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Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science

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Published in: Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 3/2023

24-09-2022 | Original Empirical Research

Examining post-purchase consumer responses to product automation

Authors: Leah Warfield Smith, Randall Lee Rose, Alex R. Zablah, Heath McCullough, Mohammad “Mike” Saljoughian

Published in: Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science | Issue 3/2023

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Abstract

Automation is increasingly being introduced into a variety of consumer products, ranging from vacuum cleaners to autonomous vehicles. While automation provides convenience and efficiency benefits consumers value, related evidence suggests it can also undermine post-purchase consumer product responses of importance to managers (e.g., brand loyalty). Using insights derived from Amazon customer reviews, a survey of product owners, a virtual reality lab, and two vignette experiments, we formally explore this possibility and find that automation is indeed a double-edged sword. That is, we uncover that automation has undesirable effects on post-purchase outcomes because it interferes with psychological ownership formation. We also find that, depending on consumer identity motives (e.g., task-related vs. technology-related) and product design affordances (e.g., a remote access feature), this effect can be strengthened, weakened, or even reversed. Our findings offer managers needed guidance on how to counter automation’s dark side through identity-based targeting and product design.
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Appendix
Available only for authorised users
Footnotes
1
The dictionary list included the following words: “me,” “mine,” “my,” “our,” “own,” “myself,” and “ownership.” While this list of words emphasizes cognitive aspects of psychological ownership, the pre-test suggests that our operationalization offers a valid approximation of or proxy for the construct. Importantly, our measurement approach is consistent with the notion that psychological ownership is partly reflected in cognitive consumer responses (Pierce et al., 2003).
 
2
Web Appendix B provides a full listing of the measures used in all our research studies.
 
3
We thank our anonymous reviewer for this suggestion.
 
4
Bias-corrected 95% CIs based on 5,000 bootstrap samples were used to estimate conditional, indirect and conditional indirect effects in this and all PROCESS models reported hereinafter.
 
5
To facilitate interpretation of the results, task-related identity was zero-centered at 1 standard deviation above its mean (i.e., at its “High” value) and technology-related identity was zero-centered at 1 standard deviation below its mean (i.e., at its “Low” value) prior to model estimation. This centering approach produced a main effect estimate for automation that is equivalent to its spotlight effect at “low” levels of technology-related identity and “high” values of task-related identity. Under this model specification, support for our theorizing is thus suggested by a negative main effect of automation (H1), a negative moderating effect of task-related identity (H4), and a positive moderating effect of technology-related identity (H5). We thank one of our anonymous reviewers for this suggestion.
 
6
Within this limited sample, we did not have adequate power to test the moderating effects of consumer identity motives. Therefore, task-related identity and technology-related identity motives were included as control variables to account for their potential influence on attitudes toward automated products (Leung et al., 2018; Uysal et al., 2022) and psychological ownership development (Jussila et al., 2015).
 
7
Alternative mediators evaluated include difficulty imagining the scenario, convenience, enjoyment, ease of use, effort, performance, and fear.
 
8
Our use of this control variable is consistent with our Study 2 findings which reveal that enjoyment has a positive effect on psychological ownership development.
 
9
Web Appendix G reports the simple slope effects derived from our probing of the interaction effects and used to generate Fig. 2. We underscore that, consistent with Hayes (2017) PROCESS model 2, the results depicted in Fig. 2 are based on the two-way interactions between automation and task-related and technology-related identity, rather than on the three-way interaction between all constructs.
 
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Metadata
Title
Examining post-purchase consumer responses to product automation
Authors
Leah Warfield Smith
Randall Lee Rose
Alex R. Zablah
Heath McCullough
Mohammad “Mike” Saljoughian
Publication date
24-09-2022
Publisher
Springer US
Published in
Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science / Issue 3/2023
Print ISSN: 0092-0703
Electronic ISSN: 1552-7824
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-022-00900-8

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