HELLO FUTURE: The Future of Shopping: Robots, AI… and Still Going to the Mall

Speaker 1 (00:07):
So I don't know about you, but I've been using
AI essentially for everything. But the one thing that AI
hasn't been able to do yet that some experts that
I've been interviewing over the last couple of months have
said it's to be able to go on to AI
and to use a prompt that says purchase this or
to set up a system and automate this, and actually
the prompt becomes how you pay Hello Future, It's me Kevin.
This is a dispatch from the Digital Frontier. The planet
is Earth. The year is twenty twenty five. My name
is Kevin Sally, and I knew I needed to interview
MIT Sloan's senior lecturer of all things marketing in the
Future of Stores, Sharmila see Chatterjee, because she absolutely blew
my mind the last time I had her on the show,
and I thought I need to help understand this all right,
So Professor Sharmila Chattergy, thank you so much for coming
back on. I use Chatgypt for helping me with everything
from drafting memos to writing emails, getting some research on
my guests like you. But what I don't use chat
Gypt or rock or other llms and whatnot is for
buying things. Do you think that in the future that
is going to change and when.

Speaker 2 (01:21):
Yeah, I think that.

Speaker 3 (01:23):
You know, Walmart already at signed this deal and will
allow consumers to buy arm Chat GBT just recently.

Speaker 2 (01:36):
So it is starting to happen.

Speaker 3 (01:38):
Now the zere is also out on the pluses and
minuses of that by doing this. When Walmart customers, you know,
previously it used to be that, yes, you lookt something
that you want to buy, but then you go back
and do your shopping in the retail and the home
retail store. Now Walmart saying okay, you know you go
to Chad GPD you basically buy it there. So it
is starting to happen, and the jury is still out
if that is a good at a bad thing for
Walmart for the customer is correct?

Speaker 1 (02:14):
If my little nieces or nephews got into my chat
GPT and started ordering a bunch of toys, I'd be ticked.
I remember when Amazon and whatnot started to take off,
you would hear these horror stories of kids ordering stuff
on their parents' cell phones and then they'd be like,
how did you get into this? You know, first and foremost,
this security and access on this and verification. And the
last time we had such a major shift of this
was when credit cards were introduced and people started paying.
You can go on YouTube and see the early consumer
reports of Americans being like, I'm never going to use
that flash forward and everything. No one has cash anymore.
But that's really the seismic shift that we're at the
precipice of. Correct.

Speaker 2 (02:54):
That is exactly right.

Speaker 3 (02:56):
Given that Warmont, this heavyweight retailer, is doing this, it
will definitely put pressure on some of the others to
start doing the same. But there are many considerations before,
as you rightly point out, first and foremost is, of course,
the customer experience on CHADGPT. Are you now outsourcing the
customer experience of your brand, the retail brand Warmont to
chat GPT. That is on the part of the retailer. Now,
what if something goes wrong? Are they going to blame CHADGBT.

Speaker 1 (03:33):
In fairness, it must have been the same conversation that
folks had with Amazon, because you can order designer brands
on Amazon, but you're not getting the same level of
a customer experience on Amazon. And then I'm also thinking
of it as the prompts, right because you can sort
on Amazon through the current data sets that aren't leveraged
by AI, you know, pricing high to low or within
this range. AI allows you to prompt it to do
it in a certain way. I think with travel agencies,
this would be really good. Find me a vacation between
this date for this price on this part of the
world that fits this experience. I think that it could
be really useful for but even for find me groceries
and this budget, you know, or helping me to draft
a yearly budget for my groceries with these ingredients and
this system. That's really interesting. But to your point, people
still crave that humanity, that human connection, and especially if
we're starting to use llms to purchase, which is a
very capitalistic thing that we Americans would certainly love to do,
if I do say so myself. From a structural standpoint,
from a banking and a financial security shift, we haven't
really seen a shift this big since Starbucks taught us
how to pay with our phones when we buy coffee.

Speaker 2 (04:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (04:51):
No, so there is real concern about security. Will Chad
GBT now now suddenly you you have if you are
buying to them, now your financial information is being stored.
And then in addition too, they will of course start
now putting together the information on the consumer.

Speaker 2 (05:12):
So what are the gob rails here? What did this start?

Speaker 3 (05:15):
Now? You know, how will your personal data be used?
Will your personal data be secure? So there is a
whole host of privacy security concerns here.

