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From Amazon.com to Amazon.love: How Alexa is redefining companionship and interdependence for people with special needs

Authors:
Zahy Ramadan at Lebanese American University
Zahy Ramadan
Maya Fouad Farah at Lebanese American University
Maya Fouad Farah
Lea El Essrawi
Lea El Essrawi
Lea El Essrawi
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Abstract and Figures

The trend of incorporating assistive conversational agents into people's lives has followed the unprecedented expansion in the usage of artificial intelligence (AI). Amazon, in particular, has been a key trendsetter in this area through its Alexa‐powered devices. Alexa is an intelligent personal assistant (IPA) that performs tasks, such as playing music, providing news and information, and controlling smart home appliances.While this IPA is widely utilized, it is especially gaining attention and growing usage by people with special needs. Even though the importance of the utilization of AI by people with special needs has been widely acknowledged in the extant literature, a sizeable gap exists in the marketing literature in relation to the assessment of the managerial and societal implications of IPAs when used by people with special needs. Accordingly, this study aims to examine (a) the stages of relationship development between Alexa and consumers with special needs, and (b) the potential opportunity of this relationship for Amazon in relation to their corporate image. The findings indicate that a relationship between Alexa and consumers with special needs is established as it helps them regain their independence and freedom. This relationship provides an opportunity for Amazon in enhancing its overall image for providing solutions to facilitate the lives of people with special needs.
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Received: 3 May 2020
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Revised: 29 October 2020
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Accepted: 12 December 2020
DOI: 10.1002/mar.21441
RESEARCH ARTICLE
From Amazon.com to Amazon.love: How Alexa is redefining
companionship and interdependence for people with
special needs
Zahy Ramadan |Maya F. Farah |Lea El Essrawi
Adnan Kassar School of Business, Marketing
Department, Lebanese American University,
Beirut, Lebanon
Correspondence
Zahy Ramadan, Adnan Kassar School of
Business, Marketing Department, Lebanese
American University, Beirut, PO Box:
13‐5053, Chouran, Beirut 1102 2801,
Lebanon.
Email: zahy.ramadan@lau.edu.lb
Abstract
The trend of incorporating assistive conversational agents into people's lives has followed
the unprecedented expansion in the usage of artificial intelligence (AI). Amazon, in par-
ticular, has been a key trendsetter in this area through its Alexa‐powered devices. Alexa
is an intelligent personal assistant (IPA) that performs tasks, such as playing music,
providing news and information, and controlling smart home appliances. While this IPA is
widely utilized, it is especially gaining attention and growing usage by people with special
needs. Even though the importance of the utilization of AI by people with special needs
has been widely acknowledged in the extant literature, a sizeable gap exists in the
marketing literature in relation to the assessment of the managerial and societal im-
plications of IPAs when used by people with special needs. Accordingly, this study aims to
examine (a) the stages of relationship development between Alexa and consumers with
special needs, and (b) the potential opportunity of this relationship for Amazon in relation
to their corporate image. The findings indicate that a relationship between Alexa and
consumers with special needs is established as it helps them regain their independence
and freedom. This relationship provides an opportunity for Amazon in enhancing its
overall image for providing solutions to facilitate the lives of people with special needs.
KEYWORDS
artificial intelligence, companion, feelings, people with disability, reliance
1|INTRODUCTION
In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) abilities have expanded to in-
clude solving problems that were previously believed to be only re-
solvable by human intervention and intelligence (Bentley et al., 2018).
Today, aside from providing weather forecasts, delivering news, and fa-
cilitating shopping, AI abilities have expanded to ease the lives of people
with various types of disabilities, including visual impairment, mobility
impairment, hearing aid, autism spectrum disorder, and other mental
illnesses (Pradhan et al., 2018). In fact, people with disabilities have been
amongst the first adopters of AI (Bigham & Carrington, 2018). With 15%
of the world's population being considered as people with special needs,
AI could cater to the needs of more than a billion people (World Bank,
2019). Furthermore, and to avoid the exclusion of any segment of the
population, companies are expected to make better use of the oppor-
tunities offered through today's technologies by making them even more
accessible to people with special needs (Where Women Work, 2019).
The trend of incorporating assistive conversational agents into
people's lives and homes have remarkably proliferated with the ex-
pansion of AI (Vtyurina et al., 2017). Amazon has been the tren-
dsetter in this area, whereby it developed a hands‐free smart
speaker that connects to the voice‐controlled intelligent personal
assistant (IPA) “Alexa”(Gordon, 2019; Smith, 2018). In 2018,
Amazon.com was ranked as the number 1 online retailer in the US in
terms of international net sales, with Walmart as number 2. In fact,
Amazon is the global industry leader in electronics and media with
Psychol Mark. 2021;38:596–609.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/mar596
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© 2020 Wiley Periodicals LLC
... To further fulfill people's needs for companionship in the modern digital society, AI companions exist in many personalized forms to help foster a sense of safety, support, and comfort across various digital landscapes [2,16,38,61,62,83,92]. Social VR platforms, however, do not at the moment provide users with any tools to create or interact with an AI companion of any kind. ...
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... Ki et al. (2020) introduced the term "quasi-friendship" to describe interactions between specific individuals and artificial intelligence voice assistants, where customers engage in intimate conversations, share thoughts, and seek emotional support from these assistants. Robots further offer utilitarian benefits to customers and partially fulfill their emotional needs (Ramadan et al., 2021). Therefore, mind perception is an essential tool for individuals to comprehend the behavior of AI-powered robots (Strachan et al., 2024). ...
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