Self‐efficacy and callousness in consumer judgments of AI‐enabled checkouts

Abstract

In a retail setting, two field studies and one controlled online experiment show that compared to self‐service checkouts, artificial intelligence (AI)‐enabled checkouts temporarily activate perceived shopping convenience. This leads to more favourable attitudes and higher purchase intent, but only for consumers who have higher levels of self‐efficacy (Studies 1 and 2). Furthermore, we find that this positive effect of AI‐enabled checkouts conditional on consumers' self‐efficacy, is diminished for consumers who show a low level of callousness (Study 3). This study introduces a novel variable to consumer literature, callousness, a subconstruct of psychopathy and features the unexplored tripartite “AI–physical–human” ecosystem, which adds a significant layer to the incipient AI literature and serves as a theeoretical framework for continued inquiries.

What makes products look premium? The impact of product convenience on premiumness perception

“…The popular historical example of Betty Crocker making their instant cakes “less convenient” to make them more appealing is one such example (Norton et al, 2012). Recent findings from van Esch et al (2021) also hint at the possibility of self‐efficacy as a moderator for our effect. These authors find that consumers prefer more convenient AI‐enables checkouts over less‐convenient self‐service ones, but only under high efficacy.…”

“…Following Farquhar and Rowley's (2009) suggestion, there has since been a steady stream of research on convenience. However, as summarized in Table 1, existing literature has examined convenience mainly in service sector contexts (e.g., Jebarajakirthy & Shankar, 2021; Roy et al, 2018) and shopping experiences (e.g., Reimers & Chao, 2014; Sohn et al, 2017; van Esch et al, 2021). Regarding tangible goods, research on convenience has been limited to technological products (Chau et al, 2019; Zhang et al, 2017).…”

Impact of self‐brand connection on willingness to pay premium: Relevant mediators and moderators

“…Consumer's motivations in the marketplace are multifaceted and are not solely based on their desire to achieve a specific outcome (Sarkar et al, 2020). Consumer cynicism (CC) is one such trait that would shape consumers' market responses (van Esch et al, 2021). Cynical behaviors characterize goal‐oriented consumers, who work hard to protect themselves from unsolicited marketing efforts and may engage in managerially undesirable behaviors (Chylinski & Chu, 2010).…”

Digital technologies and privacy: State of the art and research directions

“…These technologies allow customers to be automatically charged the price thanks to AI‐enabled object recognition software, which detects the products put by each customer in their shopping cart (Cui et al, 2021). Although providing a more frictionless experience to customers, these tools are not free from limitations in terms of potential loss of control over the shopping experience and personal data (van Esch et al, 2021). A recent study has built on the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology and the theory of mind (Moriuchi, 2021).…”

“…Another stream of literature has focused on checkout systems to provide seamless payment experiences to customers through self‐scanning devices (Inman & Nikolova, 2017), biometric fingerprints (Clodfelter, 2010), or facial recognition (Moriuchi, 2021; van Esch et al, 2021) identification. In‐store technologies have also been found to improve the experiential side of shopping through the application of Augmented Reality (van Esch et al, 2019) or smart mirrors (Pantano et al, 2017) or by providing an immersive shopping experience in a digitally rendered Virtual Reality store (Pizzi et al, 2019).…”