- Washington DC, United States
Thomas P Novak
The George Washington University, Marketing, Faculty Member
- Internet of Things (IoT), Assemblage Theory - Manuel De Landa, Topological Data Analysis, Social Media, Anthropomorphism, Emergence, and 10 moreSmart Home, Human Computer Interaction, User Experience (UX), Consumer experience, Online Marketing, Digital Marketing, Internet Marketing, Online Consumer Behavior, Smart Home Technology, and Smart Homesedit
- Denit Trust Distinguished Scholar and Professor of Marketing
Co-Director, Center for the Connected Consumer
http://postsocial.gwu.eduedit
Customer acquisition is one of the biggest chailenges facing on-line companies today. Success requires a fresh approach to managing the marketing mix.
Research Interests:
For smart home adoption to expand beyond the niche segments of technologically sophisticated upscale consumers and technology-focused DIYers, marketers must do a better job of understanding the inherent value the smart home offers.... more
For smart home adoption to expand beyond the niche segments of technologically sophisticated upscale consumers and technology-focused DIYers, marketers must do a better job of understanding the inherent value the smart home offers. Current marketing approaches are fragmented and focus on individual devices and single use cases. Most companies are wondering which combination of entry points - appliance and home entertainment control, energy management, pet monitoring, property protection, safety and security - make the most sense. But, the mass market is not buying a platform or devices controlled by an algorithm, they are buying an experience. The key to smart home marketing is to view the smart home as a complex dynamic system, an assemblage with new capacities from ongoing interactions among devices and consumers, from which new experiences emerge. Marketers must focus on communicating the value proposition inherent in experience; current approaches may actually be underselling the smart home. We discuss the value of our framework and offer eight actionable insights derived from our research that can guide marketer action in the early stages of adoption and usage of consumer Internet of Things devices that comprise the smart home.
Research Interests:
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... more
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 point of view and their own experience in interactions with the consumer and with each other. We develop a conceptual framework based on assemblage theory and object-oriented ontology that details how consumer experience and object experience emerge in the IoT emerge. We anchor our conceptualization in the context of smart home assemblages and introduce the idea that consumer experience, through its emergent properties and capacities, has two broad facets: extension experience and expansion experience. We develop a parallel conceptualization of the construct of object experience, arguing that it can be perceived by consumers through the mechanism of anthropomorphism. Interaction of consumer and object experiences lead to the emergence of relationship styles defined by combinations of agentic and communal orientations that consumers and objects express during interaction. Our framework extends considerations of consumer behavior to objects and has implications for studying emergence from interaction in the face of dynamic change.
Research Interests:
Since the commercialization of the Internet began over twenty years ago, we have been fascinated with the opportunities that computer-mediated environments present for human interaction. As a result, we have spent the last few decades... more
Since the commercialization of the Internet began over twenty years ago, we have been fascinated with the opportunities that computer-mediated environments present for human interaction. As a result, we have spent the last few decades researching the marketing and consumer behavior impact of consumers’ interactions in digital environments.
Now, as the consumer Internet of Things emerges, we find ourselves with renewed excitement as we consider the opportunities for consumer interaction in physical environments with objects that have brought the Internet with them into the real world. Just as the Internet was revolutionary because it enabled many-to-many communication through connected digital networks at unprecedented scale, the IoT is a revolutionary advance that brings the digital into the physical realm. Now, interaction is distributed not just virtually “on the Internet,” but also everywhere in the real world where people actually live, work and play.
What awaits us as we are able to interact with smart objects in our everyday lives, and these objects are able to interact with each other, often autonomously? What are the implications for human interaction and for consumer experience? Will new marketing approaches be required? In the course of thinking about these kinds of questions over the past few years, we realized we needed a new framework to help our thinking jell. We found that framework in assemblage theory. The smart home assemblage serves as the context for our theorizing, but we believe our approach generalizes to any consumer IoT assemblage.
