Marketing Science Institute Working Paper Series 2016 Report No. 16-134

Consumer and Object Experience in the Internet of Things: An Assemblage Theory Approach

Donna L. Hoffman and Thomas P. Novak

“Consumer and Object Experience in the Internet of Things: An Assemblage Theory Approach” © 2016 Donna L. Hoffman and Thomas P. Novak; Report Summary © 2016 Marketing Science Institute

MSI working papers are distributed for the benefit of MSI corporate and academic members and the general public. Reports are not to be reproduced or published in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without written permission. Report Summary

The consumer Internet of Things (IoT) has the potential to revolutionize consumer experience. Because consumers can actively interact with smart objects, the traditional conceptualization of consumer experience as consumers’ internal subjective responses to branded objects may not be sufficient to conceptualize consumer experience in the IoT.

In this report, Donna Hoffman and Thomas Novak develop a new conceptual framework that provides a fuller understanding of the nature of consumer (and object) experience in complex, interactive environments like the IoT.

Their conceptualization is based on assemblage theory and object-oriented ontology and is anchored in the context of smart home assemblages. In their conceptualization, smart home assemblages are defined not only by their components, but by the way these components interact with each other. Experience is not the result of a single interaction event, but of sequences of interactions over time.

As consumers and objects interact as parts of these dynamic assemblages, Hoffman and Novak write, “they will collectively achieve things none would be capable of doing on their own and entirely new consumer, and object, experiences will emerge.”

They introduce the idea that consumer experience, through its emergent properties and capacities, has two broad facets: extension experience and expansion experience. They develop a parallel conceptualization of the construct of object experience, arguing that it can be perceived by consumers through the mechanism of anthropomorphism, and that consumer-object relationships, and relationship styles, emerge from the interaction of their respective experiences. They note that brands’ marketing messages have begun attempting to convey this idea of object experience relationship styles through the lens of anthropomorphism. For example, LG markets the Rolling Bot and other products as “friends” which extend the capabilities of its LG G5 smartphone and Philips calls the products that are compatible with its smart lights “friends of Hue.”

Hoffman and Novak’s conceptualization of consumer experience in the IoT offers important marketing implications. A better understanding of experiences in smart home assemblages, from both the consumer and object’s perspective, may help marketers improve product design and development efforts and build better marketing communication programs that communicate the value to skeptical consumers.

Donna L. Hoffman is Louis Rosenfeld Distinguished Scholar and Professor of Marketing and Thomas P. Novak is Denit Trust Distinguished Scholar and Professor of Marketing, both at The George Washington University School of Business, where they are Co-Directors of the Center for the Connected Consumer.

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While consumer experience has to date focused on products, brands and marketing environments, the consumer Internet of Things (IoT), the wide range of everyday objects and products in the real world that are enhanced with programmable sensors and actuators that communicate with other devices and consumers through the Internet (OECD 2015), presents new opportunities for interaction that has the potential to revolutionize consumer experience. Overall, the IoT industry is expected to be worth $3 trillion by 2025, with over 27 billion heterogeneous things connected to the Internet (Meyer 2016). In the IoT, sensors that collect data, and actuators that transmit that data, will be incorporated in all manner of objects commonly found in and around the home, or worn on or in the body and used in consumption activities involving shopping, entertainment, transportation, wellness and the like. With the addition of network connectivity, previously unrelated objects and products will now work together as assemblages through a process of ongoing interaction (DeLanda 2011; 2016), and new properties and capacities will emerge that have the potential to vastly expand the range of what consumers - and objects - can do, and what can be done to and for them.

An ongoing and expanding body of literature has considered the conceptual definition, measurement, and implications of consumer experience (Holbrook and Hirschman 1982;

Janiszewski 2010; Schmitt, Brakus and Zarantonello 2015; Thompson, Locander and Pollio

1989) as well as the related constructs of brand experience (Brakus, Schmitt and Zarantonello

2009), customer experience (De Keyser et al. 2015; Gentile, Spiller and Noci 2007; Lemon and

Verhoef 2016; Maklan and Klaus 2011; Meyer and Schwager 2007; Verhoef et al. 2009), service experience (Klaus and Maklan 2012) and co-creation experience (Prahalad and Ramaswamy

2004, Verleye 2015). We use the term consumer experience (CX) to collectively refer to this varied body of research.

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Because consumers can actively interact with smart objects, and smart objects possess their own point of view and their own experience in interaction with consumers and with each other, the traditional, human-centric conceptualization of consumer experience as consumer’s internal subjective responses to branded objects (e.g. Schmitt, Brakus and Zarantonello 2015), a largely passive view of experience as a receiver of brand or marketing-related stimuli, may not be sufficient to conceptualize consumer experience in the IoT. Just as the Web needed new frameworks for understanding consumer experience when it emerged in 1993 (e.g. Hoffman and

Novak 1996), we believe the consumer IoT can benefit from a conceptual framework that details how consumer experience and object experience emerge from the multiplicity of interactions among consumers and objects.

We derive that framework from assemblage theory, coupled with object-oriented ontology (OOO). Assemblage theory is a non-human-centric comprehensive theory of social complexity from the neo-realist school of philosophy which explains the processes by which the identity of a whole, a whole that is more than the sum of its parts, emerges from the on-going interaction among its heterogeneous parts (e.g. DeLanda 2002, 2006, 2011, 2016; Deleuze and

Guattari 1987, Harman 2008). In the past few years, concepts from assemblage theory have been applied to an increasingly broad range of consumption, consumer behavior and marketing topics, including dissipation of a brand’s audience (Parmentier and Fischer 2015), outsourced family caregiving (Epp and Velageleti 2014), long-distance family practices (Epp, Schau and Price

2014), consumption experiences (Canniford and Shankar 2013), heterogeneous consumption communities (Thomas, Price and Schau 2013), consumption-driven market emergence (Martin and Shouten 2014), and Doppelganger brand images (Geisler 2012). Canniford and Bajde’s

(2016) recent edited book examines how assemblage theory can be used to understand consumer

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culture. As these consumer behavior researchers have already well demonstrated in numerous domains, assemblage theory is useful for focusing on what emerges from the relations among heterogeneous entities (Canniford and Bajde 2016).

Assemblage theory puts emphasis on the processes among these ongoing interactions and, in contrast to more traditional social science theorizing, is not human-centric (Hill,

Canniford and Mol 2014). Rather, assemblage theory assumes a flat, object-oriented ontology

(OOO) (e.g. Bogost 2012a; Bryant 2011; Harman 2002) which is “made exclusively of unique, singular individuals, differing in spatio-temporal scale but not in ontological status” (DeLanda

2002, p. 51). Because OOO holds that all objects share the same ontological status (Bryant 2011;

DeLanda 2002; Harman 2002), they can affect and be affected by each other and none are more important than another, although these effects can vary depending on the object. In OOO, objects can also have experiences.

These assumptions are especially relevant to consumer IoT assemblages, which are in a state of constant change owing to ongoing interaction among heterogeneous “individuals” (i.e. components parts or objects). What emerges from these assemblages, for example, experiences, are neither reducible to their component parts (what the assemblages are made of), or their effects (what the assemblages do). Assemblage theory argues that objects exist independent of the interactions they have with other objects (exteriority of relations), in contrast to most other relational theories (such as Latour’s (2005) actor-network theory) where objects get their identity from their relationship to other objects and do not exist outside of those relationships (interiority of relations).

To fix ideas, we anchor our conceptualization of consumer experience in the IoT in the context of smart home assemblages. The earliest definitions of the smart home envisioned homes

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“equipped with computing and information technology which anticipates and responds to the needs of the occupants, working to promote their comfort, convenience, security and entertainment through the management of technology within the home and connections to the world beyond” (Aldrich 2003, p 17). Current industry definitions still tend to place the emphasis on automation (Coldwell Banker/CNET 2016). These definitions are a good start, but in our view do not go far enough as they view the home as a closed automated system serving a passive consumer, and neglect the idea that consumers interact with various smart objects in their homes, for example with information appliances, interactive household objects and augmented furniture

(Rodden and Benford 2003), and are likely to increasingly do so over time. Put simply, “a smart home can be described by a house which is equipped with smart objects” (Ricqueborg et al.

2006), and it is the interactions among the consumer and smart objects that produce the smart home assemblage. Although our development concerns smart home assemblages, our conceptualization may be specialized to smaller micro-assemblages such as consumer interaction with a wearable device, an autonomous car, or a robot, as well as generalized to larger macro- assemblages such as smart stores, smart neighborhoods and smart cities, along with more traditional consumer environments where interaction is paramount.

We organize our paper as follows. First, we provide a brief overview of our conceptual framework. Then, we develop a conceptualization of consumer experience in smart home assemblages, followed by a parallel conceptualization of the construct of object experience and the emergence of consumer-object relationship styles. We end with concluding thoughts about whether objects can be consumers and the importance to consumer behavior of non-human- centric frameworks that can accommodate emergence from interaction in the face of dynamic change.

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OVERVIEW OF THE CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

In our conceptualization, the smart home is an assemblage of components, including both consumers and objects, that interact with each other through their paired capacities (e.g.

