Speaking fast and slow: How speech rate of digital assistants affects likelihood to use

Abstract

The market for smart speakers, which come equipped with branded digital assistants like Amazon Alexa, is expected to reach $23 billion by 2025. To take advantage of this opportunity, brands are invested in attracting consumers to their digital assistant. While digital assistants can provide social value to consumers through their vocal interactions, little research guides firms in optimizing paralinguistic features to enhance consumer usage of these tools. Across three studies, we show that fast and slow speech rates can negatively impact likelihood to use a digital assistant, that interaction style (monological versus dialogical) moderates this effect, with participants seeing Alexa as being more of a partner, versus a servant when the interaction is dialogical and moderately to fast paced. This work makes a contribution at the intersection of what is known about this nascent technology and how consumers interact with it, leading to insight on how to optimize digital assistants for consumers.