The gen-AI marketing conversation tends to fixate on content and customer service. Korst, Puntoni, and Toubia argue the bigger disruption is upstream, in market research itself: how firms gather data and understand their customers.
They make the case that marketing is among the functions most disrupted by the technology, and that research is its least-explored application.
We read this as a Strategic Fork story. Using AI to learn faster about your market is a growth move. It creates new value; it isn't an efficiency play. It's the difference between automating a survey and seeing something your competitors can't yet.
So what: Point AI at understanding your market, not just trimming your research budget. That's the growth side of the fork.