In the monograph linked above, we present an assemblage-theory based conceptual framework and its implications for consumer experience in the smart home. In 8 sections, we discuss the evolution of the Internet and the emergence of the consumer IoT, offer a lay version of assemblage theory, develop our framework and discuss the implications of our framework for research in UX, consumer experience, and marketing strategy. The last two sections offer some early practical insights derived from our theory and some perspective on where things might be going.
Because the pace of change is rapid, we wanted to put this material on the Web as early as possible for comment and feedback. The monograph remains a work in progress. We are developing several papers based on these ideas for submission to academic journals and look forward to hearing from others working in this compelling new area.
Donna Hoffman & Tom Novak
Washington, DC
V1.0, August 20, 2015
Now, as the consumer Internet of Things emerges, we find ourselves with renewed excitement as we consider the opportunities for consumer interaction in physical environments with objects that have brought the Internet with them into the real world. Just as the Internet was revolutionary because it enabled many-to-many communication through connected digital networks at unprecedented scale, the IoT is a revolutionary advance that brings the digital into the physical realm. Now, interaction is distributed not just virtually “on the Internet,” but also everywhere in the real world where people actually live, work and play.
What awaits us as we are able to interact with smart objects in our everyday lives, and these objects are able to interact with each other, often autonomously? What are the implications for human interaction and for consumer experience? Will new marketing approaches be required? In the course of thinking about these kinds of questions over the past few years, we realized we needed a new framework to help our thinking jell. We found that framework in assemblage theory. The smart home assemblage serves as the context for our theorizing, but we believe our approach generalizes to any consumer IoT assemblage.
In the monograph linked above, we present an assemblage-theory based conceptual framework and its implications for consumer experience in the smart home. In 8 sections, we discuss the evolution of the Internet and the emergence of the consumer IoT, offer a lay version of assemblage theory, develop our framework and discuss the implications of our framework for research in UX, consumer experience, and marketing strategy. The last two sections offer some early practical insights derived from our theory and some perspective on where things might be going.
Because the pace of change is rapid, we wanted to put this material on the Web as early as possible for comment and feedback. The monograph remains a work in progress. We are developing several papers based on these ideas for submission to academic journals and look forward to hearing from others working in this compelling new area.
Donna Hoffman & Tom Novak
Washington, DC
V1.0, August 20, 2015
Research Interests:
The authors address the role of marketing in hypermedia computer-mediated environments (CMEs). Their approach considers hypermedia CMEs to be large-scale (ie, national or global) networked environments, of which the World Wide Web on the... more
The authors address the role of marketing in hypermedia computer-mediated environments (CMEs). Their approach considers hypermedia CMEs to be large-scale (ie, national or global) networked environments, of which the World Wide Web on the Internet is the first and current global implementation.
ABSTRACT Though marketers have made great strides in understanding the Internet, they still understand little about what makes for a compelling consumer experience online. Recently, the flow construct has been proposed as important for... more
ABSTRACT Though marketers have made great strides in understanding the Internet, they still understand little about what makes for a compelling consumer experience online. Recently, the flow construct has been proposed as important for understanding consumer behavior on the World Wide Web. Although widely studied over the past twenty years, quantitative modeling efforts of the flow construct have been neither systematic nor comprehensive.
Recently, it has been proposed that creating compelling experiences in the distinctive consumption environment defined by the Internet depends on facilitating a state of flow. Although it has been established that consumers do, in fact,... more
Recently, it has been proposed that creating compelling experiences in the distinctive consumption environment defined by the Internet depends on facilitating a state of flow. Although it has been established that consumers do, in fact, experience flow while using the Web, consumer researchers do not as yet have a comprehensive understanding of the specific activities during which consumers actually have these experiences.
1 The material in this paragraph was derived from personal communication between David Porter and the authors and articles reported in Business Week (Borrus 2000) and the Wall Street Journal (Tam 2002). 2 In the remainder of this paper,... more
1 The material in this paragraph was derived from personal communication between David Porter and the authors and articles reported in Business Week (Borrus 2000) and the Wall Street Journal (Tam 2002). 2 In the remainder of this paper, we use the terms average, typical, and mainstream consumers interchangeably.
