Consumers and Artificial Intelligence: An Experiential Perspective

Puntoni, S, Reczek, R W, Giesler, M and Botti, S (2021) Consumers and Artificial Intelligence: An Experiential Perspective. Journal of Marketing, 85 (1). pp. 131-151. ISSN 0022-2429

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) helps companies offer important benefits to consumers, such as health monitoring with wearable devices, advice with recommender systems, peace of mind with smart household products, and convenience with voice-activated virtual assistants. However, while AI can be seen as a neutral tool to be evaluated on efficiency and accuracy, this approach does not consider the social and individual challenges that can occur when AI is deployed. This research aims to bridge these two perspectives: on one side, we acknowledge the value that embedding AI technology into products and services can provide to consumers; on the other side, we build on and integrate sociological and psychological scholarship to examine some of the costs consumers experience in their interactions with AI. In doing so, we identify four types of consumer experiences with AI: (1) data-capture, (2) classification, (3) delegation, and (4) social. This approach allows us to discuss policy and managerial avenues to address the ways in which consumers may fail to experience value in organizations’ investments into AI and to lay out an agenda for future research.