AI-driven marketing and sustainability: from intelligent persuasion to responsible market transformation

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming marketing through machine learning, predictive analytics, intelligent recommender systems and generative AI. At the same time, sustainability challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss, waste, overproduction, greenwashing, and plastic pollution require marketing scholarship to move beyond firm-centric performance and ask how markets can be redesigned for responsible and regenerative futures. This study introduces AI-driven marketing and sustainability as a timely research agenda for examining the opportunities, risks, and governance of AI-driven marketing in sustainability contexts. Rather than framing AI merely as a tool for efficiency, personalization, or conversion optimisation, we argue that the key scholarly challenge is to understand when, how, and under what governance conditions AI-driven marketing can contribute to sustainable consumer behaviour, sustainable marketing strategies, circular marketing systems, responsible communication, and cross-level market transformation. The agenda also highlights priorities for interdisciplinary theory development, empirical testing, ethical oversight, and managerial and policy implications.