The Effect of the User Experience Cycle on the Adoption of Smart Technologies for Innovative Consumers: The Case of Mass-fashion and Luxury Wearables: An Abstract

Abstract

Smart technologies, such as wearables, represent an attractive innovation that many companies still perceive as a way to build competitive advantage. This is exemplified by the recent launch of the Apple Watch Series 4 and the Gen 4 Smartwatch by Fossil, among others. However, due to the short product life cycle of such devices and weaker than anticipated consumer adoption, manufacturers find it even more important now to overcome those challenges and convince customers their products are useful and desirable. Traditionally, the way to encourage adoption of new products was to target innovators, those who are most likely to purchase and use novelty products (Rogers 1995; Im et al. 2003; Im et al. 2007). Innovators are crucial in encouraging adoption of new products, as they are not only more likely to purchase them but are also likely to wear those products, use them, and build interest about them (Agarwal and Prasad 1998). Consequently, to enable marketers to facilitate further diffusion of smart technologies, we need to understand the cognitive processes that underlie positive user experiences of this specific group, the experiences that are likely to guide their future decisions (i.e., use or purchase of another device in the future), and the way adoption is likely to diffuse beyond this segment. Addressing this research gap, we draw on the consumer behavior, IS, and wearables literatures to develop an innovative user experience cycle model, and propose how such a process affects use and upgrade intention (replacing a wearable after a year or two) for wearables. User experience is a type of product knowledge that consumers learn as a result of using a product for a given amount of time and is related to knowledge about that product (Raju et al. 1995). We propose that innovative user experiences are affected by individual innovativeness (using the example of technology and fashion innovativeness) and product type (using example of mass fashion or luxury). Then, considering those individual and product differences, we show how perceived ease of use and usefulness together with perceptions of hedonic value and social self-congruence affect both intention to use and replacement (upgrade) of a wearable.