NEW YORK: US consumers regard voice technology and payment by fingerprint scanning as "cool" technologies that they are prepared to embrace, according to research, which also finds them resistant to "creepy" tech like face recognition and AI.
RichRelevance's Creepy or Cool report found that, in general, Europeans were more comfortable with new technologies than their American counterparts.
And, tellingly, Europeans were more willing to share customer data in exchange for a superior customer experience (81% vs. 63%).
Although a majority of Americans (63%) would allow retailers to collect more customer data to improve the customer experience, most said it should be collected anonymously (40%).
They really did not warm to something like facial recognition technology that could identify them as a loyal customer and relay preferences to a salesperson in-store (69% creepy vs. 18% cool).
And they were similarly divided (69% creepy vs. 15% cool) over the use of AI to analyse their shopping and order products on their behalf.
Retaining a degree of control appeared important, with the ability to search and order products verbally using voice recognition technology featuring among the cool tech (46% cool vs. 22% creepy).
Being able to use fingerprint scanning to pay for items and get automatic home delivery, all from the store floor, was also on the cool side of the scale (46% cool vs. 34% creepy).
Diane Kegley, CMO of RichRelevance, noted that shoppers in all markets were becoming more comfortable with technologies that personalize shopping on a one-to-one basis, but remained cautious of more invasive tech.
"One important thing to keep in mind is that creepy can simply mean that something is too relevant or hits too close to home," she added.
"Retailers should take note as this may indicate areas that will be valuable in the near future as consumers grow accustomed to new technologies."
RichRelevance's Creepy or Cool report found that, in general, Europeans were more comfortable with new technologies than their American counterparts.
And, tellingly, Europeans were more willing to share customer data in exchange for a superior customer experience (81% vs. 63%).
Although a majority of Americans (63%) would allow retailers to collect more customer data to improve the customer experience, most said it should be collected anonymously (40%).
They really did not warm to something like facial recognition technology that could identify them as a loyal customer and relay preferences to a salesperson in-store (69% creepy vs. 18% cool).
And they were similarly divided (69% creepy vs. 15% cool) over the use of AI to analyse their shopping and order products on their behalf.
Retaining a degree of control appeared important, with the ability to search and order products verbally using voice recognition technology featuring among the cool tech (46% cool vs. 22% creepy).
Being able to use fingerprint scanning to pay for items and get automatic home delivery, all from the store floor, was also on the cool side of the scale (46% cool vs. 34% creepy).
Diane Kegley, CMO of RichRelevance, noted that shoppers in all markets were becoming more comfortable with technologies that personalize shopping on a one-to-one basis, but remained cautious of more invasive tech.
"One important thing to keep in mind is that creepy can simply mean that something is too relevant or hits too close to home," she added.
"Retailers should take note as this may indicate areas that will be valuable in the near future as consumers grow accustomed to new technologies."
Data sourced from RichRelevance; additional content by WARC staff
