The implications of AI implementation on the marketing employee experience

Abstract

With unprecedented and increasing levels of dependency on AI across a wide range of applications, it is of utmost importance to highlight the transition from the pre-AI to the post AI marketing workplace. The nature and outcome of employees’ work is changing by the day as AI becomes a key instrument in businesses. Focusing on the experience of employees, this study identifies factors that encourage them to implement AI and explore how it redesigns the scope and outcome of their day-to-day marketing tasks and processes. It underscores managers’ current perspective on AI and how they can integrate it to complement their employees’ work without creating a fear of replacement. While many studies review existing literature and tackle theoretical implications, they are lagging behind when it comes to exploring Lebanon’s unique context from a pragmatic and exploratory qualitative perspective. Very few authors give attention to the perspective of employees and how they perceive the transition within the scope of marketing work. For that reason, we conducted 42 semi-structured qualitative interviews with employees and managers in marketing agencies all around Lebanon and identified opportunities and threats as employees integrate AI practices at this point in time. The methodological approach used had two levels of analysis: thematic and phenomenological. We tackled this research with a post-positivist epistemology and subjectivist ontology.