Why Another Customer Channel? Consumers’ Perceived Benefits and Costs of Voice Commerce

Abstract

Owing to rapidly increasing adoption rates of voice assistants (VAs), integrating voice commerce as a new customer channel is among the top objectives of businesses' current voice initiatives. However, customers are reluctant to use their VAs for shopping; a tendency not explained by extant literature. Therefore, this research aims to understand consumers' perceived benefits and costs when using voice commerce, based on a theoretical framework derived from prior literature and the theory of reasoned action. We evaluated and extended this framework by analyzing 30 semi-structured interviews with smart speaker users. According to our results voice commerce consumers perceive benefits in terms of efficiency, convenience, and enjoyment, and criticize the perceived costs of limited transparency, lack of trust, lack of control, and low technical maturity. The resulting model sheds light on the promoters and inhibitors of voice commerce and provides guidelines that enable practitioners to design and improve voice commerce applications.

Machinelike or Humanlike? A Literature Review of Anthropomorphism in AI-Enabled Technology

“…The second stream of research focuses on the effect of anthropomorphism on the intention to adopt AIET. For instance, Rzepka et al [25] analyzed the effect of anthropomorphism on the intention to use smart speakers for shopping from a cost-benefit perspective. Moussawi et al [12] explored how anthropomorphism influenced the perceived enjoyment and initial trust in smart speakers, which in turn affected the intention to adopt AIET.…”

“…The unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) [16,22,26], technology acceptance model (TAM) [12,42], artificially intelligent device use acceptance (AIDUA) model [3], and cognition-motivation-emotion framework [14] were used to understand the effects of anthropomorphism on technology adoption. The theory of reasoned action (TRA) was used to examine the relationship between anthropomorphism and people's AIET usage behaviors [25].…”

A Conceptual Model for Assistant Platforms

“…For example, the value created may be seen from the end user or the platform provider [13]. The research in [14] targets the interaction with the user and omits the value creation through interaction with other user groups and network effects within as well as between the user groups.…”

Match or Mismatch? How Matching Personality and Gender between Voice Assistants and Users Affects Trust in Voice Commerce

“…Despite these many advantages of voice commerce, it is reported that in the United States only 14.1% of those who use smart speaker-based VAs regularly employ them to make purchases [1]. This limited uptake of voice commerce can be attributed to several obstacles: Users experience low interaction quality, limited transparency [3,4], and an uncomfortable feeling when shopping via voice [5]. In addition, several studies have found that one of the most important barriers to the widespread use of voice commerce is a lack of trust [5,6], especially when it comes to trust in the competence and benevolence of VAs [3].…”

“…This limited uptake of voice commerce can be attributed to several obstacles: Users experience low interaction quality, limited transparency [3,4], and an uncomfortable feeling when shopping via voice [5]. In addition, several studies have found that one of the most important barriers to the widespread use of voice commerce is a lack of trust [5,6], especially when it comes to trust in the competence and benevolence of VAs [3]. Trust has also been recognized as one of the key success factors for adoption in studies on other information systems (IS) artifacts, particularly in the context of online shopping [7,8].…”