DeLanda 2011, 2016). In DeLanda’s development of assemblage theory, paired capacities reflect a component’s potential to either affect or be affected in interaction with other entities. These interactions are ongoing, infusing a critical dynamic element into the model. The theory identifies key processes that serve as mechanisms explaining how interaction among independent parts can lead to assemblages. For a concise but in-depth treatment of assemblage theory see

DeLanda (2016) as well as previous extensive expositions (e.g., Canniford and Bajde 2016;

DeLanda 2002, 2006, 2011; Deleuze and Guattari 1987; Harman 2008). Here, we present a broad overview of the key constructs in our conceptual framework, illustrated in figure 1, and how they are related to each other. Our framework provides a detailed understanding of 1) how CX and

OX assemblages emerge and change over time, from habitual repetition of ongoing interactions of their component parts, 2) what CX and OX assemblages are, as revealed by their emergent properties and capacities, and 3) how CX and OX assemblages are connected to each other, first through anthropomorphism and second through emergent relationship styles. (Figure 1 follows

References.) While we refer to the smart home assemblage as a single entity, it is actually a set of nested and overlapping smart home assemblages at different levels. The components in a smart home are themselves assemblages, and there are also shifting micro-assemblages of various subsets of components that interact with each other. Thus, it is more accurate to say there are multiple smart home assemblages. Also, we will occasionally refer to object or smart object in place of smart home assemblage, depending on the context. Similarly, while we refer to the

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consumer and to consumer experience, in reality there are likely to be multiple consumers and multiple consumer experiences.

The top of figure 1 indicates that overlapping assemblages of consumer experience (CX) and object experience (OX) are nested within the smart home assemblage. Whereas the smart home assemblage emerges from all interactions among consumer and objects, the CX assemblage emerges from only those interactions between the consumer and other entities, and the OX assemblage from only those interactions between a given object and other entities. The

CX assemblage (left side of figure 1) has two facets, which we term self-extension (e.g. Belk

1988) experience that specifies how aspects of the consumer are transferred into an assemblage, and self-expansion (e.g. Aron, et al. 2004) experience that specifies how aspects of an assemblage are absorbed into the consumer. We introduce parallel concepts of object-extension and object-expansion as facets of OX (right side of figure 1) that specify how the object can transfer aspects of itself into an assemblage and absorb aspects of an assemblage into itself, respectively. As shown in figure 1 and developed in detail later, each of these two facets of CX and OX assemblages are characterized by what DeLanda (2016) has termed an assemblage’s identity, that is, its properties and capacities, as well as the expressive agentic and communal roles (Abele and Wojciszke 2007) its components play through their capacities.

In our conceptual framework, anthropomorphism (Epley, Waytz and Cacioppo 2007) provides a mechanism for the consumer to access and understand object experience (e.g. Bogost

2012a), thus providing a bridge between CX and OX. Subsequently, consumer-object relationship styles (cf. Fournier 1998) derived from the interpersonal circumplex model of complementarity (Kiesler 1983) emerge as qualitative properties from the interaction of CX and

OX assemblages, primarily through the expressive roles of the capacities of these two experience

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assemblages. Last, we note that just as the identity of the CX or OX assemblage is defined by its properties and capacities, so too is the identity of the smart home assemblage. Thus, the identity of the smart home assemblage, portrayed in the center of figure 1, reminds us that the smart home assemblage can impact CX and OX assemblages and that the smart home itself has an identity beyond that of consumer experience.

CONSUMER EXPERIENCE IN THE IOT

While some researchers have focused on establishing and territorializing the boundaries of what consumer experience (CX) is and is not (e.g. Brakus, Schmitt and Zarantonello 2009), and others on broadening and deterritorializing the boundaries (e.g. Janiszewski 2010), the body of CX research reaches consensus on two key points: 1) interaction is fundamental to CX and 2)

CX is a holistic, yet multidimensional, construct. First, consumer experience always requires interaction between a consumer and other entities (De Keyser et. al 2015; Gentile, Spiller and

Noci 2007; Polio, Henley and Thompson 1997; Prahalad and Ramaswamy 2004; Verhoef et al

2009). These entities include brands and products (Brakus, Schmitt, Zarantonello 2009; Hoch

2002), places such as stores (Hui and Bateson 1991; Kerin, Jain, Howard 2002), and people, such as salespeople, suppliers, service providers (Klaus and Maklan 2012; Schmitt, Brakus, and

Zarantonello 2015) as well as other consumers (Grove and Fisk 1997; Klaus and Macklan 2012;

Schultz 1967). That interaction is required for CX is axiomatic: “[t]he first basic tenet of CX is its interactional nature, meaning that a CX always stems from an interaction” (De Keyser et al

2015), and interaction is a prerequisite “building block” (Prahalad and Ramaswamy 2004) from which experience originates.

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Second, CX that emerges (Thompson, Locander and Pollio 1989) from interaction is distinct from and “something” more than the products and other components with which people interact (Abbott 1955; Alderson 1957; Lemon and Verhoef 2016; Pine and Gilmore 1998). CX that emerges is both holistic (Verhoef et. al 2009) as well as multidimensional. While the specific dimensions vary somewhat by researcher, five key dimensions, which we term the

“BASIS” properties of CX, are consistently mentioned: Behavioral (or physical); Affective

(feelings, emotional, experiential or hedonic); Sensory (or sensations), Intellectual (cognitive or rational) and Social (e.g. Brakus, Schmitt and Zarantonello 2009, De Keyser et al. 2015, Gentile et al. 2007, Holbrook and Hirschman 1982, Klaus and Maklan 2012, McCarthy and Wright

2004, Schmitt 1999, 2003 Verhoef et al 2009, Verleye 2015). In our framework, consumer experience is not just a characteristic of consumer response to stimuli, but a construct whose emergence is contingent on interaction among consumers and objects.

CX Assemblages Emerge from Ongoing Consumer-Centric Interactions

Interaction among Components. Consumer IoT assemblages are multi-level, nested, overlapping and changing entities of different spatio-temporal scales that emerge from habitual repetition of interaction among their heterogeneous components. The heterogeneous components of consumer IoT assemblages like the smart home include the family living in the home, pets, objects such as phones, hubs, locks, lights, thermostats and other smart devices, “material and symbolic artifacts” (DeLanda 2016, p20) of the home (Epp and Price 2010), layout and design of the home, traditional furniture, power outlets, exterior landscape, interior and exterior climate, and unexpected components such as delivery people or burglars. As Bogost (2012a, p. 12) notes

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“the term object enjoys a wide berth: corporeal and incorporeal entities count, whether they be material objects, abstractions, objects of intention, or anything else whatsoever.”

The historically contingent identity of an assemblage is defined by its emergent properties and capacities that arise from interaction its component parts, which in turn have their own properties and capacities (DeLanda 2011, 2016). For an entity, which can be an assemblage or a component, properties are measurable characteristics that specify what the entity is.

Capacities are directional and specify what the entity does, or what can be done to it, how it either affects or is affected by other entities. Figure 2 depicts the emergence of properties and capacities of a simple, stylized smart home assemblage consisting of a consumer and a smart object, from the interaction of these component parts through their paired capacities to both affect and be affected by each other. The idea that interaction occurs through paired capacities is related to the concept of affordances (Gibson 1979), or opportunities for action, which has been used by UX (user experience) researchers as a basis for interaction design (Pols 2012;

Baerentson and Trettvik 2002; Pucillo and Cascini 2014). (Figure 2 follows References.)

In interacting through their capacities, components play either a material (i.e. structural, infrastructural, mechanical, operational or functional) or expressive (i.e. conveying meaning or identity) role, depending on which capacities are exercised (e.g. Canniford and Shankar 2013;

DeLanda 2011, 2016; Parmentier and Fischer 2015). This process is dynamic, ongoing and always in formation (Bryant 2011) through habitual repetition involving recurrent processes of territorialization and coding, and through shifts between material and expressive roles of components (DeLanda 2011, 2016). As paired capacities are exercised during interaction, previously unconnected components become a CX assemblage, with new emergent properties

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and capacities that do not exist in the component parts. The resulting emergent identity of an assemblage is thus “co-constructed in action” (Epp and Price 2008).

Figure 3 shows a simplified view of interaction among seven components of a typical smart home assemblage, with the consumer and Amazon’s Alexa voice-controlled device

(Murphy 2016) among the components. Three micro-assemblages (DeLanda 2016) defined by interactions among overlapping subsets of components (i.e. Hue lighting, Ecobee, and IFTTT micro-assemblages) are shown as nested within the smart home assemblage. For example, the

IFTTT micro-assemblage might allow the consumer to connect IFTTT.com, a popular Web service for creating if-then rules for smart home automation, to their Philips Hue smart lighting

Hub and their Ecobee thermostat by creating a “recipe” whereby the home’s lights turn blue if the home’s temperature is less than 65 degrees. The smart home assemblage emerges from all of these interactions among entities in the smart homes. Thus, assemblages are defined not only by their components, but by the way these components interact with each other.

