Understanding Customer Responses to AI-Driven Personalized Journeys: Impacts on the Customer Experience

Within advertising, the customer journey concept helps explain how customer perceptions and behaviours evolve through seller-customer interactions. The concept has developed to reflect omni-channel marketing but neglects the emergence of algorithmically personalised advertisements. This study therefore explores impacts upon customer experiences of AI-driven recommendations and personalised advertisements by analyzing customer perceptions of tensions between the personalisation and customer empowerment inherent within AI-driven advertising. By combining semi-structured phenomenological interviews with Customer Journey Mapping, we capture experiences and behaviours across multiple touchpoints. Our findings show how AI’s technological limitations mediate brand-customer relationships and influence customer behaviours. The study contributes theoretically by critically contextualizing AI-driven advertising within broader ethical debates, emphasizing practitioners’ responsibilities to combine technological advancements with consumer autonomy.