The Dark Side of AI Marketing: Psychological Manipulation, Financial Vulnerability & Ethical Challenges

Abstract

Due to the growing number of applications of artificial intelligence (AI) in marketing, consumer-brand interactions have changed as they have allowed highly individualized, data-driven, and automated marketing campaigns. Although AI-based marketing is efficient and more effective at targeting customers, it has also caused significant concerns among psychological manipulation, financial vulnerability, and ethical responsibility. The paper delves into the dark side of AI marketing under the quantitative method by analyzing the effect of algorithmic personalization and persuasional marketing technology on the psychological manipulation, financial vulnerability and ethical perceptions of consumers. The conceptual framework of the study is based on the theories of persuasion, behavioral economics, and digital ethics, according to which the role of AI marketing practices is seen as an antecedent to psychological manipulation, which in turn leads to the increase in financial vulnerability and ethical risk perceptions of consumers. The collected data of online consumers are statistically analyzed based on the hypothesized relationships between the most important variables to test the hypothesis. This research will add to the growing body of literature on the ethics and consumer behavior of AI-driven marketing by uncovering the psychological and ethical impact of AI-driven marketing. These results will provide practical implications to marketers, policymakers, and regulators who may wish to come up with responsible marketing of AI that will safeguard consumers yet still allow technological inventions to prevail.