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This paper aims to categorize users of voice assistants and analyze decision-making conflicts to predict intention to adopt voice commerce (v-commerce).

This exploratory study used expert survey-based data collection founded on data saturation.

This study identifies three forms of voice systems based on senses aroused (screen first, voice only and voice first) and four profiles of voice users (passive resistant, hedonistic adopter, utilitarian adopter and active resistant), each with a different appraisal of the benefits and costs of v-commerce adoption and the experiences (positive or negative) felt during the shopping experience. This study proposes a conceptual model to predict intention to adopt v-commerce depending on voice-system and -user characteristics.

Learning from this study can help improve the marketing strategies and actions put in place by voice-assistant brands and advertisers by providing insights for adapting product recommendation algorithms to meet the needs of the identified profiles.

This paper provides an answer to the limits of classical approaches based on “one-size-fits-all” strategy by showing how voice-assistant users have different profiles that span a gradient of advance in technology adoption.

As voice search has progressively become a new way of information acquisition and human–computer interaction, this paper aims to explore the users' voice search behavior in human–vehicle interaction.

This study employed mixed research methods, including questionnaires and interviews. A total of 151 Amazon MTurk volunteers were recruited to complete a questionnaire based on their most recent and impressive voice search experience. After the questionnaire, this paper conducted an online interview with the participants.

This paper studied users' voice search behavior characteristics in the context of the human–vehicle interaction and analyzed the voice search content, search need, search motivation and user satisfaction. In addition, this paper studied the barriers and suggestions for voice search in human–vehicle interaction through a content analysis of the interviews.

This paper's analysis of users' barriers and suggestions has a specific reference value for optimizing the voice search interaction system and improving the service.

This study is exploratory research that seeks to identify users' voice search needs and tasks and investigate voice search satisfaction in human–vehicle interaction context.

Convivo is a VoIP system designed to provide reliable voice communication for poor quality networks, especially those found in rural areas of the developing world. Convivo introduces an original approach to maintain voice communication interaction in the presence of poor network performance: an Interface‐ Adaptation mechanism that adjusts the user interface to reduce the impact of high latency and low bandwidth networks. Interface modes facilitate turn taking for high latency connections, and help to sustain voice communication even with extremely low bandwidth or high error rates. An evaluation of the system, conducted in a rural community in the Dominican Republic, found that Interface‐Adaptation helped users to maintain voice communication interaction as network performance degrades. Transitions from full duplex to voice messaging were found particularly valuable. Initial results suggest that as users get more experience with the application they would like to manually control transitions based on feedback provided by the application and their own perceived voice quality.

Digital voice assistants use wake word engines (WWEs) to monitor surrounding audio for detection of the voice assistant's name. There are two failed conditions for a WWE, false negative and false positive. Wake word false positives threaten a loss of personal privacy because, upon activation, the digital assistant records audio to the voice cloud service for processing.

This observational study attempted to identify which Amazon Alexa wake word and Amazon Echo smart speaker resulted in the fewest number of human voice false positives. During an eight-week period, false-positive data were collected from four different Amazon Echo smart speakers located in a small apartment with three female roommates.

Results from this study suggest the number of human voice false positives are related to wake word selection and Amazon Echo hardware. Results from this observational study determined that the wake word Alexa resulted in the fewest number of false positives.

This study suggests Amazon Alexa users can better protect their privacy by selecting Alexa as their wake word and selecting smart speakers with the highest number of microphones in the far-field array with 360-degree geometry.

In code‐division multiple‐access (CDMA) systems, the number of mobile users that each cell can support is limited by the total received power or interference received at each base station (BS) and can vary with time. The total received power can be used as an indicator of traffic load in call admission control. In this paper, we propose a call admission control (CAC) scheme based on the total received power for CDMA systems supporting integrated voice/data services. Based on the current measure of the received power, we develop an algorithm to estimate the updated total received power due to a new incoming call. We analyze the optimal admission threshold for both power limited cells and interference limited cells. We model the system by a multi‐dimensional Markov chain and compute the system performance in terms of new call blocking probability, forced termination probability of voice calls, average transmission delay of data calls and outage probability. We compare our results with an existing degradation scheme.

The research aims to understand how smart speakers are perceived by their actual and potential users, their attitude towards smart speakers and consequently their intention to use them.

The authors apply a structural equation modelling (SEM) approach to test the research hypotheses through data coming from a structured questionnaire.

The results show that the higher the importance attributed to usefulness and ease of use, the higher the positive attitude that in turn positively affects the intention to use smart speakers. A significant relationship also emerged between task technology fit and attitude towards smart speakers, as well as between perceived enjoyment and attitude towards smart speakers. Perceived privacy risk, innovativeness and social attraction have been found to not significantly impact attitudes towards smart speakers.

