Enhancing Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty through AI-driven Personalization of Social Media Content: A Marketing Strategy for voestalpine Steel Division

Abstract

This bachelor thesis explores how AI-driven personalization of social media content can affect customer satisfaction and loyalty in a B2B context, tailored to the voestalpine Steel Division. The digital transformation and the increasing demand for personalized content changed the way marketing departments work, especially with the new opportunities that are offered by AI. The implementation of AI to personalize social media content is limited in the B2B area, therefore there is a need for research in this area. This study is guided by four research questions to explore the topic further: (1) How can AI-driven personalization (AIP) of social media content affect customer satisfaction? (2) What impact does AIP of social media content have on customer loyalty? (3) Which AI tools are most effective in personalizing social media content for voestalpine Steel Division, particularly through prompt templating? And (4) What are ethical considerations when using AI? To address these questions, a literature review investigating several academic sources and a qualitative approach was applied, involving nine semi-structured interviews with experts from different departments in the voestalpine Steel Division. The literature review and the empirical findings show that if personalized content is relevant, timely and well-targeted, it can have positive effects on customer satisfaction. Although a direct link between personalized social media content and customer loyalty has yet to be fully confirmed, personalization in general is mentioned as an important factor for building long lasting relationships in the future. Customer satisfaction is related to customer loyalty and therefore seen as a stage prior to achieving loyalty. Personalized content can support loyalty in an indirect way by strengthening customer engagement but it can not replace human connections or interactions with the customer. To evaluate the practical use of AI, three tools, ChatGPT, Gemini and Neuroflash, were tested to generate content based on real life voestalpine use cases. ChatGPT performed best, by offering organized, brand-consistent and accurate results in both use cases. Yet, the testing indicates that the engineering of the prompt is of higher importance than the tool itself. Clearly outlining the target groups, the tone and style and uploading example images affect the outcomes. This highlights the importance of prompt engineering when using AI for generating content. The research highlights several ethical considerations, that are mentioned by both literature and the interviewees. The most important ones when using generative AI are data protection, transparency and the importance of human oversight. Moreover, AI bears the risks of producing biased content, misusing customer data and losing trust of the customers. In conclusion this thesis shows that AIP of social media content or marketing content has the potential to enhance customer satisfaction and support customer loyalty in B2B marketing, when tailored to customers needs. However, the impact on loyalty is indirect and depends on other factors such as trust, reliability and product performance. The research is limited by the focus on one single company and a small sample of interviewees which may affect generalizability. Another limitation is the small sample of AI tools tested and analyzed. Future studies need to research a broader variety of AI tools and other industries and companies for more generalizable results. Looking ahead, the voestalpine has the opportunity to implement AI to their marketing processes and combine innovation with personalization to strengthen customer relationships and gain competitive advantage in a digital age.

Date of Award	2025
Original language	English
Supervisor	Margarethe Überwimmer (Supervisor)