Brand Experience in the Internet of Things: Development of an Experience Interface (ExI)

Introduction

In the 21st century, the Internet has created the greatest treasure in human history. About 50 billion devices connected to the Internet, there is an unlimited amount of information that grows by 2.5 quintillion bytes of data per day, and every person on Earth creates 1.7 MB of data every second (Domo (2017, 2018, 2019). So the Internet of Things opens up new opportunities for brands to communicate and interact with their customers, go above and beyond traditional customer experience to anticipate needs and become truly embedded in the consumer’s experience world. But there is still a massive gap between potentially available information and actual extracted information by analyzing the data. However, it can be done by understanding the consumer’s experience world and using artificial intelligence, machine learning, sensors, and automation to communicate the brands experience promise. This chapter presents the need and development of an Experience Interface (ExI) in the Internet of Things that analyzes customer experiences and predicts customer behavior based on neural networks. Due to the high complexity of the topic, the chapter gives a general overview of what experiences are, how evaluations and decisions are made, what role human motives play, and what influence they have on consumer behavior. Based on the knowledge gained, the Experience Interface (ExI) will be developed, its control options described and the ethical framework for the use of an ExI - which are summarized in the Digital Codex – will be elaborate.