelikely outcome would be there might be more
happiness with the gifts. People mightbe happier, it might meet their needs.
There might also be fewer returns tothe store, so stores are happy
about that, so that's a goodthing on the customer side. On the
(03:42):
company side, what's happening is AIis being used to decide or determine how
much inventory to hold. What's thelikely trend preference for gifts because AI it's
the same system. It's like thesame neural networks that are interacting with customers
and with companies, so they haveinformation from both sides. In the past,
(04:03):
there was information asymmetry. Customers andcompanies were working with a different information
bases. So right now companies aregetting a better idea of what customers are
looking for. So that helps withinventory management. So there would be better
management of inventory. Like last year, last shopping years, some of these
clothing retail chains fashion brands had accessinventory in some categories and they had to
(04:28):
like liquid at those deep discounts,so they can avoid that. So again,
AI presumably would lead to happier customers, happier gift recipients, fewer returns,
or happier companies. It sounds likea win win situation here, But
is there The first thing that poppedinto my mind is I hear you describing
this process is search engine optimization.Is there any incentive to game AI the
(04:53):
way that companies and have been gamingsearch engines for years to try to make
the product that they're marketing pop up. Let's say, as being a good
choice if you're buying for your father, or for your kid, or for
any family member. Not this yearyet, because companies still don't know how
(05:17):
to for lack of a better term, how to gain the system. Like
what you said, you can gainranks in a search outcome like a search
engine optimization, because companies now havea pretty good idea. We even teach
that in our digital marketing courses.I talk about that with my students.
So there are certain things you cando that would help you with search engine
(05:39):
optimization. Artificial intelligence is a muchmuch bigger black box where we don't know
what's going on inside, and rightnow it's only a small number of players
controlling it, which is not differentthan the rest of the tech sector.
But for the rest of the techsector, we have enough information now to
decide what's best for us. Verynew. So this year I doubt anything
(06:01):
like that would happen. But toyour point, two three years from now,
it is possible that companies might collude. So for example, if Google's
AI platform becomes really popular, socompanies might be incentivised to, like somehow
gain in the rankings and gain interms of recommendations. But probably not this
(06:24):
year, but in the future itis possible if you had to make recommendations
to companies and or consumers who weretrying to figure out how to make AI
work for them, Is there isthere anything you can say at this point?
Or again, is it, likeyou say, still all very new
and still very hard to predict wherethings will go right? So one suggestion
(06:48):
I would have for everyone on bothsides of the equation, the customers and
companies, is EI even now isstill like a machine. It would all
be a machine. It's not ahuman being. It doesn't have concepts of
emotion, it doesn't have like biologicalfunctions or reactions like fear, love,
(07:10):
et cetera. So a lot ofthe things it would suggest is based on
hard data. Like let's say,if you describe a person, they have
enough data to compile what they wouldlike. But people are not data like
We are individuals in our own ways, so we might have some average traits,
but someone's like parent or like significantother or their children might have something
(07:35):
unique. So just relying on AIme or may not fit the bill.
So maybe it can be a twoprong process. But I would suggest AI
is not bad. It helps youcut down on a lot of these search
activities and In fact, Google rightnow is incorporating some AI tools into its
shopping search website. It has beenpublicly revealed now. So it's fine to
(07:58):
look for recommendations for categorse, butEI may not know if like your significant
other would like the product in redor blue. That's where the human element
comes in, the individual factor.So I would say AI is good as
a tool, use it as atool, but do not rely on it
one hundred persons. So maybe itmight suggest, oh, like a good
(08:18):
gift this year might be this,I don't know. A music system.
That's fine, but the music systemcomes in seven different colors. Or shoes.
What's more, shoes they come innine different colors. Maybe you yourself
might know based on your interactions thatthis person that you're gifting this too,
would prefer this in like blue orin red. So based on that,
(08:39):
use your human element to make thefinal call. A new tool, but
it can't entirely replace human choices,in human knowledge and human emotions and simple
humanity. And perhaps that's a goodplace to break it off. Doctor dipel
i'm biswas Biswas. He's the Professorof market at the Mummah College of Business
(09:01):
at the University of South Florida inTampa. Doctor biswas thank you very much
for joining us on beyond the news. Thank you for having me
Gordon Bird here beyond the News.It is, of course the holiday shopping
season, and people are shopping.They're shopping at brick and mortar stores,
and they're shopping online. Overall,there are some changes to the way people
shop and the way companies market tothem because of the use of artificial intelligence.
And here to give us the overviewon that is to Pine Biswass.
(00:22):
Doctor Biswass is Professor of Marketing atMUMA College of Business at the University of
South Florida in Tampa. Doctor Biswass, a good day, and thank you
very much for joining us on Beyondthe News. Thanks for having me,
Gordon, all right, if youcould start kind of give us the overview
here as to how artificial intelligence ischanging the relationship between the consumer and the
(00:46):
retailer as we go through this holidayseason. Absolutely, so, this year
is the first year where AI,artificial intelligence is being used on a large
scale by both customers and by companyfor the holiday season. Now, why
this year? What's so special aboutthis year? So, this is the
(01:06):
first year where we have this large, large language model artificial intelligence systems where
you can interact or communicate with AIlike you would interact with a human being.
