Synthèse
Digitalisation has multiplied the media, channels, and touchpoints through which consumers and firms interact, reshaping the customer journey around digital experiences. In parallel, the rapid maturation of Machine Learning, Deep Learning, and especially Artificial Intelligence (AI), is pushing both scholars and managers to rethink how human actors engage with, rely on, and derive value from technological systems, and to revisit the design of these interactions as well as their governance.
A growing body of research shows that AI is increasingly becoming a central shopping companion across the entire customer journey, supporting consumers from product discovery and evaluation in the pre-purchase stage, to basket building and checkout at purchase, and into post-purchase activities such as customer service and returns.
Extrait.
Lire l'appel complet sur le site de l'éditeur.
Thèmes proposés
- What psychological and informational mechanisms explain the effect of AI companions on basket conversion? How do these effects vary with trust, perceived agency, and disclosure in conversational assistance?
- To what extent do AI companions alter assortment exploration and basket structure in terms of variety seeking, complementarity, substitution patterns, and price sensitivity?
- Which conversational features (e.g., framing, explanations, tone, memory) act as key drivers?
- When does AI-induced conversion translate into higher decision quality and ex post satisfaction, and when does it instead generate regret, decision deferral, or dependence on assistance?
- What is the impact of AI companions on returns, distinguishing between informational mismatch, fit errors, overbuying, and opportunistic behaviours, and how do these dynamics vary across product categories and channels (online vs. omnichannel)?
- How can companion design (e.g., explainability, user controls, limits on persuasion, 'pro-social' nudges) reduce returns and increase decision quality without depressing conversion and revenues?
- What are the distributional effects of AI companions on consumers with different levels of digital literacy and vulnerability, and which policies or governance standards are needed to ensure transparency, accountability, and fairness?