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Voice assistant technology represents one of the most radical artificial intelligence innovations. Drawing on the processing fluency theory and consumer learning literature, this study aims to explore how consumer acceptance of new products is influenced by voice assistant function (VAF), along with the impacts of role clarity and learning modality.

Four between-subjects experimental studies were conducted. Study 1 tested the main effect of VAF on consumer acceptance. Study 2 included role clarity as a mediator between VAF and consumer acceptance. Study 3 examined the moderation effect of learning modality and contrasted the effectiveness of experiential and verbal learning in helping increase consumer acceptance. Study 4, as a post hoc study, tested serial mediations to validate whether processing fluency was indeed the mechanism explaining the indirect relationship between VAF and consumer acceptance via role clarity.

The negative impact of VAF on consumer acceptance was demonstrated in all four studies. Studies 2 and 3 showed VAF decreased role clarity which further influenced consumer acceptance. Moreover, Study 3 evidenced that experiential learning was more effective than verbal learning in increasing consumer acceptance of voice-assisted products via role clarity. Study 4 demonstrated that VAF decreased role clarity, which in turn decreased processing fluency, leading to lower consumer acceptance.

This research views the usage of voice-assisted products as a coproduction process between consumers and the VAF. Accordingly, findings provide novel insights into processing fluency of tasks assisted by VAF through the lens of role clarity and learning modality, which enriches the understanding of potential barriers and opportunities for consumers to accept voice-assisted products.

Customers can participate in new product development (NPD) in many ways. Drawing on the knowledge-based view (KBV) and innovation literature, this study aims to contrast two main product development activity types, i.e. problem-solving and decision-making. It proposes customers play distinct roles if they get involved in these activities, which influence NPD outcomes differently. It also explores customer need specificity as a boundary condition for the above-mentioned relationships.

The authors collected survey data from 308 managers in the innovation domain.

Customer involvement in problem-solving and decision-making distinctively influences new product innovativeness and development speed. Customer need specificity interacts with the two co-development types differently to impact these NPD outcomes further.

This research extends the KBV and addresses the inconsistent findings in the literature regarding customer involvement as co-developers in innovation. It also provides novel insights into how knowledge characteristics like customer need specificity can direct co-developing activities to generate distinct NPD results.

This paper offers practical implications for firms on how to involve customers in developing innovative new products while managing development speed.

Prior research has yet to distinguish customer responsibilities related to co-development activities. This research fills this gap and offers novel insights that problem-solving and decision-making have opposite impacts on different NPD outcomes. This research demonstrates that finer knowledge about customer involvement responsibilities is needed for critical NPD outcomes.

Companies are increasingly leveraging digital technologies toward innovation strategies that deliver novel features to customers sequentially through successive new product generations (i.e., successive innovation). Extant literature examining successive innovation is both limited and fragmented across marketing and management literatures. Our goal is to synthesize literature on concepts related to successive innovation (such as versioning and upgrades) to identify the core dimensions of successive innovation and provide a cohesive framework to guide future research in this domain.

Given the equivocality in understanding the conceptual domain of successive innovation, we review and synthesize literature across three disciplinary domains: marketing, management, and information and decision sciences. Based on the emerging patterns from the literature review, we develop a conceptual framework of successive innovation with the aim of moving the discussion toward greater theoretical clarity.

Based on the literature review and synthesis, we identify three core-dimensions that define successive innovation and compare these across digital and physical product realms: coexistence, embeddedness, and adoption controllability.

Our proposed conceptual dimensions of successive innovation, and discussion of differences across physical and digital product domains, offer important directions for future research and a common vocabulary.

As physical and digital successive innovations can differ in coexistence, embeddedness, and adoption controllability, firms need to consider relevant barriers to adoption of successive product generations and select appropriate strategies to promote and communicate successive innovation. Our proposed successive innovation conceptual dimensions help managers comprehend the complexity of arranging such innovation in business and consumer segments.

Our contribution to the emerging literature on successive innovation is threefold. First, by conducting a comprehensive literature review, we integrate insights from different fields of inquiry (i.e., marketing, management, and information and decision sciences). Second, based on the synthesis of the literature, we offer a conceptual framework of successive innovation, which aims to move the discussion toward greater theoretical clarity. Third, based on our review and conceptual framework, we discuss a set of future research directions to guide academic research efforts.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a more thorough understanding of cognitive social capital (shared representations) building in a multicultural marketing context.

An ethnographic study with in-depth interviews and observations are used to explore how Chinese entrepreneurs utilize cultural metaphors to build their cognitive social capital in the USA. Both Chinese entrepreneurs and their American stakeholders (consumers and business associates) are interviewed.

The three themes from the findings are cultural conceptual blending, frame shifting with stereotype dilution and metaphor conversion. These form the sub-processes of an overall process the authors name “cross-cultural shifting.” The use of visual and verbal cultural metaphors by the Chinese entrepreneurs leads to conceptual blending, a process of blending of elements and relations from various scenarios in the mind. A frame shifting and stereotype dilution follows, culminating in the conversion of the cultural metaphors into the deep (universally recognized) metaphors of resource and connection.

Given that metaphors are one manifestations of culture and also effective for communicating universally, they play a role in cognitive social capital building in a multicultural context. This exposition calls for further research the utilization of cultural metaphors in international marketing.

The variability in communication and comprehension of business stakeholders from different cultures influence their cognitive social capital building (cooperative behavior to exchange resources). This makes it imperative for multicultural marketers to understand the use of cultural metaphors to enhance cognitive social capital in a multicultural context.

This exposition on cross-cultural frame shifting will result in improved knowledge of the role of cultural metaphors in enhancing multicultural understanding, shared representations and cognitive social capital in international marketing.

Anchored on the natural resource-based view and stakeholder theories, this study aims to investigate the mediating roles of sustainable supply chain management and green radical product innovation (GRPI) in the link between sustainable entrepreneurial orientation (SEO) and sustainability performance.

The comprehensive research model developed in this study is empirically tested by using data garnered from 248 managers of Ghanaian small and medium-sized enterprises. Partial least square structural equation modeling is applied as the methodological technique to test all the hypothesized relationships.

Results of the study indicate that SEO has a direct significant positive impact on environmental performance and social performance but not financial performance. However, through sustainable supply chain management and GRPI (both mediating variables), SEO tends to have significant impact on all sustainability performance dimensions (environmental, financial and social performance).

This study offers fresh empirical evidence by developing a unified research model that validates the specific mediation role of sustainable supply chain management between SEO and green radical product innovation, as well as the mediating roles of both sustainable supply chain management and GRPI between SEO and sustainability performance dimensions.