A Research On The Influence And Mechanism Of AI Product Users’ Age Cues On Consumer Product Innovation Perception

With the advent of the intelligent era,the impact of Artificial Intelligence（AI）products on consumers is one of the current research hotspots.Existing AI researches in the field of marketing focus on the attitudes and purchasing responses of consumers,especially elderly consumers,towards AI products.However,when an AI product is used by the elderly,how people perceive the specific characteristics of the AI product has not been discussed by scholars.From the perspective of AI product innovation,this paper responds to this research gap.This paper explores the effect of age cues of AI product users on consumers’ innovation perception,and suggests that the cues of old users will increase consumers’ innovation perception of AI products（hypothesis 1a）,and this effect is driven by the efforts of perceived producers（hypothesis 2a）.In addition,this study also proposed that the influence of age cues of AI product users on consumers’ product innovation perception is moderated by consumers’ cognitive load（hypothesis 3 and hypothesis4）.In order to verify the above hypothesis,four experiments were carried out in this paper.Experiment 1 was mainly used to preliminarily verify the validity of hypothesis1 a and hypothesis 1b.This experiment adopted the age cues of AI product users（old people vs.young people）,one-factor between-subjects design,a total of 100 college students participated.Specifically,the picture and text introduction of the same smartphone were made into questionnaire booklets and sent to the subjects,and the age cues of AI product users were manipulated through text introductions.The results of Experiment 1 preliminarily verified the validity of hypothesis 1a.Experiment 2 by changing the measuring way of dependent variables and the start of independent variables,and the choice of experimental products,replicated the main effect of this paper.At the same time,Experiment 2 examined the mediating mechanism behind the results of experiment 1,namely the mediating role of perceived producer’s effort（hypothesis 2b）,and examined the two competitive mediators of processing fluency and emotion.This experiment adopted the age cues of AI product users（old people vs.young people）,one-factor between-subjects design,111 students from a university participated.Experiment 3 is based on the method of testing mediation with moderation to verify the mediating effect of perceived producer input effort,which is a 2（age cues of AI product users: old vs.young）×2（perceived producer input effort:high vs.control）two-factor between-subjects design,180 social subjects were divided into one of four conditions,the experimental results provide support for hypothesis2 b.Experiment 4 examined the moderating effect of cognitive load.This experiment was a 2（age cues of AI product users: old vs.young）×2（cognitive load: high vs.low）two-factor between-subjects design,420 social subjects were assigned to one of four conditions.The results confirm that when the AI product is used by the elderly,compared with the young,consumers perceive the AI product as more innovative.Perception of producer’s input effort is the mediating mechanism behind this phenomenon.This paper also finds that the phenomenon of elderly users’ cues enhance the innovative perception of AI products is reversed when consumers’ cognitive load level is high,because when the cognitive load level is high,consumers will infer the lack of innovation of AI products used by elderly users based on the stereotype of elderly users’ low ability.Specifically,when consumers’ cognitive load is low,elderly users’ cues will improve the perception of AI product innovation;when consumers’ cognitive load is high,elderly users’ cues will reduce the perception of AI product innovation.This study has important theoretical value and practical value.Theoretically,this study expands the research scope of artificial intelligence products and promotes the research in the field of perceptual product innovation,perceptual effort and cognitive load.Meanwhile,this study proposes the mediating variable of perceived producer investment effort and explores the moderating effect of cognitive load.In practice,this study can provide some reference value for enterprise managers to formulate corresponding marketing strategies.For example,when recommending products to consumers,their cognitive load should be taken into account,and corresponding recommendations can be made according to the level of noise in the shopping environment of consumers.