The CX Assemblage. We formally define a CX assemblage as an assemblage, nested within a smart home assemblage that includes the consumer as a part, that emerges from the subset of consumer-centric interactions of the consumer with other entities. The CX assemblage is contingent on the existence of a smart home assemblage that includes the consumer as well as the CX assemblage as components, which are nested within the larger smart home assemblage like Russian dolls (Canniford and Bajde 2016; Bennett 2010). In the CX assemblage, consumer- centric interaction (i.e. between consumer and component, consumer and micro-assemblage, consumer and assemblage) occurs at a range of levels as the components play a multiplicity of roles in various overlapping and nested micro-assemblages. When an assemblage emerges from

Marketing Science Institute Working Paper Series 11 the interaction among its parts, it can interact with and affect those parts through part-whole interaction (DeLanda 2006 p 34), setting them “into new vibrations” (Harman 2008, p. 371), and additionally, the parts can affect the whole (Canniford and Bajde 2016), resulting in change over time.

Figure 4 (panels a through c) builds upon figure 3 to illustrate examples of these different levels of consumer-centric interactions. First is the part-whole interaction of the consumer and the smart-home assemblage of which the consumer is a part (path 1 in figure 4, panel a). Second are the part-whole interactions of the consumer and various smart-home micro-assemblages of which the consumer is a part, for example the Hue lighting, Ecobee and IFTTT micro- assemblages (paths 2-4 in figure 4, panel b). Last are the within-assemblage interactions of the consumer with individual smart home components (paths 5-10 in figure 4, panel c). A parallel set of object-centric interactions, discussed later, are identified on the right side of figure 4. While we focus on the CX assemblage of a single consumer, a multi-person household will have CX assemblages for each family member that intersect (Parmentier and Fischer 2015) with each other like Venn diagrams (Canniford and Bajde 2016). (Figure 4 follows References.)

CX as the Identity of the CX Assemblage. We define CX as the identity of the CX assemblage, that is, as its emergent properties and capacities. Note that our use of the term

“identity” as the emergent properties and capacities of an assemblage is derived from DeLanda

(2002, 2006, 2011, 2016) and is distinct from the use of the term identity as synonymous with self, sense of self, and psychological identification (i.e. Belk 1988, Ahuvia 2005, Reed et al.

2012). Following DeLanda’s use of the term identity, since components are assemblages of their own components, the consumer is an assemblage of “sub-personal expressive components”

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(DeLanda 2016, p26) and correspondingly the identity of the consumer is defined by their emergent properties and capacities. Additionally, to fully incorporate the role of capacities, we include in the definition of CX the expressive and material roles that the assemblage and its components play, through the capacities they exercise in a given interaction. Collectively, the properties of the CX assemblage describe what CX is, the capacities describe what CX does, and the material and expressive roles explain, respectively, the function and meaning.

The Importance of Part-Whole Interaction. Ongoing part-whole interaction of the consumer with a smart home assemblage, of which the consumer is a part, is especially important for understanding CX. This concept is diagrammed in figure 5, beginning with an assemblage emerging at time1 from interaction between a consumer and an object. Following the consumer’s part-whole interaction with this assemblage at time2, both the consumer and assemblage may be different than they were at time1, to the extent that interaction at time2 changes the whole (i.e. assemblage) and the part (i.e. consumer). Over time, the consumer and assemblage are each redefined by the sequence of prior interactions. The simple assemblage of consumer and object is not so simple after all, in that the consumer and object do not only interact with each other, but through part-whole interaction, the consumer and object each also interact with a third entity, the assemblage, with the consumer and object having different experiences of this part-whole interaction. (Figure 5 follows References.)

Habitual Repetition with Difference

Experience is not the result of a single interaction event, but the repeated exchange and habitual repetition of paired capacities in back-and-forth sequences of interactions over time.

However, what is important for CX to emerge is not mechanical cookie-cutter repetition, but

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repetition combined with difference (e.g. Deleuze and Guattari 1987). This repetition is a

“creative response that seeks to reproduce the essence of prior performances across different relations, capacities and territories” (Price and Epp 2016, p. 67), and is the main process by which the CX assemblage is territorialized (DeLanda 2006; Deleuze and Guattari 1987; Wise

2000).

While repetition of interaction in a smart home assemblage may appear at first glance to be fixed and rigid, it can be seen to actually involve difference. For example, consider a consumer interacting with Amazon’s Echo device (Murphy 2016) through its Alexa Voice

Control service. Even with repetition that has been programmed with if-then rules (e.g. “if I say,

Alexa turn on the lights, then the lights go on”), the context of a particular interaction creates a difference. Using Alexa to turn on the lights in the morning is different than doing so in the middle of the night. Shouting to Alexa to turn the lights on from another room is different than quietly whispering the request in the same room. Different people may make the request. Alexa may not always understand the request, and sometimes ask the speaker to clarify. The consumer may phrase the request in slightly different ways, perhaps as a playful experiment to see how far one can modify the request and still be understood. Additionally, as new components are added to an assemblage, further difference in repetition will occur. By purchasing a motion sensor, the consumer now has the option to control the lights by her physical position, in addition to her voice. The consumer can program IFTTT recipes that work with the assemblage to control the light by time of day or other external events, and so on.

In effect, repetition becomes anything but repetitious. How should such differences - not mere mechanical repetition - be encouraged by smart home interaction design? Much smart home interaction is programmed, so how do differences in interaction evolve, and what happens

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when they do not? Through programming, consumers may offload some of the routine behavior to the smart devices that operate autonomously. Does the consumer internalize offloaded routine behavior as if they themselves had done it? What are the effects of habitual repetition that is offloaded from consumer to devices, compared to explicitly repeated by the consumer?

Further, interaction with difference is heterogeneous interaction, ranging from ambient to direct, with ambient interaction as background, peripheral “standby” passive interaction (Vogel

2005), and direct interaction as foreground, back-and-forth active interaction. Ambient interaction is akin to Harman’s muffled “black noise,” while direct interaction is “white noise:”

“It is not a white noise of screeching, chaotic qualities demanding to be shaped by the human mind, but rather a black noise of muffled objects hovering at the fringes of our attention”

(Harman 2005, p. 183). Some repeated interactions are direct and at close proximity, other are ambient and less close, with closeness defined not just by physical distance (e.g. Ballendat,

Marquardt and Greenberg 2010; Christian and Avery 2000; Greenberg et al. 2011; Hall 1966;

Michelis and Send 2009; Streitz et al. 2005; Vogel 2005; Wang et al. 2012) but also by orientation and direction of movement (e.g. Ballendat, Marquardt and Greenberg 2010; Wang et al. 2012). Is difference in repetition more or less important for direct than ambient interaction?

How might a sense of connection that has been termed ambient intimacy (Case 2010; Makice

2009; Reichelt 2007) emerge from habitual repetition of ambient interaction?

Territorializing and Coding. Through repetition, consumer experience evolves over time (Neslin et al. 2006; Verhoef et al. 2009) as part of the customer journey (Payne et al. 2008;

Klaus and Maklan 2012; Lemon and Verhoef 2016). During this journey, recurrent processes of territorialization, reterritorialization (DeLanda 2006, 2011, 2016; Deleuze and Guattari 1987) and deterritorialization explain how CX assemblages come to be, and serve to change CX

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assemblages by stabilizing or destabilizing their identities. Territorialization is an identity formation process that sharpens the spatial boundaries of the CX assemblage (e.g. physical locations of consumer and devices) and the past and future time horizons (Bluedorn and

Denhardt 1988; Das 1987) defining its temporal boundaries. Territorialization also increases the internal homogeneity of the CX assemblage through practices of inclusion and exclusion, routinization, habitual repetition and common motivation (DeLanda 2006). Importantly for IoT contexts, a sense of agency during interactions has been found to territorialize an assemblage as

“a unified and continuous entity across space and time” (Haggard and Tsakiris, 2009; see also

Tsakiris et al. 2005).

More broadly, the degree of territorialization itself is a “parameter, or variable coefficient” of assemblages (DeLanda 2016, p19) so that the overall degree of territorialization is itself a higher-level property of consumer experience. How can this territorialization parameter of the CX assemblage be measured? How does the degree to which assemblages are or are perceived by the consumer to be territorialized contribute to CX? We expect that changes in the value of the territorialization property over time, resulting from shifts in the balance between territorialization and deterritorialization processes, may impact CX in a manner similar to the way that the balance between skill and challenge over time impacts flow (e.g. Hoffman and

Novak 1996). Correspondingly, we may conceive of an optimal “experience channel” analogous to the flow channel in models of flow (e.g. Ellis, Voelkl & Morris 1994; LeFevre 1988;

Nakamura 1988; and Wells 1988). This suggests a number of research questions. Can we define optimal CX in terms of the balance of territorialization and deterritorialization processes over time, and if so, how? Beside the balance of territorialization and deterritorialization over time,

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what other balances impact optimal experience (direction of interaction, shifts from material to expressive, coding to decoding)?