Decades of research provide strong evidence that consumers process information in two distinct and qualitatively different ways, rational and experiential. However, little research has addressed situational influences on thinking style,... more
Decades of research provide strong evidence that consumers process information in two distinct and qualitatively different ways, rational and experiential. However, little research has addressed situational influences on thinking style, and there have been no attempts to simultaneously measure and validate two-dimensional situation-specific thinking. We develop and validate a new instrument for measuring situation-specific thinking style using performance tasks, consumer Web activities, and differing motivations.
Research Interests:
In most traditional media environments, the main type of control available to consumers is to manipulate their own beliefs and judgments or to approach or avoid the mass media message. Indeed, most research in the consumer behavior... more
In most traditional media environments, the main type of control available to consumers is to manipulate their own beliefs and judgments or to approach or avoid the mass media message. Indeed, most research in the consumer behavior literature studying control (cf., Greene 1988; Hui and Bateson 1991; Hoch and Loewenstein 1991; Gould 1991; Siddarth and Chattopadhyay 1998; Zufryden, Pedrick and Sankaralingam 1993) has dealt with what is called secondary control. Secondary control occurs when people do not have control ...
Abstract The flow construct has recently been proposed as essential to understanding consumer navigation behavior in online environments. We review definitions and models of flow, and describe an empirical study which measures flow in... more
Abstract The flow construct has recently been proposed as essential to understanding consumer navigation behavior in online environments. We review definitions and models of flow, and describe an empirical study which measures flow in terms of respondents' skills and challenges for using the World Wide Web. Skills and challenges are shown to correlate in anticipated ways with scales measuring constructs of flow, control, arousal, and anxiety that underlie previous models of flow.
Abstract. The Internet's distinctiveness holds important implications for digital commerce efforts. Some marketing activities are proving to be difficult to implement in their present forms and need to be restructured so they are more... more
Abstract. The Internet's distinctiveness holds important implications for digital commerce efforts. Some marketing activities are proving to be difficult to implement in their present forms and need to be restructured so they are more compatible with the unique features of the Web. Thus, online managers now find themselves having to think about how to develop truly interactive customer environments, how to enable innovative content, and how to construct new methods for the measurement of customer behavior on the Internet.
Background In September 1993, the Clinton Administration launched a National Information Infrastructure (NII) initiative as a major policy initiative for the coming decades. The blueprint for this initiative is contained in a document... more
Background In September 1993, the Clinton Administration launched a National Information Infrastructure (NII) initiative as a major policy initiative for the coming decades. The blueprint for this initiative is contained in a document which has come to be known as the Agenda for Action. With the establishment of the Internet as the basic technology behind the NII, the metaphor of the information highway has now become part of our national vocabulary.
In most traditional media environments, the main type of control available to consumers is to manipulate their own beliefs and judgments or to approach or avoid the mass media message. Indeed, most research in the consumer behavior... more
In most traditional media environments, the main type of control available to consumers is to manipulate their own beliefs and judgments or to approach or avoid the mass media message. Indeed, most research in the consumer behavior literature studying control (cf., Greene 1988; Hui and Bateson 1991; Hoch and Loewenstein 1991; Gould 1991; Siddarth and Chattopadhyay 1998; Zufryden, Pedrick and Sankaralingam 1993) has dealt with what is called secondary control.
Abstract The potential of the World Wide Web on the Internet as a commercial medium and market has been widely documented in a variety of media. However, a critical examination of its commercial development has received little attention.... more
Abstract The potential of the World Wide Web on the Internet as a commercial medium and market has been widely documented in a variety of media. However, a critical examination of its commercial development has received little attention. Therefore, in this paper we propose a structural framework for examining the explosion in commercial activity on the Web. First, we explore the role of the Web as a distribution channel and a medium for marketing communications.
