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Voice command and voice search are becoming increasingly popular in the hospitality and tourism industry, with many hotels and travel companies investing in voice-enabled technology to improve guest experiences and streamline operations. This technology allows travellers to manage their travel plans, request services and get information through natural voice commands on any voice-enabled device. Voice assistants are also multilingual, allowing hotels to customise responses to guests who do not speak the local language. Angie, a multilingual, in-room voice assistant, is an example of this technology. It can fulfil guest requests, answer common questions about the property and create streamlined access to a wide range of hotel amenities, such as ordering room service or requesting extra towels. Hotels can control questions and responses to assist stretched staff and provide upsell and advertising revenue through digital promotions or recommended onsite amenities or discounts. In addition, voice command technology can be used to book travel and find things to do at a destination. Google Assistant can help with travel plans like booking a hotel, checking flight status and finding things to do at a destination. In conclusion, voice command and voice search technology are transforming the hospitality and tourism industry by improving guest experiences, reducing operational costs and increasing revenue.

The notion of luxury has changed due to the democratization and the fast adoption pace of intangible luxury service providers embedding voice-controlled assistants. In particular, Amazon’s Echo Look is expected to further democratize luxury services and consumer experience; indeed, this camera-based device acts as a personal consultant as it provides fashion advices based on the pictures of its users. Nonetheless, as the Echo Look proliferates the market, concerns around its potential disruption to the marketplace alongside usage-related issues, such as privacy, will arise. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The research adopted an exploratory approach using elite interviewing. The sample included 17 experts in the fields of digital marketing, fashion consulting, information technology security and retailing.

The study pioneers the discussion on how interactive voice-activated assistant (IVA) devices can potentially outweigh concerns around safety and privacy through providing luxury-like personalized services. To that end, the Echo Look device was taken as the key example based on the unique features and benefits it provides to its users, namely, in being perceived as a personal fashion consultant.

The literature on intangible luxury based on IVA devices is still nascent. This study fills a considerable gap in the literature related to retailers’ technological innovations aimed at democratizing luxury-like personalized experiences.

With the upgrade of natural language interaction technology, the simulation extension of intelligent voice assistants (IVAs) and the uncertainty of products and services have received more and more attention. However, most of the existing research focuses on investigating the application of theories to explain consumer behavior related to intention to use and adopt IVAs, while ignoring the impact of its privacy issues on consumer resistance. This article especially examines the negative impact of artificial intelligence-based IVAs’ privacy concerns on consumer resistance, and studies the mediating effect of perceived creepiness in the context of privacy cynicism and privacy paradox and the moderating effect of anthropomorphized roles of IVAs and perceived corporate social responsibility (CSR) of IVAs’ companies. The demographic variables are also included.

Based on the theory of human–computer interaction (HCI), this study addresses the consumer privacy concerns of IVAs, builds a model of the influence mechanism on consumer resistance, and then verifies the mediating effect of perceived creepiness and the moderating effect of anthropomorphized roles of IVAs and perceived CSR of IVAs companies. This research explores underlying mechanism with three experiments.

It turns out that consumers’ privacy concerns are related to their resistance to IVAs through perceived creepiness. The servant (vs. partner) anthropomorphized role of IVAs is likely to induce more privacy concerns and in turn higher resistance. At the same time, when the company’s CSR is perceived high, the impact of the concerns of IVAs’ privacy issues on consumer resistance will be weakened, and the intermediary mechanism of perceiving creepiness in HCI and anthropomorphism of new technology are further explained and verified. The differences between different age and gender are also revealed in the study.

The research conclusions have strategic reference significance for enterprises to build the design framework of IVAs and formulate the response strategy of IVAs’ privacy concerns. And it offers implications for researchers and closes the research gap of IVAs from the perspective of innovation resistance.

The influence of technology on marketing communications is rising in both applications and value created. Artificial intelligence (AI) and, as a result, smart speakers are benefiting both brands and customers at many levels. In particular, AI opens up the possibility to establish human-like dialogs with customers and to advertise brands in a new and engaging way. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to understand why and how consumers would accept receiving advertising (ad) via AI-enabled devices such as smart speakers.

A total of 326 individuals participated in a study that explored the factors influencing ad acceptance in smart devices. A partial least squares-structural equation model technique was used to validate the results.

The findings show that customer acceptance of ads via smart assistants is influenced by smart assistant usefulness and hedonic motivations. However, privacy risk moderates the relationship between smart speaker ease of use and smart speaker usefulness.

This paper explores the main drivers of ad acceptance via smart speakers and goes beyond the existing knowledge of smart speaker acceptance to further explore how this can become an important channel for brands to communicate.

La influencia de la tecnología en las comunicaciones de marketing está aumentando tanto en las aplicaciones desarrolladas como en el valor creado. La inteligencia artificial (IA) y, en consecuencia, los altavoces inteligentes están beneficiando tanto a las marcas como a los clientes a muchos niveles. En particular, la IA abre la posibilidad de establecer diálogos similares a los humanos con los clientes y de publicitar las marcas de una manera nueva y atractiva. Por lo tanto, es necesario entender por qué y cómo los consumidores aceptarían recibir publicidad (anuncios) a través de dispositivos con IA, como los altavoces inteligentes.

Un total de 326 personas participaron en un estudio que exploró los factores que influyen en la aceptación de la publicidad en los dispositivos inteligentes. Se utilizó una técnica PLS-SEM para validar los resultados.

Los resultados muestran que la aceptación de los anuncios a través de los asistentes inteligentes por parte de los clientes está influenciada por la utilidad del asistente inteligente y las motivaciones hedónicas. Sin embargo, el riesgo para la privacidad modera la relación entre la facilidad de uso del altavoz inteligente y su utilidad.

