The Voice of Commerce: How AI Speakers Reshape Digital Content Consumption and Preference

Technologies based on artificial intelligence (AI) have revolutionized how individuals use various services by enabling verbal command over machines. Although such alternative forms of human-machine interaction have begun to insinuate themselves into our lives, limited efforts have been directed toward examining their economic effects. This study takes off from the current state of scholarship by examining the effects of AI speaker (e.g., Alexa) usage on consumers’ digital content consumption and preference behaviors. To this end, drawing on the dual processing system and self-control dilemma frameworks, this study analyzes a unique panel data set that comprises information on household patterns of digital content transaction, consumption, and AI usage. Our results indicate that the adoption of AI speakers is positively associated with increased digital content purchase but negatively related to the average rate of content completion. We also find a change in type of content purchased, with customers consuming a greater proportion of hedonic products. The findings on households’ AI usage patterns indicate that emotion-seeking interactions are more positively associated with purchase than information-seeking interactions. On the basis of our findings, we drew implications for the design of optimal voice commerce strategies and derive insights into effectively eliciting the economic value of the voice recognition market.