HARNESSING DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY AND NEUROMARKETING TO TRANSFORM CONSUMER ENGAGEMENT ACROSS CHANNELS

The relationship between marketing and the human mind is being transformed by two converging forces: the maturation of neuromarketing as a discipline for understanding the neurological architecture of consumer decision-making, and the emergence of artificial intelligence as an increasingly active participant in consumer purchasing behaviour. This thesis investigates the intersection of these forces, examining how digital technology and neuromarketing principles can be harnessed to transform consumer engagement across channels today, and how these strategies must evolve as AI progressively assumes the role of surrogate decision-maker on behalf of human consumers. The thesis is built around a single central contribution — the argument that AI shifts the locus of consumer decision-making upstream, from the moment of purchase to the prior formation of trust, preferences, and decision parameters — which is developed through the Consumer-AI Decision Continuum. Three further contributions develop and support this argument. First, drawing on dual- process theory, the somatic marker hypothesis, and the consumer neuroscience literature, it establishes that the neurological mechanisms governing consumer choice (attention, emotion, reward processing, and memory encoding) are not context-independent but are profoundly shaped by the degree of AI mediation in the decision environment. Second, synthesising the omnichannel marketing and customer engagement literatures, it demonstrates that the shift from multichannel to omnichannel thinking represents a reorientation of marketing strategy that is directly supported by neuroscientific evidence on the cumulative, path-dependent character of brand experience. Third, and most substantively, it develops the Consumer-AI Decision Continuum, a five-stage framework mapping the full spectrum of AI involvement in consumer purchasing, from unmediated human choice through AI-assisted search, AI-curated choice sets, and AI-led recommendation with human confirmation, to full AI autonomy. The framework identifies the stage-specific neuromarketing and engagement implications of each mode, advances the concept of upstream engagement as the most strategically important form of brand interaction in an AI- mediated world, and generates a specific theoretical proposition concerning sustainability: that AI delegation may systematically undermine sustainable consumption by displacing the deliberate, values-based reasoning that translates sustainability intentions into purchasing behaviour. The empirical work employs a sequential explanatory mixed-methods design, combining semi- structured expert interviews with digital marketing practitioners and a quantitative consumer survey administered via Google Forms. The survey operationalises the Consumer-AI Decision Continuum as a measurement instrument and assesses the psychological determinants of AI delegation, particularly perceived choice autonomy and decision autonomy, alongside emotional responses to AI-mediated purchasing scenarios (measured using the Self-Assessment Manikin scale) and sustainability orientation. The findings suggest that decision autonomy and trust were the strongest psychological correlates of AI delegation among the constructs examined, that the felt sense of dominance decreased as AI autonomy increased even when emotional valence is positive, and that a substantial proportion of respondents perceive a gap between their sustainability preferences and AI-generated purchase recommendations. The central argument of the thesis is that the emergence of AI as a surrogate decision-maker does not diminish the strategic importance of marketing but renders it more consequential.