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INTEREST CATEGORY: INNOVATION AND TECH
POSTING TYPE: Calls: Journals

Posted by: Gabriele Pizzi

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Special Issue Call

The rise of new scenarios in psychology and marketing: the role of immersive and generative technologies

Technology gives companies the unprecedented opportunity to give their customers immersive shopping experiences where the brand-customer interaction can be almost fully automated thanks to generative AI solutions. This special issue focuses on these two distinct, though interrelated aspects of the customer experience: immersiveness and automation.

With regards to the former, augmented (AR), virtual (VR), and extended reality (XR) technologies enable the (re)construction of 3D digital environments by creating an immersive experience for the customer. Advancements in immersive technologies are enabling individuals to interact with other individuals using avatars (e.g., in the Metaverse), with users having complete and persistent ownership of their digital assets, which extends beyond the temporal boundaries of the fruition of the digital environment (Park & Kim, 2022). Despite these relevant peculiarities of such immersive technologies, there is still a paucity of studies addressing them, particularly in psychology and marketing. There is a paucity of literature on the psychological mechanisms of next-generation immersive experiences (Chen and Yao, 2022; Hilken et al., 2022). For instance, it might be worthwhile exploring the extent to consumers’ perceptions of brands and/or stores in the Metaverse diverge from the physical reality (Pizzi et al., 2019; Caboni and Hagberg, 2019; Pizzi, Vannucci and Aiello, 2020), how digital payment tools, such as NFTs, affect price perceptions in the Metaverse (Kumar, Nim, and Sharma, 2019), how the concept of ownership is reshaped and how it affects consumers’ behaviors (Sinclair and Tinson, 2017), how the interaction with avatars of digital assistants, both humans or bots, influences consumers’ decision-making (Pizzi, Scarpi, and Pantano, 2021), or consumers’ perceptions of privacy threats and disclosure intention (Martin, Borah, and Palmatier, 2017).

With regards to the latter, generative AI is a specific branch of Artificial Intelligence that can generate new content (spanning from text to images and music) thanks to the ability of the software to learn from prior training datasets and automatically originally replicate the knowledge (Susarla et al. 2023). Marketing has been addressed as one of the main functional areas of organizations benefitting from the adoption of generative AI (Davenport et al 2020; Kshetri et al. 2023), and prior research has well discussed the profound implication in the fields of retailing (Guha et al. 2021), services (Dwivedi et al. 2023a), hospitality and tourism (Dwivedi et al. 2023b) and ultimately also marketing research and education (Peres et al. 2023). Although many authors have consistently found consensus on the potential of generative AI in several marketing activities, such as building marketing campaigns, designing content, and providing chatbot assistance (Dwivedi et al. 2023a), research on these various application areas is still at its dawn. Few empirical studies have been published on consumers’ psychological reactions to the interaction with generative AI-generated content. For instance, consumers might display different levels of reliance on the suggestions they receive (Balakrishnan and Dwivedi, 2021) or different levels of dissatisfaction in case of failure depending on the customer’s locus of control (Dong et al., 2016).

Accordingly, this special issue aims to provide a comprehensive overview of consumers’ behaviors and their approach/response to immersive and/or generative technologies. Specifically, it aims to understand if immersive and generative technologies will soon constitute a new dimension where people will feel confident conducting their usual activities and how companies can exploit them to provide customers with utilitarian and experiential shopping value. This special issue aims to advance theoretical knowledge to interpret psychological perceptions and behaviors regarding immersive and generative technologies and anticipate their impact on psychology and marketing. Areas of interest for the special issue might include, but are not limited to, the following:

• How do individual perceptions and reactions differ between physical and virtual environments?
• Which psychological theories enable the explanation of individuals’ decisions to engage or not in virtual immersive environments?
• What are immersive technologies’ main challenges and opportunities in psychology and marketing?
• What are the ethical and moral issues related to immersive and/or generative technologies?
• What is the role of social presence in immersive environments?
• How do brand perceptions in immersive environments spill over to brand perceptions in the physical reality?
• How do consumers envision consumption and ownership of digital products and/or services in virtual environments?
• To what extent do consumers perceive privacy threats when relating with companies through immersive and/or generative technologies?
• Do generative technologies increase or reduce consumers’ trust in the advice they receive from digital assistants?
• What is the sense of control that individuals perceive concerning Generative AI content, and how does this shape their intentions and behaviors?
• How does Generative AI affect consumers’ search and digital shopping behavior?
• Does Generative AI impact consumers’ privacy concerns when engaging with a marketer?

Submission deadline:

March 31, 2024 (submissions will be open on December 31, 2023)

To submit a manuscript, author should follow the manuscript submission guidelines outlined in the . Be sure to select the correct special Issue and mention it in the letter to the editor.

Guest Editors:

Federica Caboni (University of Bologna) federica.caboni2@unibo.it
Shashi Matta (Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt)  shashi.matta@ku.de
Gabriele Pizzi (University of Bologna) gabriele.pizzi@unibo.it
David W. Stewart (Professor Emeritus, Loyola Marymount University) david.stewart@lmu.edu

References

Balakrishnan, J., & Dwivedi, Y. K. (2021). Role of cognitive absorption in building user trust and experience. Psychology & Marketing,��38(4), 643-668.

Caboni, F. & Hagberg, J. (2019), “Augmented reality in retailing: a review of features, applications and value”,��International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, Vol. 47 No. 11, pp. 1125-1140.

Chen, C., & Yao, M. Z. (2022). Strategic use of immersive media and narrative message in virtual marketing: Understanding the roles of telepresence and transportation. Psychology & Marketing,��39(3), 524-542.

