Branding innovation: brand voice and brand anthropomorphism in the name-brand voice assistants context

The growing consumer adoption of voice-activated artificial intelligence (AI) technologies is stimulating the rise of a new line of research in the field of marketing, aimed at analysing the academic implications related to interactions with voice assistants (VAs). The early studies carried out in this innovative experiential context have begun to focus on technology providers’ VAs (e.g., Alexa-Amazon, Cortana-Microsoft, Siri-Apple), highlighting the possibility to achieve relevant cognitive, attitudinal and behavioural outcomes (i.e., VA trust; VA attitude; VA engagement). Furthermore, the spread of so-called name-brand voice assistants (NBVAs) – voice assistants developed in-house by companies/brands (e.g., Google LLC, Mercedes-Benz), which speak with a specific voice and are activated by the user by pronouncing the brand name (e.g., "Hey, Google", “Hey, Mercedes!”) – can open interesting opportunities in terms of branding innovation. From a conceptual point of view, NBVAs could help achieve the brand's conquest of the “agent”' role, i.e., a human entity to which consumers can dialogue. Given the paucity of conceptual and empirical contributions on this topic, this dissertation intends to start filling this gap, focusing on the peculiar name-brand voice assistants context, first adopting the managerial perspective (essay 1 and essay 2) and then the consumer's point of view (essay 3). Following both qualitative and quantitative approaches, the results of the three studies reveal original branding implications, i.e., brand voice, brand experience, customer brand engagement, brand anthropomorphisation strategies and brand anthropomorphism. In light of the positioning of this dissertation that combines the nascent stream on VAs with the branding literature, the findings contribute to advancing knowledge in both fields while offering useful managerial implications.