David Schweidel

Professor of Marketing & Goizueta Chair in Business Technology Emory University, Goizueta Business School

  • Atlanta GA

Marketing analytics expert focused on the opportunities at the intersection of marketing and technology

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Biography

David A. Schweidel is Professor of Marketing at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. Schweidel received his B.A. in mathematics, M.A. in statistics, and Ph.D. in marketing from the University of Pennsylvania. He was previously on the faculty of the Wisconsin School of Business at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business.

Schweidel is an expert in the areas of customer relationship management and social media analytics. His research focuses on the development and application of statistical models to understand customer behavior and inform managerial decisions. His research has appeared in leading business journals including Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Marketing Science and Management Science. His research has garnered numerous awards, including the Gaumnitz Junior Faculty Research Award from the Wisconsin School of Business and the Marketing Science Institute’s Buzzell Award. He has been recognized as a leading scholar by the Marketing Science Institute’s Young Scholar and Scholar programs, and by Poets and Quant’s “Top 40 Under 40.” Based on his research, he has consulted for companies including EBay, HP Labs and General Motors.

Schweidel is the author of Social Media Intelligence (Cambridge University Press) in which he and his co-author discuss how organizations can leverage social media data to inform their marketing strategies. He is also the author of Profiting from the Data Economy (Pearson FT Press), in which he details the value of businesses tapping into consumer data for both individuals and companies.

Education

The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

Ph.D.

Marketing

2006

The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

M.Sc.

Statistics

2004

University of Pennsylvania

B.A.

Mathematics, Economics and Actuarial Mathematics

2001

Areas of Expertise

Marketing Technology
AI
Social Media
Political Marketing
Customer Analytics

Publications

Frontiers: Supporting Content Marketing with Natural Language Generation

Marketing Science

2022

Advances in natural language generation (NLG) have facilitated technologies such as digital voice assistants and chatbots. In this research, we demonstrate how NLG can support content marketing by using it to draft content for the landing page of a website in search engine optimization (SEO). Traditional SEO projects rely on hand-crafted content that is both time consuming and costly to produce...

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The role of slant and message consistency in political advertising effectiveness: evidence from the 2016 presidential election

Quantitative Marketing and Economics

2022

We explore the relationship between the content of political advertising on television and ad effectiveness. Specifically, we investigate how slant – the extremeness of the message –...

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How consumer digital signals are reshaping the customer journey

Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science

David A. Schweidel, Yakov Bart, J. Jeffrey Inman, Andrew T. Stephen, Barak Libai, Michelle Andrews, Ana Babić Rosario, Inyoung Chae, Zoey Chen, Daniella Kupor, Chiara Longoni & Felipe Thomaz

2022-02-19

Marketers are adopting increasingly sophisticated ways to engage with customers throughout their journeys. We extend prior perspectives on the customer journey by introducing the role of digital signals that consumers emit throughout their activities. We argue that the ability to detect and act on consumer digital signals is a source of competitive advantage for firms. Technology enables firms to collect, interpret, and act on these signals to better manage the customer journey. While some consumers’ desire for privacy can restrict the opportunities technology provides marketers, other consumers’ desire for personalization can encourage the use of technology to inform marketing efforts. We posit that this difference in consumers’ willingness to emit observable signals may hinge on the strength of their relationship with the firm. We next discuss factors that may shift consumer preferences and consequently affect the technology-enabled opportunities available to firms. We conclude with a research agenda that focuses on consumers, firms, and regulators.

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Research Spotlight

5 min

AI Art: What Should Fair Compensation Look Like?

