---
title: "The Polarizing Effects of AI in Marketing"
url: https://adtech.lol/articles/416801fc-cb8a-4232-8aa7-968873cd0a56
source_url: https://searchengineland.com/why-earned-autonomy-is-the-sweet-spot-for-ai-and-customer-loyalty-in-2027-494171/
source_site: searchengineland
author: "SAP"
published: 2026-10-13T00:00:00+00:00
tags: ["Brand loyalty", "Artificial intelligence", "Consumer behaviour", "Marketing", "Generation Z"]
publisher: AdTech Radar
---

# The Polarizing Effects of AI in Marketing

> AI's impact on customer loyalty is more nuanced than a simple call for more or less automation. Consumers are open to AI enhancements but desire control over their interactions with brands.

![SAP 20261013](https://searchengineland.com/wp-content/seloads/2026/10/SAP-20261013.jpg)

The polarizing effects of AI are everywhere you look in marketing (and the wider world).

The enthusiasts are easy to spot. They’re all over LinkedIn, using AI for everything from automating campaigns to ordering groceries.

The concerns are just as visible: factual inaccuracy, hallucinations, opaque data use, and real questions about what happens to human judgment and creativity when you hand more decisions to a machine. These aren’t fringe worries, and any marketer paying attention has good reason to be cautious.

Most of us sit somewhere in between. We see the value AI brings to our day-to-day, but we’re aware of the risks too.

Either way, the bigger question is: what do our customers actually want? If we introduce AI into our workflows, will it hurt brand perception or, at worst, alienate customers and drive churn?

SAP’s Global Customer Loyalty Index (CLI), now in its sixth edition, offers a fascinating answer. AI is making customers more loyal and, at the same time, making it easier than ever for them to jump ship.

Thirty-one percent of consumers say interactions with AI assistants make them feel more loyal toward a brand. Almost the same proportion (30%) have already switched away from a brand because of its use of AI, rising to 45% among Gen Z.

So it’s more complex than consumers asking for “more AI” or “less AI”. What they’re saying is: “help me, remember me, and act for me when it makes my life easier, but don’t move the steering wheel somewhere I can’t reach it.”

For marketers deciding how far to push automation, the opportunity isn’t full autonomy. It’s earned autonomy: giving AI more responsibility as customer confidence grows.

### Customer loyalty is shifting, but don’t wave goodbye to the loyalty card just yet

Incentivized loyalty, built through discounts, points, and rewards, has fallen from 48% in 2025 to 38% in 2026, the first time it has dropped below 40% in the research’s six-year history. Meanwhile, true loyalty, SAP’s term for deeper brand love, has rebounded from 29% to 32%.

That doesn’t mean discounts have stopped working or anyone should ceremonially throw the coupon codes into a fire. It means incentives alone are becoming a shakier foundation for the relationship. A discount gives someone a reason to buy this time. Not a reason to prefer you next time.

When consumers are asked what builds loyalty, the usual suspects show up: 62% point to quality products, 42% to trusted brand reputation, 31% to connected online and offline experiences, 29% to frictionless shopping, and 23% to memorable, personalized experiences.

The irony is that while marketing teams are busy discussing agents, orchestration, and predictive personalization, customers overwhelmingly care about whether the product is any good. Declining product quality is also the biggest loyalty breaker at 45%, followed by rising prices (40%) and poor customer service (36%).

The foundations haven’t changed: is the product good, is the price defensible, and can someone get help when things go wrong? AI can’t compensate for failing those tests. At best, it will help customers discover the disappointment more efficiently.

60% of consumers want shared control with AI.

The research asked consumers where control should sit between humans and AI. The majority sit at neither extreme: 20% want full human control, 60% want shared control, 16% are comfortable with AI leading provided there’s oversight, and just 4% want a fully autonomous experience.

People aren’t rejecting automation, but nor are they queuing up to hand the whole relationship to a machine. The trust data backs that up. Human support if something goes wrong is the top trust-builder at 42%, while 36% want the ability to review or override decisions. Data privacy and security assurances sit at 35%, clear explanations at 31%, and proven accuracy over time at 29%.

What’s reassuring is how practical this is. Consumers want AI assistants to remember useful context, such as past purchases, regular buys, and delivery preferences. Sometimes they’d just like you to remember they’ve bought the same thing three times and prefer delivery on a Thursday.

