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This study proposes a framework that demonstrates how the perceived value of augmented reality (AR) shopping influences the formation of psychological ownership of product and technology. The mediating role of flow experience and the moderating role of perceived control are identified.

An online survey study recruiting 480 participants who experienced AR shopping was conducted to test the hypotheses.

Functional value is negatively related to psychological ownership of product and technology whereas emotional value shows opposite effects. Flow experience mediates the relationships between functional/emotional value and psychological ownership of product and technology. Perceived control moderates the relationship between emotional value and flow experience, as well as the relationship between functional/emotional value and psychological ownership of product and technology.

The findings suggest the importance of AR’s functional and emotional values in developing psychological ownership of product and technology. To mitigate the negative effect of functional value, AR designers should focus on creating emotionally engaging apps that induce a flow experience, thereby enhancing psychological ownership. Furthermore, AR apps should be designed to empower users with a sense of control in the AR experience.

This research contributes to the AR and psychological ownership literature. It introduces a model that can explain both the formation of psychological ownership of product and psychological ownership of technology, thereby expanding the current understanding. By adding perceived values as antecedents of psychological ownership, it enriches the psychological ownership literature. Moreover, it enhances the flow experience literature by demonstrating the role of flow experience in the formation of psychological ownership of product and technology.

This study combines the TAM and UGT frameworks to investigate how Vietnamese students' views of ChatGPT and intrinsic needs affect their intentions to use it for education (via variables including perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, novelty, information seeking and academic content creation). We will employ TAM theory (Davis, 1989) and UGT theory to elucidate university students' motivations for utilising ChatGPT in Vietnam. Simultaneously, we aim to address the limitation stemming from data uniformity. Our research will make a substantial contribution to the understanding of researchers regarding the use of ChatGPT and its varied consequences as it grows and develops.

This study was conducted at a private university in Vietnam with an estimated population of 15,000 students. One of Vietnam’s top private information technology institutions requires its students to use a variety of information and communication technologies (ICTs) on a regular basis to facilitate and enjoy their academic pursuits (Ngo, 2024; Nguyen). Students who are familiar with ChatGPT and have access to it for educational purposes are the ones that were chosen. This research is a quantitative study that utilises primary data through a survey method. Participants answered a questionnaire online through the Google Form platform sharing via social media platforms from October to December 2023. The questionnaire was divided into two sections: the first contained screening questions and demographic information and the second had five-point Likert-scale questions that measured the study’s components. Two screening questions are used to separate out the intended responders. (i.e. “I have heard the name ChatGPT” and “I know about ChatGPT”) were set to find whether the participants had any knowledge of ChatGPT. If participants were unaware of ChatGPT, their responses were not included in the study. A total of 283 responses were received. The participant’s demographic information is shown in Table 1. It is believed that a sample size of more than 200 provides adequate statistical power for data analysis in structural equation modelling. It is evident that the 283-sample size in this study is adequate to evaluate the research hypothesis and the fitting model. 42.9% of the 283 research samples were made up of men, while 57.1% were women. Business administration accounted for 40.1% of survey respondents, followed by information technology (25.2%) and English language (14.5%). The average ChatGPT usage time of respondents was 56 min in a single use. The study sample’s average age is 20–72 years old.

The present study contributes to the existing AI chatbot literature in the educational industry in several ways. First, this study addresses a gap in the literature by investigating the factors that influence students’ ITU ChatGPT for educational purposes in Vietnam. Using the extended model, we investigated factors influencing students’ intentions to use ChatGPT. It integrates three motive factors of the UGT (ACT, IS and N) with the core factors of TAM (PeoU and PU). The integrated framework’s findings indicate that in a Vietnamese educational setting, ChatGPT is a novel technology that should be considered in conjunction with PU and PEoU.