Subsequent recurrent processes of coding and recoding reinforce territorialization effects, consolidating and fixing the identity of the CX assemblage, allowing a territorialized identity to be, in effect, locked in (e.g DeLanda (2006, 2011, 2016). Decoding, in turn, reinforces effects of deterritorialization. The need and ability to literally program smart devices leads to a strong role for coding in consumer IoT environments (Rowland, et. al. 2015). Routines, procedures and if- then programming rules used by consumers to formalize rituals, such as setting their lights to specific colors and intensities for television viewing, code smart home interactions in individualized and bottom-up ways compared to top-down coding of traditional media interactions. For example, mass market smart televisions code human-device interaction from top-down so broad segments of consumers necessarily interact with their smart televisions in similar fixed ways. In contrast, individual bottom-up IoT codings allow commonalities to emerge from the ways different people code their interactions. What common ways of interacting across different homes are likely to emerge from these individual codings, and how can we identify them? For example, consumer-generated if-then rules for connecting devices can provide the raw material for automated detection of these coded human actions through machine learning based on inductive programming (Gulwani et al. 2015).

Material and Expressive Roles. Repetition of interaction with difference also occurs through shifts in the material and expressive roles that components of an assemblage play in interaction through their exercised capacities (Harman 2008). In the smart home, there is at a mechanical, Lego-like aspect to first connecting devices to each other based on their material roles. Smart lights, locks and other devices initially play material roles as they are installed on a

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network and connected to other devices, shifting from material to expressive as their capacities are exercised. Repeated interaction that is superficially the same in terms of physical actions acquires difference through the roles these actions express. Through the recurrent identity formation and consolidation processes that operate on the repeated exercise of paired capacities within a sequence of interaction events over time, components roles will shift from material to expressive and back again, writing the “signature” of consumer experience in the IoT (DeLanda

2006). The shift back and forth between material and expressive roles as capacities are exercised

(Parmentier and Fischer 2015) is an ongoing process that generates discontinuities in the signature of the identity of the CX assemblage (DeLanda 2006), and thus in CX.

The originally material role played by smart light bulbs in an assemblage with motion sensors and IFTTT recipes becomes expressive as the consumer experiences the lamp turning on and off according to programmed rules, and as people walk in and out of rooms. The automated triggering of the light may serve as an “ambient identity cue” (Cheryan, et.al. 2009) that expresses to its occupants its agency. Will the house’s lights begin to “seem alive” as they behave on their own, often unpredictably (e.g. Waytz et al 2010)? If so, this could lead to intellectual or affective CX (Brakus, Schmitt and Zarantonello 2009), as the consumer imagines, akin to interpersonal perception (e.g. Kenny 1994), what the home may be thinking or feeling?

How do material interactions become expressive, and what is the role of habitual repetition, with difference?

Shifts from expressive to material roles are also important. For example, a consumer who expresses his taste for music by telling a voice-based music control system to skip songs he doesn’t like will give the music control system an understanding of his preferences. The expressive feedback becomes a material capacity of the system to match the consumer’s

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preferences to a database of other users, to calculate probabilities that future music recommendations will be favorably received, and ultimately to play songs that will increase affective CX (Brakus, Schmitt and Zarantonollo 2009). Do shifts from material to expressive roles impact CX in a fundamentally different way than shifts from expressive to material roles?

How can shifts between material and expressive roles be detected and measured?

Extension and Expansion Experiences

Drawing on the self-extension (e.g Belk 1988, 2013, 2014) and self-expansion (e.g. Aron et al. 1991, 1992, 2004; Riemann and Aron 2009) literatures, we define self-extension experiences and self-expansion experiences as two broad facets of consumer experience that emerge from the part-whole interactions of a consumer with a smart home assemblage. As shown in the CX panel of figure 1, extension and expansion facets of CX are comprised of emergent properties, emergent capacities, and emergent roles of components as expressed through the capacities, all of which emerge from consumer-centric interactions of the consumer with a smart home assemblage, its micro-assemblages, and its components.

The literature on self-extension (Belk 1988, 2013, 2014) describes how “individuals cathect objects with meaning and extend their identities from themselves into objects and other people” (Belk 1988). Self-extension, where physical and digital possessions can contribute to consumers’ identities and function to extend their sense of themselves, bringing more meaning to their lives (Belk 1988, 2013, 2014), is consistent with an agentic orientation (Pierce, Kostova and

Dirks 2002). In the consumer IoT, self-extension experiences involve transferring aspects of the consumer’s identity (i.e. the consumer’s properties and capacities) into a smart home assemblage’s identity. The second facet of CX includes self-expansion experiences, where

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aspects of a smart home assemblage’s identity are absorbed into the consumer’s identity. With self-expansion, which is consistent with a communal orientation (Carpenter and Spottswood

2013), “individuals treat a close other’s resources, perspectives and identities as if these were their own” (Aron et al. 1992), by incorporating aspects of a close other into one’s self (Aron, et al. 2004; Reimann al. 2012). While self-extension and self-expansion have natural interpretations consistent with our assemblage theory framework, Connell and Schau (2013) have noted that there is some confusion in the marketing literature over the distinction between self-expansion and self-extension. Hoffman, Novak and Kang (2016) found empirical support for this confusion in a pilot study of 102 participants evaluating their smartphones on three existing scales of self- expansion and six existing scales of self-extension: the vast majority of correlations were much larger than .5, with no clear grouping of self-expansion and self-extension measures by correlation, indicating that current measures of expansion and extension may not possess satisfactory discriminant validity. We believe that our formulation of expansion and extension experiences from an assemblage theory perspective may prove useful in developing separately valid measures of these distinct constructs.

Emergent properties of the CX assemblage. Since properties are measurable characteristics that specify what the CX assemblage is, they are the natural starting point for understanding CX. A range of scales have been developed that measure what we earlier termed the BASIS (i.e., behavioral, affective, sensory, intellectual, social) properties of CX (e.g.,

Brakus, Schmitt and Zarantonello 2009; Maklan and Klaus 2011; Klaus and Maklan 2012;

Verleye 2015; Lemon and Verhoef 2016). However, these scales were developed to measure how the consumer is affected by a brand or other marketing stimuli during an interaction, rather than how the consumer can affect the brand. This is likely due to the view in the literature of CX

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as largely composed of consumer responses and reactions, rather than as consumer initiatives and actions. For example, experience is described as “responses evoked by and triggered by” marketing stimuli (Brakus, Schmitt and Zarantonello 2009), as an “internal and subjective response customers have to any direct or indirect contact with a company” (Meyer and Schwager

2007, p, 118 cited in Verhoef et al 2009, p 2),” and as originating from “interactions…which provoke a reaction” (Gentile, Spiller and Noci 2007, p. 397 cited in Verhoef et al 2009, p. 2).

Mirroring the fundamental role of paired directional capacities in interaction, parallel

BASIS scales can be developed that measure not only how the consumer is affected by other entities, but also how they affect them. While “properties can be specified without reference to anything else capacities to affect must always be thought in relation to capacities to be affected,”

(DeLanda 2011, p4), this does not preclude defining properties from dual perspectives, just as capacities are. Current BASIS properties, describing how the consumer is affected, tend to describe self-expansion experience; our proposed additional BASIS properties, describing how the consumer affects others, tend to describe self-extension experience. For example, whereas the sensory aspect of CX is currently measured (i.e., Brakus, Schmitt and Zarantonello 2009) as how strongly the smart home assemblage affects the consumer’s senses (e.g., “Amazon Alexa’s lights and voice appeal to my senses”), we may additionally measure how strongly sensory stimuli created by the consumer affect the smart home assemblage (e.g. “The sound of my voice gets a reaction from Amazon Alexa”). This approach can greatly expand our understanding of what CX is.

While BASIS properties are important descriptors of extension and expansion experience, agency, autonomy and authority are three additional emergent properties of CX that are especially relevant to the consumer IoT. Agency represents consumers’ ability to act (Latour

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2005). Autonomy refers to consumers’ internal perceived locus of control (Ryan and Deci 2000), indicating behaviors that are self-determined. Authority concerns the degree to which one has the rights to take action or do something (Weber 1978) and is sometimes referred to as rightful or legitimate power (Rucker, Galinsky and Dubois 2012). Because both consumers and objects in smart home assemblages can possess autonomy, agency and authority, the “3As” can be explicitly introduced as measurable properties of CX, again from the dual perspectives of how the consumer affects the smart home assemblage (i.e. as describing self-extension experience), and how the consumer is affected by the 3As of the assemblage and it components (i.e. as describing self-expansion experience). As with the BASIS properties, how these properties emerge from the assemblage and how they should be measured are important research questions.

DeLanda (2016, p31) outlines, for example, conditions leading to the emergence of the property of authority in an interpersonal network.

Emergent capacities of the CX assemblage. Both extension experience capacities as well as expansion experience capacities emerge from the things consumers can do or have done to them in habitual interaction with a smart home assemblage. Self-extension experience capacities transfer consumer identity into the assemblage as they are exercised. This transfer is more naturally and more likely to happen as the capacity of the consumer to affect, but can also occur through the capacity to be affected. Conversely, self-expansion capacities absorb assemblage identity into the consumer as they are exercised. This absorption is more naturally and more likely to happen as the capacity of the consumer to be affected, but can also occur through the capacity to affect. These qualitative measures of what the consumer as a component of the CX assemblage does, or has done to them, have been largely neglected from a CX measurement point of view. Perhaps their numerosity is one reason for the neglect, as DeLanda

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(2011) notes that capacities “form a potentially open list” compared to the finite number of properties of an assemblage, because through interaction they are continually emerging.

