Patrick van Esch

Patrick van Esch is a High Senior Professor at Coastal Carolina University. His research sits at the intersection of marketing, artificial intelligence, and consumer behaviour, with a specific focus on the transformative impact of AI agents on business and society. His recent work explores the rise of agentic AI and AI-orchestrated organizations, the role of generative AI in salesperson creativity, and the emerging "delegate economy" where AI agents mediate consumer choices. He has also developed and validated scales for virtual social influencers and simulated responses in reality-enhancing technologies. His publications appear in leading journals such as *Business Horizons*, the *Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management*, and the *Australasian Marketing Journal*, and his research extends into branding, services marketing, and the ethical dimensions of synthetic scarcity and cultural appropriation.