Human-to-Human Marketing in Cyberphysical Systems: Cases and Best Practices

In the race toward digitalization, companies strive to balance the advantages of digital technologies with the warmth of the human touch. This is not an easy task, and the balance can quickly be upset by too much focus on technology, too much focus on cost cuttings, or simply operational issues. Organizations today strive to establish effective human-to-human marketing at scale. Human-to-human (H2H) marketing refers to the creation of genuine, authentic connections between organizations and their customers, transcending traditional product-related models to focus on personal, emotional engagement (Kotler et al. in The genesis of human-to-human marketing. Springer, 2020). In a world where customers seamlessly navigate from the physical to the digital space during their customer journey, H2H marketing is a very challenging endeavor. This chapter aims to (1) highlight the challenges of establishing H2H marketing at scale in the cyberphysical space, (2) present the key factors needed to enable the provision of H2H marketing, (3) provide examples from USAA, a company that has excelled in leveraging cyberphysical systems to provide a H2H customer experience; and (4) provide a model to implement effective H2H marketing strategies in cyberphysical systems.