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ABSTRACT
With the rising popularity of the Internet of Things (IoT), increasingly more customers are enjoying personalised, autonomous, and optimised services provided by smart and connected objects. Drawing on the stereotype content model and brand attachment literature, we examine the effect of interaction style (e.g. friend-like and engineer-like communication) on consumers’ brand perception using two laboratory experiments. The results indicate that a friend-like interaction style (1) produces more positive brand warmth than the engineer-like style, (2) enhances brand competence as much as the engineer-like style does, and (3) has a positive effect on users’ brand attachment, which (4) is mediated by brand warmth and brand competence. Furthermore, (5) the style of smart interaction and brand positioning have interaction effects on brand warmth, brand competence, and ultimately brand attachment.
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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
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Notes on contributors
Jintao Wu
Jintao Wu is Associate Professor of Marketing, Sun Yat-Sen University, Guangzhou, China. His current research focuses on consumer creativity, consumer behavior, and waiting perceptions.
Junsong Chen
Junsong Chen is Associate Professor of Marketing, East China University of Science and Technology, Shanghai, China. His current research interests include consumer behavior, branding, and decision-making.
Wenyu Dou
Wenyu Dou is Professor of Marketing, City University of Hong Kong. His current research interests focus on e-commerce and advertising.