Driving innovation and digital transformation for future growth in the GBA

Every generation faces a technology that rewrites the rules and redraws the map of opportunity. Since ChatGPT caught the world off guard in 2022, artificial intelligence (AI) has arrived with more promise, and has generated more anxiety, than anything before it. Around the world, AI is upending how brands build loyalty, engage customers and stay relevant.

At the CUHK Business School Greater Bay Area (GBA) CEO Forum, Professor Mandy Hu, Director of CUHK’s Centre for Consumer Insights, spoke with a panel of distinguished leaders to separate the signal from the noise. How is AI transforming business models and consumption patterns across the GBA? What does this mean for the brands and entrepreneurs trying to navigate this new landscape?

The age of the AI agent

For Mr Chris Tung, Group Chief Marketing Officer and China Chief Executive Officer, Shangri-La Group, the AI shift began with language. Large language models such as ChatGPT are able to understand human language and can even participate in conversations, fundamentally changing the way humans interact with machines. With the subsequent emergence of vibe coding (the ability to write computer code and create personal AI agents using natural language), AI is no longer just a tool that assists humans as they make decisions. It is helping consumers act on them.

In hospitality, the implications are immediate. As consumers delegate trip planning to AI agents, brands must now rethink how they connect in an increasingly AI-mediated world. Yet Mr Tung believes the fundamentals of marketing remain unchanged. Brands that shape people’s minds through the right content and storytelling will shape the agents trained on that very data. This makes brand building not less important in the AI era, but more.

Ms Freda Ng (Professional Accountancy 2000), Managing Director, PARKnSHOP Hong Kong, saw the same dynamic playing out in retail. AI, she emphasised, is not a competitor; it is a companion that helps consumers navigate choices. While AI can remove some friction from the process, it cannot replace the emotional dimension of shopping. “What is your brand about? What’s your personality, your purpose? How do you connect with your customers’ emotions? How do you make their experience fun?” she asked. “All of this is even more important than before.”

Can SMEs compete?

With the rapid rise of AI, can small businesses keep pace with the giants? Mr Sean Tam (International Business and Chinese Enterprise 2021), Lead Corporate Instructor and Head of Content, Preface, believes so. He argued that SMEs may actually be better positioned than large corporations to move fast. He outlined three pillars for staying competitive. The first is workplace productivity. Large corporates might spend months assembling a cross-functional team to pilot a single AI workflow, but SME owners can deploy five to ten AI agents simultaneously across finance, administration, operations, sales and marketing, thereby gaining a speed and agility that was previously out of their reach.

The second and third pillars are closely linked: digital presence and unique experience. Mr Tam explained that search behaviour is shifting from keywords to questions. Results are now summaries, not links. This disrupts the keyword dominance that once favoured established brands, giving SMEs a chance to compete through generative engine optimisation (GEO), and surface their brands on AI platforms. The third pillar reinforces this: smaller brands can carve out a niche through unique experiences and establish a distinct and discoverable voice in this landscape.

The GBA’s AI advantage

Using innovation to gain a competitive edge also extends to the infrastructure level. Ms Cindy Chow (Integrated BBA 1992), Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer, Alibaba Hong Kong Entrepreneurs Fund, offered a structural view of why the GBA, and China more broadly, hold a distinctive edge in the AI race.

Drawing on the five-layer cake framework popularised by NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang, where energy, data centres, chips, models and applications form the backbone of any AI economy, Ms Chow said China’s advantages are growing across every layer. Energy capacity is roughly eight times that of the United States, at around 40% of the cost. Data centres in China cost approximately 60% less to build. Although China’s chips trail their US counterparts in raw computing power, “deficiency-driven aggressiveness” in innovation is closing the gap, such as improving chip performance via software. At the model and application layers, Chinese open-source models rank among the world’s best. Meanwhile, the country’s dense, digitally sophisticated population with 20 years of mobile payment and e-commerce data provides fertile ground for AI development.

“We are still very optimistic about how AI agents can change how we work, how we live and help entrepreneurs turn their dreams into reality,” Ms Chow said.

Brand in the AI era

If AI is reshaping how consumers discover and choose products, what does this mean for the brands that are competing for their attention?

Mr Tam believes standardised products can still maintain their premium by emphasising “product plus experience” as the key to resisting commoditisation. Ms Ng echoed that view, noting that in-store experiences can deepen their emotional connections with their customers, “such that they choose you not for purely mathematical reasons.”

Ms Chow shifted the frame: “If AI does replace a third of jobs, the displaced workforce will need to become more entrepreneurial, resulting in an explosion of new brands offering more choices for consumers, and a genuine challenge to established players.”

For Mr Tung, brand building is not dying; it is evolving. “A brand is an icon that offers trust over functional benefits; or love or emotional value. Or both.” In an AI era, the question is not whether brands matter, but whether the category requires the trust or love that a strong brand provides. He illustrated the point with two examples. For a generic query seeking luxury hotels in Central, appearing in AI search results through GEO will suffice; it is a matter of visibility. But when a diner specifically seeks a restaurant’s off-menu fish burger, such stories can no longer remain hidden, known only by insiders. Brands must actively surface these stories. “We need even stronger differentiation in today’s AI era,” he said, “because otherwise the agents will not grasp your brand. This is a make-or-break factor.”