The Effect of Voice AI on Digital Commerce

This research examines the impact of voice-activated shopping assistants, such as Alibaba’s Tmall Genie, on consumer behavior in online shopping. Analyzing real-world purchase data using econometric models, this work finds that the average consumer’s weekly spending on Alibaba increased by 16.6% within the first four months after adopting voice AI. Additionally, we explore specific product features that moderate the effect of Genie adoption by examining the repeat purchase and product substitutability and familiarity, supporting a mechanism that involves reducing information acquisition costs. The positive effects of Genie adoption remain significant on repeat purchases in the long term, although they attenuate over time. Furthermore, our analyses reveal that on average, the voice channel has a positive spillover effect on spending on the PC channel but no significant effect on the mobile channel. The channel dynamics are contingent on specific shopping contexts. These results demonstrate that voice AI devices with shopping capabilities can enhance the growth of the affiliated e-commerce platform. As the first study to empirically examine the impact of voice AI adoption on e-commerce consumption, our paper provides valuable implications for e-commerce platforms and retailers leveraging voice-activated shopping.