How can autonomy improve consumer experience when interacting with smart products?

Purpose This paper analyzes the direct and indirect effects of the autonomy of smart home speakers on consumer experience, weighing its benefits and costs in the following areas: usefulness, interactivity, coolness, service failure severity and intrusiveness. Experience value is examined as an antecedent of repurchase intention. Design/methodology/approach Structural equation modeling is applied to data collected from 607 users of smart home speakers. Mediating effects are examined between autonomy and experience value. Findings Autonomy has no direct effect on experience value, since the positive effect is fully mediated by interactivity, intrusiveness, perceived usefulness and coolness. Failure severity has no mediating effect and has no influence on experience value. Usefulness, coolness and interactivity show positive mediating effects between autonomy and experience value, while intrusiveness has a negative mediating effect. The better the consumer's experience response, the greater the repurchase intention. Practical implications Companies should highlight the benefits (interactivity, usefulness and coolness) and attempt to reduce the costs (intrusiveness) associated with smart device autonomy. Firms can use these aspects to increase the rate of smart-device adoption. Originality/value This research contributes to the interactive research literature by empirically examining the mediating effect of interactivity and coolness. Additionally, this research offers evidence of the full mediation effect of usefulness, interactivity, coolness and intrusiveness. Finally, this research shows that failure severity is not always important and that it can be context specific.