Why people (do not) use voice assistants for shopping

What is it about?

More and more people use voice assistants like Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant in their day-to-day life to ask for information, to control their smart home, or to play music. Whereas these activities are rather simple, voice assistants can also support more complex tasks such as shopping. Despite the popularity of voice assistants, voice commerce has not yet become a relevant alternative to other means of shopping. This study investigates why this is the case. In a nutshell, we find that the main benefits of voice commerce are convenience and fun. However, voice assistant users also doubt the reliability, miss transparency, and lack control of voice assistants when using them for shopping, which exacerbates a broader adoption of voice commerce.

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Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

Why is it important?

Voice assistants hold tremendous potential of becoming a new means of interaction between humans and computers . The hands- and eyes-free operation of voice assistants enables the use of computers in new contexts, for instance while driving a car, and facilitates communication for older and impaired people. To reap these benefits, however, we need to understand why and how poeple use voice assitstants. This study contributes to this goal by enhancing our knowledge of how important it is to explain users transparently what the voice assistant does.

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