AI-driven electronic customer relationship management and brand advocacy: The mediating role of consumption values in Vietnam’s digital banking sector

Abstract

Type of the article: Research ArticleAbstractThe rapid adoption of artificial intelligence in digital banking is transforming how financial institutions manage customer relationships and encourage customer advocacy. However, empirical evidence explaining how artificial intelligence-driven electronic customer relationship management influences brand advocacy through different consumption values remains limited. This study aims to assess the effect of AI-driven electronic customer relationship management on brand advocacy and to examine the mediating roles of consumption values in Vietnam’s digital banking context. A quantitative cross-sectional survey was conducted with 468 users of digital banking services who had interacted with artificial intelligence-enabled customer service functions, and the data were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modelling. The results show that AI-driven electronic customer relationship management has a positive and statistically significant direct effect on brand advocacy (β = 0.194, p < 0.001). Functional value (β = 0.092, p = 0.030), monetary value (β = 0.347, p < 0.001), epistemic value (β = 0.197, p < 0.001), and social value (β = 0.104, p = 0.010) also positively influence brand advocacy, whereas emotional value does not have a significant effect (β = 0.023, p = 0.703). Monetary value emerges as the strongest predictor of brand advocacy, and the model explains 63.4% of the variance in this construct. The findings indicate that artificial intelligence-enabled relationship management systems strengthen brand advocacy primarily when they deliver tangible economic, informational, and functional benefits to digital banking customers.AcknowledgmentThis research is partly funded by Industrial University of Ho Chi Minh City and University of Finance – Marketing.