Consumer Adoption of Artificial Intelligence: The Role of Variety in Product Design

Abstract

Consumer products featuring AI technology, such as virtual personal assistants (e.g., Apple’s Siri or Microsoft’s Cortana), smart home devices (e.g., Google home), and automatic vehicles (e.g., Baidu’s self-driving car), are growing rapidly nowadays. Much research has been done on how the functions of AI-powered products may influence consumers’ adoption of them, but the impact of the physical appearance of these products is largely unexplored. This research investigates this overlooked factor. Specifically, we examine whether offering greater variety in the physical appearance of AI-powered products may affect consumers’ adoption tendency. We found that greater variety in product design can decrease consumers’ likelihood to adopt AI-powered products by reducing perceived functionality. This finding stands in contrast to prior research suggesting that greater variety can make consumers perceive that a brand has more expertise, and suggests that evaluation basis for AI-powered products differs from that for other general products. Our findings also offer important implications for marketing managers. (Keywords: Product Design, Variety, Adoption)