Note that emergent capacities can also be exercised in imagined interaction (De Keyser et al. 2015; Helkkula, Kelleher and Pihlstrom 2012; Honeycutt 2003; 2009), occurring in past and future events as well as current events (Roto 2011; Wirtz et al. 2003). This is closely related to the idea of imaginative capacity, or “the potential to creatively envision components interacting in a reassembly” (Epp, Schau and Price 2014, p88). For example, if a burglar breaks the glass door, I know my home security alarm has the capacity to sound a loud siren, and therefore I feel my house has the property of being secure even though these capacities have never been exercised. Developing typologies or taxonomies as measures of CX capacities is an important direction for future research.

Agentic and Communal Expressive Roles of Components Through Capacities. As figure 5 illustrates, interactions in smart home assemblages have a historical component as outcomes of past interactions influence current and future interactions. Because of this contingent history underlying interaction, consumer interactions with smart objects may be considered relational (Aggarwal 2004). Considering consumer interaction as relational allows us to consider emergent expressive roles of assemblage components in terms of distinctions along the agency and communion orientations in relationships with others (Kurt and Frimer 2015).

Note that the previously discussed property of agency that emerges in the CX assemblage is a distinct construct from the agentic and communal expressive roles played by the components of the CX assemblage. The property of agency is a fundamental description of a consumer’s ability to affect and be affected, in the context of all of their interactions over time as part of the CX assemblage, while agentic orientation is a “self-centered agency” operating dual to communality

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in the context of the role the consumer plays in specific interactions (Bandura 2001, p 14).

People express traits of agency by acting on or asserting themselves and express communion through their social connections to others. People’s need to differentiate the self account for expressions of agency, while needs to incorporate the self into social environments account for expressions of communion (Abele and Wojciszke 2007).

As originally formulated by Bakan (1966), agency and communion are oppositional dimensions of personality that define how people behave. While Bakan’s (1966) original conceptualization argues that agency and communion need to be in balance, later formulations have suggested these are independent dimensions of personality, agency as mastery and power that supports individuation, and communion as nurturance and warmth that supports closeness with others, that are likely to interact (Wiggins 1991). Recent research in person perception has established a link between agency and communion and the perspectives people take in social relationships (Abele and Wojciszke 2014). Agency, associated with constructs like competence and independent self-construal, is important to self-related goals, and communion, associated with nurturance and interdependent self-construal, is important to relationships with others

(Abele and Wojciszke 2007; Judd, et.al. 2005).

Habitual interactions between consumers and smart objects are likely to reflect these orientations, with agentic interactions characterizing effectance and independence, and communal interactions emphasizing integrating with close others (Guisinger and Blatt 1994).

Because consumers are agentic when striving to individuate (Abele and Wojciszke 2007), as they focus on exercising capacities that emphasize self-related goals, they will perceive their capacities as expressing an agentic role and injecting or transferring their identity into the assemblage. In that way, self-extension experiences will obtain. As consumers are communal

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when striving to integrate (Abele and Wojciszke 2007), when they focus on exercising capacities that emphasize relationships with others, they will perceive their capacities as expressing a communal role and incorporating or absorbing assemblage identity into the self. This will lead to self-expansion experiences.

To understand the distinction between directional capacities and their expressive roles, consider the LG Rolling Bot, a spherical rolling smart object that combines audio and video recording and playback and remote control features for home monitoring and pet stimulation

(Thompson 2016). Components of the CX assemblage include the Rolling Bot, the consumer, the consumer’s home WiFi network, a smartphone, the app for remote control, Bluetooth, other smart home devices including appliances and lights, and one’s pets, along with other associated entities including the areas in the home where the device is deployed, others who might participate in using or observing the device, and so on. Once connected, the Rolling Bot can adjust volume or change channels on the TV, control the air conditioner, and, in “pet mode,” transmit one’s voice through the speakers on the device, point a red laser pointer and make the device “dance.” The consumer has the capacity to move the Rolling Bot around their home, record audio and video of events in the home and enable “pet mode” (capacities to affect), as well and the capacity to receive audio and video (capacities to be affected).

Self-extension experiences are likely to obtain when the consumer is focused on exercising capacities related to the self, but exercising them in ways that could not be done without the assemblage. For example, previous interactions might have involved the consumer exercising the capacity to monitor her home and pets by asking friends to house sit when she is away. Now able to monitor her home with the Rolling Bot, the originally material capacities of mechanically controlling the Rolling Bot and receiving its notifications may shift to play an

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agentic expressive role through which the consumer takes charge and monitors her home and pets even when she is away. In doing so, the consumer transfers her capacities for monitoring - capacities that the consumer has developed as part of her identity in other assemblages - into the

Rolling Bot assemblage. This type of interaction serves to inject the consumer’s previously developed capacities for monitoring into what the assemblage can do, thus extending the range of her own eyes and ears into the assemblage.

On the other hand, self-expansion experiences tend to emerge when the consumer is focused on exercising emergent capacities related to the assemblage of which she is a part. These capacities can only be exercised by the consumer as part of the assemblage, but as part of the assemblage, the consumer feels these capacities are hers. Those same material capacities of controlling the device and receiving notifications shift to play a communal expressive role through which the consumer thinks about her relationship with her home and pets. The consumer absorbs the assemblage’s capacity to physically be present with the pet and play with it. What the assemblage can do is incorporated into the consumer, expanding her ability to care for and enjoy her pet, even when she is away. The consumer is thus integrated with the assemblage’s capacities, becoming something more by being able to do, from a distance, what the Rolling Ball does.

It may seem that self-extension is the capacity of the consumer to affect the assemblage, for example by remotely moving the Rolling Bot. Similarly, it may seem that self-expansion is the capacity of the consumer to be affected by the assemblage, for example by viewing the home and pet while away. However, upon further thought it should be clear that both extension and expansion involve interactions where the consumer both affects and is affected by other entities.

Thus, it is the expressive role that the consumer’s capacities play across a sequence of

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interactions, that determines extension or expansion, rather than whether the consumer affects or is affected by another entity during any particular interaction event.

OBJECT EXPERIENCE IN THE IOT

Like Consumers, Smart Objects Have Autonomy, Authority, and Agency

Traditionally, consumer behavior research takes as its underlying assumption that consumers are unique in their ability to express agency. As a consequence of this human-centric view, all interactions among heterogeneous objects, including consumers, brands and the contexts and places within which they interact, are evaluated from the consumer’s perspective.

Thus, anthropocentrism drives much consumer behavior research, and the assumptions consumer behavior researchers make about how consumers and objects interact tend to inform the kinds of questions that get asked about those interactions (Borgerson 2013; Campbell, et.al. 2010).

In this view, consumer behavior researchers implicitly assume that the only ontology and epistemology that is relevant is that of the consumer (Zwick and Dholakia 2006), so that even theorizing about the relationship between consumers and objects is from the perspective of the consumer. Thus, the ontological status of objects is defined in terms of the consumer who interact with them. For example, Fournier’s (1998) seminal theory that brands could be considered as active, relationship partners and not merely “passive objects of marketing transactions” (p. 344) is because consumers have a tendency to anthropomorphize brands and this anthropomorphism helps consumers see brands as making active contributions to the brand- consumer relationship. In Fournier’s (1998, p. 345) original conceptualization, brands “cannot act or think or feel - except through the activities of the manager that administers it” and that brands have “no objective existence at all,” existing only as a “collection of perceptions held in

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the mind of the consumer.” Effectively, marketing mix decisions actualize the brand’s personality and justify the consumer-brand relationship, a perspective that still holds sway.

However, and consistent with the OOO perspective emerging in consumer behavior research (Canniford and Bajde 2016), we argue that it is not just consumers that have their own ontology; it is also critical to consider the ontology of objects. In other words, in addition to considering how consumers affect and can be affected by objects, it makes sense to consider how objects can affect and be affected by consumers. The smart objects as well as the assemblages that form from consumer interaction with these objects, and objects with each other, have meaning on their own, possessing their own ontology and therefore equally existing alongside consumers in the relationship (“all things equally exist, yet they do not exist equally” (italics original, Bogost 2012a, p. 11)).

Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton’s (1981) empirical examination of the role of objects in people’s lives gives us an early, general understanding of how objects contribute to individuals’ sense of their authentic selves. Belk’s (1988) seminal examination of how consumers attach meaning to the objects they possess marks the first step in the consumer behavior literature of an object-oriented ontology. This emphasis is related to materiality, the study of the relationship between the consumer and others, where others can include objects, places and not just other humans (Borgerson 2013). More recently, Giesler and Fischer (2017) called for an emphasis on market system dynamics to counter the current scholarly marketing biases that emphasize: 1) the consumer as the key actor in economic exchanges, 2) a micro-level theoretical focus, and, 3) the prediction of market response and consumer behavior. Market system dynamics calls for the recognition of a market as a complex social system comprised of

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heterogeneous constituents that interact at multiple levels, with a focus on emergence, growth and change.

