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This paper aims to explore how customer involvement unfolds in the development of a smart product. Smart product development poses new challenges to firms. In particular, the buyers’ and users’ involvement has shown novel dynamics in smart product development. These peculiarities are linked with the specific characteristics of the digital technology embedded into the smart products. This study’s rationale is to analyse the frictions arising from potential divergent objectives between the focal firm and its customers when digital technologies are embedded in traditional products.

This study adopted an explorative and qualitative approach to investigate new emerging dynamics of customer involvement during technological development. A coffee machine producer is selected as a case study to uncover new insights and a novel perspective on the phenomenon of customer involvement in smart product development. Data analysis followed an abductive approach that allowed to identify the dimensions of friction emerging during the technological development process.

The case study analysis depicts that smart product development presents novel customer involvement dynamics. In particular, this study abductively identifies dimensions of friction emerging between the focal firm and buyers/users. Friction arises in the technological interface between the actors involved. These dimensions of friction address the complexities of developing technology in terms of smart products with customer involvement. This study suggests that embedding of technology into an existing product might change how customers are involved.

Even though customer involvement in product innovation has been extensively studied in management literature, this paper focused on a new type of innovation, smart products. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no previous studies have yet empirically explored customers’ involvement while embedding digital technologies into existing products to create smart products. In particular, this study sheds light on the dimensions of friction emerging between the focal firm and the actors of the business network. This study unfolds novel contributions to the Industrial Marketing and Purchasing literature on technological development.

New information technologies such as IoT and big data analytics have reshaped the development of smart green products. These products exhibit two important features that are not seen in traditional products: environmental friendliness and data network effect. Based on these unique features, the authors investigate a firm's optimal selling strategy of smart green products from both the profitability and environmental perspectives.

The authors establish stylized models to consider the optimality of three selling strategies: (1) traditional strategy – only offering traditional products, (2) green strategy – only offering smart green products, and (3) hybrid strategy – offering both traditional and smart green products.

The authors’ analysis shows that in the absence of data network effect, there will always be a conflict between profit maximization and environmental protection. However, a strategy that benefits both the firm and the environment exists when data network effect is present. Interestingly, hybrid and traditional strategies can be win-win strategies, but the green strategy cannot. Also surprisingly, the green strategy may harm the environment more as smart products become greener.

This study examines the economic and environmental implications of selling smart green products, and contributes to existing literature on sustainable operations and green product design by incorporating the impact of both consumer environmental awareness and data network effect. The authors’ findings shed light on how to coordinate the profitability and environmental impact of selling smart green products in the era of big data and IoT.

This study is a reference for manufacturers who are promoting their product-service system (PSS) development. Currently, improvements in both digital customization and sustainability for various smart PSS categories have been considered rarely. This paper addresses this research gap by developing relevant models.

The development trends of customization-oriented PSS are described in a literature review. An in-depth multiple-case study methodology is adopted, and seven manufacturing companies are sampled. The goal is to identify digital customization measures that can be employed on representative smart PSS models and to explore how these models can create sustainable value.

This study provides valuable insights by uncovering a synthesis framework for achieving customization of the product/use/result-oriented smart PSSs, and the relevant representative smart functions are summarized. This identifies how digital customization capabilities can improve sustainability, including direct economic value for customers as well as additional social benefits and environmental improvements during customization.

Currently, the influence of digitalization on customized offerings and the relevant impact on sustainability development have not been fully addressed to date. This study provides comprehensive information with a reference value for digital customization transformation among the three main types of smart PSS.

Consumers' perceptions of product intelligence affect their willingness to accept smart offerings. This paper explores how people perceive various smart products based on their smartness profiles, composed of five distinct smartness facets. Additionally, the study investigates how these perceptions of product intelligence impact consumers' evaluation of factors that either promote or impede the adoption of smart products. These factors are examined as potential mediators in the adoption process. This paper aims to determine if the value-based adoption model can be applied to a broad range of smart service systems.

Consumers assessed one of 28 smart products in a scenario-based quantitative study. Multilevel structural equation modeling (SEM) is used to test the conceptual model, taking the nested data structure into account.

The findings show that product smartness essentially enhances usage intention via adoption drivers (enjoyment and usefulness) and reduces usage intention via adoption barriers (intrusiveness). In particular, the ability to interact in a humanlike manner increases the benefits consumers perceive, which in turn increases consumer acceptance. Only the smartness characteristic of awareness impairs usage intention, mediated by the perceived benefits of enjoyment and usefulness.

In contrast to previous research, which usually focuses on single smart products, this work examines a variety of different products, which allows for better transferability of the results to other smart offerings. Furthermore, prior research has mainly focused on single facets of product smartness or researched smartness on an aggregated level. By considering the consumer perception of each smartness facet, the authors gain deeper insights into the perceptual differences regarding product smartness and how this affects technology adoption via conflicting key acceptance drivers and barriers.

This paper provides the strategic direction and coordination mechanism selection for the intelligent transformation of manufacturing enterprises.

A theoretical framework is developed through grounded theory and case analysis.

Collaboration value is the building block of the intelligent product ecosystem. The ecosystem is upgraded via a path of product coordination, platform coordination and network coordination.

This paper provides a framework for enterprises to build an intelligent product ecosystem.

