Consumer behaviour towards emerging smart technologies and its consequences for business environments

The investigation of consumer behaviour with regards to technology usage and adoption accounts for a longstanding field of marketing research. Traditionally, research took emphasis on understanding technology acceptance or beneficial points which lead consumers to the adoption of technology. In addition, the perspective to understand stronger ties between individuals and technology – and therefore a rather strict adoption behaviour – was found to be barely addressed in the literature. Pertaining this to the potential consequences arising for companies, it can be substantiated that increased bonds between consumers and technologies lead them to be eminently forced to integrate the specific technology into their own business environment – in order to retain or attract customers. This led to the identification of a research gap in terms of understanding the influence of negatively associated aspects in the consumer sphere – complemented by deficiencies in terms understanding whether informing about negative considerations from a company’s side leads consumers to change their behaviour towards the specific technology.
With respect to previously stated considerations, it was found that digital technologies are used as a means to substantiate decisions in terms of approaching a specific business environment. In this regard, it was derived that virtual assistants, accounting for an emerging and contemporarily used technology in the private sphere, are subject to guide or also control individuals’ choice of the distinctive venue to approach – probably causing companies, who are not integrating or maintaining these technologies, to forfeit customer potential. Therefore, the research aimed to understand reasons substantiating the adoption of virtual assistants from the professional and consumer perspective as well as to draw conclusions about the influence of negatively associated measures, complemented by approaching to deduce insights about the potential to inform individuals about them.

In terms of theoretical foundations, traditional as well as relatively new theories are discussed, namely: the rational choice and actor-network theory as well as the theory of planned behaviour and technology-acceptance theories, traditionally emphasising objective arguments for technology adoption. These theories were complemented by a multiplicity of factors, which can be related to theoretical underpinnings such as bounded rationality, consumer-driven demand for integrated solutions, information avoidance or paradoxical behaviour. These indications led to the consideration that ties between individuals and technologies are probably beyond the lines of rational assessments, culminating in hypothesising traditionally negatively associated measures to have no or a contradictory extent, considering that, for example, the empowerment towards technologies may lead individuals to feel vulnerable in case of not being able to use them.

In advance of conducting this research, casual insights from the perspective of professionals and non-professionals provided the foundation of investigations – respectively claiming to be forced to integrate digital solutions or indicating to adopt technologies like virtual assistants without further reflection. Under the consideration that the professional insights were given from the restaurant sector, this research was determined to be contextualised to this specific industrial field – complemented by aligning investigations with the United Kingdom.

In terms of the adopted methodology, it was determined to premise this research project on partial least squares structural equation modelling, the positivist paradigm as well as quantitative data inquiry through a self-administered online questionnaire. This means of data collection led to substantiate the data analysis on a cleaned sample of 259 responses. Subsequently, the model- bound analysis of generated data revealed that adoption intention accounts for a major facet of consumer behaviour towards virtual assistants, while switching intention, in contrast, was found be of negligible nature. In addition, it was deduced that traditional risk assessments have no major emphasis, complemented by the finding that active or conscious evaluations have no significant influence. This culminated in the confirmation of a rather strict adoption of virtual assistants, which can be reflected in leading to a dependency of professionals seeking the fulfilment of customer requirements. Besides this, the model analysis implicated that the idea to inform individuals about virtual assistants’ potential disbenefits cannot be advised for professionals. In contrast, personalisation attempts were found to open some potential for the mitigation of virtual assistants’ influences. In respect to theory, the research gave emphasis for understanding that the ties between individuals and virtual assistants are subject to lead to rather non-reflective behaviour. In addition, the potential of not being able to use the specific technology was found to create unwelcome emotional states – or being associated with missing potentially relevant information. This revealed a perspective which could be understood to be, at least in part, of a rather diametrical nature – in contrast to traditional approaches investigating the behaviour towards technology.