Christian Alexander Hildebrand

Voice-based interfaces provide new opportunities for firms to interact with consumers along the customer journey. The current work demonstrates across four studies that voice-based (as opposed to text-based) interfaces promote more flow-like user experiences, resulting in more positively-valenced service experiences, and ultimately more favorable behavioral firm outcomes (i.e., contract renewal, conversion rates, and consumer sentiment). Moreover, we also provide evidence for two important boundary conditions that reduce such flow-like user experiences in voice-based interfaces (i.e., semantic disfluency and the amount of conversational turns). The findings of this research highlight how fundamental theories of human communication can be harnessed to create more experiential service experiences with positive downstream consequences for consumers and firms. These findings have important practical implications for firms that aim at leveraging the potential of voice-based interfaces to improve consumers' service experiences and the theory-driven ''conversational design'' of voice-based interfaces.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of brand gender on brand equity across countries and cultures in various product domains. Design/methodology/approach – Consumers from ten countries on four continents rated 20 global brands, leading to a total of 16,934 cross-clustered observations. Linear mixed effect models examined a series of nested models, testing three novel brand gender effects with respect to the impact of androgynous brands on brand equity and the moderating role of consumers’ biological sex as well as individualistic and collectivistic cultures. Additional robustness tests provide support on form, metric, and scalar invariance of the measurements and the robustness of the observed effects across countries and cultures. Findings – The current research reveals that androgynous brands generate higher brand equity relative to exclusively masculine, exclusively feminine, and undifferentiated brands. The authors also show a brand gender congruence effect such that male consumers value masculine brands higher than females while female consumers value more feminine brands higher than males. Finally, highly masculine brands generate higher brand equity in more individualistic countries whereas highly feminine brands generate higher brand equity in more collectivistic countries. Originality/value – This is the first research examining and demonstrating the positive influence of androgynous brand gender perceptions on brand equity. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is also the first paper examining brand gender effects across countries and cultures.

This work examines the effects of conversational interfaces on consumers’ brand perceptions and purchase decisions. Evidence from four experiments shows that incorporating such interfaces into the shopping process promotes more intimate consumer-brand relationships and increases consumers’ inclination to choose high-priced premium offers compared to traditional interfaces.

This work examines the effects of conversational chatbot interfaces on consumers’ brand perceptions and purchase decisions. Evidence from four experiments shows that incorporating such interfaces into the shopping process promotes more intimate consumer-brand relationships and increases consumers’ inclination to choose more higher-priced premium offers compared to traditional interfaces.

Retailers and brands are just starting to utilize online social media to support their businesses. Simultaneously, public displays are becoming ubiquitous in public places, raising the question about how these two technologies could be used together to attract new and existing customers as well as strengthen the relationship toward a focal brand. Accordingly, in a field experiment we displayed brand- and product-related comments from the social network Facebook as pervasive advertising in small-space retail stores, known as kiosks. From interviews conducted with real customers during the experiment and the corresponding analysis of sales data we could conclude three findings. Showing social media comments resulted in (1) customers perceiving brands as more innovative and attractive, (2) a measurable, positive effect on sales on both the brand and the product in question and (3) customers wanting to see the comments of others, but not their own, creating a give-and-take paradox for using public displays to show social media comments.