Artificial Intelligence, Structure of Knowledge, and the Future Directions for Macromarketing
Abstract
In this essay, we explore AI critically from the perspectives of the corpus and structure of knowledge, human control of knowledge-based processes (including business decision-making and public policymaking), and capitalist ideology. We present a preliminary test of our argument with a re-analysis of a corpus of citizen visions of desirable and sustainable futures across 30 countries in Europe, demonstrating how pre-trained AI provides findings that appear convincing but in effect lack situational and contextual understanding and depth. Indeed, AI relies on the data that has been used in its training. Our conclusions discuss how capitalism through AI aims for advanced forms of productivity and efficiency that pose new challenges to marketing as an embedded cultural practice. We offer some suggestions for ways macromarketing scholars can help overcome some of these challenges.
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The critical frontier in marketing theory centers on the autonomous AI agent itself.
“yet the critical frontier in marketing theory centers on the autonomous AI agent itself(Aw et al., 2025;Dholakia et al., 2025;Puntoni and Wertenbroch, 2024).”
From Shopping by algorithm: How agentic AI deploys human heuristics as a surrogate consumer (2026) · cites this paper as Dholakia et al., 2025
Cites
The Ethics of AI Ethics: An Evaluation of Guidelines
Hagendorff, T. (2020) · Minds and Machines · doi:10.1007/s11023-020-09517-8 · Cited by 1,911 · cited 1× · see citing works
“In the realm of ethics, there is a conspicuous lack of guidelines in matters such as care, welfare, social responsibility, and social and ecological relationships, and this re fl ects the male dominance of focusing on aspects such as accountability, privacy, or fairness (Hagendorff, 2020).”
Mariani, M. M., Perez‐Vega, R., & Wirtz, J. (2022) · Psychology & Marketing · doi:10.1002/mar.21619 · Cited by 631 · see citing works
Trustworthy AI: From Principles to Practices
Li, B., Qi, P., Liu, B., Di, S., Liu, J., Pei, J., Yi, J., & Zhou, B. (2023) · ACM Computing Surveys · doi:10.1145/3555803 · Cited by 612 · cited 3× · see citing works
“In this context, explainability, or the capacity to understand how AI models make decisions, and interrelated transparency of these decision-making processes, are critical (Li et al., 2023).”
InfluentialAI as Agency Without Intelligence: on ChatGPT, Large Language Models, and Other Generative Models
Floridi, L. (2023) · Philosophy & Technology · doi:10.1007/s13347-023-00621-y · Cited by 404 · see citing works
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Shopping by algorithm: How agentic AI deploys human heuristics as a surrogate consumer
Wadi, D., & Ma, Y. (2026) · arXiv · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2609.28372
- Authors
- Dholakia, N., Repo, P., Fırat, A. F., Campos, I., & Timonen, P.
- Affiliations
- University of Rhode Island (US)
- University of Helsinki (FI)
- The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (US)
- University of Lisbon (PT)
- Corresponding author
- Dholakia, Nikhilesh
- Venue
- Journal of Macromarketing
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2025-03-14
- Volume
- 45
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 337-344
- ISSN
- 0276-1467 (ISSN-L)
- 1552-6534
- OpenAlex
- W4408452813
- Cited by
- 12
- References
- 4
- Citations by year
- 2026: 9 · 2025: 3
- FWCI
- 12.55
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Journal of Macromarketing (publishedVersion)
- ScholarWorks @ UTRGV (The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (Inês Campos’ post-doc contract 2020.01663.CEECI)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Safety Research › Ethics and Social Impacts of AI
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Artificial Intelligence Applications
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Management Science and Operations Research › Impact of AI and Big Data on Business and Society
- Keywords
- artificial intelligence, knowledge structure, management decision-making, public policymaking, capitalist ideology, productivity and efficiency
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