Partner and managing director of the Global Business Policy Council
Erik Peterson and his colleagues at A.T. Kearney Consulting create a top 5 trends prediction every year for the upcoming five years. We had the pleasure of discussing some of those trends with Mr. Peterson at the University of Maryland Robert H. Smith School of Business. We talked about all of the hot topics in the media, such as cryptocurrencies, cyber crime and electric vehicles. In this dicussion, though, I would like to highlight the three topics that resonated the most with me: facial recognition, quantum computing and climate change.
As a marketing major, his predictions on facial recognition were most interesting to me. According to Mr. Peterson, facial recognition is going to become omnipresent. One of the applications of facial recognition is likely to be customer identification in stores. In the future, whenever customers walk into stores, companies will have the capabilities to identify them and some of the items that are likely to interest them. This will take personalized marketing to a whole new level where employees could walk up to the customer and ask “Would you like me to show you what you are statistically likely to be interested in?” instead of asking you “Can I help you today?” This could, theoretically, be very beneficial as customers are likely not aware of exactly what they are looking for and some direction could help. Yet, would facial recognition help or harm the company more?
Customers are already wary of companies knowing way too much about them. One example that I had previously heard of and that I thought of as a result of this talk is when Target decided that it would use customer data to identify and market to women who are likely to be pregnant. Because major life and buying pattern changes occur right before a woman gives birth, Target thought it would be a good idea to gain brand loyalty by reaching out to women during this time period. While a good idea, consumers were getting very creeped out that they got brochures completely tailored towards the needs of pregnant women when they hadn’t told Target that they are actually pregnant. Bottom line is people don’t like it when businesses know too much about them because they feel like their privacy has been invaded. So, in my opinion, actively using facial recognition may scare consumers more than it’ll attract them if it’s not implemented properly.
Erik Peterson acknowledged that finding a balance will in fact be difficult saying that facial recognition will provide a set of challenges with a wider standard deviation. What he meant was that while this technology has a great potential for good, it has an equally large potential for harm if used for malicious reasons. The key takeaway from this talk directly related to my future in the marketing field. It highlighted the importance of new technologies and the implementation of those new technologies in a way that will be accepted by the public. They way that this talk has affected me is that it has encouraged me to stay up to date on the new technologies in order to be able to leverage them in my future marketing campaigns. I have already attempted to do this at my summer internship this summer where I adapted the specific capabilities of virtual reality technology to help consumers who are physically disabled.
A couple other topics that I found interesting were quantum supremacy and climate changes effect on insurance. I found it very interesting that in the context of “America is the best”, Peterson acknowledged that the Chinese currently have the fastest computer. He does predict that quantum computing will get even faster as China and the US fight to be the best. Finally, climate change has always been presented in the context of saving the world for the common good. Peterson framed the question in a business perspective. With the continuation of climate change, insurance companies will have to make large payouts. That will in turn come back on the consumer in the form of higher premiums.
Overall, we had a great discussion on the possible world trends in the near future and I look forward to seeing whether they come to fruition.