Search Engine VS AI Platforms for Digital Generation Consumers: Shift from Traditional Search Engines to AI Tools for Marketing and Consumer Purchase Decisions.

Abstract

As AI is transforming every sector, consumer purchase decision are affected by it increasingly day by day. Mainly, the digital generation have already become over reliant on AI Tools. But the marketers and industry is still focusing on traditional search engine for their products and service recommendations through keyword based search and website ranking. Thus, this study explores AI’s effect on digital generation consumers purchase decision over traditional search engine. The structure is created on variables like trust on AI tools, frequency of use, personalization and AI vs traditional search engine to general preferences for their queries. The survey was of 150 respondent mostly young male students and few job holders. Their responses was analyzed using SPSS and Smart PLS SEM model to see the reliability and variables relations with each other. Here, trust a mediating variable shows direct impact on purchase decisions where indirectly with the help of personalization and comparison with search engine factor. As, these 2 factors directly didn’t contribute much with purchase decisions rather mainly indirectly thorough trust. Only independent variable to have significant impact besides mediating one is Frequency for purchase decision. All of them combine built a strong model to support the hypothesis passing all the attributes with different tests. Future study should focus on more variables that directly impact purchase decisions as well as different age group, gender and demographics.