AI-powered marketing: What, where, and how?

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a disruptive force that has revolutionized industries and changed business practices. The integration of AI has brought numerous benefits to various functional areas within organizations, with marketing experiencing a significant positive impact. AI technologies have empowered marketers with advanced tools and insights, fostering unparalleled efficiency, personalization, and strategic campaign decision-making. Despite these advancements, the scholarly focus on AI's transformative effects on marketing is limited. This research investigates how AI is currently applied across different marketing functions and its potential future evolution and impact on marketing processes. In a rapidly evolving world, businesses must navigate complexity, innovate, and sustain competitive advantages. Grounding our analysis in previous AI marketing literature, we adopt the dynamic capability theoretical lens, emphasizing how organizations adapt and prosper in changing environments. This study highlights six key marketing areas where AI promises transformative effects, aiming to illuminate the path for future marketing innovations and strategies, including AI-driven customer insights, measuring marketing performance, automated marketing strategies, ethical implications, enhancing customer experiences, and growth opportunities with AI Implementation. While recognizing AI as a positive disruptive force, we also highlight its limitations, potential threats to privacy and security, as well as ramifications of biases, misuse, and dissemination of misinformation. Finally, the article delineates the gaps in the research and formulates questions aimed at advancing knowledge in AI marketing.