Legitimacy in Algorithmic Marketing: A Governance-Dependent Perspective

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a pervasive and readily accessible component of contemporary marketing practice. As generative and automated AI tools are now widely embedded in activities such as content creation, personalization, targeting, and customer interaction, attention increasingly shifts toward the legitimacy of AI use and the conditions under which AI-enabled marketing practices are perceived as appropriate, trustworthy, and acceptable by market audiences. This chapter advances the concept of governance-dependent AI legitimacy in marketing, arguing that the success or failure of AI use cannot be explained by technological performance or output quality alone. When AI systems mediate communication and creative production, observable outputs provide limited information about human agency, intention, and responsibility. Under these conditions, legitimacy judgments are formed through inferential processes shaped by how AI use is governed, disclosed, framed, and embedded within organizational practices. Building on research in marketing, innovation, and governance, the chapter conceptualizes governance as an interpretive infrastructure that structures audience sensemaking under conditions of algorithmic opacity. Governance mechanisms, such as transparency regimes, representations of AI’s role, and signals of human oversight, influence how audiences infer authenticity, fairness, and moral appropriateness in AI-mediated marketing interactions. As a result, similar uses of AI may lead to different outcomes, ranging from trust and acceptance to backlash and delegitimation. By reframing AI legitimacy as a governance-dependent phenomenon, this entry contributes to marketing theory by moving beyond adoption-centered models and highlighting legitimacy as a central explanatory lens for understanding AI-enabled marketing in a post-adoption era. The chapter concludes by outlining implications for marketing theory, practice, and future research on responsible and legitimate AI use.