The Role of Smart Technologies in Decision Making Developing, Supporting and Training Smart Consumers

This comprehensive book examines the impact of smart technologies in consumer's behaviour from a contemporary perspective, blending marketing and retailing along with other disciplines such as psychology, media studies and sociology. Market forces and technological advancements are making the management of and strategies for innovation more prominent and essential in all functions of business, not least marketing and retailing. Frontiers of marketing are constantly pushed, requiring the development and adjustments of new theories. Prior literature on innovation in marketing has mainly focused on digital marketing strategies and consumer behaviour, while only recently introducing the notion of smart retailing in terms of smart experience and interaction. While these studies provide a basis for defining smart retailing and consumer behaviour in smart retail settings, the concept of smart consumers is still under-investigated. Thus, the smart consumer — consumers making extensive use of smart technologies in all steps of their shopping behaviour and experience of the store (both offline and online) — is emerging as a promising area for future marketing and retailing studies. The chapters in this edited volume seek to understand the effect of innovation in consumer behaviour by proposing original empirical and theoretical contributions, methods, models, tools and case studies that contribute to explain this emergent phenomenon. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Marketing Management.

Introduction: the role of smart technologies in decision making: developing, supporting and training smart consumers 1. Are households ready to engage with smart home technology? 2. Siri, Alexa, and other digital assistants: a study of customer satisfaction with artificial intelligence applications 3. The need for services and technologies in physical fast fashion stores: Generation Y’s opinion 4. Impact of privacy concerns on resistance to smart services: does the ‘Big Brother effect’ matter? 5. The rise of smart consumers: role of smart servicescape and smart consumer experience co-creation 6. In-store location-based marketing with beacons: from inflated expectations to smart use in retailing 7. Smart consumers come undone: breakdowns in the process of digital agencing Conclusion

Eleonora Pantano is Senior Lecturer in Marketing at University of Bristol, UK. Her research activities mainly relate to the development of new customer solutions and retail management strategies, with emphasis on the role of new technology, artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms. Francesca Serravalle is Assistant Professor in Business Management at University of Turin, Italy. Her research activities mainly relate to new technologies in retailing, with emphasis on augmented reality in an omnichannel retailing.