Developing the AIDMCA Framework: An Integrated Model of AI-Enabled Competitive Advantage
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Abstract
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is now a key force in marketing and strategy but there is fragmentation among theoretical traditions for how investment in AI translates into lasting competitive advantage. Current research draws separately on resource view, dynamic capabilities perspective, Technology Organization Environment (TOE) framework, alignment between business and IT strategy and emerging literature on AI capabilities but no integrated model ties these lenses into a clear pathway for value creation. This conceptual paper introduces the AIDMCA framework, an integrated multi-layer model explaining how organizations convert data and AI resources into sustained competitive advantage. Five sequential layers are specified: foundation of data and technology, AI capability (sensing), organizational empowerment (seizing), strategic alignment (reconfiguring) and transformation of marketing capability culminating in competitive advantage expressed as differentiation, cost efficiency, intimacy with customers and sustained value. The AIDMCA framework integrates resource view to explain endowments and valuable, rare, inimitable embeddedness; dynamic capabilities to explain engine of sensing seizing reconfiguring that works in turbulent times; TOE framework to specify contextual moderators; Strategic Alignment Model to explain role of alignment; and AI capability view to define focal technological competence. This paper advances ten propositions that articulate relationships among different layers and highlight the mediating role of strategic alignment along with moderating effects of environmental dynamism, competitive intensity, regulatory climate and firm resources. Further, it offers operationalization schemes with indicative constructs and measures to guide future empirical testing. By synthesizing scattered literature into a single nomological structure, the AIDMCA framework provides a grounded theory and actionable account of competitive advantage enabled by AI and sets an agenda for empirical validation, longitudinal studies and cross industry application.
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