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What is an Augmented Consumer?

Andrew Stephen, Associate Dean of Research at the University of Oxford, recently explained the concept of an “augmented consumer” at the at the AMA Winter Academic Conference.

According to Stephen, all consumers are augmented by technology in the current landscape. The way consumers process and share information is being augmented by devices such as smartphones and all the available resources associated with them, but also increasingly through voice and AI-based tools and assistants, which are of special interest to CMOs and marketing executives. Augmented consumers are always “on” and hyperconnected. Marketers must ask themselves how to reach, interact, and build relationships with these types of consumers.

Overall, Stephen is seeing that marketers are rapidly testing and experimenting with new AI and voice technology, as well as the insights that the latest technology can provide. Marketers must also ask themselves what they can do at a small scale with all the new data that such tech can provide. Firms that can best take advantage of this data will dominate in this new climate.