First, only Vietnamese students make up the research sample. To increase the relevance of the findings, it is advised that future research look at the study model in various geographic regions. Second, the present investigation’s constraints arise from the lack of clarity about the Chat GPT version utilised by the respondents, specifically whether it was the free or premium edition. Furthermore, the limited duration of the survey presents an obstacle to gathering thorough data. Due to their reliance on the particular features and functionalities of the Chat GPT version used, these restrictions may have an effect on the researcher’s objectivity. Furthermore, the limited survey time may curtail the coverage of the collected answers, particularly considering that our survey predominantly focuses on business administration students, thus limiting the diversity and richness of the gathered data. We recommend that future studies should conduct comparative research between different versions of GPT Chat, including free and paid variants that can provide valuable insights into potential differences in performance and results. Such analysis can provide a deeper understanding of the strengths and limitations of different GPT Chat versions. Third, because the study focused on behavioural intention, actual usage and post-usage behaviour may not be covered by the findings. To gain a deeper understanding of users' actual behaviour, we suggest doing research on their usage and post-usage behaviours.

The findings will assist service providers and legislators in determining critical variables and influencing students' incentives to use ChatGPT in educational settings that use constructivist teaching methods. As a result, the information will assist service providers in creating AI chatbots that are more user-friendly, visually appealing, efficient, safe and convenient for education. Governments, in conjunction with service providers, have the potential to significantly accelerate the adoption of AI-based chatbots by highlighting their ethical and sustainable use. The findings demonstrate that students' ITU towards ChatGPT is substantially impacted by PU and PEoU. It is recommended that service providers emphasize the advantages and ease of use of AI chatbots in order to draw new clients. Additionally, in order to promote ChatGPT or related technologies, marketers should concentrate on raising the technology’s perceived novelty value. This is because people are open to new technologies as long as they believe they are interesting and innovative.

ChatGPT is an advanced AI-powered chatbot that has the potential to advance and revolutionize the learning and teaching process. This study attempted to look at the elements that lead students to want to use ChatGPT from an academic standpoint by combining the UGT and TAM. For practitioners, academics and educators, the findings provide a solid knowledge of and encouragement for the sustainable use of such AI tools. Despite having important practical consequences, the study contains a number of limitations that indicate possible research gaps that should be filled by further investigation.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a pivotal technology in both marketing and daily life. Despite extensive research on the benefits of AI, its adverse effects on customers have received limited attention.

We employed meta-analysis to synthesise effect sizes from 45 studies encompassing 50 independent samples (N = 19,503) to illuminate the negative facets of AI's impact on customer responses.

Adverse effects of AI, including privacy concern, perceived risks, customer alienation, and uniqueness neglect, have a negative and significant effect on customers' cognitive (perceived benefit, trust), affective (attitude and satisfaction) and behavioural responses (purchase, loyalty, well-being). Additionally, moderators in AI (online versus offline), customer (age, male vs. female), product (hedonic vs. utilitarian, high vs. low involvement), and firm level (service vs. manufacturing) and national level (individualism, power distance, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, long-term orientation) moderate these relationships.

Our findings inform marketing managers about the drawbacks of utilising AI as part of their value proposition and provide recommendations on how to minimise these effects in different contexts. Additionally, policymakers need to consider the dark side of AI, especially among the vulnerable groups.

This paper is among the first research studies that synthesise previous research on the dark side of AI, providing a comprehensive view of its diminishing impact on customer responses.

Advances in autonomous technology have transformed customer experience. Most prior research has investigated the effect of augmented reality (AR) on purchase intention, yet few research has discussed the effect of semiautonomous AR in the context of service use. Semiautonomous AR recognizes content in the present reality, inserts and adjusts virtual content, supervises the users and enables them to feel in control of the virtual content overlaid in observed reality resulting in enriched user experience and thereby augmentation experience. This research demonstrates how perceived control of virtual content leads to higher perceived augmentation experiences among semiautonomous AR users than among non-AR users. In addition, this research examines the mediation effects of enriched user experience and perceived augmentation experience on user satisfaction and users’ willingness to continue using AR. Results also indicate that AR users perceive a higher augmentation experience than non-AR users. However, users’ willingness to continue using AR is not significantly different between AR and non-AR users.

This study derives six hypotheses and uses a preliminary study, a field study and a lab study to evaluate the hypotheses. A field study was conducted in a car dealership to test the hypotheses, and a lab experiment was conducted in a controlled setting to corroborate the results obtained in the field study and test the underlying causal effects.

