Marketing Work and Artificial Intelligence

Call for Papers

Marketing Work and Artificial Intelligence

JOURNAL NAME: Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal

PUBLISHER: Emerald Publishing

SUBMISSIONS OPEN: 1 May 2026

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: 1 December 2026

About This Special Issue

Marketing scholarship has traditionally emphasized prescribing how marketing should be managed rather than examining how it is actually practiced. A significant gap exists in our understanding of marketing work — that is, the everyday practices through which marketers perform and enact marketing. This gap has become even more pronounced in light of the transformations brought about by artificial intelligence. AI not only shapes contemporary consumption — from music and food to mobility services — but also profoundly reconfigures the ways marketing is conceived and executed.

While an optimistic stance sees human marketing work becoming less focused on routine tasks and more focused on enhanced strategic planning thanks to AI, this special issue also aims to debunk the risks associated with AI use. Certain areas of marketing work may be becoming far more distant from the target audience than ever before — and questions arise about what it means when the customer being oriented towards is synthetic rather than real. The particular soft skills needed to conduct qualitative research well may become unnecessary when the focus group is entirely synthetic.

Over the past five years, marketing research has increasingly examined how digitalization is transforming marketing work. Yet there is a need to move further and more urgently, as AI is now rapidly and profoundly reconfiguring marketing work. Several scholars contest the idea of AI as simply an enabler of performance and instead urge researchers to treat AI as a social practice that affects individuals and society — one that produces consumption norms, ranks consumers, and shapes their behaviours.

This special issue invites contributions employing a broad spectrum of qualitative research approaches — from ethnography to phenomenology and grounded theory — each offering distinctive insights into how organizations are currently practising marketing with AI.

Scope & Theme Areas

We invite submissions addressing, but not limited to, the following themes:

• Evolution of Marketing Practitioners — How AI is transforming the profiles and identities of individuals who enact marketing practices

• Changes in Marketing Practices — How AI is causing fundamental changes in the organized activities that marketing practitioners routinely enact

• Consumer Co-Creation and Customer Experience — How AI-mediated environments reshape consumer co-creation practices, customer experience dynamics, and the way marketers orchestrate them

• Sustainability and AI in Marketing — How marketing practices and practitioners are becoming more — or less — sustainable as a result of AI

• Algorithmic Marketing as Normative Practice — How algorithmic decisions shape consumer behaviour, vulnerability, and isolation

• Daily Marketing Work with AI — Specific challenges and opportunities including AI as interviewer or moderator, connecting multi-level datasets, and other practical dimensions of AI-assisted marketing work

Guest Editors

Bernard Cova

Mehdi El Abed

Amina Djedidi

Key Deadlines & Dates

Submission Guidelines

How to submit: Manuscripts must be submitted via ScholarOne Manuscripts at https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/qmr strictly following the journal's author guidelines.

Selection step: Authors must select the special issue title from the drop-down menu at the appropriate submission step — in response to "Please select the issue you are submitting to."

Eligibility: Submitted articles must not have been previously published, nor should they be under consideration for publication elsewhere while under review for this journal.

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