El artículo explora los principales impulsores de la aceptación de la publicidad a través de los altavoces inteligentes y va más allá del conocimiento existente sobre la aceptación de los altavoces inteligentes para explorar más a fondo cómo esto puede convertirse en un canal importante para que las marcas se comuniquen.

科技对营销传播的影响在应用和价值创造方面都在上升。人工智能（AI）以及智能音箱在很多层面都对品牌和客户有益。尤其是, 人工智能开辟了与客户建立类似人类对话的可能性, 并以一种新颖的、有吸引力的方式宣传品牌。因此, 了解消费者为什么以及如何接受通过人工智能设备（如智能音箱）接收广告（广告）是有必要的。

本研究的326名参与者探讨了影响智能设备中广告接受度的因素。PLS-SEM技术被采用以对结果进行验证。

研究结果显示, 客户通过智能助手接受广告会受智能助手有用性和享乐动机的影响。然而, 隐私风险调节了智能音箱的易用性和智能音箱的有用性之间的关系。

本文探讨了通过智能音箱接受广告的主要驱动因素, 并超越了现有的关于智能音箱接受度的知识, 进一步探讨了这如何能成为品牌沟通的重要渠道。

This study explores the role of smart voice assistants (SVAs) as purchase recommenders, a phenomenon the authors term “word of voice” (WOV) communication. By integrating human–computer interaction (HCI) literature and electronic word of mouth (eWOM) research, the authors examine what makes consumers trust in SVA-transmitted WOV communication following their initial interactions with their SVAs during a purchase process (i.e. post-trust); and the authors propose that consumers' perceptions of their SVAs' smart capabilities (i.e. cognitive, emotional and social) are critically important for building this trust. Moreover, the study explores the influence of post-trust on consumers' adherence to WOV communication, measured by three types of behavioural intentions.

Data from a survey of 202 United States (US)-based SVA users who employ them to obtain purchase recommendations were collected and analysed. They confirmed the validity of the measurement scales and provided input for the partial least squares modelling (PLS-SEM).

The results demonstrated that post-trust in WOV communication partially or totally mediates the effect of smart capabilities on consumer adherence to WOV communication; identified the key role of cognitive, emotional and social smart capabilities for building consumers' post-trust in WOV and demonstrated the influence of this trust on behavioural intentions.

The present study contributes by examining the employment of SVAs as recommenders during the purchase process; the authors term this type of communication WOV. It analyses consumers with experience of using SVAs in their purchase processes, revealing that post-trust in WOV communication is the psychological mechanism that explains how the smart capabilities of SVAs determine consumer adherence to the recommendations they receive.

The main objective of this chapter is broadening the understanding of anthropomorphic artificial intelligence (AI) (e.g. avatars, humanoid robots, chatbots) in both physical and digital environments. The chapter strives to demonstrate how organisations can curate relationship marketing and enhance customer experience by employing anthropomorphic AI. To achieve this, the chapter extends existing understanding in three ways. First, it explains the interconnectivity between relationship marketing and customer experience. Second, it presents anthropomorphic AI along with its different characteristics and technologies. Third, it offers some real-life uses cases and examples of such AI drawing from practical insights into five selected industries. Overall, the chapter provides some food of thoughts concerning the successful application and deployment of anthropomorphic AI in marketing practices.

Voice assistant technology represents one of the most radical artificial intelligence innovations. Drawing on the processing fluency theory and consumer learning literature, this study aims to explore how consumer acceptance of new products is influenced by voice assistant function (VAF), along with the impacts of role clarity and learning modality.

Four between-subjects experimental studies were conducted. Study 1 tested the main effect of VAF on consumer acceptance. Study 2 included role clarity as a mediator between VAF and consumer acceptance. Study 3 examined the moderation effect of learning modality and contrasted the effectiveness of experiential and verbal learning in helping increase consumer acceptance. Study 4, as a post hoc study, tested serial mediations to validate whether processing fluency was indeed the mechanism explaining the indirect relationship between VAF and consumer acceptance via role clarity.

The negative impact of VAF on consumer acceptance was demonstrated in all four studies. Studies 2 and 3 showed VAF decreased role clarity which further influenced consumer acceptance. Moreover, Study 3 evidenced that experiential learning was more effective than verbal learning in increasing consumer acceptance of voice-assisted products via role clarity. Study 4 demonstrated that VAF decreased role clarity, which in turn decreased processing fluency, leading to lower consumer acceptance.

This research views the usage of voice-assisted products as a coproduction process between consumers and the VAF. Accordingly, findings provide novel insights into processing fluency of tasks assisted by VAF through the lens of role clarity and learning modality, which enriches the understanding of potential barriers and opportunities for consumers to accept voice-assisted products.

The purpose of this paper is to review the advancements in new multi-technology sensor products being developed or already serving the market and to explore such applications. The paper also addresses some hacking problems which may arise.

This paper is a review of published information and papers on multi-technology sensor research as well as contact and discussions with multi-technology sensor researchers and suppliers in this field.

Microelectronics and electrochemical technologies have been major factors in the multi-sensor technology advancements of sensors for a wide range of applications. Sensors are becoming much smarter; solving application problems better than has been previously possible with single-technology sensors. Multi-technology sensors in many cases may offer better resolution and are much more sensitive than single technology sensors in the past.

Readers may be very excited to learn of the many advances in multi-technology sensors which are coming to the sensor field. Applications that were previously served with more than one sensor or were not possible before are now being served by multi-technology sensors. One such application which many readers may not be aware of but may be using is the wearable individual exercise sensor. One such device is the Apple Watch which will be reviewed in some detail later in this paper.

No previous review of multi-technology sensing has been observed.