This emerging research perspective informs our conceptualization of object experience in the IoT. While it is straightforward to argue that the constructs of agency, autonomy and authority are relevant to consumer behavior, we submit that smart objects in the IoT also possess these characteristics. Figure 6, reflecting our view of the relationship between agency, autonomy and authority, applies to both objects and consumers. The emergent property of authority is nested under autonomy which is nested under agency. Thus, the property of authority can only be considered once agency and then autonomy have emerged, a view consistent with the computer science perspective on autonomous agents (Jones, Artikis and Pitt 2013; Luck and d’Inverno 1995). (Figure 6 follows References.)

The computer science literature has long recognized the roles of agency and autonomy in intelligent objects (Franklin and Graesser 1996; Luck and d’Inverno 1995). Agency is the ability to act (Franklin and Graesser 1996; Latour 2005), explicitly implying an intention (Borgerson

2005; Borgerson 2013). Smart objects have agency to the extent that they possess the ability for

(inter)action, having the ability to affect and be affected. In the case of everyday objects, object agency is typically seen as the ability to have an effect, without implying intentionality

(Borgerson 2013). Borgerson (2013, p. 132) notes that this is a “diminished” form of agency, although the object still has the power to effect change. But consider an intriguing smart object experiment like Brad the Toaster. Brad, an Internet-connected toaster networked to other toasters, knows when the home’s occupants are not using it as much as other households in its network are using their toasters, and flips its lever repeatedly to get the consumer’s attention and

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encourage more use (Rebaudengo 2014; Rebaudengo, Aprile and Hekkert 2012). For Brad the

Toaster, and smart objects like “him,” this lends an intentionality which we expect will only increase over time.

A smart object is autonomous to the degree it can function independently without human intervention (Parasuraman and Riley 1997) and independently interact with other entities, serving a purpose unto itself (Luck and d’Inverno 1995), “in pursuit of its own agenda” (Franklin and Graesser 1996, p 25). Object autonomy resides on a continuum from the lowest level of automation involving complete human intervention for action to succeed to the highest level where intelligent systems can behave, making and executing decisions, independently without human intervention (Parasuraman, Sheridan and Wickens 2000). Independent interaction is possible because smart objects are context-aware (Dey and Abowd 1999; Perera, et.al. 2013), rendering them able to detect changes in their environment at a particular point in space

(location) and time through sensors, initiate autonomous action through actuators, store and process information, transmit and receive information to and from the Internet, and connect to other smart devices through the Internet. In very real ways, smart objects evolve and change through interaction, representing, as assemblages themselves, something more than just inanimate objects.

In addition to agency and autonomy, smart objects can possess authority. Authority can be described as legitimate power (Rucker, Galinsky, and Dubois 2012). In the computer science literature, scholars have drawn on deontic logic, emphasizing normative concepts of obligation and permission (Hansen, Pigozzi, and van der Torre 2007), to evaluate how to implement communication and decision-making among smart objects. Thus, agency describes the ability to act, autonomy the ability to act independently, and authority how smart objects affect and are

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affected by other entities in interaction. Smart objects have agency to the extent they are capable of acting and being acted upon in smart home assemblages and they are autonomous to the extent that their actions (i.e. their agency) can be motivated from within (Luck and d’Inverno 1995;

Parasuraman, Sheridan and Wickens 2000). While agency and autonomy focus on the object’s internal properties, authority concerns its behavior in interaction, representing a social construct

(Dignum 1999). A smart object’s contextual connections confer upon it the authority to give instructions to other smart objects and make decisions about its own and other objects’ operations. To what extent is the object authorized to provide or request information, and to initiate and respond to requests? In our conceptualization, authority refers to the degree to which components with autonomy and agency have both permission and the obligation to control how they respond to other entities and how other entities respond to them. Therefore, Brad the

Toaster exhibits agency, autonomy and authority, with behaviors that can be interpreted as social

(Mitew 2014).

Object-Oriented Ontology (OOO)

The human-centric approach considers experience from the perspective of the human, and so precludes our ability to evaluate objects as having the capacity to interact with other entities, affecting or being affected by them, extending themselves into other objects or humans, or being expanded by other objects or humans. Thus, the human-centric approach does not allow us to consider object experiences (Bettany and Daly 2008; Canniford and Bajde 2016). As Mitew

(2014, paragraph 13) puts it, “Something strange happens however when objects acquire connectivity, semantic depth, and the powers of computation and memory - they immediately and drastically transgress the ontological borders assigned to them.” Zwick and Dholakia (2006)

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argue that consumption objects are becoming “ontologically indeterminate and emerging entities akin to life forms” (p. 57). These observations suggest that objects are something more than passive entities that consumers invest with meaning (Belk 1988) and that our conceptualization must be flexible enough to encompass this expanded view of smart objects.

OOO, a conceptualization from the speculative realism school of philosophy (Bogost

2012a; Bryant 2011; Harman 2002), permits this expanded view of what an object is. OOO holds that objects are more than just their component parts and effects, and that they are irreducible to their parts or their relations. This challenges the human-centric or anthropocentric view that dominates most research in the social sciences and the correlationism view in philosophy which states that everything about an object is tied up in humans’ relations to it. Thus, OOO is in opposition to relational theories such as actor-network theory which argues that a thing is nothing more than what it does (Latour 2005).

OOO involves a “profound decentering of the human and the subject that nonetheless makes room for the human, representation, and content, and an accompanying attentiveness to all sorts of nonhuman objects or actors coupled with a refusal to reduce these agencies to vehicles of content and signs” (Bryant p. 27). Objects are more than just the matter from which they are constructed or how consumers use them, but have ontological weight on their own (Harman

2002) and exist substantially on their own with qualities that are more than consumers’ perceptions or interactions with them. In OOO, all objects, human and otherwise, are placed on equal footing with no difference in kind between, say, a consumer’s relationship with Amazon

Alexa, and a Philips Hue light bulb’s relationship with Alexa. Objects do not have meaning because consumers use them. Instead, they can “only be used because [they] are capable of an effect” (Harman, 2002, p. 20). This is an important point for our conceptualization because

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consumers are not the only entities with the capacity to affect and be affected; smart objects also have significant paired directional capacities, and ones that involve interaction not only with consumers, but also with other objects.

Object Experience (OX)

In a manner parallel to our development of the CX assemblage which emerges from all the consumer-centric interactions, we also propose a conceptualization of object experience (OX) that, for any given object, emerges from all object-centric interactions. Figure 4 (panels d through f) shows that the object-centric interactions include the part-whole interactions of the object and the smart-home assemblage of which the object is a part (path 1 in figure 4, panel d), the part-whole interactions of the object and the various smart home micro-assemblages of which the object is part (e.g. the Hue and Ecobee micro-assemblages in paths 2 and 3 in panel e of figure 4), and the within-assemblage interactions of the object with individual smart home components (paths 4-7 in panel f of figure 4). While the OX assemblage is defined by different interactions among entities than the CX assemblage, both OX and CX assemblages are contingent on the existence of the same smart home assemblage within which they are nested.

Additionally, figure 5 indicates that even in the simplest assemblage of a consumer and an object, part-whole interaction implies that we are not considering the interaction of the consumer and object with each other, but rather the separate interactions of each of the consumer and the object with a historically contingent assemblage, resulting in different experiences for consumer and object.

Both OOO and assemblage theory support the idea that objects have experience that exists independent of our interaction with those objects. As Caniford and Bajde (2016, p. 6)

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observe: “There is a whole lot of stuff out there doing things and objectifying other stuff without our involvement” and Deleuze and Guattari (1994, p. 154) observe that “[e]ven when they are nonliving, or rather inorganic, things have a lived experience because they are perceptions and affections. In other words, owing to their capacities to affect and be affected in interaction with other entities, objects can interpret one another through what Bryant (2011, p. 178) calls

“translations.”

The main difference between consumer and object experience is that consumers as entities are realized not only through interaction with the external world, but also through interactions inside themselves, whereas objects are only realized through external interactions with other entities (Bryant 2011). However, Bryant (2011) also notes that object realization likely resides on a continuum, so we can argue that even though objects are not living, to the extent that they are smart, they actually can operate on themselves to a certain degree. This suggests that the properties and capacities of the object will dictate how it is realized in interaction with other objects and the kinds of experiences it is capable of having. So, just as interaction produces emergent capacities for the CX assemblage, so will it for the OX assemblage. This means we can posit parallel sets of object-extension and object-expansion experiences, with analogous BASIS and 3A properties for object experience, as well expressive roles of OX emergent capacities, as depicted on the right side in figure 1.

Perceptions of Object Experience Through Object Anthropomorphism

For consumers to understand object experience, consider that our knowledge of objects is constructed, not discovered, in context of our respective interactions as components of a larger assemblage (Bettman, Luce and Payne 1998; Bryant 2011; Harman 2002). Because we can never

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have direct access to the exact properties of an object, we must interact with it in the context of an assemblage and construct an experience from that interaction. While we have no way to directly ask an object what its experience is, we can connect ideas from OOO and the person perception literature (Jones 1990; Malloy and Kenny 1986) in an attempt to speculate about object experience. Consider that a consumer’s perception of her own experience is akin to self- perception, while the consumer’s perception of the object’s experience is akin to other- perception. What mechanism can bridge the gap between consumer experience and object experience? We propose that anthropomorphism supplies the process for this translation.

