CMOs Embrace Generative AI Despite Limited Understanding

A recent international study by SAS and Coleman Parkes Research shows that while 75% of marketers already use GenAI for daily tasks, most focus on simpler applications such as content creation, copywriting, and editing. Despite these basic uses being widespread, AI offers much more advanced capabilities that only a small proportion of marketers are currently utilising.

The survey revealed that 18% use generative AI for audience building, 19% for audience targeting, 16% for customer journey mapping, and 14% for price optimisation.

Benefits for E-commerce

It appears that marketers who use Generative AI strategically are seeing impressive results. The adoption of GenAI is associated with improvements in personalisation (92%), customer satisfaction and retention (89%), ability to process large amounts of data (88%), and accuracy of predictive analytics (88%).

Within e-commerce, generative AI tools could transform customer communication, streamline operations, and drive business growth.

Marketers expect to expand their use of Generative AI over the next one to two years to:

• save time and costs (63%)
• improve risk management and compliance (62%)
• enable more efficient data processing (60%)

However, the main obstacle is insufficient understanding and strategic management by CMOs. Privacy protection and data security also pose problems, with 61% of marketers citing them as key challenges in adopting GenAI. Only a third of organisations have comprehensive data governance frameworks in place, and less than 10% have achieved this for GenAI.

To stay ahead of the competition, consider investing in GenAI now. To fully realise its potential, the e-commerce industry should invest in educating its leaders, including CMOs.

Moreover, building robust data governance and compliance frameworks will be crucial to strengthen customer trust and ensure responsible AI usage.