How Mercedes-Benz is rethinking the digital journey in the age of AI

AI is reshaping automotive discovery before potential buyers reach a brand website. For Mercedes-Benz USA, that shift is prompting a broader rethink: not just how the brand appears in search or how it structures content, but how it understands and supports the customer relationship from the first question through long-term ownership.

At Contentsquare’s Automotive Client Club, Jeannette Brown, Senior Manager of Business and Customer Data Integration at Mercedes-Benz USA, shared how AI is changing the starting point of the buying journey, why traditional funnels no longer reflect real behavior, and how Mercedes-Benz is connecting the path to purchase with the path to passion.

Watch our interview with Jeannette Brown to learn about AI-led discovery at Mercedes Benz USA

Key insights

• AI is moving discovery upstream. A buyer’s first meaningful interaction may now happen with an AI assistant, making accurate, well-structured product information essential.

• The funnel is a useful model, not a reliable map. Customers can move between research, consideration, and conversion from one session to the next.

• Ownership is part of the journey, not the end of it. Digital services, app experiences, and post-purchase feedback shape loyalty and future consideration.

• Consistency is a competitive advantage. Customers should feel recognized across AI tools, social channels, websites, dealerships, and post-purchase touchpoints.

AI is changing where the journey begins

Before stepping foot in a dealership, buyers do their research online across multiple channels, from official brand websites to comparison portals to large language models (LLMs). Today, LLMs are increasingly being used to compare vehicles, narrow their options, and get recommendations.

“The biggest shift is that our customers are using a growing variety of tools to inform themselves. LLMs are on the rise, and as a result, our organic traffic is declining,” Jeannette said. “When someone asks ChatGPT or Gemini, ‘What’s the best family SUV for $50K?’ they may get a direct recommendation before they ever visit a brand website.”

That raises a new question: how can brands ensure AI assistants work from accurate, current information and represent their products in the right context?

Mercedes-Benz is exploring that question through generative engine optimization (GEO). GEO is the practice of structuring content so generative AI systems can find, interpret, and use it accurately. The work goes beyond the words customers see on a page. It includes how information is organized behind the scenes, how product details are captured in metadata, and how consistently those details are maintained across the digital ecosystem.

It’s not just about what the site looks like to the user anymore. What’s happening in the backend, how data is captured and structured in the metadata, becomes much more important.

Jeannette Brown

Senior Manager of Business and Customer Data Integration at Mercedes-Benz USA

The implication is significant: the brand website is no longer only a destination. It is also a source of information that AI systems may use to shape a customer’s expectations before the customer arrives.

From managing the funnel to observing the journey

AI is not the only reason the automotive journey is changing. Mercedes-Benz also found that its assumptions about customer behavior were too neat.

Before adopting Product Analytics, Jeannette’s team worked primarily from hypotheses. The product team would ask a focused question about the website, and the analytics team would pull the data needed to answer it. That approach was useful, but it often limited the investigation to the original question. 

Product Analytics opened the door to more exploratory analysis. Instead of asking only whether customers interacted with a particular widget, the team could ask broader questions: Did customers notice it? What did they look at instead? Where did they go next? That shift surfaced a more realistic picture of the funnel: there is no single, predictable path. 

The biggest insight was that the customer journey is by no means linear.

Jeannette Brown

Senior Manager of Business and Customer Data Integration at Mercedes-Benz USA

A customer may arrive in an awareness mindset and submit a lead moments later. Another may submit a lead, return the next day, and behave as though they are visiting for the first time. Customers can move forward, backward, or sideways, depending on what they need at that moment.

“Maybe we need to step back from trying to guide customers through a predefined path and instead accommodate whatever they’re doing today. Because it can change from session to session,” Jeannette said. 

For digital teams, this changes the role of analytics. The goal is not simply to measure whether customers follow the intended sequence. It’s to understand the signals that reveal what customers are trying to do—and then reduce the friction around that behavior.

The journey does not end at purchase

Many automotive teams still treat the sale as the defining conversion event. Mercedes-Benz is taking a broader view.

Jeannette’s team sits within marketing, but its work extends beyond the moment a customer purchases a vehicle. The digital ownership experience can shape how customers feel about the brand every day—and whether they consider buying from it again. Jeannette explained: 

“It’s not just, ‘Did we get you into a vehicle?’ It’s, ‘Now that you’re in the vehicle, how do we make sure you’re getting the full experience we intended?’” 

Mercedes-Benz describes this as an infinity loop: the path to purchase on one side and the path to passion on the other. The first covers the traditional marketing journey—from discovery through conversion. The second captures the ongoing ownership experience—spanning digital services, in-app extras, the Mercedes-Benz app, app store ratings, and customer conversations across social media and online forums.

“What creates brand loyalty is how customers interact with their vehicle and with the brand day to day,” Jeannette said.

This framework broadens what teams need to measure. A campaign may generate a lead, but the relationship does not stop there. Teams also need to understand whether the digital services promised during the buying journey are useful in practice, where customers encounter friction after purchase, and what those experiences reveal about future needs.

The feedback loop works in both directions. Product teams can use customer signals to improve digital services, while marketing teams can use them to understand what customers value and what the brand should address in future communications.

Consistency is the competitive advantage

The shift to AI is happening alongside a broader change in customer expectations. Information is easier to find, comparisons are faster to make, and switching brands feels less difficult than it once did. Familiarity alone is no longer enough to secure loyalty.

“We believe we have the best product out there. The challenge is: How do we get that across?” Jeannette explained.

For Mercedes-Benz, the opportunity is to meet customers wherever they are—in an AI assistant, on social media, on the brand website, or at a dealership. The experience does not need to be identical in every channel, but it does need to feel connected.

That requires personalization and better handoffs. If a customer has spent time researching a particular model online, the dealership experience should reflect that context. Customers should not have to start from zero every time they move to a new touchpoint.

“The goal is for the customer to feel like one customer across the entire journey, not like a stranger every time they interact with a new touchpoint,” Jeannette said.

That is easier said than done. It depends on connecting data, content, teams, and measurement across the organization. It also requires brands to acknowledge that a customer’s intent can change—and to make that change visible to the next person or system involved in the journey.

Design for a loop, not a line

The automotive journey is no longer a straight line that begins with a website visit and ends with a vehicle purchase. It may begin with an AI-generated recommendation, move to a social channel, continue at a dealership, and return to a digital ownership experience after the sale.

AI has not made the journey more linear. It has dispersed the starting points and compressed the time customers spend deciding. The brands best positioned to win will be the ones that respond with continuity rather than control: accurate information for AI systems, analytics that reveal real behavior, and experiences that make customers feel recognized across every interaction.

For Mercedes-Benz, that means connecting the path to purchase with the path to passion—and treating every touchpoint as part of the same relationship.