Abstract: Decades of theoretical and empirical research in social and cognitive psychology provide strong evidence that consumers process information in two distinct ways: rational and experiential. Surprisingly, there has been very... more
Abstract: Decades of theoretical and empirical research in social and cognitive psychology provide strong evidence that consumers process information in two distinct ways: rational and experiential. Surprisingly, there has been very little research attention devoted to directly investigating how different tasks directly impact thinking style. Further, attempts to simultaneously measure the two dimensions of thinking style as either situation-specific or as an enduring state are even fewer and lack validation in a broad context.
Internet advertising is rapidly emerging as a key strategic tool in the battle for online customers. Managerial attention is increasingly shifting to online advertising as a viable mechanism for generating traffic and stimulating trial at... more
Internet advertising is rapidly emerging as a key strategic tool in the battle for online customers. Managerial attention is increasingly shifting to online advertising as a viable mechanism for generating traffic and stimulating trial at consumer-oriented Web sites. According to eMarketer, total Internet advertising revenues exceeded $3 billion in 1999 and the category is growing far faster (112%) than traditional mass media advertising vehicles like cable (13%), television (7%), and print (6.2%).
The advertiser-supported Web site is one of several business models vying for legitimacy in the emerging medium of the World Wide Web on the Internet (Hoffman, Novak, and Chatterjee 1995). Currently, there are three major types of... more
The advertiser-supported Web site is one of several business models vying for legitimacy in the emerging medium of the World Wide Web on the Internet (Hoffman, Novak, and Chatterjee 1995). Currently, there are three major types of advertiser-supported sites: 1) sponsored content sites like Hotwired, ESPNET Sportszone, and ZD Net, 2) sponsored search agents and directories like InfoSeek, Excite, and Yahoo, and 3) entry portal sites like Netscape.
The authors empirically examine how locus of control, an important consumer behavior construct, differentiates among consumers' Web use in a marketing policy context and argue that consumers' general expectancies as to whether they or... more
The authors empirically examine how locus of control, an important consumer behavior construct, differentiates among consumers' Web use in a marketing policy context and argue that consumers' general expectancies as to whether they or others control events can predict their Web use and their beliefs regarding the regulation of content on the Internet.
What does it take to be a success on the Internet? What makes for a profitable Web site? Understanding the issues involved in achieving profitability on the Web is turning out to be elusive, even as the Internet Economy is becoming a more... more
What does it take to be a success on the Internet? What makes for a profitable Web site? Understanding the issues involved in achieving profitability on the Web is turning out to be elusive, even as the Internet Economy is becoming a more potent force both domestically and globally.
Almost daily, articles about the Internet and the Information Superhighway appear in major US newspapers, such as the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. At the end of last year, NBC Nightly News broadcast a five part series on... more
Almost daily, articles about the Internet and the Information Superhighway appear in major US newspapers, such as the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. At the end of last year, NBC Nightly News broadcast a five part series on the Information Superhighway titled" Almost 2001." After the first show, NBC received over 1500 electronic mail messages from all over the world in response to the broadcast of their Internet address (nightly@ nbc. com).
The advertiser supported Web site is one of several business models vying for legitimacy in the emerging medium of the World Wide Web on the Internet (Hoffman, Novak, and Chatterjee 1995). Advertising on the Web takes on a number of forms.
That portion of the Internet known as the World Wide Web has been riding an exponential growth curve since 1994 (Network Wizards 1999; Rutkowski 1998), coinciding with the introduction of NCSA's graphically-based software interface Mosaic... more
That portion of the Internet known as the World Wide Web has been riding an exponential growth curve since 1994 (Network Wizards 1999; Rutkowski 1998), coinciding with the introduction of NCSA's graphically-based software interface Mosaic for" browsing" the World Wide Web (Hoffman, Novak, and Chatterjee 1995).