The proposed intelligent product ecosystem framework is new to the literature and lays down a fruitful avenue for future research.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effects of brand and message framing on consumers’ evaluations and purchase intentions of smart health-care clothing. The study also examines the mediating effect of consumers’ evaluations on the effects of the brand and message framing on purchase intentions.

Through an experimental approach, a total of 240 US consumers’ evaluation of smart health-care clothing is compared according to the existence of a well-known brand (vs. none) and message framing (technology-focused vs. fashion-focused).

The results show that consumer evaluation of smart health-care clothing is higher when the product is from a well-known brand, where consumers’ fashion consciousness and health consciousness positively influence such an evaluation as covariates. Message framing, however, did not have an influence that revealed any significant difference between technology-focused and fashion-focused messages. The consumer’s evaluation of smart health-care clothing eventually increased their purchase intentions and mediated the effects of brand on purchase intentions.

Smart health-care clothing refers to clothing that measures, records and manages the user’s activity and health status through conductive fibers or sensors that are woven in the clothes. Despite its benefits, smart health-care clothing is still not widely adopted among consumers, except for a few successful examples. Closing this gap, the results of this study provide implications regarding whether and how brand and message framing maximize consumers’ evaluations toward smart health-care clothing, which the developers and marketers of such products can use to increase the product’s market penetration.

With the advancements of Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI) in recent years, smart objects (SOs) have been widely applied in the lives of consumers to fulfill a variety of functions. This research aims to explore the new interaction experience between consumers and a smart speaker that can create the effect of customer engagement by enhancing the gendered voice and product smartness.

This study conducted a 2 × 2 × 2 between-subject experiment to validate the research model and the hypotheses.

The results indicate that a high level of interaction experience between the users and smart speaker devices increases customer engagement. Smart speaker devices that present female voices have a high product smartness, whereas high levels of interaction experience are more effective in customer engagement. Furthermore, the results also show a moderate effect of gendered voice and product smartness between the interaction experience levels and customer engagement.

This study contributes to the assemblage theory and the interaction experience levels between users and smart speaker devices in IoT. Based on the results, suggestions on enhancing the smartness ability and application services of new smart speaker devices are proposed. The findings of this study can promote a more continuous interaction between users and smart speakers.

This study aims to examine the effects of perceived product–brand fit and brand type on consumer evaluations of wearable smart masks’ technological, aesthetic and social attributes and how these affect consumers’ attitudes and intentions to use.

Through an experimental approach, a total of 240 US consumers’ evaluations of smart masks are compared according to perceived product–brand fit (high vs low) and brand type (electronics vs fashion).

The results showed that high perceived product–brand fit increases consumers’ evaluations, while brand type did not significantly affect consumers’ evaluations. Among various attributes, social acceptability had the greatest influence on consumers’ attitude and intention to use. Perceived ease of use, however, positively influenced attitude but negatively influenced intention to use.

As consumers’ interest in smart health-care wearables increases and air pollution is a serious issue across countries, research on wearable smart masks is being facilitated. Smart masks refer to the digitalized, reusable wearable masks that provide protection and health-care functions. However, their market penetration is still limited. To close this gap between smart mask technology and the market, this study examines how perceived fit and brand type can be used to enhance consumer evaluations.

This paper analyzes the direct and indirect effects of the autonomy of smart home speakers on consumer experience, weighing its benefits and costs in the following areas: usefulness, interactivity, coolness, service failure severity and intrusiveness. Experience value is examined as an antecedent of repurchase intention.

Structural equation modeling is applied to data collected from 607 users of smart home speakers. Mediating effects are examined between autonomy and experience value.

Autonomy has no direct effect on experience value, since the positive effect is fully mediated by interactivity, intrusiveness, perceived usefulness and coolness. Failure severity has no mediating effect and has no influence on experience value. Usefulness, coolness and interactivity show positive mediating effects between autonomy and experience value, while intrusiveness has a negative mediating effect. The better the consumer's experience response, the greater the repurchase intention.

Companies should highlight the benefits (interactivity, usefulness and coolness) and attempt to reduce the costs (intrusiveness) associated with smart device autonomy. Firms can use these aspects to increase the rate of smart-device adoption.

This research contributes to the interactive research literature by empirically examining the mediating effect of interactivity and coolness. Additionally, this research offers evidence of the full mediation effect of usefulness, interactivity, coolness and intrusiveness. Finally, this research shows that failure severity is not always important and that it can be context specific.

The purpose of this paper is to identify strategic options and challenges that arise when an industrial firm moves from providing smart service toward providing a platform.

This conceptual study takes on a multidisciplinary research perspective that integrates concepts, theories and insights from service management and marketing, information systems and platform economics.

The paper outlines three platform types – smart data platform, smart product platform and matching platform – as strategic options for firms that wish to evolve from smart service providers to platform providers.

Investigating smart service platforms calls for launching interdisciplinary research initiatives. Promising research avenues are outlined to span boundaries that separate different research disciplines today.

Managing a successful transition from providing smart service toward providing a platform requires making significant investments in IT, platform-related capabilities and skills, as well as implement new approaches toward relationship management and brand-building.

The findings described in this paper are valuable to researchers in multiple disciplines seeking to develop and to justify theory related to platforms in industrial scenarios.