A Study to Assess Users’ Preferences for Intelligent Personal Assistance and Improve their Mass Adoption

Despite the dissemination and wide availability of Intelligent Personal Assistants (IPA), such systems have not reached the popularity expected. One reason for this is the users\u27 lack of trust in IPA and their providers. Another reason is the IPA\u27s limited performance and skill set, which in turn is due to the intentional segregation of IPAs in proprietary ecosystems. Enabling IPAs to communicate and exchange data with each other could help IPAs improve performance and thus their acceptance among users. Further, certifications and suitable marketing strategies can also contribute towards their mass adop-tion, by fostering user\u27s trust in IPA and their providers. To better understand the incentives necessary to instigate mass adoption of interoperable IPAs, this paper presents a survey which captures the po-tential users\u27 attitude towards interoperable IPAs and their attitude towards different marketing strate-gies which could increase users’ trust in IPAs. The ultimate purpose of this ongoing research is to develop design recommendations and an efficient incentive system that can foster the mass adoption of IPAs

Linguistic analysis of human-computer interaction

This article reviews recent literature investigating speech variation in production and comprehension during spoken language communication between humans and devices. Human speech patterns toward voice-AI presents a test to our scientific understanding about speech communication and language use. First, work exploring how human-AI interactions are similar to, or different from, human-human interactions in the realm of speech variation is reviewed. In particular, we focus on studies examining how users adapt their speech when resolving linguistic misunderstandings by computers and when accommodating their speech toward devices. Next, we consider work that investigates how top-down factors in the interaction can influence users’ linguistic interpretations of speech produced by technological agents and how the ways in which speech is generated (via text-to-speech synthesis, TTS) and recognized (using automatic speech recognition technology, ASR) has an effect on communication. Throughout this review, we aim to bridge both HCI frameworks and theoretical linguistic models accounting for variation in human speech. We also highlight findings in this growing area that can provide insight to the cognitive and social representations underlying linguistic communication more broadly. Additionally, we touch on the implications of this line of work for addressing major societal issues in speech technology

Structural changes in online retailing and the marketing mix: An analysis considering multichannel online retailing and voice dialog interfaces

The online retail environment is expanding, enhancing the possibilities for customers to shop online. On the one hand, a proliferation of online channels establishes a multichannel online retailing landscape, which offers customers more alternatives in terms of where to shop online. On the other hand, a change in the user interaction mode of existing customer touchpoints, from graphics to voice, creates new voice dialog interfaces, which enhance the way with regard to how customers can shop online. In this context, this publication-based dissertation aims to generate theoretical and practical contributions on these two most recent developments in online retailing, i.e., multichannel online retailing and voice dialog interfaces, to improve marketing mix decision-making

The impact of cultural differences towards product innovation in smartphone industry: a cross cultural study on consumers from Saudi Arabia and United Kingdom

Smartphone penetration is growing across the globe and people from all over the world are increasingly using this device. However, the average replacement cycle length of smartphone is increasing. The consumers are taking longer now to replace their smartphone. This presents the problem for the smartphone corporations to better understand the challenges currently present for consumers regarding adopting new smartphones and how the latest technology is perceived across cultures. Previous literature confirms the link of culture and uptake of technology. However, there are lack of technology acceptance models which takes culture into account and there is scarcity of frameworks which compares European and Middle Eastern culture in context of innovation. The purpose of our study is to explore the impact of culture within smartphone industry by developing a framework which compares adoption behaviour. This study aims to fill this gap by developing and testing a conceptual framework based on Technology Acceptance Model, Theory of Reasoned Action, Sheth Model and Hofstede’s Cultural Dimension Theory. Researcher attempts to validate the moderating effect of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions on behavioural intention to use new smartphone technology. This exploratory study uses interpretivist approach and gathers qualitative data by conducting 28 in depth semi-structured interviews to evaluate the psychological behaviour of the consumers in UK and Saudi Arabia aged 18-34. Our study concluded that both adoption and resistance towards innovation within smartphone usage are driven to a varying extent by Individualism, Uncertainty avoidance, and Power distance dimensions. The research also showed that smartphone users across both cultures believed that there has not been a meaningful innovation within smartphone industry in last 5 years. This study contributes by enlightening Policy makers, Smartphone corporations, and Software developers on factors relevant in adoption of latest smartphone features (Voice Assistants, Digital Payments). It also contributes to body of knowledge by confirming the impact and relevance of culture in technological industry. The study provides an in-depth analysis in the area which is underdeveloped theoretically and encourage future researchers to apply our model in different regions and industries