Technology-Driven Experiences Shape Emotional Brand Relationships and Behavioral Outcomes, Enhanced by AI Personalization

Abstract

The proposed study explores the effect of technology-driven experiences on brand emotional relationships and consumer behavioral outcomes, and it fills the gap in existing body of research that frequently studies them independently. In particular, it explores how perceived value, brand authenticity, and self-brand connection are mediators and the moderating influence of AI-enhanced personalization. This research will endeavor to offer an in-depth insight into the digital interactions which translate into meaningful consumer behavior. The research design adopted is a quantitative study design with a structured questionnaire that was administered to 385 people who are active users of digital platforms. The analysis of the data was performed with the Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) with SmartPLS. Reliability, structural relationship; validity and mediation and moderation of relationships were evaluated. The findings reveal that performance expectancy and effort expectancy have considerable effect on the perceived value (R² = 0.737), brand authenticity (R² = 0.580) and self-brand connection (R² = 0.596). These constructs, in their turn, have significant influence on the customer purchase (R² = 0.682) and customer referral (R² = 0.655). Although AI-enhanced personalization does not directly influence the purchase behavior (p = 0.831) it has a strong moderating effect on the main relations, enhancing the influence of emotional brand constructs on consumer outcomes. The research has the benefit of combining UTAUT, the theory of branding and AI personalization into a single stream. It underscores the fact that emotional brand relations are the key mechanism that motivates consumer behavior, and AI is an enhancing factor that provides useful information to both theory and practice.