ROLE OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN DIGITAL MARKETING AND CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT

Artificial intelligence is reshaping digital marketing by changing how firms identify customer needs, personalize communication, generate content, automate interactions, and make decisions. The literature reviewed in this paper indicates that AI can increase customer engagement when it creates meaningful value through relevance, convenience, responsiveness, enjoyment, and reliability. However, the same technologies can reduce engagement when customers experience privacy intrusion, opacity, bias, inaccurate content, or loss of human connection. The central conclusion is therefore not that more AI automatically produces better marketing. Instead, effective AI marketing depends on matching technology to customer needs, preserving appropriate human involvement, and designing transparency and governance into the experience. The proposed framework positions perceived value, trust, and customer experience as key mechanisms linking AI capabilities with engagement, while disclosure, expertise, complexity, and channel context shape the strength of those relationships. This framework can support future empirical studies and provide managers with a structured way to evaluate AI initiatives beyond short-term campaign efficiency.

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