The widespread use of voice-activated artificial intelligence technologies (voice assistants) has started to attract the attention of academic researchers in different strands of studies, like marketing and human-computer interaction. As user-voice assistant (VA) dialogues are based on dynamic learning and adaptation algorithms, which collect and process a huge volume of users' personal and behavioural data, marketing scholars are beginning to investigate users' perception of privacy risk related to interactions with VAs. Alongside these studies on negative perceptions, researchers also started to investigate users' positive perceptions, focusing mostly on three types of benefits, i.e., utilitarian, hedonic and symbolic. However, despite the growing interest in perceived risk and benefits in interactions with VAs, the partial theoretical and empirical perspectives adopted do not allow us to grasp a holistic view of users' positive and negative perceptions. In addition, little attention has been given to the context of the smartphone, which is the most used device to dialogue with VAs. Finally, despite VAs are rapidly entering the daily life of all generational groups of users, no scholar has proposed a study across generations with the aim of bringing out perceptual differences. Consequently, our research intends to adopt a multi-method exploratory approach with a three-fold aim: 1) to uncover the risk and benefits perceptions in interactions with VAs on smartphones across users' generations (i.e., Generation Z, Generation Y, Generation X and Baby Boomers); 2) to jointly explore the main dimensions of risk and benefits arising from interactions with VAs on smartphones across generations; and, 3) to identify clusters of users based on perceptual differences in terms of risk and benefits. In the light of these cognitive objectives, data will be collected initially through in-depth interviews and subsequently by administering questionnaires.
This research project will contribute in an original way to the advancement of knowledge, with interesting implications for management as well.
In particular, our study is part of the recent academic literature on users' perceptions in the VAs field (e.g., Cho, 2019; Moriuchi, 2019; McLean et al., 2021; Patrizi et al., 2021) and propose a holistic view of the main positive and negative perceptions arising from interactions with VAs on smartphones across users generations. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first attempt to: 1) investigate the risk perception related to data collection in VAs interactions on smartphones; 2) jointly analyse the two concepts of risk which are related to data collection and misuse practices; 3) jointly explore the main dimensions of risk and heterogeneous perceived benefits arising from interactions with VAs on smartphones; 4) propose a study across generations in VAs field (i.e., Generation Z, Generation Y, Generation X and Baby Boomers); and 5) identify groups of users based on perceptual differences in terms of risk and benefits.
Finally, in terms of managerial implications, the exploration conducted will be useful not only to VAs technology providers but also to companies/brands that intend to adopt this new technology. In particular, our results will show marketers which are the key elements of risk and benefits perceived by users of different generations, offering interesting insights both in terms of communication and interaction experience design. Moreover, our findings will be able to support the choice of the target segment and the proposal of a specific value offer.