Artificially Intelligent CRM

by Prof. Charles HOFACKER

Carl De Santis Professor of Business Administration and Professor of Marketing

Florida State University

Discussant: Grégoire Bothorel – Director Marketing Science – Numberly (1000Mercis Group)

Abstract: A firm’s ability to execute customer relationship management is a key requirement for competing in a digitized world. Marketers use CRM for three basic tasks: to create new relationships, to maintain current relationships, and to expand those relationships. In this presentation I will introduce the notion of AI-CRM, that is, AI methodology as applied to the three CRM tasks described above. I will show that a Resource-Based View of the firm will provide a useful perspective on AI-CRM. Using the fairly mild assumption that AI-CRM will get better at analyses needed for the three CRM tasks, I will be able to show a set of predictions for the firm, for customers and for society. Here is a warning: many of these predictions are pessimistic.

Charles F. Hofacker has a Ph. D. in Mathematical Psychology from the University of California, Los Angeles. He is Carl DeSantis Professor of Business Administration and Professor of Marketing at the College of Business of Florida State University. He was Visiting Professor at Università Bocconi in Milan, Italy in 2001, 2007 and 2015, and at Northeastern University in 2014. His research interests are at the intersection of marketing and information technology.

Prof. Hofacker’s work in that and other areas has appeared in the Journal of Marketing Research, Psychometrika, Management Science, Journal of Management, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Advertising Research, and other outlets. He was first Co-Editor then Editor of the Journal of Interactive Marketing from 2009-2014. At the present time he is Associated Editor for Technology, Interactive and Social Media for the Journal of Business Research. Dr. Hofacker is also the moderator of ELMAR, an electronic newsletter and community platform for academic marketing with over 8,000 subscribers.