Davenport, Tom, Abhijit Guha, Dhruv Grewal, and Timna Bressgott (2020), “How Artificial Intelligence Will Change the Future of Marketing,” Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science,��48, 24–42.

Dong, B., Sivakumar, K., Evans, K. R., & Zou, S. (2016). Recovering coproduced service failures: Antecedents, consequences, and moderators of locus of recovery. Journal of Service Research,��19(3), 291-306.

Dwivedi, Y. K., Kshetri, N., Hughes, L., Slade, E. L., Jeyaraj, A., Kar, A. K., … & Wright, R. (2023a). “So what if ChatGPT wrote it?” Multidisciplinary perspectives on opportunities, challenges and implications of generative conversational AI for research, practice and policy. International Journal of Information Management,��71, 102642.

Dwivedi, Y. K., Pandey, N., Currie, W., & Micu, A. (2023b). Leveraging ChatGPT and other generative artificial intelligence (AI)-based applications in the hospitality and tourism industry: practices, challenges and research agenda. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management

Guha, Abhijit, Dhruv Grewal, Praveen K. Kopalle, Michael Haenlein, Matthew J. Schneider, Hyunseok Jung, Rida Moustafa, Dinesh R. Hegde, and Gary Hawkins (2021), “How Artificial Intelligence Will Affect the Future of Retailing,” Journal of Retailing,��97 (1), 28–41.

Hilken, T., Keeling, D. I., Chylinski, M., de Ruyter, K., Golf Papez, M., Heller, J., … & Alimamy, S. (2022). Disrupting marketing realities: A research agenda for investigating the psychological mechanisms of next‐generation experiences with reality‐enhancing technologies. Psychology & Marketing. Earlycite.

Kshetri, N., Dwivedi, Y. K., Davenport, T. H., & Panteli, N. (2023). Generative artificial intelligence in marketing: Applications, opportunities, challenges, and research agenda. International Journal of Information Management, 102716.

Kumar, V., Nim, N., & Sharma, A. (2019). Driving growth of Mwallets in emerging markets: a retailer’s perspective. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science,��47(4), 747-769.

Martin, K. D., Borah, A., & Palmatier, R. W. (2017). Data privacy: Effects on customer and firm performance. Journal of Marketing,��81(1), 36-58.

Park, S. M., & Kim, Y. G. (2022). A Metaverse: taxonomy, components, applications, and open challenges. IEEE Access.

Peres, Renana, Martin Schreier, David Schweidel, and Alina Sorescu (2023), “On ChatGPT and Beyond: How Generative Artificial Intelligence May Affect Research, Teaching, and Practice,” International Journal of Research in Marketing, 40 (2), 269–75.

Pizzi, G., Scarpi, D., & Pantano, E. (2021). Artificial intelligence and the new forms of interaction: Who has the control when interacting with a chatbot?. Journal of Business Research,��129, 878-890.

Pizzi, G., Scarpi, D., Pichierri, M., & Vannucci, V. (2019). Virtual reality, real reactions?: Comparing consum’rs’ perceptions and shopping orientation across physical and virtual-reality retail stores. Computers in Human Behavior,��96, 1-12.

Pizzi, G., Vannucci, V., & Aiello, G. (2020). Branding in the time of virtual reality: Are virtual store brand perceptions real?. Journal of Business Research,��119, 502-510.

Sinclair, G., & Tinson, J. (2017). Psychological ownership and music streaming consumption. Journal of Business Research,��71, 1-9.

Susarla, A., Gopal, R., Thatcher, J. B., & Sarker, S. (2023). The Janus Effect of Generative AI: Charting the Path for Responsible Conduct of Scholarly Activities in Information Systems. Information Systems Research.

Biographies

Federica Caboni, is Junior Assistant Professor of Marketing at the Department of Management of the University of Bologna, Italy. Her research interests focused on digitalization and the role of new technologies in developing business strategy and consumer behaviour analysis. Her research has been published in international journals such as the International Journal of Retail and Distribution Management and in several book chapters edited by Emerald, Springer, and Palgrave. Since 2017 she has been a visiting researcher at the Centre for Retailing, School of Business, Economics and Law at the University of Gothenburg.

Shashi Matta is Professor of Innovation and Creativity at the WFI – Ingolstadt School of Management at the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, where he serves as the founding co-director of the KU Research Center for Business and Economics in Service of Humanity. His research interests include consumer inferences, stereotypes, identity, privacy, and well-being. His research has been published in marketing and psychology journals including Journal of Marketing, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Journal of Retailing, Psychology and Marketing, AMS Review, Personality and Individual Differences, and Emotion.

Gabriele Pizzi is Associate Professor of Marketing at the Department of Management of the University of Bologna, Italy. His research interests deal with assortment management, the impact of innovative technologies on the retailing activity and the longitudinal analysis of customer satisfaction. His research has been published in international journals such as the Journal of Retailing, Journal of Business Research, Psychology & Marketing, Journal of Service Research and Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Journal of Interactive Marketing and others. He served as a Guest Editor on the Special Issue on Psychology, Marketing, Digital Technologies and Privacy on Psychology & Marketing.

David W. Stewart is the Emeritus President’s Professor of Marketing and Business Law at Loyola Marymount University and a Professor Emeritus at University of California, Riverside.  He previously served as a tenured member of the faculty and in various administrative roles at Vanderbilt University, the University of Southern California and the University of California, Riverside.  He serves or has served on the editorial boards of twenty journals and regularly reviews manuscripts that have been submitted for publication in these journals. He is a past editor of the Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, the Journal of Marketing and, the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science. His research has examined consumers’ and managers’ search for and use of information in decision making, effective marketing communication, methods for the study of consumers and their behavior, and the effective design and implementation of marketing strategy and programs.

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