Special Issue: The role of smart technologies in decision making: developing, supporting and training smart consumers
Journal of Marketing Management, Volume 35, 2019 – Issue 15-16

Editorial

The role of smart technologies in decision making: developing, supporting and training smart consumers
Eleonora Pantano

Article

Are households ready to engage with smart home technology?
Rory Mulcahy, Kate Letheren, Ryan McAndrew, Charmaine Glavas & Rebekah Russell-Bennett
“This paper contributes new knowledge regarding consumers’ preparedness for smart home technology adoption. This research bridges together three important frameworks – the technology readiness index (TRI) 2.0, consumer engagement, and perceived risk and trust – to understand consumers’ intentions to adopt smart home technology. We examine both direct and indirect effects, with results demonstrating the model explains 77% variance of consumers’ imagined engagement with smart home technology and 74% variance of intentions to adopt; hence, our model has greater predictive power than others proposed in the literature. Theoretically and managerially, we demonstrate a new pathway to consumers’ adoption of smart home technology in two ways. First, we depict the impact of consumers’ general perceptions of technology (TRI) on opinions and imagined engagement experiences with smart home technology. Second, we show how opinions and imagined experiences with smart home technology impact their intentions to adopt …” Read more>

Siri, Alexa, and other digital assistants: a study of customer satisfaction with artificial intelligence applications
Thomas M. Brill, Laura Munoz & Richard J. Miller
“Digital assistants (e.g., Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, Google’s Google Assistant) are highly complex and advanced artificial intelligence (AI) based technologies. Individuals can use digital assistants to perform basic personal tasks as well as for more advanced capabilities. Yet, the functional and topical use of a digital assistant tends to vary by individual. This study reflects the contextual experiences of the respondents. At present, there is little empirical evidence of customer satisfaction with digital assistants. PLS-SEM was used to analyse 244 survey responses to examine this research gap. The results confirmed that expectations and confirmation of expectations have a positive and significant relationship on customer satisfaction with digital assistants. This study provides evidence that customer expectations are being satisfied through the digital assistant interaction experience. As firms integrate digital assistants into their operations, they must help customers properly define what to expect from the firm’s interactive experience …” Read more>

The need for services and technologies in physical fast fashion stores: Generation Y’s opinion
Alexandra Rese, Tobias Schlee & Daniel Baier
“This study answers the question of in which services and technologies should fast fashion retailers with physical stores invest. Fifteen improvement options were identified through a literature review, corporate practice and expert interviews. Then, a sample of 255 members of Generation Y evaluated and classified these options as attractive, indifferent, must-be, one-dimensional, or reverse according to Kano’s approach using the segmented Kano perspective. Results show that Generation Y generally values service improvements (e.g. with respect to salesperson friendliness and competence) higher than technology improvements. However, this evaluation differs among customer segments: whereas quality-conscious fast fashion shoppers are mainly indifferent to technology improvements, other customer segments rate ‘3D Bodyscan’, ‘Barcode App’, ‘Click&Collect’, ‘iDressroom’, ‘iTerminal’, ‘Loc Aware App’, or ‘Self-Checkout’ as highly attractive …” Read more>

Impact of privacy concerns on resistance to smart services: does the ‘Big Brother effect’ matter?
Zied Mani & Inès Chouk
“The aim of this study is to provide a better understanding of the factors that explain consumer resistance to smart services from a privacy perspective. To this end, an exploratory qualitative study and a quantitative study were carried out. 653 French consumers answered an online questionnaire regarding smart services in the banking sector. Structural equation modelling was used to test the conceptual model. The findings show that information privacy, the unauthorised secondary use of personal information and perceived intrusion have an impact on consumer resistance to smart services. Moreover, our research highlights the major role of the ‘Big Brother effect’ as an antecedent to these various privacy concerns …” Read more>

The rise of smart consumers: role of smart servicescape and smart consumer experience co-creation
Sanjit K. Roy, Gaganpreet Singh, Megan Hope, Bang Nguyen & Paul Harrigan
“Rapid technological advancements have led to the emergence of smart services and smart consumers. This study focuses on smart consumers who voluntarily engage in value creation activities, in order to conceptualise smart experience co-creation (SEC) and the smart servicescape. Drawing on the Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) framework, a model is proposed and tested around the impacts of smart servicescape dimensions (aesthetics, superior functionality, social presence, perceived interactivity and perceived personalisation) on smart consumer experience co-creation. SEC is conceptualised as a second-order construct consisting of cognitive, hedonic, social/personal, and pragmatic/economic first-order dimensions. Results show that the technological environmental cues of the smart servicescape (S) collectively influence smart experience co-creation (O), and this co-created experience eventually influences consumers’ service brand equity and word-of-mouth (WOM) intentions (R). A major novelty of this study lies in uncovering the relationship between experience co-creation and service brand equity. Findings have theoretical and managerial implications for smart services …” Read more>

In-store location-based marketing with beacons: from inflated expectations to smart use in retailing
Stephanie van de Sanden, Kim Willems & Malaika Brengman
“The announcement of beacon technology in 2013 created a wave of excitement among pioneering retailers and marketing leaders, allowing them to send location-based messages to customers in-store. However, until present, the technology has not yet established a strong foothold in retailing. The present paper adopts a multi-method approach with the objective to 1) detail its main challenges in the market and 2) enlighten scholars and practitioners on smart use cases for in-store location-based marketing. The findings of the multiple data sources (i.e. review of academic and practitioner literature, in-depth interviews with retail technology experts and focus groups with consumers) allowed the authors to infer valid conclusions, along with recommendations for future research and actionable managerial advice …” Read more>

Smart consumers come undone: breakdowns in the process of digital agencing [Openaccess]
Christian Fuentes
“While digitalisation is a widespread technological, social and economic process, shaping markets and consumers, not all efforts to produce digitalised smart consumers are successful. The aim of this paper is to explore and explain failures in the digital agencing of consumers. Making use of the market studies literature on consumer agencing, and drawing on an ethnographic study of ethical shopping apps, the paper explores how as well as under what conditions efforts to enact smart ethical shoppers fail. Results show that it is the immutability of apps that leads to breakdowns in the process of digital agencing. While these apps were scripted to configure consumers, they can seldom be configured by consumers. Because of this, the apps could not be adjusted to specific situations and consumer-assemblages …” Read more>

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