Journal of Current Issues & Research in Advertising

AI-Enabled Brand Touchpoints

Since the end of 2022, hardly any other topic has changed the brand, marketing, and advertising world as much as AI (Huang & Rust, 2021; Deryl et al., 2023, Gao et al., 2023). Now that the initial hype has slowly died down, the focus is shifting toward more meaningful and effective applications of AI—such as enhancing creativity (e.g., Pagani & Wind, 2024; Bohren et al., 2024) and brand control (Li et al., 2023; Sarstedt et al., 2024)—as well as improving efficiency in brand management, communication, and advertising (Dell'Acqua et al., 2023). In addition to the direct use of generative AI, particularly for creating brand touchpoints (e.g. design, Moureau et al., 2023), AI is also an integral part of other technology-based brand touchpoints like social robotics (Choi et al., 2022) and virtual influencers (Baumgarth et al., 2021; Laszkiewicz & Kalinska‐Kula, 2023).

The management and technology perspective needs to be expanded to include a consumer perspective on the impact of AI- and technology-based touchpoints. This perspective provides answers to questions such as the effect of disclosing AI as the source of advertising and other touchpoints on brand authenticity (Kirkby et al., 2023) and creative judgment (Grassini & Koivisto, 2024).

In addition to established brands, emerging and small and medium-sized enterprises (SME brands) are uniquely positioned to leverage AI for rapid scalability, creativity, and efficiency. However, they also face challenges in integrating AI effectively due to resource constraints (Schönberger, 2023).

Finally, the use of technology-based brand touchpoints is connected with legal and ethical challenges like copyright issues (Drott, 2021), deepfakes (Campbell et al., 2022), and AI bias (Akter et al., 2022; Atari et al., 2023).

This special issue aims to contribute to a better understanding of this broad and dynamic field of AI-enabled brand touchpoints and to provide brand management with scientifically sound recommendations through innovative, theoretically sound, and evidence-based research results. For this special issue, we welcome conceptual and empirical papers that use quantitative and qualitative methodological approaches to advance research regarding developments in AI and technology-enabled brand touchpoints.

Suggested topics include but are not limited to:

• Use of generative AI to develop brand touchpoints (advertising, brand communication, service, design, product innovation)

• Use of AI-powered social robots and voice assistants as brand touchpoints

• AI-powered virtual influencers as brand touchpoints

• Ensuring “brand rules” of brand touchpoint creation (e.g. brand consistency) in AI tools

• Effects of disclosing AI as the source of the brand touchpoints

• Changes in brand touch work in companies and advertising agencies through AI

• AI creativity in brand management, brand work, and advertising

• Augmented brand intelligence by combining AI and humans

• AI and technology in advertising for SMEs and Emerging Brands

• Use of AI to analyze brand touchpoints

• Ethical and legal limits of using AI in brand work and advertising

• Sustainability & AI-enabled brand touchpoints

(please contact Guest Editors for list of references)