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Consumer and Object Experience in the Internet of Things: An Assemblage Theory Approach
Abstract
The consumer Internet of Things (IoT) has the potential to revolutionize consumer experience. Because consumers can actively interact with smart objects, the traditional, human-centric conceptualization of consumer experience as consumers’ internal subjective responses to branded objects may not be sufficient to conceptualize consumer experience in the IoT. Smart objects possess their own unique capacities and their own kinds of experiences in interaction with the consumer and each other. A conceptual framework based on assemblage theory and object-oriented ontology details how consumer experience and object experience emerge in the IoT. This conceptualization is anchored in the context of consumer-object assemblages, and defines consumer experience by its emergent properties, capacities, and agentic and communal roles expressed in interaction. Four specific consumer experience assemblages emerge: enabling experiences, comprising agentic self-extension and communal self-expansion, and constraining experiences, comprising agentic self-restriction and communal self-reduction. A parallel conceptualization of the construct of object experience argues that it can be accessed by consumers through object-oriented anthropomorphism, a nonhuman-centric approach to evaluating the expressive roles objects play in interaction. Directions for future research are derived, and consumer researchers are invited to join a dialogue about the important themes underlying our framework.
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“IoT may impose constraints and restrictions on consumer journeys (Hoffman and Novak 2018; Novak and Hoffman 2019).”
From A strategic framework for artificial intelligence in marketing (2021) · cites this paper as Hoffman and Novak 2018
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Metadata
- Authors
- Hoffman, D. L., & Novak, T. P.
- Affiliations
- George Washington University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Hoffman, Donna L
- Venue
- Journal of Consumer Research
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2017-10-06
- Volume
- 44
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 1178-1204
- ISSN
- 0093-5301 (ISSN-L)
- 1537-5277
- OpenAlex
- W3124255990
- Cited by
- 668
- References
- 124
- Citations by year
- 2026: 65 · 2025: 92 · 2024: 77 · 2023: 92 · 2022: 122 · 2021: 84 · 2020: 77 · 2019: 45 · 2018: 10 · 2017: 3
- FWCI
- 66.82
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Journal of Consumer Research (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Marketing › Consumer Behavior in Brand Consumption and Identification
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Human-Computer Interaction › Innovative Human-Technology Interaction
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Marketing › AI in Service Interactions
- Keywords
- Internet of Things, customer experience, assemblage theory, object-oriented ontology, smart objects
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