From Amazon.com to Amazon.love: How Alexa is redefining companionship and interdependence for people with special needs

Abstract

The trend of incorporating assistive conversational agents into people's lives has followed the unprecedented expansion in the usage of artificial intelligence (AI). Amazon, in particular, has been a key trendsetter in this area through its Alexa‐powered devices. Alexa is an intelligent personal assistant (IPA) that performs tasks, such as playing music, providing news and information, and controlling smart home appliances. While this IPA is widely utilized, it is especially gaining attention and growing usage by people with special needs. Even though the importance of the utilization of AI by people with special needs has been widely acknowledged in the extant literature, a sizeable gap exists in the marketing literature in relation to the assessment of the managerial and societal implications of IPAs when used by people with special needs. Accordingly, this study aims to examine (a) the stages of relationship development between Alexa and consumers with special needs, and (b) the potential opportunity of this relationship for Amazon in relation to their corporate image. The findings indicate that a relationship between Alexa and consumers with special needs is established as it helps them regain their independence and freedom. This relationship provides an opportunity for Amazon in enhancing its overall image for providing solutions to facilitate the lives of people with special needs.

“Alexa, order me a pizza!”: The mediating role of psychological power in the consumer–voice assistant interaction

“…With a sharper focus on power than many recent studies, we contend that for experiential dimensions of VAs (Pitardi & Marriott, 2021; Whang & Im, 2021) to translate to purchasing behavior, they must be leveraged into asymmetrical power conditions. Consumer–VA interactions must favor the consumer, convenience, and low involvement, rather than symmetrical conditions that result in interdependence, companionship, and high involvement (Ramadan et al, 2021).…”

“…The VAs failure to deliver thus far is attributed to hiccups in the customer experience with the VAs themselves. As such, much research focuses on how to improve and create seamless and frictionless customer experiences with VAs be that through improving emotional connections (Chung et al, 2018), sensorial experiences (Mishra et al, 2020), engagement (Moriuchi, 2019), trust (Pitardi & Marriott, 2021), or companionship (Ramadan et al, 2021). This should come as no surprise considering the VAs unprecedented possibility to increase consumer convenience.…”

“…First, the findings of this study emphasize the functional elements of VAs that drive usage, particularly in the realm of voice‐commerce. While many recent studies document the social and relational roles of VAs in consumer experiences (Pitardi & Marriott, 2021; Ramadan et al, 2021; Whang & Im, 2021), the psychological mechanisms underpinning the functional usage of VAs remain under‐explored (Mari, 2019; Moriuchi, 2019). This is surprising given the impact such findings warrant for marketers aiming to increase sales through voice‐commerce.…”

Exploring Interactions Between Trust, Anthropomorphism, and Relationship Development in Voice Assistants

“…However, while parasocial relationships capture the nondevelopmental aspect of interactions with contemporary voice assistants, the term implies a level of perceived friendship that is often missing from the interactions reported by existing research. Recent works in this area have conceptualised voice assistants as friends [61,63], coaches [76], and companions [50,63], but suggest that these relationships take on a more fluid status between friend and machine that changes over time based on interaction outcomes [61]. No prior work has measured these intimacy labels in the context of interpersonal relationship development.…”

Anthropomorphized artificial intelligence, attachment, and consumer behavior

“…With the steady advancement of AI and its levels of intelligence, AI's emotional and social capabilities and competences and thus the degree of humanization are assumed to increase as well. AI applications including intelligent personal/digital assistants such as Siri or Alexa, chatbots, and service robots are already equipped with human morphology, names, and qualities such as human speech and interaction and emotional sensing capabilities (e.g., Huang & Rust, 2021;Ramadan et al, 2021;Wan & Chen, 2021).…”