The Influence of Individual Consumer Characteristics on the Acceptance of Digital Assistants: A Grocery Shopping Examination

Abstract

The ever-faster development of the digital environment is also changing our daily lives. One of these changes is that people are increasingly adopting digital companions to support and optimize their daily activities. However, since users are fundamentally diverse and perceive and use digital assistants in a variety of ways, a detailed examination of the acceptance of these assistants is necessary. Based on the conceptual framework of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), this thesis answers the research question of how individual characteristics influence the acceptance of digital assistants. Previous research has already examined the effects of various characteristics on the acceptance of new technologies, but has been limited to a small number of attributes. Additionally, the influence of characteristics has not yet been studied in the context of digital assistants. By conducting exploratory research, this work investigates this aspect on a wide scale. First, an extensive literature review was carried out to identify relevant characteristics, which were then used to extend the TAM model. In addition, a video was created introducing the different features of a fictitious grocery shopping digital assistant, called 'Wink'. On this basis, a survey was then conducted with 120 respondents. It was found that none of the characteristics had a significant impact on the acceptance of the digital assistant; however, perceived usefulness proved and emerged as the strongest predictor. Further analysis subsequently showed that social influence and attitude towards digital assistants had a consistent significant indirect effect on the intention to adopt the grocery shopping digital assistant. This study contributes to the literature on future research on the technology acceptance model and provides managers with a guide to enhance the performance of such technologies and to understand in more detail the adoption and user behavior.