Ranieri, Angelo (2022) Customer Experience in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: Challenges and Opportunities in the retail business. [Tesi di dottorato]

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Purpose: The advancement of technologies, the development of artificial intelligence and the need to involve customers in unique and innovative experiences bring a major challenge for firms as well as for society. The attention towards customers as central subjects of companies’ strategies is more and more frequent, a phenomenon that seems something extremely simple to explain, but at the same time more difficult to realize. In retail contexts, interactions between customers and companies become increasingly immediate and demanding through a variety of different channels, so as a consequence the diffusion of conversational agents based on artificial intelligence capable of creating a continuity between physical and digital contexts is increasing too. This research aims to understand and introduce challenges and opportunities offered with these technologies by exploring the role they assume in relation to three foundational concepts: customer experience, customer engagement and customer journey. Design/methodology/approach: This research focused on the comparison between retrospective and current data is carried out through the application of multiple methodologies and approaches with a common thread. The review of the literature and to form the theoretical background is conducted in a systematic way through the simultaneous application of PRISMA and bibliometry. The collection of case studies as described by companies and retrieved online requires a thematic analysis capable of extrapolating a conceptual framework. The collection of semi-structured interviews that give the interlocutor space to expand beyond the boundaries set at the beginning involves the adoption of a narrative analysis to interpret the transcripts. Finally, the data resulting from the action research presupposes an illustrative approach that allows the results obtained to be presented and compared with what was previously reported with a desk analysis. Findings: Conversational agents, as an emerging technology that emulates human behaviour, make a major contribution to the generation of unique and unforgettable experiences for customers. Used at different times and through different channels, they can recognize customers, engage them, and have a real conversation with them. The immediacy, the personalization, richness of information provided, and the way of communicating allow us to interpret the conversational agents as a new actor to be considered in service ecosystems. Originality/value: This research finds its originality in the application for the first time of a framework based on three conceptual elements to explain the impact of a technology in service contexts.

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