Hyundai Card bets on ‘super customization’

Hyundai Card, the credit card unit of Hyundai Motor Group, is preparing to level up its business with “super customized” marketing, officials said Wednesday.

The new system, heavily based on the data of over 8 million customers accumulated by the company over the years, uses artificial intelligence to measure a customer’s real-time circumstances, such as location and weather, and uses that information to provide tailored marketing messages.

The company explains that super customization is a step up from market segmentation, which involves analyzing a customer’s purchasing patterns and offering recommendations accordingly. In short, it said, super customization involves analyzing and offering benefits based on when the customer makes a purchase, what kind of purchase it is and what channels the customer uses. The system is to be applied to its services from next year, it added.

 

“Super customization is the next frontier of personalized service that will mark Hyundai Card’s digital transformation into a data-driven powerhouse, revolutionizing the way we live,” the company said in a statement.

Hyundai Card has been working on using artificial intelligence to manage its customer data through a “D-tag” committee led by its Vice Chairman Chung Tae-young. D-tag is an AI-based machine-learning package of thousands of data points including details such as age, occupation, consumption preferences and spending habits.

“We’re using these new techniques in our beta tests and we’re getting amazing results. So we’re sending promotional coupons to the people at the right time. And then the results were five times higher,” Chung was quoted as saying in an interview with the New York Times on Tuesday.

According to industry insiders, Hyundai Card plans to raise its valuation through the new marketing method before its IPO debut. Chung said in another interview with the Financial Times that he hoped the IPO would take place in 2021.

By Jie Ye-eun (yeeun@heraldcorp.com)