Does AI Advertising Persuade or Scaffold? Consumer Cognitive Pathways in AI-Mediated Experiential Consumption

AI-targeted advertising has become central to consumer-facing marketing, yet it does not directly persuade consumers to purchase experiential products. This study proposes a cognitive scaffolding framework, arguing that AI advertising supports consumers’ autonomous value construction rather than directly generating purchase motivation. Using SEM with 412 Korean consumers in cultural experience tourism, the results show that AI advertising has no direct association with purchase intention. Instead, its association operates sequentially through perceived value and trust. Moreover, the value–purchase intention relationship is stronger among consumers with higher AI utilization. Complementary fsQCA shows that no single condition—including advertising effectiveness—is individually necessary for high purchase intention. A configurational analysis identifies a dominant sufficient path in which perceived value combines with AI utilization and does not require advertising effectiveness, alongside two secondary paths in which advertising effectiveness operates only in conjunction with other conditions. This pattern is consistent with a reconceptualization of AI advertising as one of several substitutable cognitive scaffolding inputs, interpretable as supporting rather than driving consumers’ autonomous value construction—a claim advanced as specific to experiential consumption contexts rather than as a general account of AI-mediated trust formation.