In the last three-plus decades of working as a marketing and communication professional, I have seen significant shifts in the way people engage with brands, driven by many factors such as technology, the advent of new media, and evolving consumer behaviour. In recent years, observing how people around me choose, purchase and engage with brands has made me notice a significant shift - the rapid evolution of the process of choice making.
These days, in our busy lives, “choosing” has itself become exhausting, not due to a lack of information; rather, due to the information deluge. Take, for example, a simple act of buying a television. We are surrounded by multiple brands, models, functions, and technical specifications that most of us don’t fully understand. And to top that, there are reviews, ratings, comparison videos, and recommendations that flood us.
And it was in scenarios like this that I found my own behaviour changing. I began to seek the help of an AI assistant to understand my requirements and recommend suitable options. Although I still check the prices and reviews before making the final buying decision, I am quite happy to allow the technology to do the initial research and aid me in narrowing the options.
Interestingly, I have noticed that the recommendations made by AI have not always favoured brands with the biggest visibility and reach. On more than one occasion, I’ve been pointed to a few not-so-well-known options that were better suited to address my requirements, rather than heavily marketed brands which I had originally been leaning towards.
Delegating the decision-making is hardly new. We humans have always done it. We ask our friends, family, colleagues, and neighbours for recommendations. In business, we reach out to our trusted network when we are looking for a vendor partner or an employee. These recommendations free us from evaluating everyone, and give us a starting point.
Our willingness to seek help in making choices has not changed, but perhaps what is changing now is who we approach to seek this information before we decide. I have started recognising this behaviour as a delegated choice.
In the future, I don’t think humans are going to hand over decision-making to AI. Personal relationships and recommendations from trusted sources are unlikely to disappear, particularly in high-risk decisions. However, I foresee that the application of artificial intelligence will become useful in certain stages before the final decision, with AI playing a key role in assisting humans.
For years, marketing and communication professionals have worked on making brands visible by building awareness and ensuring that customers understand why they should choose one over the other.
If, in the future, AI influences customer decisions on brand choice, business and marketing leaders have a different challenge to address. For years, we have asked whether our brand is visible and whether it is well differentiated from the competition. We have asked whether our communication is of relevance to our target audience. Perhaps beginning now, we should ask whether our brand and its messaging are easy to understand, evaluate, and recommend.
Interestingly, I don't believe the fundamentals of building a brand will change very much. A strong brand will always help reduce uncertainty, and it will continue to do so. When we already know a brand and trust it, choosing it is much easier. Marketing efforts such as reputation building, combined with customer experience, credibility, and recommendations, will continue playing an important role in building that trust.
However, in the future, the key shift for marketers will be how easily all this evidence can be combined when a non-human is evaluating us.
For example, a brand can claim its world-class expertise and customer trust through its external communication, but going forward what its customers say and how they rate its products or services will matter more. The trust that the brand claims will be evaluated against whether its reputation supports that claim.
What will be different is the information available outside the brand’s own communication, be it customer reviews, media coverage, leadership perspectives, or employee experiences. And this wealth of information will create the bigger picture and become the key to how a brand is understood and evaluated. The credibility of marketing communication will depend not just on what the organisation says about itself but also on what others experience.
We are at the threshold of a major shift, and I believe that no one can claim today with certainty how far people will be willing to delegate their choices or how differently this will play out across consumer and business decisions. So far, brand building has been about giving people reasons to choose. While that may not change, what will change is how we get our brand onto the list of choices in the first place.