The Mechanism of Anthropomorphism. Anthropomorphism is the tendency for people to ascribe human-like characteristics, emotions and behaviors to objects (Epley, Waytz and

Cacioppo 2007). The brand relationships literature has demonstrated that consumers have a tendency to anthropomorphize brands (Aggarwal and McGill (2007; Fournier 1988), for example, as partners or servants (Aggarwal and McGill 2012). Research has also shown that individuals are motivated to anthropomorphize smart objects (Waytz, Heafner and Epley 2014;

Waytz, et.al. 2010). It seems highly likely that consumers will have the tendency to anthropomorphize the smart home assemblages they interact with (Pieroni et al 2015; Sung, Guo,

Grinter and Christensen 2008). In our framework, anthropomorphism is an additional holistic property that emerges from the CX assemblage, as shown in figure 1. Through habitual interactions with smart home assemblages, consumers will develop interpretations of smart object experience through anthropomorphism.

If consumers perceive object experience through the mechanism of anthropomorphism, how exactly does this happen? An early OOO foray into considering the phenomenology of objects suggested that object experience can be approached from two perspectives: what it is like

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for a human to be the object and what it is like for the object to be the object (Nagel 1974). The former approach is an example of anthropocentric anthropomorphism which involves interpreting the world in ways that are consistent with ourselves. This is a subject-centered perspective in which we might ask, “what’s it like for me to be a smart toaster?” and make assumptions about objects through our own subjectivity, imagining how Brad the Toaster is like me in some ways but different from me in others. This is an example of how we can bring to life objects in our minds. The problem with this approach is that it assumes that our own subjectivity is the ideal lens. More recently, Bogost (2012a) has argued that anthropomorphism may be applied as a metaphor to understand object experience from the object’s perspective. So we can

“metaphorize” this experience, where anthropomorphic metaphor serves as the bridge between our own reality and that of the object’s reality. This approach involves imagining the experience of the object relative to its properties and capacities, not ours (e.g. what the Rolling Bot camera

“sees” is relative to its sensor, not the human eye). We can use anthropomorphic metaphor to serve as the bridge between our own reality and that of the object’s reality. For example, when

Brad the Toaster repeatedly flips its levers, a consumer might invoke anthropomorphic metaphor to perceive this behavior as expressing that the smart toaster assemblage is trying to get the consumer’s attention because it knows that it is not being used enough compared to other toasters it has access to. This is not an anthropocentric comparison to how I would feel, if I myself were a toaster, but an anthropomorphic imagining of what the world might look like from

Brad’s perspective.

Anthropomorphic metaphor means consumers use the same constructs to think about object experience that they use to think about their own experience; that is, in terms of expansion and extension, BASIS and AAA properties, and agentic and communal expressive roles. This

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perspective asks us to recognize the ontology of the object and speculate through metaphor what it is like for the object to be an object, assuming the object’s BASIS and AAA properties and myriad emergent capacities render it capable of object-extension and object-expansion experiences, just as ours allow for our experiences. Through this approach we can give anthropomorphic “voice” to smart home assemblages (Mitew, 2014), striving to consider the object’s experience not from our own perspective, but by speculating how the object might perceive things from its perspective.

Several interesting research questions arise from our argument that anthropomorphism is the mechanism by which consumers are able to perceive and interpret object experience. Under what conditions is smart object anthropomorphism likely to occur? Waytz, et. al. (2010) found that more unpredictable smart gadgets were seen as more anthropomorphic compared to more predictable smart gadgets, where greater unpredictability corresponds to less control, so when consumers can program a gadget or otherwise control its behavior, they are less likely to anthropomorphize the object than when they cannot predict its behavior. So as control decreases and unpredictability increase, anthropomorphism should increase, suggesting that perceptions of agency, autonomy and authority will be important in determining the degree to which anthropomorphism occurs. Relatedly, are there qualitatively different types of anthropomorphism, or does it simply differ in terms of intensity? Does object anthropomorphism differ depending on whether it emerges from self-extension versus self-expansion experiences?

A Toolkit for OX: Ontography, Metaphorism and Carpentry. An important direction for future research is to map out the nature of these anthropomorphic metaphors. Bogost (2012b) argues that we can base our speculation “on a combination of evidence - the exhaust [objects] leave behind - and poetics - the speculative work we do to characterize that experience.” What

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metaphors can we construct to help us understand how smart objects see themselves and their interactions in smart home assemblages? Bogost (2012a) proposes using a trio of “alien phenomenology” tools including ontography, metaphorism and carpentry, to speculate about what it means for an object to be an object. Ontography includes creating visual representations, descriptive lists and even simulations to elucidate the relations among objects. The list of all

Amazon Alexa commands – “her” capacities to affect and to be affected - accessed from one’s smartphone, is an example of an ontography of Alexa that shows how the object is not just connected to the consumer through the voice commands issued, but also to the other objects

Alexa is networked with. Because objects like Alexa cannot be reduced to their components or their effects in interaction, as the next step we can apply metaphorism. Here we invoke anthropomorphism to try and understand the object’s perceptions and experiences of other objects as represented by the ontography, as opposed to trying to describe the effects of object interaction. The key is to anthropomorphize experience relative to the object’s components, not our own. Thus, what might it be like for Alexa to constantly listen for the “wake word” (her name, Alexa) and then respond to commands? With carpentry, we can construct artifacts that

“explain how things make their world” (Bogost 2012a, p. 93). The Amazon Alexa app maintains a scrollable history of all commands she heard, translated into the words as Alexa understood them, together with the consumer’s voice recording of the commands. This documented history shows the world as Alexa sees it. In the smart home, dashboards that allow the consumer to visualize (Schmidt, Doeweling, and Mühläuser 2012) how the various components of smart home assemblages interact also represent this carpentry, revealing to consumers what their home is, from the home’s perspective.

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Object-Extension and Object-Expansion. How can we use anthropomorphism to speculate about extension and expansion facets of OX? Consider again the LG Rolling Bot assemblage, but now, from the perspective of the object. Object-extension experiences emerge from object-centric interactions in which the object’s exercised capacities shift from playing material roles to agentic expressive roles. In object-extension, the Rolling Bot is focused on exercising capacities related to itself, but exercising them in ways that could not be done without the assemblage. Suppose that the Rolling Bot has the capacity to play with a pet in the home in a rudimentary manner and send the consumer a notification when it is doing so. The LG Rolling

Bot might be perceived as transferring its capacities for moving about the floor and interacting with a pet through its laser pointer into the broader assemblage that involves the consumer.

Through anthropomorphic metaphor, the consumer may view the Rolling Bot’s actions as playing an agentic expressive role in which the Rolling Bot, through its notification, has commanded the consumer to participate in playing with the pet, extending its capacities for movement and interaction into the assemblage.

In object-expansion, an object’s exercised capacities shift to playing a communal expressive role. The Rolling Bot has some capacities that can only be exercised as part of the assemblage, for example talking to the pet in the voice of the consumer who is speaking remotely through their smartphone. The Rolling Bot may be perceived as absorbing the assemblage’s capacity to talk to the pet. What the assemblage can do is incorporated into the

Rolling Bot, expanding its ability to play with the pet. Through anthropomorphic metaphor, the consumer may view the Rolling Bot’s actions as playing a communal expressive role in which the Rolling Bot is cooperatively working with the consumer, expanding the ability of the Rolling

Bot to ensure a good relationship with the pet.

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Implications for Consumer-Object Relationships in the IoT

Because the relational nature of consumer interactions with smart objects (and smart home assemblages) suggests that the consumer's perspectives of the interactions in the CX and

OX assemblages may be evaluated by referencing them to social relationships (Fournier 1988), consumer-brand relationships offer a precedent for considering relationships with smart objects and their assemblages. Consumers have many different types of relationships with brands that are dynamic and situated on multiple continua encompassing location, social context and time

(McAlexander, et al 2002) and that are the product of mutually reinforcing relationships among the consumer and the product, the brand, the marketer and other consumers. Consumer relationships with smart objects follow directly. However, consumer-object relationships are necessarily evaluated from the perspective of the consumer, owing to the inaccessibility of knowing an object’s experience (Bogost 2012a; Harman 2002).

Consumer-object relationship styles emerge from the interaction between the CX and OX assemblages, as depicted in figure 1. Through capacities developed from and exercised during habitual interaction, consumers will play agentic and communal expressive roles in their interactions in the CX assemblage. By means of anthropomorphism, consumers will perceive that the new capacities objects develop in their interactions in the OX assemblage will express these roles as well. The relationship styles are descriptive properties of the relationship assemblage that emerges from interaction of the CX and OX assemblage. We propose that the styles, dynamic and evolving over time, can be represented on a circumplex model by dimensions corresponding to the agentic and communal expressive roles of the consumer in the

CX assemblage, and the object in the OX assemblage (Horowitz, et. al. 2006; Kiesler 1983;

Wiggins 1991). While consumer behavior researchers have applied Russell’s (1980) circumplex

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model of affect (e.g. Oliver 1993; Richins 1997) and Schwartz's (1992) circumplex model of values (e.g. Burroughs and Rindfleisch 2002; Shepherd, Chartrand and Fitzsimons 2015), we believe this is the first application of Kiesler’s (1983) circumplex model of interpersonal complementarity in the consumer behavior literature.

