一画胜千言:图像数据在营销领域的应用

A Picture Is Worth a Thousand Words:The Application of Image Data in Marketing

随着图像生成、存储技术的发展,图像数据已成为越来越重要的信息载体,尤其是在社交媒体平台上,用户生成的图像内容包含了比文字更丰富的信息,是企业获取消费者洞察的重要数据来源。本文首先介绍了图像的定义和分类以及图像数据的存储方式,然后介绍了图像数据的分析方法以及分析步骤,接下来从营销活动的产品、价格和推广三大方面分别回顾了国内外利用图像数据开展的相关营销实践以及相关营销学术研究,并在此基础上提炼出基于图像分析的重要研究课题和前沿方向。

With the vigorous development of image generation, storage technology and social media, image data has become an increasingly important information carrier and an important data source for enterprises to obtain consumer insight. However, image data is difficult to analyze and process because of its unstructured data characteristics, and there are few marketing studies on image analytics at present. Therefore, there is a certain gap between research and practice, and the existing theoretical results are difficult to give full guidance to the booming marketing practice.This paper first combs the relevant concepts of image analytics and the relevant marketing practice carried out by image analytics at home and abroad. Then, it reviews the relevant marketing literature based on image analytics, extracts important topics and cutting-edge directions, analyzes the theoretical gaps in the current research, and looks forward to future research.In the relevant marketing research field, we select 20 representative core papers from 19international top journals in the field of marketing, management science, and information systems. Some well-cited working papers are also included to represent the cutting-edge marketing research utilizing image analytics. Generally speaking, the marketing research literature utilizing image analytics is somewhat sparse and mostly published after 2017, which mainly focuses on the fields of brand management, communication management and customer relationship management, and deep learning methods are ubiquitously used.Based on the review of relevant marketing research and practice, this paper further proposes and discusses six potential directions for future research: Consumer behavioral research that utilizes image analytics to investigate theoretical mechanisms;product design with artificial intelligence;real-time responses to customer needs;how to increase model interpretability;multi-type image data and multimodal data;and how to improve the fairness of products or services.The main contributions of this paper are as follows: First, it reviews the fundamental concepts and methods of image analytics, providing guidance for marketing scholars to carry out relevant research.Second, it identifies and discusses some major research streams in marketing that image analytics could potentially be utilized. Third, it proposes several potential directions for future research, hoping to provide inspirations for domestic marketing scholars and call on more scholars to participate in this type of research.