Semiautonomous AR can constantly sense, plan and not necessarily always act over the virtual content to sustain the interaction with its users. Perceived control of virtual content enhances perceived augmentation experience, and its effect of perceived control of virtual content on perceived augmentation experience is higher among semiautonomous AR users than among non-AR users. Perceived control of virtual content is a key to enriched user experience, augmentation experience and thereby users’ attitude and behavior. In addition, results showed that enriched user experience mediates the effect of perceived control of virtual content on perceived augmentation. User satisfaction mediates the effect of perceived augmentation experience on users’ willingness to continue using AR. The theoretical and practical contributions are comprehensively discussed.

Some limitations of the studies are ascertained. First, a larger sample size might be required to achieve generalizability and a strong test of the applied theory. Second, new field studies can reflect customers’ real attitudes and behaviors so as to reveal realistic interactions between the device properties and the human will in solving actual problems. The user is interested in participating in the solution within the sensing-planning-acting process as depicted by this research. Third, new research to test AR’s capabilities in bounded and symbiotic conditions can illustrate the level of autonomy each type requires, providing additional insights into why supervised AR autonomy best reflects semiautonomous AR. The pioneering structural model offered in this study (perceived control of virtual content-perceived augmentation experience-users’ satisfaction-users’ willingness to continue using AR) should be tested with new samples in other industries, aside from including other variables that may enrich the model and increase its explanatory power. In addition, future research might use other AR devices such as smart glasses to explore the effects of AR on perceived control of virtual content, enriched user experience and perceived augmentation experience. Future studies can investigate the effect of auditory and visual augmentation on enriched user experience and perceived augmentation experience, and involve features of artificial intelligence (AI) to assist users in decision-making. Regarding context, this research showed that age and gender differences did not affect the results. Nonetheless, age and gender, and perhaps additional demographic characteristics, may concern future studies.

Some recommendations for technology developers are derived from this research. AR is revolutionizing service experience. As technologies are becoming autonomous, developers seek ways to design experiences to enhance consumers’ sense of control over their interaction with such systems. Companies cannot create customer experience (Becker and Jaakkola, 2020), yet they can leverage the level of autonomy in AR to sustain ongoing interaction with customers. It is vital to design an autonomous AR that focuses on users’ needs, desires and well-being (de Bellis and Johar, 2020) that drive novel experiences (Novak and Hoffman, 2019). This study recommends AR developers design autonomous features in AR that enable customers to interact with the virtual contents generated by AR and extend their own capabilities to perform a task and feel expanded. While designing a fully autonomous system may hinder users to feel in control of their choice (Schmitt, 2019), service companies can develop an AR system that sustains an interaction, involves the user in value co-creation and guides the user (Alimamy and Gnoth, 2022). AR can sustain an interaction with the users by continuously scanning the objects in the reality and providing sensory feedback such as product size recommendations (e.g. eyeglasses) that facilitate customers’ information processing (Poushneh, 2021b; Heller et al., 2019). To achieve this, developers may focus on technology qualities such as “image recognition,” a subset of AI. With image recognition, AR can effectively provide instruction as if the customer is in a real setting. The proper incorporation of image recognition in the design of AR while enabling users to interact with 3D virtual images sustains their interaction with AR and makes them feel in control of their interaction with AR. Service companies need to ensure users feel in control of their interaction and expand their capacities to engage in the service experience with AR to accomplish their desired tasks. AR’s capacities enable users to expand their abilities to fix their basic service problems without referring to or speaking to a service provider agent in a service context. Therefore, instead of taking their car back to the dealership, customers can use AR mobile applications or glasses provided by car manufacturers to learn and fix basic vehicle problems.

This research advances the marketing literature on how users feel in control of virtual content when they interact with a semiautonomous AR that subsequently influences enriched user experience, perceived augmentation experience, attitudes and behavior.

In recent years, there has been significant interest in adopting XR (extended reality) technologies such as VR (virtual reality) and AR (augmented reality), particularly in retail. However, extending activities through reality-mediation is still mostly believed to offer an inferior experience due to their shortcomings in usability, wearability, graphical fidelity, etc. This study aims to address the research gap by experimentally examining the acceptance of metaverse shopping.

