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As luxury goods are losing their importance for demonstrating status, wealth or power to others, individuals are searching for alternative status symbols. Recently, individuals have increasingly used conspicuous consumption and displays of experiences on social media to obtain affirmation. This study aims to analyze the effects of luxury and nonluxury experiences, as well as traditional luxury goods on status- and nonstatus-related dimensions.

After presenting the theoretical foundation, the authors conduct a study with 599 participants to compare status perceptions elicited by the conspicuous consumption of luxury goods, luxury experiences and nonluxury experiences. The authors investigate whether experiences that are visibly consumed on Instagram are replacing traditional luxury goods as the most important status symbols. Furthermore, the authors examine the effects of the content shown on nonstatus-related dimensions and analyze whether status perceptions differ between female and male social media communicators. Finally, the authors analyze how personal characteristics (self-esteem, self-actualization and materialism) influence the status perceptions of others on social media.

The results show that luxury goods are still the most important means of displaying status. However, especially for women, luxury experiences are also associated with a high level of social status. Thus, the results imply important gender differences in the perceptions of status- and nonstatus-related dimensions. Furthermore, the findings indicate that, in particular, the individual characteristics of self-actualization and materialism affect status perceptions depending on the posted content.

While the research has already considered some alternative forms of conspicuous consumption, little attention has been given to experiences as status symbols. However, with their growing importance as substitutes for luxury goods and the rise of social media, the desire to conspicuously consume experiences is increasing. The authors address this gap in the literature by focusing on the conspicuous display of luxury and nonluxury experiences on social media.

Voice-activated smart speakers such as Amazon Echo and Google Home were recently developed and are gaining popularity. Understanding and theorizing the underlying mechanisms that encourage or impede consumers to use smart speakers is fundamental for enhancing acceptance and future development of these new devices. Therefore, building on technology acceptance research, this study aims to develop and test an acceptance model for investigating consumers’ intention to use smart speakers.

First, antecedents that may significantly affect the usage intention of smart speakers were identified through an explorative approach by a netnographic analysis of customer reviews (N = 2,186) and Twitter data (N = 899). Afterward, these results and contemporary literature were used to develop and validate an acceptance model for smart speakers. Structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to test the proposed hypotheses on data collected from 293 participants of an online survey.

Besides perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness, the quality and diversity of a system, its enjoyment, consumer’s technology optimism and risk (surveillance anxiety and security/privacy risk) strongly affect the acceptance of smart speakers. Among these variables, enjoyment had the strongest effect on behavioral intention to use smart speakers.

This is the first study that incorporates netnography and SEM for investigating technology acceptance and applies it to the field of interactive smart devices.