“Good wages will change customer experience,” says Jagdish N. Sheth, Charles H. Kellstadt Professor of Business
“Good wages will change customer experience,” says Jagdish N. Sheth, Charles H. Kellstadt Professor of Business
- Feb 11, 2026,
- Updated Feb 11, 2026 4:39 PM IST
In the changing world of business and politics, what is your message to chief marketing officers?
The chief marketing officer has to become a deep generalist. This is an interesting concept that says that you need to know the context as it is evolving. For example, social media is transforming the entire society, not just products and brands. You have to be flexible and organised in such a way that you can contextualise much faster.
Will the relevance of the 4 Ps of marketing—Product, Price, Promotion, Place—undergo a change?
Each of the 4 Ps of marketing must now have an element of digitisation as well as AI. Products will become more and more personalised. Pricing is the most interesting area with the advent of AI. While there is dynamic pricing today to some extent, tomorrow there can be price changes even as you walk through the aisle. Pricing becomes real-time, like in the stock market. The third one is Promotion. With the use of AI, special effects are much better in commercials nowadays. But they can become a lot cheaper and better going forward. And finally, Place: AI can personalise your location and have a greater impact on delivery, for example.
Despite all the advancements in marketing, good customer experience is still a rarity. What should CEOs and CMOs be doing to improve this?
The weakest link in marketing is customer service. The way to better customer experience is simple: improve quality of people through the right recruiting. We think that we can recruit anybody and train them. But I have found a lot of evidence to show that if a wrong person is recruited, no matter how much training is given, customer service will not improve. Selective recruitment and paying good wages is what will make the big difference in customer experience.
With advanced technology, will the role of psychology in marketing diminish?
The role of psychology becomes even more critical. There are two opinions here. One is that most consumption is basically habit-based. While that may be very true, it still does not fully answer the question of why buyers behave in a particular way. I have come out with a general theory, that I feel captures this well. There are five needs or values people see in a product: functional value, social value, emotional or epistemic value, position value (need to possess, but not to consume) and situational value, which means under certain situations, I need a product.
In the changing world of business and politics, what is your message to chief marketing officers?
The chief marketing officer has to become a deep generalist. This is an interesting concept that says that you need to know the context as it is evolving. For example, social media is transforming the entire society, not just products and brands. You have to be flexible and organised in such a way that you can contextualise much faster.
Will the relevance of the 4 Ps of marketing—Product, Price, Promotion, Place—undergo a change?
Each of the 4 Ps of marketing must now have an element of digitisation as well as AI. Products will become more and more personalised. Pricing is the most interesting area with the advent of AI. While there is dynamic pricing today to some extent, tomorrow there can be price changes even as you walk through the aisle. Pricing becomes real-time, like in the stock market. The third one is Promotion. With the use of AI, special effects are much better in commercials nowadays. But they can become a lot cheaper and better going forward. And finally, Place: AI can personalise your location and have a greater impact on delivery, for example.
Despite all the advancements in marketing, good customer experience is still a rarity. What should CEOs and CMOs be doing to improve this?
The weakest link in marketing is customer service. The way to better customer experience is simple: improve quality of people through the right recruiting. We think that we can recruit anybody and train them. But I have found a lot of evidence to show that if a wrong person is recruited, no matter how much training is given, customer service will not improve. Selective recruitment and paying good wages is what will make the big difference in customer experience.
With advanced technology, will the role of psychology in marketing diminish?
The role of psychology becomes even more critical. There are two opinions here. One is that most consumption is basically habit-based. While that may be very true, it still does not fully answer the question of why buyers behave in a particular way. I have come out with a general theory, that I feel captures this well. There are five needs or values people see in a product: functional value, social value, emotional or epistemic value, position value (need to possess, but not to consume) and situational value, which means under certain situations, I need a product.