This study conducts a 2 (VR: with vs. without) × 2 (AR: with vs. without) between-subjects laboratory experiment involving 157 participants in simulated daily shopping environments. This study builds a physical brick-and-mortar store at the campus and stocked it with approximately 600 products with accompanying product information and pricing. The XR devices and a 3D laser scanner were used in constructing the three XR shopping conditions.

Results indicate that XR can offer an experience comparable to, or even surpassing, traditional shopping in terms of its instrumental and hedonic aspects, regardless of a slightly reduced perception of usability. AR negatively affected perceived ease of use, while VR significantly increased perceived enjoyment. It is surprising that the lower perceived ease of use appeared to be disconnected from the attitude toward metaverse shopping.

This study provides important experimental evidence on the acceptance of XR shopping, and the finding that low perceived ease of use may not always be detrimental adds to the theory of technology adoption as a whole. Additionally, it provides an important reference point for future randomized controlled studies exploring the effects of technology on adoption.

The article investigates different types of strategies for managing user-generated content (UGC) and provides some insights into their implications.

A unique sample of Italian hotels with current and prospective customers in the digital environment is investigated. A taxonomy of user-provider interactions mediated by UGC is developed. A mixed approach was designed to meet the study aims. Firstly, an exploratory factor analysis was performed in order to illuminate different strategies of UGC and electronic word-of-mouth (E-WOM) management. Secondly, a cluster analysis was implemented in order to explain hoteliers' behavior toward users' contents.

The study results suggested the existence of three clusters, which reflected three different types of interactions between hotels and customers in the digital domain. Interestingly, most of Italian hotels were found to adopt a reductionist approach to UGC and E-WOM management, turning out to be ineffective to exploit them for the purpose of quality improvement and hospitality service excellence.

Hotels were found to be largely unaware of the importance of UGC and web-based communication with customers to improve their digital business strategy. Tailored management approaches are needed to realize the full potential of hotels' online content responsiveness for the purpose of value co-creation and service co-production.

This is one of the first studies investigating the strategic and management perspectives embraced by hotels to handle their interactions with customers in the digital arena.

This paper aims to examine the association between perceived firm risk and two reporting mechanisms: risk disclosure and earnings smoothing in the UK context.

This study juxtaposes three competing views, the “null”, the “divergence” and the “convergence” hypotheses, and empirically investigates whether risk disclosure and earnings smoothing affect firm perceived risk for a sample of large UK firms with rich and poor information environments. This study also uses the global financial crisis as an external shock on overall risk in the economy to investigate when and how managers use these two reporting mechanisms to shape the firm perceived risk.

This paper documents that risk disclosures have no significant effect on investors’ risk perceptions, consistent with risk disclosures containing boilerplate and generic statements about firm risk. This paper also finds that earnings smoothing reduces investors’ risk perceptions, reflecting investors’ interpretations about future firm performance. Additional tests reveal that earnings smoothing is not associated with perceived firm risk for firms with rich information environments and expanded risk disclosures. Furthermore, reporting smooth earnings decreases perceived firm risk following the global financial crisis. These findings are robust to alternative specifications and measures of earnings smoothing as well as post-filing perceived firm risk.

This study does not distinguish between the garbling role and the informational role of earnings smoothing. The risk disclosure measurement used in this study, developed based on UK annual reports, may limit the generalizability of findings to other countries.

The findings suggest that managers should revise their risk disclosure strategies to provide in-depth details on firm risk. Investors might require information and thorough assessment to evaluate investment risks when firms provide generic risk disclosures and smoothed earnings by consulting sources like financial intermediaries. Regulators should keep an eye on firms reporting boilerplate risk disclosures and on how smoothing earnings impacts the firm perceived risk following economic turmoil, to guide interventions that promote market stability.

The findings provide new insights into when and how managers use their financial reporting discretion to make firms appear less risky and, therefore, influence investors’ risk perceptions.

Compared to traditional (domestic) e-commerce consumers, cross-border electronic commerce (CBEC) consumers may face greater information asymmetry in the CBEC purchase process. Given this background, however, the literature has paid limited attention to the informational antecedents that influence consumers' perceptions of transaction costs and their CBEC purchase intentions. To fill this gap, this study integrates the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) and transaction cost theory (TCT) to develop a model for exploring how product (website informativeness, product diagnosticity and website interactivity as the central route) and external (country brand, website policy and vendor reputation as the peripheral route) informational antecedents affect consumers’ evaluations of transaction costs in terms of uncertainty and asset specificity and their CBEC purchase intentions.

