Adopting Voice Assistants in Online Shopping: Examining the Role of Social Presence, Performance Risk, and Machine Heuristic

Abstract

Although voice commerce using voice assistants (VA) in shopping is burgeoning, little is known about the effect of the manner of interaction with VAs in shopping. To fill this gap, this study applied the concept of message interactivity by investigating the key factors that influence intention to use VAs embedded in smart speakers for online shopping. Specifically, we analyzed consumers’ responses to the adoption of VAs with the mediating variable, such as social presence and performance risk as well as the moderating variable, machine heuristic using a lab experiment (N = 62). Our results showed that individuals who experienced contingent conversations with Alexa reported greater feelings of social presence, and less perceptions of performance risk. Moreover, these social presence and performance risk mediated the effect of message interactivity on perceived usefulness, which in turn, predicted the intention to use a VA for an online commerce platform. These results also suggested that voice commerce platforms can increase the positive impact of message interactivity by amplifying machine heuristic.