The Creator Effect: A quantitative study of the impact on consumer perceptions and judgements when exposed to an AI-created advertisement

Sammanfattning: Artificial intelligence is expected to disruptively change the future of marketing, and the benefits of the technology are widely known. However, despite a general skepticism around AI, there is still a lack of research investigating consumer perceptions in the field. By combining the research fields of signaling theory and the machine heuristic through the MAIN model, this thesis aims to contribute to the research body by understanding how AI as an advertisement creator may impact the consumer perceptions of creativity, spending and effort, as well as the consumer judgements of ad attitude, brand attitude and brand trust. Moreover, this thesis aims to test emotional message appeal as a moderating factor in forming consumer judgements when exposed to an advertisement portrayed as being created by AI. Through an experiment, this thesis provides significant support that an advertisement created by AI signals low advertising spend and effort, as well as generates a less favorable ad attitude, brand attitude and brand trust, compared to an advertisement created by a human. However, no significant results could be established in regard to creativity perception or the moderating effect of message appeal. To conclude, these findings indicate that there may be negative effects when employing AI to create advertisements, which further pose important theoretical and managerial implications.