This study employs a survey approach to validate the model with 766 Generation Z CBEC consumers based on judgment sampling. The partial least squares (PLS) technique is adopted for data analysis.

The results show that all the proposed central and peripheral informational antecedents reduce consumers’ perceptions of uncertainty and asset specificity, which in turn negatively influences their CBEC purchase intentions.

Through this investigation, this study increases our understanding of how product and external informational antecedents affect consumers’ evaluations of transaction costs, which subsequently determine their CBEC purchase decisions. This study offers theoretical contributions to existing CBEC research and has practical implications for CBEC organizations and managers.

People frequently experience a conflict between immediate pleasure and long-term health when consuming healthy food. This study investigates how anthropomorphizing healthy food influences consumers’ sense of pleasure and their subsequent food preferences.

Using different samples and food items, the authors conducted five online or laboratory studies to provide empirical support for the research hypothesis, rule out potential alternative explanations, and demonstrate boundary conditions.

By conducting five empirical studies involving self-reported and actual eating preferences, this study found that anthropomorphism increases consumer preference for and actual intake of healthy food. Such an anthropomorphism effect is driven by the increased positive affect evoked by anthropomorphism. However, this positive effect is suppressed for consumers who experience low trust in their affective feelings. Additionally, the effect is weakened when consumers readily attribute their affective feelings to a target-irrelevant source.

This study contributes to the literature on healthy consumption, anthropomorphism, and mood, revealing whether and how food anthropomorphism affects consumers. For marketers in the field of healthy food and relevant policymakers, anthropomorphic means can be employed, such as giving products human names, to enhance consumer preference for them. Moreover, anthropomorphizing can help alleviate consumers’ concerns about the relative lack of pleasurable taste in healthy foods and compensate for the lack of hedonic value that consumers may feel, thereby enhancing consumer welfare.

1. Anthropomorphism increases consumer preference for healthy food and actual intake of it.

2. The anthropomorphism effect is driven by the increased positive affect evoked by anthropomorphism, through which affective feelings offer evaluative and decisional informativeness for judgments and decision-making.

3. The positive effect of anthropomorphism is suppressed for consumers who experience low trust in their affective feelings.

4. The anthropomorphism effect is weakened when consumers readily attribute their affective feelings to a target-irrelevant source.

Anthropomorphism increases consumer preference for healthy food and actual intake of it.

The anthropomorphism effect is driven by the increased positive affect evoked by anthropomorphism, through which affective feelings offer evaluative and decisional informativeness for judgments and decision-making.

The positive effect of anthropomorphism is suppressed for consumers who experience low trust in their affective feelings.

The anthropomorphism effect is weakened when consumers readily attribute their affective feelings to a target-irrelevant source.

Studying the effect of social media advertising on consumer engagement, this study analyzes the impact of shared-experience versus personal message strategies, informational versus transformational creative appeals and low-involvement products versus high-involvement products. It aims to determine how best to combine ad elements to affect consumer engagement on different levels.

Using an online survey among 448 Facebook users, an experimental factorial design of 2 (message strategy conditions) X 2 (creative appeal conditions) X 2 (product types: TV vs. frozen pizza) was used. Each advertisement was evaluated on three facets of engagement: cognitive, psychological and behavioral.

Results indicate that informational appeal is preferable for all conditions. The effectiveness of message strategy differs by product type, and interactions between message and appeal are significant only for the high-involvement product. Additionally, it indicates that message strategy is most significant in affecting behavioral engagement and not necessarily cognitive or psychological engagement.

To develop effective Facebook ads, practitioners should use a personal/informational combination when working with high-involvement products and a shared-experience/informational combination when working with low-involvement products.

An original grid for integrating message strategy and creative appeal is constructed in this paper. Besides behavioral engagement, it also evaluates cognitive and psychological engagement. By comparing products with a high and low involvement level, it provides marketers with actionable recommendations to increase social media campaign effectiveness.