Machine learning and AI in marketing – Connecting computing power to human insights

Abstract Artificial intelligence (AI) agents driven by machine learning algorithms are rapidly transforming the business world, generating heightened interest from researchers. In this paper, we review and call for marketing research to leverage machine learning methods. We provide an overview of common machine learning tasks and methods, and compare them with statistical and econometric methods that marketing researchers traditionally use. We argue that machine learning methods can process large-scale and unstructured data, and have flexible model structures that yield strong predictive performance. Meanwhile, such methods may lack model transparency and interpretability. We discuss salient AI-driven industry trends and practices, and review the still nascent academic marketing literature which uses machine learning methods. More importantly, we present a unified conceptual framework and a multi-faceted research agenda. From five key aspects of empirical marketing research: method, data, usage, issue, and theory, we propose a number of research priorities, including extending machine learning methods and using them as core components in marketing research, using the methods to extract insights from large-scale unstructured, tracking, and network data, using them in transparent fashions for descriptive, causal, and prescriptive analyses, using them to map out customer purchase journeys and develop decision-support capabilities, and connecting the methods to human insights and marketing theories. Opportunities abound for machine learning methods in marketing, and we hope our multi-faceted research agenda will inspire more work in this exciting area.