That sounds simple, but for most organizations it isn’t. What customers experience as a single relationship, most brands still manage across a dozen disconnected systems. Closing that gap is where AI-driven personalization begins.

### Where should marketers use AI? Start where choice gets overwhelming

Consumers turn to AI most often when the decision itself starts taking too much time and energy: 23% use it when they’re unsure what to buy, 22% when there are too many options, 20% when they’re short on time, 17% when buying gifts, and 16% when they’re new to a brand or platform.

The rule of thumb is simple: AI thrives where choice becomes overwhelming.

So the better question isn’t, “What can we automate?” but, “Where are we making the customer do unnecessary work?” A catalog of 400 near-identical products is an obvious candidate. So is choosing a gift, comparing complex plans, or navigating an unfamiliar category.

These are moments where AI can remove friction rather than add an AI-shaped layer to an experience that worked perfectly well without one. If the customer thinks “that saved me some effort”, you’re onto something.

### Why AI autonomy has to be earned

SAP frames the relationship between AI and loyalty as an equation: Earned Trust + Human Control + Autonomous Action = Loyalty. It’s best read less as a formula and more as a permission model, because consumers want two things at once. One-third trust AI to complete purchases on their behalf and 31% regularly rely on AI to help choose what to buy, yet 56% still want the ability to reverse AI decisions when necessary.

That last figure explains why autonomy has to be earned. Customers aren’t saying “don’t act for me.” They’re saying, “Act for me, but if this goes sideways, I want to course correct or speak to a human.” The willingness to delegate is there, but it’s conditional on confidence and control.

For marketers, the aim is to lower the perceived risk of letting AI do more: proving accuracy over time, keeping consequential actions reversible, explaining decisions when it matters, and making sure a human can step in.

Think about any genuinely useful assistant. You don’t want to approve every tiny decision they make, because that defeats the point. But you do want them to recognize when a decision is consequential and let you intervene before a small mistake becomes an expensive one.

Trust gives the brand permission to personalize, control makes delegation feel safe, and consistently useful outcomes make customers more comfortable handing over the next task. Autonomy isn’t the goal in itself. Less effort for more reward, without a loss of confidence, is.

### Gen Z is a stress test, not a crystal ball

Gen Z makes this tension especially visible. Forty-five percent have already switched brands because of better AI practices, while 44% say they’d trust an AI assistant to purchase an item for them. They’re unusually willing to embrace AI and unusually prepared to punish brands when the experience falls short.

That makes Gen Z useful, but not prophetic. Older consumers won’t necessarily follow them. Treat Gen Z instead as a stress test: is the experience useful enough that someone is happy to delegate, while transparent enough that they don’t feel tricked, trapped, or surveilled? If both answers are yes, you’re designing around the right tension.

### What marketers should do now

Find the moments of cognitive friction. Look for choice overload, uncertainty, repetitive decisions, and places where customers are wasting effort.

Build useful memory before dazzling personalization. Remember orders, preferences, service history, and context customers have already given you. “You don’t have to tell us again” is an underrated customer experience.

Design the escape hatch with the automation. Overrides, reversibility, explanations, and access to a human are part of what makes people comfortable delegating.

Use autonomy selectively. The more consequential the decision, the more visible the controls should be.

Keep the boring stuff sacred. Product quality, price, service, and reputation still do more of the heavy lifting on loyalty than most marketing conference agendas would suggest.

### The best AI experiences won’t feel like AI experiences

The most useful finding in the CLI 2026 isn’t whether consumers are ready for AI. It’s that they are becoming comfortable granting technology more authority without giving it unconditional authority.

They’ll let AI narrow the options, remember context and, increasingly, even buy, but they still want an override and a human when things go sideways. The goal isn’t to maximize how much AI can do. It’s to maximize how much useful work customers are comfortable letting it do.

That’s a higher bar, but it’s also a better customer experience. It’s also why the principle behind SAP’s Autonomous Marketing and Engagement proposition (people set the direction, AI executes) hinges on the word “direction”, not “executes”.

Earn that permission, and autonomy starts to feel less like losing control and more like receiving good service.


Source: [https://searchengineland.com/why-earned-autonomy-is-the-sweet-spot-for-ai-and-customer-loyalty-in-2027-494171/](https://searchengineland.com/why-earned-autonomy-is-the-sweet-spot-for-ai-and-customer-loyalty-in-2027-494171/)