“Marketing Work and Artificial Intelligence”
DETAILS
Call for Papers – Special Issue: “Marketing Work and Artificial Intelligence”
Journal: Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal
Publisher: Emerald Publishing
Submission deadline: 01 December 2026
Overview
This special issue explores the "everyday practices" of marketing—how it is actually performed and enacted—in the age of Artificial Intelligence. While much literature focuses on how AI optimizes performance or economic value, this issue seeks to debunk optimistic narratives and critically examine the risks and transformations AI brings to the marketing profession. The editors call for qualitative research to investigate whether AI is making marketing work more distant from real consumers, and what the shift toward "synthetic" customer insights means for the future of the field.
Key Research Themes
The special issue invites qualitative studies (e.g., ethnography, phenomenology, grounded theory) that address:
Changing Practitioner Profiles: How AI is reshaping the identity, skills, and daily routines of marketing professionals.
Transformation of Practices: How AI reconfigures the organized activities that marketers routinely enact.
Consumer Co-creation: How AI-mediated environments reshape customer experience dynamics and marketer orchestration.
Sustainability & Ethics: Whether AI makes marketing practices more sustainable and the normative nature of algorithmic decision-making (e.g., consumer vulnerability, isolation, and bias).
Practical AI Applications: Challenges and opportunities in using AI for day-to-day marketing tasks (e.g., synthetic focus groups, data integration).
Submission Details
Submission window: 1 May 2026 – 1 December 2026.
Submission platform: QMR ScholarOne Manuscripts:
https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/qmrWhen submitting, select the special issue title in the drop-down menu under “Please select the issue you are submitting to.”
All manuscripts must strictly follow the journal’s Author Guidelines:
https://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/journal/qmr#jlp_author_guidelines
Guest Editors
Bernard Cova, ESCE Paris
Mehdi El Abed, ESCE Paris
Amina Djedidi, University of Paris 8
Why This Issue Matters
There is a significant gap in academic understanding regarding how marketing is actually practiced versus how it is managed.
By treating AI as a social practice rather than just a neutral tool, this issue aims to challenge narratives of technological neutrality and uncover how algorithmic decisions reshape both the marketing organization and the society it interacts with.
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