Wharton@Work

November 2025 | 

AI in Marketing: Customer Value and Intelligent Systems

AI in Marketing: Customer Value and Intelligent Systems

When Wharton professors Eric Bradlow and Stefano Puntoni talk about artificial intelligence, they don’t start with algorithms or automation. They start with customers. “If you think about what every business does,” Bradlow says, “it’s to deliver products and services that meet customer needs. Marketing owns that process. Artificial intelligence now enhances, not replaces, that entire workflow.”

That focus on customer value is at the heart of Wharton Executive Education’s new AI in Marketing  program, designed to help leaders understand how intelligent systems are reshaping every stage of the marketing value chain. Drawing on insights from the Wharton AI & Analytics Initiative (WAIAI) and its ongoing Generative AI Adoption Report — which identifies marketing as the leading functional use case for AI across industries — the program explores how AI informs customer insight, segmentation, product design, pricing, and brand strategy. Participants learn how to use AI to augment decision making and workflow design and to rethink creativity, communication, and customer connection.

“Marketing is the frontier of the firm,” Puntoni says. “It’s the function that manages information flowing in and out: learning about customers, markets, and competitors, and then communicating with the outside world through products, pricing, and messages. AI amplifies both sides: it helps us understand people better and connect with them in more meaningful ways.”

Both professors emphasize that the program is not about “tool training” but about transformation. “We’re not teaching people to click through a menu,” Puntoni says. “We’re helping them see how AI reshapes workflows, decision making, and leadership models.” The goal is to give participants the frameworks and fluency to lead cross-functional adoption — connecting marketing, technology, and finance in pursuit of smarter, faster, and more customer-centric strategies.

Bradlow, Wharton’s vice dean of AI and analytics, notes that this integration across functions is essential. “Without marketing, there’s no need for finance, because there’s nothing to fund. There’s no need for operations, because there’s no product to deliver. Marketing comes first. It’s where understanding customer needs begins. AI doesn’t change that purpose; it gives us new ways to fulfill it.”

Wharton’s Next Evolution in Executive Learning

The program’s structure mirrors its content: integrative, flexible, and designed for depth. It’s Wharton’s first open-enrollment offering that combines asynchronous, live online, and in-person learning, reflecting how today’s leaders learn best: interactively, and with time to apply insights between experiences. Participants complete self-paced online segments in March, join faculty-led virtual sessions March 25–26, and convene in Philadelphia April 8–10 for intensive, application-driven workshops.

Puntoni says this design makes learning more effective, not just more convenient. “We often think of online and in-person programs as separate universes,” he explains. “But that’s not how executives live or learn anymore. When they’re integrated intentionally, they make discussions richer and more transformational.”

Bradlow calls the model “tri-variate”: asynchronous, synchronous, and in-person. “Time has always been our most valuable resource,” he says. “This approach lets participants learn foundational material at their own pace, reflect on how it applies to their own business, and arrive on campus ready to engage at a deeper level. It turns what used to be a five-day immersion into something more thoughtful and enduring.”

Advancing the Frontier of Marketing and AI

The timing of the program is also strategic. Two years ago, Wharton launched its popular Generative AI and Business Transformation program to help executives understand the technology’s broad impact on the firm. Now that leaders have absorbed those fundamentals, interest is shifting toward more targeted functional exploration. AI in Marketing is the first in what Puntoni hopes will become a series of programs examining AI’s influence on finance, operations, and human resources.

“It would have been too early to do a functional program two years ago,” he says. “Now, we’re ready to go deeper. The technology has matured, and so has the demand for applied understanding.”

As with all Wharton programs, the curriculum will evolve with the field itself. Bradlow notes that executives today face an overwhelming flood of information about AI and need guidance on what truly matters. “There’s so much noise in the space,” he says. “Executives want to know what’s real, what’s practical, and how to use it responsibly to create value for the customer and the firm.”

Puntoni adds that this pace of change demands a dynamic approach to teaching. “AI is advancing too quickly for us to rely on last year’s examples,” he says. “Wharton programs shouldn’t teach the last Harvard Business Review article — they should teach the next one. Participants will learn at the frontier.”

The result is a unique learning experience that blends theory and application, digital and human connection, and curiosity with confidence. “AI is transforming how businesses create value,” Puntoni says. “It’s only fitting that the way we teach it should transform too.”