Against the IoT: a multi-method examination of the barriers to the adoption of smart objects

Despite the Internet of Things (IoT) is expected to open up new business opportunities, consumers' adoption of smart objects is still limited. Extant literature has widely analyzed the barriers to consumers’ adoption of innovation in general and IoT services. Conversely, it investigated the barriers to smart object adoption limitedly. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate the specific barriers to consumers’ adoption of smart objects, and to identify the most relevant barriers across different consumer segments. This paper is based on a multimethod approach. In Study 1 (N = 132) we run a qualitative survey based on the critical incident technique while in Study 2 (N = 468) we present the results of cluster analysis based on an online survey. Our results reveal that despite price and value are perceived as relevant obstacles to adoption, privacy concern (collection) is the most important barrier in profiling consumers across clusters.