Speaker 1 (05:25):
Absolutely, I just how to meet the future moment, Sharmela.
Chategy is the guests that m T Slowed senior lecturer.
She's the go to source for all things the future
of shopping and whatnot. And my moment, I meet the
future moment, Charmela. It's just like when Starbucks became a bank,
I like to say, because we all use payment on
our phone. CHATCHYPT and Rock are going to be financial institutions,
just like Apple's a health company, just like the New
York Times for that matter, is a gaming company because
of wordl and so we don't necessarily think of these
companies that we interact with every single day in different
domains as the scope of what they are entirely. So
as you look at the future of commerce, as you
look at the future of marketing for the next fifty years,
and CHATCHIVT and AI is just playing such a crucial
role in our lives. Do you think that the marketing
experience will start to shift, because I think it should.
For example, everyone knows that the price of groceries and
all you got to do is pick up an avocado
at Whole Foods, and you know that the cost of
groceries has gone way up. Do you think that from
a marketing perspective, bundling will get an upgrade? What do
I mean by that? When I was a kid, we'd
go to BJ's Wholesale Club or Costco. Okay, you'd get
the samples and you'd get enough toilet paper and paper
towels the last year, the whole year. If I could
do a one stop shop, Sharmila, I'm telling you so much.
Should do this. If I could do a one stop
shop where every January, I'm ordering my entire stuff, for
lack of a better word, for the entire year, and
I'm just making a one thing and I can remove
having to buy shaving cream, having to buy toothpaste, and
I'm just getting it all for the year in one haul.
And maybe it's not even delivered all at once, maybe
it's delivered periodically. But I don't have to think about
it anymore. Why can't AI solve that problem, Charmila. Why
haven't the marketing geniuses that you covered that you know
very well, why haven't they cracked that code?

Speaker 3 (07:19):
So, you know, I mean part of it is, of course,
you know the subscription models that are happening that on
Amazon now you can you know, repeat by the same stuff.
So I think that for some of the commonly used
repeat purchase, which you know that there is a fixed
pondit I'm going to use over and over again, I
think those absolutely want to get off your check listener,
do it once and this on repeat. But then there
are those things that are more experiential that are not repeated.
It's not cookie cut or that's repeating over and over again.
That's where I think it would be still nice and
marketing should focus on those unique experiences and the repeat stuff.
Of course, you know it is on this you know,
subscription model or whatever you want to call it. You know,
the less you think about things, you are not developing
a relationship anymore with that brand or you know, with
that company. You want those relationships because otherwise all it
becomes is transactional and anyone can just take away that
with just a simple price cut or some such things.
So you want these relationships, long term performance that is
built on relationships. So I would actually try to stay
away from people routinizing their buying as much as possible.

Speaker 1 (08:45):
Why has tech failed in the sense of I was
looking at a study, you know, about artificial intelligence and
attitudes about artificial intelligence throughout different regions of the world,
and in the West, our attitude is one of fear, doom,
and glue. The majority of us believe that AI is
gonna take our jobs. Yes, we're optimistic about health and
cures for diseases, but there is a real palpable. I'm
not naive. I'm a huge optimist and I disagree with
the majority of Americans on this, but there's a huge
belief that it's gonna mess up everything and we're all
gonna be out of a job. If you go to
other parts of the world, they're celebrating it. They're like,
oh my gosh, we gonna have a four day work week.
Oh my gosh, this is gonna make me allow to
be more human. It's crazy to me because I think
it's awesome that America's number one export has always been innovation,
and if you look at the technology that America has
just even in the last thirty years, just come up
with is really awesome, you know, GPS, Internet, artificial intelligence,
hopefully one day quantum computing. It's cool. I mean even
just our habits in the last decade, whether it's using
Uber or if you live in a city, getting using
your phone to rent a scooter. All of this stuff
is just new developments. But why are we as a
society right now not optimistic about it? And what marketing
needs to be done to change the mood? You know
what I'm saying, It's a bad vibe out there, Charmela.

Speaker 3 (10:08):
You know, this is a dramatic shift that has happened,
and it has happened very very quickly. We are seeing
the amazing capabilities of AI, and in our day to
day usage we see that quite a bit. However, at
the same time, I think that the cases of AI
implementation failures, people do not realize how much AI implementations
are actually not working the way they should. Yes, they
will improve, however, human in the loop will have to
be there. Yes, the skill sets will need to evolve
and we need to train our workforce. But I think
that it is wrong to say that humans will, you know,
all go out of the picture and we will be
just run by robohats or AI will do all our stuff.
It needs education to educate the public that there will
be a role for you. But the skill sets will
of course need to evolve and so we need to
adapt with the times, but that humans are not going anywhere.

Speaker 1 (11:17):
Charmela chant gy Mit, Sloan senior lecturer. I can't thank
you enough. You really do just help us all understand
what's happening with the marketing, and I think it's fascinating.
I think twelve months from now, people are going to
be purchasing more and more frequently with their lms, whichever
one they use, and that's such a huge major shift
for society. And you know, it's just two or three
years ago when all of us first started using lllms,
and I can't imagine doing my job without it, to
be blunt, It's made me way more efficient at what
I do, but has allowed me to focus more on
engaging on a human level. But now to be able
to leverage it with purchasing power, I think is a
really fascinating, fascinating shift. So Shermerila Chatterji Thank you so
much for showing up to meet the future and saying
hello to the future. I'm a lot more optimistic because
of you, my friend.

Speaker 2 (12:09):
Thank you, thank you so much.