New research from Goizueta’s David Schweidel looks at questions of compensation to human artists when images based on their work are generated via artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence is making art. That is to say, compelling artistic creations based on thousands of years of art production may now be just a few text prompts away. And it’s all thanks to generative AI trained on internet images. You don’t need Picasso’s skillset to create something in his style. You just need an AI-powered image generator like DALL-E 3 (created by OpenAI), Midjourney, or Stable Diffusion. If you haven’t tried one of these programs yet, you really should (free or beta versions make this a low-risk proposal). For example, you might use your phone to snap a photo of your child’s latest masterpiece from school. Then, you might ask DALL-E to render it in the swirling style of Vincent Van Gogh. A color printout of that might jazz up your refrigerator door for the better. Intellectual Property in the Age of AI Now, what if you wanted to sell your AI-generated art on a t-shirt or poster? Or what if you wanted to create a surefire logo for your business? What are the intellectual property (IP) implications at work? Take the case of a 35-year-old Polish artist named Greg Rutkowski. Rutkowski has reportedly been included in more AI-image prompts than Pablo Picasso, Leonardo da Vinci, or Van Gogh. As a professional digital artist, Rutkowski makes his living creating striking images of dragons and battles in his signature fantasy style. That is, unless they are generated by AI, in which case he doesn’t. “They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. But what about the case of a working artist? What if someone is potentially not receiving payment because people can easily copy his style with generative AI?” That’s the question David Schweidel, Rebecca Cheney McGreevy Endowed Chair and professor of marketing at Goizueta Business School is asking. Flattery won’t pay the bills. “We realized early on that IP is a huge issue when it comes to all forms of generative AI,” Schweidel says. “We have to resolve such issues to unlock AI’s potential.” Schweidel’s latest working paper is titled “Generative AI and Artists: Consumer Preferences for Style and Fair Compensation.” It is coauthored with professors Jason Bell, Jeff Dotson, and Wen Wang (of University of Oxford, Brigham Young University, and University of Maryland, respectively). In this paper, the four researchers analyze a series of experiments with consumers’ prompts and preferences using Midjourney and Stable Diffusion. The results lead to some practical advice and insights that could benefit artists and AI’s business users alike. Real Compensation for AI Work? In their research, to see if compensating artists for AI creations was a viable option, the coauthors wanted to see if three basic conditions were met: – Are artists’ names frequently used in generative AI prompts? – Do consumers prefer the results of prompts that cite artists’ names? – Are consumers willing to pay more for an AI-generated product that was created citing some artists’ names? Crunching the data, they found the same answer to all three questions: yes. More specifically, the coauthors turned to a dataset that contains millions of “text-to-image” prompts from Stable Diffusion. In this large dataset, the researchers found that living and deceased artists were frequently mentioned by name. (For the curious, the top three mentioned in this database were: Rutkowski, artgerm [another contemporary artist, born in Hong Kong, residing in Singapore] and Alphonse Mucha [a popular Czech Art Nouveau artist who died in 1939].) Given that AI users are likely to use artists’ names in their text prompts, the team also conducted experiments to gauge how the results were perceived. Using deep learning models, they found that including an artist’s name in a prompt systematically improves the output’s aesthetic quality and likeability. The Impact of Artist Compensation on Perceived Worth Next, the researchers studied consumers’ willingness to pay in various circumstances. The researchers used Midjourney with the following dynamic prompt: “Create a picture of ⟨subject⟩ in the style of ⟨artist⟩”. The subjects chosen were the advertising creation known as the Most Interesting Man in the World, the fictional candy tycoon Willy Wonka, and the deceased TV painting instructor Bob Ross (Why not?). The artists cited were Ansel Adams, Frida Kahlo, Alphonse Mucha and Sinichiro Wantabe. The team repeated the experiment with and without artists in various configurations of subjects and styles to find statistically significant patterns. In some, consumers were asked to consider buying t-shirts or wall art. In short, the series of experiments revealed that consumers saw more value in an image when they understood that the artist associated with it would be compensated. Here’s a sample of imagery AI generated using three subjects names “in the style of Alphonse Mucha.” Source: Midjourney cited in http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4428509 “I was honestly a bit surprised that people were willing to pay more for a product if they knew the artist would get compensated,” Schweidel explains. “In short, the pay-per-use model really resonates with consumers.” In fact, consumers preferred pay-per-use over a model in which artists received a flat fee in return for being included in AI training data. That is to say, royalties seem like a fairer way to reward the most popular artists in AI. Of course, there’s still much more work to be done to figure out the right amount to pay in each possible case. What Can We Draw From This? We’re still in the early days of generative AI, and IP issues abound. Notably, the New York Times announced in December that it is suing OpenAI (the creator of ChatGPT) and Microsoft for copyright infringement. Millions of New York Times articles have been used to train generative AI to inform and improve it. “The lawsuit by the New York Times could feasibly result in a ruling that these models were built on tainted data. Where would that leave us?” asks Schweidel. "One thing is clear: we must work to resolve compensation and IP issues. Our research shows that consumers respond positively to fair compensation models. That’s a path for companies to legally leverage these technologies while benefiting creators." David Schweidel To adopt generative AI responsibly in the future, businesses should consider three things. First, they should communicate to consumers when artists’ styles are used. Second, they should compensate contributing artists. And third, they should convey these practices to consumers. “And our research indicates that consumers will feel better about that: it’s ethical.” AI is quickly becoming a topic of regulators, lawmakers and journalists and if you're looking to know more let us help. David A. Schweidel, Professor of Marketing, Goizueta Business School at Emory University To connect with David to arrange an interview simply click his icon now.

