The Advent of the Voice Moment of Truth: The Case of Amazon’s Alexa

Abstract

Interactive Voice Assistants (IVAs), such as Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Assistant, are increasingly being integrated into consumers’ daily lives. Indeed, IVAs are unfolding new opportunities for retailers to capitalize on Internet of Things (IoT) technologies and generate incremental value. This is affecting the consumer purchasing cycle through the advent of what this study coins as the Voice Moment of Truth (VMOT). This paper introduces a conceptual framework discussing this new moment of truth, which is expected to alter shoppers’ behavior, as well as brands’ and retailers’ strategies. The VMOT is presented to be segmented into five key components: activation, conversation, perception formation, duration, and relationship formation. In addition, the introduction of the VMOT sets forth a new relation between shoppers, brands and online retailers that is crucial for its success. This new voice-based moment of truth introduces new challenges that are yet to be defined or analyzed by any pre-existing literature. The importance of defining the interaction between these IVA devices and users is key to understand the implications that these interactions will have on shoppers.