Title: Marketing AI Exposure: Applicability Breadth, Substitution Depth, and Job Outcomes

Speaker: Jia Cao, Ph.D. candidate, University of Georgia

Host: Si Zuo, Assistant Professor, Antai College of Economics and Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Time: 13:30–15:00, Wednesday, November 18, 2026

Venue: Room A303, Pao Siu-Long Library, Antai College of Economics and Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Brief introduction of the content: 

As AI reshapes organizational work, its overlap with marketing responsibilities raises questions about its impact on marketing jobs. This research introduces Marketing AI Exposure as a two-dimensional construct comprising AI applicability breadth and AI substitution depth. Applicability breadth captures the range of AI technologies relevant to a job’s task portfolio, whereas substitution depth captures the extent to which AI can perform those tasks. Using dependency parsing to extract verb-noun pairs from approximately 4.86 million marketing job postings and 1.3 million AI patents, we construct job posting-level measures of both dimensions. Regression analyses show that breadth is associated with higher hiring but lower wages, whereas depth is associated with lower hiring and lower wages. Jobs high on both dimensions show the strongest wage compression, but not uniform hiring contraction, underscoring the value of distinguishing AI availability from task coverage. The research also shows that marketing skills moderate these relationships heterogeneously.

Speaker's profile:

Jocelyn Cao is a Ph.D. candidate in Marketing at University of Georgia, advised by Prof. Sundar Bharadwaj. Her research interests include artificial intelligence, marketing-finance interface, and influencer marketing. Her current research focuses on exploring how artificial intelligence affects the marketing labor market and firm performance. Her research is supported by Marketing Science Institute Grant.

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