Chapter 10: Towards the Underlying Theories of Artificial Intelligence in Customer Engagement: A Review and Future Research Agenda

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and customer engagement have grabbed the attention of many business organizations in the recent past, especially with the advancement of machine and deep learning. Though there is significant development in this area, in reality customer engagement and customer experience has received less attention. Since there is less theoretical and empirical evidence related to AI application in customer engagement, the objective of this research is to lay down the theoretical underpinning for artificial intelligence and customer engagement research and to propose a future research agenda. In this context, the present study aims to full fill the gap based on 20 different theories and model identified from 53 A Star and A categories of Australian Business Deans Council (ABDC) journals (2011–2023), and result are analyzed using classifier variables. In associating the presence research aim, four prominently used theories like value co-creation theory, theory of planned behaviour, SOR (Stimulus–Organism–Response) theory, Relationship Marketing theories are selected to review. The selected theories are compared based on key attributes and outcomes to give a clear direction towards an optimum theory development. By validating the various theoretical perspective, the present study also gives first-hand insight to the practising manager to formulate organization strategy and researcher to explore the future research directions.