The flow construct (Csikszentmihalyi 1977) has recently been proposed by Hoffman and Novak (1996) as essential to understanding consumer navigation behavior in online environments such as the World Wide Web. Previous researchers (eg... more
The flow construct (Csikszentmihalyi 1977) has recently been proposed by Hoffman and Novak (1996) as essential to understanding consumer navigation behavior in online environments such as the World Wide Web. Previous researchers (eg Csikszentmihalyi 1990; Ghani, Supnick and Rooney 1991; Trevino and Webster 1992; Webster, Trevino and Ryan 1993) have noted that flow is a useful construct for describing more general human-computer interactions.
Table 1 summarizes the evolution in Internet user characteristics in the general US population over time using data gathered from the Pew Internet and American Life Project [7]. The number of adult Americans using the Internet increased... more
Table 1 summarizes the evolution in Internet user characteristics in the general US population over time using data gathered from the Pew Internet and American Life Project [7]. The number of adult Americans using the Internet increased 50% from 2000 to 2003, reaching 126 million users in 2003. Most of this increase is accounted for by individuals 30 years and older, although younger users are still the most wired.
METHOD The experiment reported below was designed to simulate the initiation of exchanges involving personal information requests in as externally valid a manner in possible. Below, we refer to the benefit component of this exchange as... more
METHOD The experiment reported below was designed to simulate the initiation of exchanges involving personal information requests in as externally valid a manner in possible. Below, we refer to the benefit component of this exchange as the focal company's offer. Participants received the target offer (a valid coupon) on either a contingent or a non-contingent basis.
ABSTRACT Emerging (or “inchoate”) industries differ significantly from mature industries. Inchoate industries are characterized by few producers, underdeveloped markets, unclear technologies, and uncertain regulatory forces. Traditional,... more
ABSTRACT Emerging (or “inchoate”) industries differ significantly from mature industries. Inchoate industries are characterized by few producers, underdeveloped markets, unclear technologies, and uncertain regulatory forces. Traditional, linear-adaptive approaches to business strategy derived from the study of mature industries, such as Miles and Snow (1978) and Porter (1980), are not applicable to inchoate industries.
The Internet is mainstream. The most recent aggregate statistics show that Internet use continues to penetrate the population (Phillips, 2010). In 2010, 71% of people in the United States used the Internet at least once a month. This... more
The Internet is mainstream. The most recent aggregate statistics show that Internet use continues to penetrate the population (Phillips, 2010). In 2010, 71% of people in the United States used the Internet at least once a month. This figure is expected to rise to 78% of the population by 2014. Now, more than 15 years since the Internet was first commercialized, it is safe to say that Internet use is no longer restricted to highly educated, upper-income, mostly White males.
personal information during the online navigation process. These concerns over privacy span the dimensions of environmental control and secondary use of information control [6]. Environmental control, or the consumer's ability to control... more
personal information during the online navigation process. These concerns over privacy span the dimensions of environmental control and secondary use of information control [6]. Environmental control, or the consumer's ability to control the actions of a Web vendor, directly affects consumer perception of the security of online shopping. In the physical world, a consumer may be concerned about giving out credit card information over the telephone to an unknown voice within a mail-order company.
We investigate egocentric biases in mental accounting within the context of informationdriven consumer seller relationships. Our research suggests that consumers keep “loose mental accounts” of exchange benefits and costs that are... more
We investigate egocentric biases in mental accounting within the context of informationdriven consumer seller relationships. Our research suggests that consumers keep “loose mental accounts” of exchange benefits and costs that are balanced when resource exchanges are either contingent or temporally integrated (ie, exchanged in the same transaction).
Abstract: While much research has emphasized improving current new product concept techniques, little work has focused on trait-based approaches that specify which consumers are the" right" ones to use in the new product development... more
Abstract: While much research has emphasized improving current new product concept techniques, little work has focused on trait-based approaches that specify which consumers are the" right" ones to use in the new product development process, particularly in the consumer goods industry.
