Unveiling the Dark Side of Companies Self-Promotion of Artificial Intelligence [abstract]

Vorobeva, D., Pinto, D. C., González, H., & António, N. (2024). Unveiling the Dark Side of Companies Self-Promotion of Artificial Intelligence [abstract]. In Proceedings of the European Marketing Academy (pp. 1-2). Article 119392 European Marketing Academy (EMAC). https://proceedings.emac-online.org/pdfs/A2024-119392.pdf --- This work received partial support from national funds through FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia) , under the project – UIDB/04152/2020 – Centro de Investigação em Gestão de Informação (MagIC)/NOVA IMS and 2021.09496.BD ; Companies’ investment in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its dynamic promotion has been growing rapidly. However, such promotional activities can backfire. This research reveals that companies’ self-promotional activities of AI-based services decrease the customers' willingness to interact with AI-based (vs. human-based) services. The set of studies - Twitter text mining and experimental studies - demonstrate that self-promotion of AI-based technology has a pejorative effect on customers’ willingness to interact with such services and concurrently is perceived as bragging and exaggeration. In contrast, it has a beneficial outcome if self-promotion is done about human-related achievements. The findings suggest self-discrepancy as an underlying factor of such diversion. Lastly, the research provides suggestions to companies on how to diminish customers’ resistance to AI-based services using thinking (vs. feeling) skills. ; publishersversion ; published