Although several academic studies have focused on various aspects of smart technologies, only a few studies discuss the factors that push consumers to use smart speakers for activities related to commercial transactions. Therefore, looking at the rapid rise of smart speakers for daily tasks and the gradual acceptance of voice interaction with digital tools, the authors proposed a study about Italian users' intention to use smart speakers. Specifically, to fill the gap in the existing literature, the authors applied a SEM approach to identify utilitarian and hedonic benefits that motivate the use of these devices.

By adopting a managerial perspective, this study aims to deepen how the strategic role of brand voice is conceived in the design of in-car name-brand voice assistants (NBVAs), how the brand experience based on NBVAs is designed and how the NBVA brand experience might influence customer brand engagement (CBE). The ultimate aim is to develop an interpretative theoretical framework for developing voice-based branding through NBVAs.

A qualitative research approach with the analysis of a single in-depth case study is followed: the NBVA developed in-house by Mercedes, which was the first NBVA launched in the automotive market.

In the design of the NBVA, a key role was assigned to the brand voice in developing the brand’s anthropomorphic profile. Driving safety, consistency with the corporate identity, human-like interaction, dynamic personalisation and connectivity emerged as the strategic criteria for designing the NBVA brand experience, which was oriented towards the pursuit of multiple CBE dimensions.

Although the qualitative empirical contribution of this study differs from statistical generalisations, the research insights are analytically generalisable. The insights emerging from the study could guide future research on voice-based branding.

The results may be a useful conceptual reference for managers involved in designing brand voice and brand experience based on NBVAs.

This study is the first empirical contribution to the marketing literature about voice-based branding in an innovative experiential field, a topic that, thus, far has been poorly analysed.

This paper aims to show how the production of meaning is a matter of people interacting with technologies, throughout their appropriation and in co-performances. The researchers rely on the case of household-based voice assistants that endorse speaking as a primary mode of interaction with technologies. By analyzing the ethical significance of voice assistants as co-producers of moral meaning intervening in the material and socio-cultural space of the home, the paper invites their informed and critical use as a form of (re-)empowerment while acknowledging their productive role in human values.

This paper presents an empirically informed philosophical analysis. Using the conceptual frameworks of technological appropriation and human–technological performances, while drawing on the interviews with voice assistants’ users and literature studies, this paper unravels the meaning-making processes in relation to these technologies in the household use. It additionally draws on a Wittgensteinian perspective to attend to the productive role of language and link to wider cultural meanings.

By combining two approaches, appropriation and technoperformances, and analyzing the themes of privacy, power and knowledge, the paper shows how voice assistants help to shape a specific moral subject: embodied in space and made as it performatively responds to the device and makes sense of it together with others.

The researchers show how through making sense of technologies in appropriation and performatively responding to them, people can change and intervene in the power structures that technologies suggest.

This paper describes the development process of a mobile Voice User Interface (VUI) for Korean users with dysarthria with currently available speech recognition technology by conducting systematic user needs analysis and applying usability testing feedback to prototype system designs.

Four usability surveys are conducted for the development of the prototype system. According to the two surveys on user needs and user experiences with existing VUI systems at the stage of the prototype design, the target platforms, and target applications are determined. Furthermore, a set of basic words is selected by the prospective users, which enables the system to be not only custom designed for dysarthric speakers but also individualized for each user. Reflecting the requests relating to general usage of the VUI and the UI design preference of users through evaluation of the initial prototype, we develop the final prototype, which is an individualized voice keyboard for mobile devices based on an isolated word recognition engine with word prediction.

The results of this paper show that target user participation in system development is effective for improving usability and satisfaction of the system, as the system is developed considering various ideas and feedback obtained in each development stage from different prospective users.

We have developed an automatic speech recognition-based mobile VUI system not only custom designed for dysarthric speakers but also individualized for each user, focussing on the usability aspect through four usability surveys. This voice keyboard system has the potential to be an assistive and alternative input method for people with speech impairment, including mild to moderate dysarthria, and people with physical disabilities.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how healthcare-users’ engagement is perceived, how it occurs and how these perceptions differ between three European countries: England, Poland and Slovenia, using the concepts of voice, choice and coproduction.

This comparative, qualitative study is based on a review of legal documents, academic literature and semi-structured interviews conducted in October and November 2011. A research sample consisted of 21 interviewees representing various stakeholders including healthcare-users, doctors and managers. Primary and secondary data were analysed using theoretical thematic analysis. Emerging themes were identified from the interviews and related to the indicators describing healthcare-users’ involvement in the voice, choice and coproduction model.

Results of the comparative qualitative research suggest that the healthcare-users’ influence is strongly grounded in England where the healthcare system and professionals are prepared to include healthcare-users in the decision-making process. In Slovenia, cultural development of healthcare-users’ involvement seems to proceed the institutional development. In Poland, institutions are ready to involve healthcare-users in decision-making process although the cultural desirability of involving users among doctors and patients is lacking.

The notion of user involvement is increasingly gaining importance and research attention, yet there is still little known about the way cultural, political, historical differences between various European countries influence it. This paper explores this little known area using the original approach of user involvement (Dent et al., 2011) with input from various stakeholders including patients, healthcare representatives and academics.