The prospect of AI-enhanced agile marketing: boosting marketing ROI through customer engagement and sales performance

Purpose Given the fast-paced integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in marketing practices, this study aims to investigate how AI-enhanced marketing agility influences marketing ROI through customer engagement and sales performance in Chinese e-commerce SMEs. Design/methodology/approach Drawing from dynamic capabilities theory (DCT) and the resource-based view (RBV), and using survey data from 317 marketing managers and executives, we combined partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) analysis and artificial neural networks (ANN) to validate our theoretical framework. Findings We examined how AI can enhance the established dimensions of marketing agility, revealing distinct operational mechanisms and value-creation pathways: AI enables marketing agility to operate through parallel dual-mediation pathways, i.e. simultaneously enhancing customer engagement and sales performance, an uncommon phenomenon under traditional resource constraints. Originality/value While previous literature has established that marketing agility enhances firm performance, this study's novelty lies in the “parallel dual mediation” framework, which extends our understanding previously confined by assumed resource trade-offs. Also, AI-enhanced agility exhibits both autonomous operation and synergistic integration, which refines linear capability–performance assumptions. These findings offer practitioners valuable insights and caveats on leveraging AI technology to enhance marketing performance.