Generative AI is becoming an active participant in the purchase journey, helping consumers compare products, interpret information and select among alternatives. Based on a survey of 500 adults who use AI at least weekly and have used it for shopping or product research, the latest report in the ARF and MSI Psych of Gen AI series examines how much of the decision process consumers are willing to delegate, where they still insist on control and what their growing reliance on AI means for marketers.
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Generative AI is changing more than how consumers discover and compare brands. It is becoming an active participant in how they interpret brand information, evaluate alternatives and make purchasing decisions. The latest report in the ARF and MSI's Psychology of Gen AI series, The Third Actor: How AI Is Entering the Consumer–Brand Relationship, explores this emerging dynamic and what it could mean for marketers. Drawing on a survey of experienced AI users, the research examines how AI's personalized, conversational interactions may influence brand perceptions, consumer preferences and the relationship between brands and their customers.
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What happens to brand growth when consumers increasingly turn to AI assistants instead of relying on familiar brands or traditional search results? As generative AI becomes a more influential part of product discovery and purchasing decisions, marketers face new questions about how brands gain visibility, enter consumers' consideration sets and compete for attention. In MSI Working Paper, Tri-System Brand Growth: The AI Mediation Layer, researcher Pablo Ulpiano González Castro introduces a framework that adds AI availability to the established concepts of mental and physical availability. Drawing on brand-growth theory, an experiment and cross-category measurement research, the paper examines how AI-generated recommendations may reinforce existing brand advantages or create new opportunities for competing brands, and what these changes mean for marketing strategy and brand measurement.
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