Convergent Smart Marketing in Live Commerce: A Dual-Pathway Model of AR–AI Integration, Psychological Ownership, and Creepiness

As connected live-commerce platforms increasingly integrate augmented reality (AR) try-on, artificial intelligence (AI) personalization, and AI-assisted hosting within a single promotional episode, they create a convergent smart marketing environment that reshapes how consumers experience, evaluate, and respond to digital promotions. Drawing on Stimulus–Organism–Response theory, this study tests a dual-pathway model in which perceived AI personalization depth and AR embodiment operate as stimuli, psychological ownership and creepiness as opposing organismic states, and purchase intention as the response, with AI literacy and algorithmic transparency as moderators. PLS-SEM on 357 Vietnamese beauty-category live-commerce consumers shows that both stimuli are positively associated with ownership, and ownership with purchase intention, whereas personalization is simultaneously associated with creepiness, which is associated with lower purchase intention. Both moderators weaken that association, and AI-host anthropomorphism is linearly, not curvilinearly, associated with creepiness. By theorizing AR–AI live commerce as a convergent smart marketing system rather than as separate AR or AI applications, the study contributes to promotion management by explaining how immersive personalization can simultaneously enhance promotional effectiveness through psychological ownership and constrain it through creepiness, unless governed by AI literacy and algorithmic transparency.