One in five customers shop under the dictation of new algorithms
Artificial intelligence adoption breaks through in purchasing choices: Eumetra research reveals that consumers increasingly question Ai chatbots to choose products and services
There are no longer the tax collectors of yesteryear. In a world marked by constant background noise, to stand out you have to wow. But it is striking that the wow effect is chosen by Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs, known in England by its acronym HMRC. Paradoxes of this time that confuse the marketing cards. The 60,000-employee English tax collection agency has, thanks to its new app, simplified the flow of money and tax queries, tapping younger users. The newly launched 30-second spot adopts a surreal humour: a woman at a bus stop enters a bathtub full of foam, gliding through suburban streets accompanied by an orchestra of rubber ducks. A dystopian metaphor to explain how easy it is now - frictionless, i.e. frictionless, as one would say in technical marketing jargon - to manage fiscal disputes.
The Attention Match
What one does not invent to win the battle for the attention of a connected and distracted consumer. Also because the game is enriched by ruthless protagonists linked to artificial intelligence. New research by Eumetra for Mediaworld captures the choices of users grappling with continuous jumps between online and offline, driven by the sirens of Ai. This is how artificial intelligence changes the consumer journey: this is the subtext of the survey previewed in Sole24Ore and which mapped one thousand users in Italy.
"The centrality of Ai in the processes and thoughts of companies and professionals does not appear to be reflected in the consumer debate, which uses it in a fluid and integrated manner. Moreover, the Ai is superseding the indications of experts, technicians, insiders. The less the consumer feels knowledgeable about a product, the more he uses it to study and compare it,' says Alberto Stracuzzi, Market research director at Eumetra. Thus its adoption becomes even more relevant in the purchasing process: 9% question the Ai in the first instance when they need to gather information for a purchase of durable goods and electronics, but also clothing or specific foods, while as many as 20% - on average 1 in 5 people - employ it at some point in the consumer journey, rising to 21% for restaurant and even 22% in the gaming sector, which has always been the one most exposed to the adoption of emerging technologies.
It must be said that compared to the easy enthusiasm of two years ago, we are more cautious. Today only - so to speak - 35% of the sample would make up the insurance policy exclusively with the Ai (it was 45% in 2023), while 29% would make an initial diagnosis instead of your doctor (it was 34% in 2023).
Mandatory courses
But if the choice is made in these extemporaneously closed marketplaces, the purchasing game becomes very complex. "But actually it was already so before Ai with the concept of multicanality. The consumer quickly became accustomed to using all available channels and not always in the way companies had imagined. Now with Ai it does the same: it is there, at hand, in some cases pervasive. It does not argue when to use a search engine, a shop or an Ai platform but chooses for convenience or speed. All this makes the relationship with the consumer complex,' Stracuzzi points out.
