“The Voice of Commerce: How AI Speakers Reshape Digital Content Consumption and Preference” by Mr. Yoonseock Son
Ph.D. Candidate in Management Engineering
College of Busines
Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)
Technologies based on artificial intelligence (AI) have revolutionized how individuals use various services by enabling verbal command over machines. Although such alternative forms of human-machine interaction have begun to insinuate themselves into our lives, limited efforts have been directed toward examining their economic effects. This study examines the effects of AI speaker (e.g., Alexa) usage on consumers’ digital content consumption and preference behaviors. To this end, drawing on the modality and human-computer interaction frameworks, this study analyzes a unique panel data set that comprises information on household patterns of digital content (e.g., VOD) transaction, consumption, and AI usage. Our results indicate that the adoption of AI speakers is positively associated with increased digital content purchase but negatively related to the average rate of content completion. We also find a change in type of content purchased, with customers consuming a greater proportion of hedonic products after adopting AI speakers. The findings on households’ AI usage patterns indicate that emotion-seeking interactions are more positively associated with purchase than information-seeking interactions. On the basis of our findings, we drew implications for the design of optimal voice commerce strategies and derive insights into effectively eliciting the economic value of the voice recognition market.