So artificial intelligence has been around fora long time, but till this
year, it wasn't widespread as anatural language processor where they would understand natural,
(01:29):
normal English that human beings talk about. So that has changed the landscape
where we have different platforms Open aisChat, GPT was a pioneer, but
they are not only one. Thereare several others out there. Google has
won out their board and a fewothers have been lined up. Google has
another improved version, Gemini that's inthe pipeline. So basically what's happening is
(01:52):
these tools are being used by customers, not everyone, but by a pretty
large number of customers. They're usingAI to decide what gifts to give.
I actually talk to some customers.These are students at USF, so I
had like one on one interactions discussionswith them. So there are people who
(02:14):
are using AI to decide a giftfor someone. Like one person told me
that she asked AI what kind ofgift she should give to her dad,
So she described her dad his life'sinterest is age, et cetera, and
then asked AI, chadchipt, whatshould I get as a gift for my
(02:37):
dad who has these This is hispersonality and Chad ChiPT made a recommendation.
So this is like just to highlightan example of something happening on a larger
scale. People are using it tobuy gifts for their young niece nephews.
So people this is a very commonphrase this year. People are asking what
should I give my six year oldnephew six year old needs, So that's
(03:00):
where people are using AI to decidethe gifts. Now, what would be
the likely implication? So the assumptionhere is AI has a better understanding of
the general feeling, general pulse,Like they have a better idea of what
like someone in their fifties might wantor a six year old might want in
(03:21):
a gift, so you don't haveto guess or speculate. You outsource it
to the AI system. So onelikely outcome would be there might be more
happiness with the gifts. People mightbe happier, it might meet their needs.
There might also be fewer returns tothe store, so stores are happy
about that, so that's a goodthing on the customer side. On the
(03:42):
company side, what's happening is AIis being used to decide or determine how
much inventory to hold. What's thelikely trend preference for gifts because AI it's
the same system. It's like thesame neural networks that are interacting with customers
and with companies, so they haveinformation from both sides. In the past,
(04:03):
there was information asymmetry. Customers andcompanies were working with a different information
bases. So right now companies aregetting a better idea of what customers are
looking for. So that helps withinventory management. So there would be better
management of inventory. Like last year, last shopping years, some of these
clothing retail chains fashion brands had accessinventory in some categories and they had to
(04:28):
like liquid at those deep discounts,so they can avoid that. So again,
AI presumably would lead to happier customers, happier gift recipients, fewer returns,
or happier companies. It sounds likea win win situation here, But
is there The first thing that poppedinto my mind is I hear you describing
this process is search engine optimization.Is there any incentive to game AI the
(04:53):
way that companies and have been gamingsearch engines for years to try to make
the product that they're marketing pop up. Let's say, as being a good
choice if you're buying for your father, or for your kid, or for
any family member. Not this yearyet, because companies still don't know how
(05:17):
to for lack of a better term, how to gain the system. Like
what you said, you can gainranks in a search outcome like a search
engine optimization, because companies now havea pretty good idea. We even teach
that in our digital marketing courses.I talk about that with my students.
So there are certain things you cando that would help you with search engine
(05:39):
optimization. Artificial intelligence is a muchmuch bigger black box where we don't know
what's going on inside, and rightnow it's only a small number of players
controlling it, which is not differentthan the rest of the tech sector.
But for the rest of the techsector, we have enough information now to
decide what's best for us. Verynew. So this year I doubt anything
(06:01):
like that would happen. But toyour point, two three years from now,
it is possible that companies might collude. So for example, if Google's
AI platform becomes really popular, socompanies might be incentivised to, like somehow
gain in the rankings and gain interms of recommendations. But probably not this
(06:24):
year, but in the future itis possible if you had to make recommendations
to companies and or consumers who weretrying to figure out how to make AI
work for them, Is there isthere anything you can say at this point?
Or again, is it, likeyou say, still all very new
and still very hard to predict wherethings will go right? So one suggestion
(06:48):
I would have for everyone on bothsides of the equation, the customers and
companies, is EI even now isstill like a machine. It would all
be a machine. It's not ahuman being. It doesn't have concepts of
emotion, it doesn't have like biologicalfunctions or reactions like fear, love,
(07:10):
et cetera. So a lot ofthe things it would suggest is based on
hard data. Like let's say,if you describe a person, they have
enough data to compile what they wouldlike. But people are not data like
We are individuals in our own ways, so we might have some average traits,
but someone's like parent or like significantother or their children might have something
(07:35):
unique. So just relying on AIme or may not fit the bill.
So maybe it can be a twoprong process. But I would suggest AI
is not bad. It helps youcut down on a lot of these search
activities and In fact, Google rightnow is incorporating some AI tools into its
shopping search website. It has beenpublicly revealed now. So it's fine to
(07:58):
look for recommendations for categorse, butEI may not know if like your significant
other would like the product in redor blue. That's where the human element
comes in, the individual factor.So I would say AI is good as
a tool, use it as atool, but do not rely on it
one hundred persons. So maybe itmight suggest, oh, like a good
(08:18):
gift this year might be this,I don't know. A music system.
That's fine, but the music systemcomes in seven different colors. Or shoes.
What's more, shoes they come innine different colors. Maybe you yourself
might know based on your interactions thatthis person that you're gifting this too,
would prefer this in like blue orin red. So based on that,
(08:39):
use your human element to make thefinal call. A new tool, but
it can't entirely replace human choices,in human knowledge and human emotions and simple
humanity. And perhaps that's a goodplace to break it off. Doctor dipel
i'm biswas Biswas. He's the Professorof market at the Mummah College of Business
(09:01):
at the University of South Florida inTampa. Doctor biswas thank you very much
for joining us on beyond the news. Thank you for having me
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