Traditional brand tracking data have been used by marketing managers for decades to understand consumer response to brands. Marketers and advertisers are highly enthusiastic about the opportunities that the new online tool Google Insights... more
Traditional brand tracking data have been used by marketing managers for decades to understand consumer response to brands. Marketers and advertisers are highly enthusiastic about the opportunities that the new online tool Google Insights for Search (IFS) provides to monitor “rising searches” and analyze consumer search trends. IFS augments traditional brand tracking data in unprecedented ways, but is important for another reason: Google Insights for Search does not only monitor trends, it can influence them.
While there is no question that the commercial development of the World Wide Web is still in its infancy and growing rapidly, this development faces a serious barrier to ultimate commercialization. In this article we develop the argument... more
While there is no question that the commercial development of the World Wide Web is still in its infancy and growing rapidly, this development faces a serious barrier to ultimate commercialization. In this article we develop the argument that the primary barrier to the successful commercial development of the Web is the current lack of consumer trust in this new commercial medium.
Abstract Although the flow construct has been widely studied over the past decade in marketing and related fields, it has proven to be an elusive construct to measure and model. In this paper, we examine two of the most important themes... more
Abstract Although the flow construct has been widely studied over the past decade in marketing and related fields, it has proven to be an elusive construct to measure and model. In this paper, we examine two of the most important themes in flow research in the last decade: the conceptualization and measurement of flow in online environments and the marketing outcomes of flow.
Will E-Commerce Erode Liberty? R00310 oday, more than 1.6 million commercial sites operate on the Web, all in fierce competition for the attention of potential buyers. E-tailers are finding that it takes enormous marketing expenditures to... more
Will E-Commerce Erode Liberty? R00310 oday, more than 1.6 million commercial sites operate on the Web, all in fierce competition for the attention of potential buyers. E-tailers are finding that it takes enormous marketing expenditures to set themselves out from the crowd, inspire Web shoppers to visit their sites, and then get them to actually make a purchase. Many e-tailers, in fact, are averaging more than $100 to acquire a new customer, and some are spending upwards of $500.
Companies want to do business on the Internet, but so far it's proven a tough target for spreadsheet jockeys. Without accurate numbers indicating the Net's size and market potential, many firms investigating electronic commerce are... more
Companies want to do business on the Internet, but so far it's proven a tough target for spreadsheet jockeys. Without accurate numbers indicating the Net's size and market potential, many firms investigating electronic commerce are reluctant to invest in net. product development.
Page 1. environment and little solid information on which to base critical business decisions. A variety of studies have suggested that the demographic characteristics of individuals are highly correlated with their use of the Internet.
Summary We investigated differences in Internet use between whites and African Americans in the United States. Although African Americans are online in impressive numbers, significant disparities in access indicate the presence of a... more
Summary We investigated differences in Internet use between whites and African Americans in the United States. Although African Americans are online in impressive numbers, significant disparities in access indicate the presence of a racial divide on the Internet. Our findings have important implications for public policy seeking to ensure Internet access for all members of our society.
That portion of the Internet known as the World Wide Web has been riding an exponential growth curve since 1994 (Network Wizards 1999; Rutkowski 1998), coinciding with the introduction of NCSA's graphically based software interface Mosaic... more
That portion of the Internet known as the World Wide Web has been riding an exponential growth curve since 1994 (Network Wizards 1999; Rutkowski 1998), coinciding with the introduction of NCSA's graphically based software interface Mosaic for" browsing" the World Wide Web (Hoffman, Novak, and Chatterjee 1995). Currently, over 43 million hosts are connected to the Internet worldwide (Network Wizards 1999).
The identity of a consumer Internet of Things (IoT) assemblage emerges through a historical process of ongoing interactions among consumers, smart devices, and digital information. Topological Data Analysis (TDA), consistent with... more
The identity of a consumer Internet of Things (IoT) assemblage emerges through a historical process of ongoing interactions among consumers, smart devices, and digital information. Topological Data Analysis (TDA), consistent with mathematical aspects of assemblage theory, is used to visualize the underlying possibility space from which individual IoT assemblages emerge.