Applying transfer learning to achieve precision marketing in an omni-channel system – a case study of a sharing kitchen platform

Abstract

Omni-channel marketing is an enhanced cross-channel business model involving shared data that allows enterprises to enhance and facilitate customer experience. Omni-channel opportunities shape retail business and shopper behaviours by coordinating data across all channel platforms while enabling their simultaneous use. Artificial intelligence (AI) has played an increasingly critical role in marketing analysis. With the proper training, AI can predict consumer preferences and provide recommendations based on historical data to achieve precision marketing in e-commerce. At present, however, the existent chatbots on many product-ordering platforms lack AI refinement, resulting in the need to ask customers multiple questions before generating a reliable suggestion, yet an effective way to incorporate AI in an omni-channel platform has remained vague. Hence, the aim of this study was to develop an omni-channel chatbot that incorporates iOS, Android, and web components. The chatbot was designed to achieve personalised service and precision marketing using convolutional neural networks (CNNs). A shared kitchen case study demonstrates the advantages of the proposed method, which is transferable to other consumer applications such as clothing selection or personalised services. The number of food offerings and the quality of image classifiers set the research limitations, pointing toward the direction of future research.

KEYWORDS:

• Omni-channel
• artificial intelligence
• precision marketing
• chatbot
• convolutional neural network

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Correction

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Correction Statement

This article was originally published with errors, which have now been corrected in the online version. Please see Correction (http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00207543.2021.1886436).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan [grant number MOST  109-2628-E-007-002-MY3, MOST 109-2634-F-007-021].

Notes on contributors

Ming-Chuan Chiu

Ming-Chuan Chiu is a Professor, in the Department of Industrial Engineering & Engineering Management, National Tsing Hua University (NTHU), Taiwan. He obtained his BS and MS degrees Industrial Engineering & Engineering Management from National Tsing Hua University (NTHU) in 1997 and 1999, respectively. Before joining NTHU, he served at The School of Engineering Design, Technology, and Professional Programs (SEDTAPP) at The Pennsylvania State University as instructor for one year and worked in industry as chief engineer for six years. He received his PhD degree in the Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering at The Pennsylvania State University in 2010. Dr. Chiu joined the faculty of Dept. Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management, National Tsing Hua University (NTHU) in August 2011. He has served as an associate professor since August 2016. He is also the founder of Innovation Engineering Laboratory (IELAB) at National Tsing-Hua University. Dr. Chiu was Sayling Wen's Award for Outstanding Young Researcher in Service Science in 2013 and receipt of MOST Outstanding Young Scholar Grant in 2014∼2017. He serves as associate editor of International Journal of Industrial Engineering: Theory, Applications and Practice (SCI) since 2016 and editorial board of Advanced Engineering Informatics (SCI) since 2019. Dr. Chiu has been acting as the PI and co-PI for more than 20 projects from the government (including Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST), Ministry of Education (MOE), Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), Institute for Information industry (III)) and industries. His research interests focus on Sustainable Design, Service Innovation, Product Service System Design, and Smart Manufacturing. The aim of the above interests is to solve problems in product, service, and system development stage using systems thinking.

Kai-Hsiang Chuang

Kai-Hsiang Chuang received his MS degree in Innovation Engineering Laboratory (IELAB) in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management at National Tsing-Hua University in winter of 2018. His research interests focus on development of Omni-channel system and its Applications. The aim of the above interests is to solve problems in product and service development stage with creative thinking.