David Schweidel

1 min

US House Passes Tiktok Ban Bill, Goizueta Expert on TikTok Algorithm Safety and Proposed Ban for Media

The U.S. House today passed a federal bill to ban TikTok and it now moves to the Senate. President Biden said he would sign a potential bill that bans the social media platform. Goizueta Business School Professor David Schweidel has done extensive research on the impact of social media. He says: The security and privacy issues around TikTok are only one part of the equation. User safety is another concern that all social media companies are now facing. He notes that the algorithms prioritize engagement, which could be showing people content that is harmful to them (mentally and/or physically). Background: TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a private Chinese company that claims all information gathered through the app is secure. Lawmakers do not agree and have plans to remove TikTok from the U.S. by September 30th unless ByteDance sells TikTok. The proposed bill would also put into place allowance for the executive branch to prohibit access to an app owned by a foreign adversary that could impact national security. Expert Source: David A. Schweidel, Professor of Marketing, Goizueta Business School at Emory University Bio https://goizueta.emory.edu/faculty/profiles/david-schweidel To connect with David to arrange an interview simply click his icon now.

David Schweidel

1 min

Super Tuesday and Biden’s State of the Union Address - Emory University’s Goizueta Business School Experts Available for Interview

It's going to be a busy week in America when it comes to politics. And if you're covering we have experts who can help with any of your questions or stories. Tom Smith Professor in the Practice of Finance Professor Smith is an expert in labor economics, entertainment and healthcare economics, as well as real estate and urban economies. David Schweidel Professor of Marketing Professor Schweidel has been closely researching the impact of AI in society, especially elections. He can speak on the impact AI is expected to have in this year’s elections. Professor Schweidel also has extensive work in election marketing. He researched negative campaign advertising and if a negative tone has a positive impact on election results. Ramnath Chellappa Professor of Information Systems & Operations Management Professor Chellappa is available to discuss the economics of information security and privacy. He can also discuss the economics and impact of AI. Raymond Hill  Professor Emeritus Hill is available to discuss any issues on the economy related to energy. If you are looking to arrange an interview simply click any of the listed expert's icons to set up a time today or email Kim Speece for assistance.

David SchweidelThomas SmithRamnath K Chellappa
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In the News

Stuck on holiday gifts? What happened when I used AI to help with Christmas shopping

USA Today  online

2023-12-01

I admit it. I have never been great at coming up with gift ideas.
I do not have that gift, so to speak, of knowing exactly what someone would like without asking or I worry that they’ll want to return what I ultimately pick. Occasionally, I have hit a home run picking up on an idea for the perfect gift

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Why Spirit Halloween memes may be the brand’s best friend

Fast Company  online

2023-10-06

The digitally altered memes have become a tradition that not-so-subtly promotes the chain of Halloween pop-up shops.

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Actors on strike call for limits on artificial intelligence

Yahoo News  online

2023-07-18

Your favorite shows and movies are on hold as actors and writers from New York to L.A. to here in Atlanta, are on strike.

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Answers

AI and the Future
David Schweidel

Chatbot GPT launched in December and has surpassed 100 million monthly users as of January -- surpassing the growth rates of Instagram and TikTok. The AI space is also growing as competition from leading tech firms like Google and Meta enter the space. The AI space is more than a computer writing term papers. Image generation is also a threat to businesses. Goizueta marketing professor David Schweidel can discuss what image generators mean to consumers and how the technology could impact pending lawsuits and compensation.