From JAMS - Special Section

The upcoming issue of JAMS features a special section of articles on generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI). We invited the editorial authors to share more details about this special section.  

Rubera, G., Li, W. & Hulland, J. Generative artificial intelligence: Marketing’s death knell or ringing in a new era? Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-025-01100-w  

1. What is the main purpose of this special section?

The primary purpose of this special section is to explore the transformative impact of Generative AI (GenAI) on the marketing discipline. It aims to:

• Address growing concerns that GenAI may threaten traditional marketing roles and education.

• Demonstrate how marketing scholars and practitioners can adapt, thrive, and lead in the GenAI era.

• Encourage marketers to not only use GenAI but also contribute to its development, similar to how marketing once integrated with finance through the "marketing-finance interface".

The Editorial serves as a call to action for the marketing field to embrace GenAI as an opportunity to modernize, expand relevance, and secure its role in business and academia.

 2. What are the issues addressed across the articles?

The articles in this special section tackle several pressing issues across three key nodes: marketing stakeholders, marketing practices, and marketing research.

• Marketing Stakeholders:
  Hermann and Puntoni (2025) discuss how GenAI empowers different stakeholders—marketers, consumers, researchers—across four dimensions:

• Operational

• Creative

• Agentic

• Normative empowerment

• Marketing Practices:

• Grewal et al. (2025) propose a practical framework for implementing GenAI in marketing, considering:

• The level of customization in GenAI inputs.

• The degree of human involvement in GenAI outputs.

• Cillo and Rubera (2025) explore GenAI’s potential to reshape innovation and marketing processes, emphasizing how changing consumer behavior (influenced by GenAI) drives strategic shifts in firms.

• Marketing Research:
  Yoo et al. (2025) examine how large multimodal GenAI models can enhance stages of marketing research—from idea generation to data analysis. Their findings suggest GenAI can improve theory development and experimental data collection.

3. What research areas for future research are suggested?
The editorial and in the articles suggest several avenues for future research:

• Bias and Optimization in GenAI:
  Leveraging marketing’s expertise in consumer biases and survey methods to improve GenAI performance and fairness.

• Development of GenAI-specific Frameworks:
  Further research into stakeholder empowerment models, especially the four types mentioned by Hermann and Puntoni.

• GenAI and Innovation:
  Exploring how GenAI reshapes consumer behavior and how that, in turn, alters firm innovation strategies, as proposed by Cillo and Rubera.

• Empirical Research Augmented by GenAI:
  Investigating how GenAI can replicate or even improve stages of academic marketing research, including theory building and experimentation (Yoo et al.).

• Customization and Human-Augmentation Trade-offs:
  Research into the optimal balance between automation and human control in GenAI-driven marketing practices (Grewal et al.).