Chatbots in Marketing: An In-Deep Case Study Capturing Future Perspectives of AI in Advertising

A personalized customer approach in marketing offers many benefits to customers and organizations. With chatbots, personalized marketing could reach the next level as they gather, analyze, and use customer data while communicating with them. Based on qualitative data collected with a start-up in the field, this in-depth case study evaluates the potential of chatbots from an industry perspective, identifying significant benefits, challenges, and future directions that organizations can use to engage in chatbots in marketing. Our main results indicate that chatbots offer optimized customer approaches that are less intrusive and provide a better identification and segmentation of customers. We also see that organizations should avoid bombarding customers with advertising messages because the chatbot enables them to approach the customer directly, so use this communication channel wisely. In the future, chatbots can optimize access to a wholesome customer experience that fits customers' preferences.1