ABSTRACT
Smart devices have recently gained in popularity among consumers. Likewise, with the increasing diffusion of smart technology, consumer behavior and marketing researchers have shown growing interest in the ways consumers interact with their devices. As a result, a plethora of theories and conceptual frameworks arose, many of which have proven helpful in understanding consumption of and with smart technologies. Yet, most models and theories have merely been adapted from other fields and have remained mostly unrelated to each other. This chapter is intended to address these issues. In doing so, it will explore and identify the impact of smart devices on digital consumption and will link extant theories and frameworks to conceptually map the phenomenon of smart digital consumption (SDC), that is, of digital consumption experiences that actively or passively include smart devices and thus go beyond “traditional” digital consumption. Extending on that, the second part of this chapter will stress the necessity of unorthodox research methods to generating truly innovative findings in research on consumer interaction with smart technologies. Thus, using examples from the field, we encourage researchers to engage in more creative, transdisciplinary, and methodologically diverse research projects to ensure genuine advancement of the field.