The interpersonal circumplex (Pincus and Ansell 2003; Wiggins, Trapnell and Phillips

1988) identifies four broad classes of relationship styles (Kiesler 1983). As depicted in figure 7, the horizontal axis of the circumplex displays the degree of communal orientation, from indifferent on the far left (Horowitz, et.al. 2006) to warm and agreeable on the far right. The vertical axis represents agentic orientation, with dominant at the top and submissive at the bottom. The four styles specify interpersonal patterns between two entities (diagrammed as black and grey circles) according to their degree of complementarity on the dimensions of agentic and communal orientation (Kiesler 1983): a) complementarity, b) isomorphic acomplementary, c) semimorphic acomplementary, and d) anticomplementary. While figure 7 reflects stylized relationship styles defined by high and low combinations of agentic and communal expression, numerous other combinations are possible, depending on the degree of agentic and communal expression. (Figure 7 follows References.)

Complementarity patterns involve reciprocity (i.e. opposite values) on agency and correspondence (i.e. similar values) on communion, reflecting that interactions “co-occur in lawful ways” (Gurtman 2009, p. 12), representing balance in the regulatory system defining the relationship (Pincus and Gurtman 2006) and promoting interaction stability. In relationship styles with complementary patterns, consumer-object interactions express a shared communal orientation (e.g. both warm and agreeable), but differ in agentic expression (dominant versus

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submissive). Figure 7a diagrams the stylized version of these patterns. Complementarity patterns reflect master-servant relationship styles that are either trusting (high communal) or indifferent

(low communal). In general, the object servant-consumer master relationship style occurs when the consumer agentic role is high and the object agentic role is low. If communal expression is high for both consumer and object, the object is a trusting servant of its consumer master (right side of figure 7a), but if communal expression is low for both, then the object is an indifferent servant (left side of figure 7a). The object servant relationship style represents “long-finger” connectivity (Rebaudengo 2014) that literally extends the consumer’s reach, so that the object functions in the assemblage as a cyborg appendage of the consumer. The object servant relationship style is likely to emerge naturally in interactions between consumers and smart objects because consumers innately tend to see themselves as more agentic, compared to how they see others (Abele and Wojciszke 2007; 2014). Additionally, user programming of devices with simple “if- then” rules readily codes a consumer’s agentic expression toward an object, territorializing and locking in this relationship style, making it more likely to obtain.

Consumer servant-object master relationship styles are also possible when the consumer agentic role is low and the object agentic role is high. When communal expression is high for both consumer and object, the consumer may be a trusting servant of the object master, for example allowing the Nest thermostat to decide what the ideal temperature in the home should be. On the other hand, low communal expression for both consumer and object can arise in situations where the consumer perceives the object’s actions and reactions as independent and active, and her own as less assured. These perceptions of expressions are likely to arise from unpredictable objects that are highly anthropomorphized (Waytz, et.al. 2010) that consumers do not well understand. Consumers whose agentic expression is low relative to the object’s have

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essentially ceded power to the smart home assemblage becoming an indifferent servant of the object master. Echoing Mick and Fournier’s (1989) freedom/enslavement paradox, the consumer potentially becomes a “slave to technology” (Mick and Fournier 1989, p. 129). In the extreme, this could be experienced as dehumanizing (Haslam and Loughnan 2014).

Isomorphic acomplementary relationship styles are defined by nonreciprocity of agency and correspondence of communion, and involve identical agentic and communal expressions by consumer and object (figure 7b), are less stable than complementary styles, and motivate behaviors that increase separation of agentic roles (Horowitz, et.al. 2006). For example, consumers and objects are active partners in the relationship when agentic and communal expression is high for both (upper right in figure 7b), but detached interactors when expression is low across the board (lower left of figure 7b). Abele and Brack (2013) find that mutual dependence leads to a preference for agency in the other, suggesting that the active partner relationship style is increasingly likely to become common as the smart home becomes indispensible (Hoffman, Novak and Venkatesh 2004).

Semimorphic acomplementary relationship styles are reciprocal for agentic expression but do not correspond in communal expression (figure 7c). These styles are also less stable and motivate behaviors that encourage convergence of communal expressions. For example, when agentic and communal expression are high for the consumer, but low for the object (the pattern connecting the black circle in the upper right to the gray circle in the lower left in figure 7c), consumers may perceive the smart home assemblage as disinterested in responding appropriately to coded interactions. This may happen as consumers struggle to successfully implement commands with smart objects that are difficult to control or, for example, have a difficult time understanding voice commands.

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The final set of relationship styles are anti-complementary, involving non-reciprocal agentic expressions and non-corresponding communal expressions (figure 7d). These are the most unstable styles; they are minimally rewarding and present few opportunities for sustained interaction. These styles are particularly interesting as they could, for example, lead to diminished expectations for the smart home and increasing churn rates.

We see four additional interesting directions. First, measurement and validation of the styles is an important initial direction. Second, how do the assemblage processes of territorialization and coding impact the emergence of different relationship styles? We noted how programmed if-then rules can code direct interactions as the servant-master relationship style.

But, as interactions between consumers and objects become increasingly coded, they are likely to recede into the background, becoming less direct and more ambient. Such programmed ambient interaction may code isomorphic relationship styles where both parties play highly communal roles, but do not express strong agentic orientations. Because communion is primary compared to agency when consumers observe others or think about how others affect them (Abele and

Wojciszke 2007; Abele and Wojciszke 2014), consumers may naturally interpret ambient interactions that they observe as communal. Third, what is the impact of relationship styles on consumer behavior outcomes? Research has found that when both a smart object and user express agentic orientations in a shared task (i.e. an isomorphic style reflecting active partners), task performance improves, as do the user’s feelings of control over the action, even when the smart object performs most of the action (Marble, et. al. 2004) and even when the smart object initiates action in a shared task, users attribute task performance success to themselves. Fourth, what are the dynamics underlying the “relationship journey” (Ring and Van de Ven 1994) of consumers and objects? Which relationship styles are most likely to develop and which

Marketing Science Institute Working Paper Series 44 transitions to occur? For example, a relationship journey might begin with the object as servant

(through coded direct interaction) and transition to the consumer and object as highly communal but not agentic (through coded ambient interaction).

CONCLUDING THOUGHTS

Our assemblage theory-based development of consumer and object experience in IoT contexts like the smart home has covered a lot of ground. We have argued that facets of self- expansion and self-extension experience provide a more comprehensive understanding of the nature of consumer experience in the IoT, with CX consisting of the properties and capacities of a corresponding CX assemblage defined by consumer-centric interactions, along with the expressive roles of the consumer in that assemblage. We have also proposed that objects, like consumers, have experiences, which consumers access through anthropomorphism, and that consumer-object relationships emerge from interaction of their respective experiences. As consumers and objects interact as parts of dynamic assemblages in the consumer IoT, they will collectively achieve things none would be capable of doing on their own and entirely new consumer, and object, experiences will emerge. We believe these new experiences, combining people, objects, the physical world, and the Internet, have the potential to rival experiences from not only all previous phases of the Internet, but also those in the real world.

Beyond the relationships that emerge from the interaction of consumer experience with object experience, the concept of object experience raises the question, what does it mean to be a consumer? A recent taxonomy categorizes intelligent agent technology (Kumar et al. 2016) from the perspective of how marketers can use intelligent agents to improve the effectiveness of their marketing efforts to human consumers. This parallels early corporate visions of IoT appliances

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like smart refrigerators, which have been viewed as a means to present on-screen in-home coupons to consumers (Smith 2013). But, what if instead we view the smart refrigerator as an

“intelligent agent” which itself is a consumer that can be understood and marketed to directly?

There is a long history of intelligent agents working alongside consumers (e.g. Maes, Guttman and Moukas 1999), but what happens when the agent is the consumer? Our framework considers a smart object as a kind of consumer, interacting with all the assemblages of which it is a part, and from which object experience emerges as a distinct assemblage. “Object consumers” can have the equivalent of affective responses; for example, Brad the Toaster is only happy when he is making lots of toast. Object consumers can make decisions; Amazon’s Dash Replenishment service allows washing machines, pet feeders, and printers to re-order laundry detergent, pet food, and printer cartridges on their own when they are running low (Rao 2015). Object consumers can participate in consumption; using a smartphone app, smart refrigerators show consumers the inside of their refrigerator when they are at the grocery store and suggest products and recipes contingent on what the consumer already has at home. Is there value in thinking of these assemblages as consumers? How should we market to object consumers as end users?

The idea that objects have experiences that can be understood through metaphorism suggests important practical applications beyond the interesting conceptual, ethnographic, and empirical work consumer behavior scholars may undertake. If marketers can better understand the experiences in smart home assemblages, from both the consumer and object’s perspective, there are opportunities to improve product design and development efforts and build better marketing communication programs that communicate the value to skeptical consumers

(Accenture 2016). It is interesting to note that brands’ marketing messages have begun attempting to convey this idea of OX relationship styles through the lens of anthropomorphism.

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LG markets the Rolling Bot and other products as “friends” which extend the capabilities of its

LG G5 smartphone (LG 2016) and Philips (Philips 2016) calls the products that are compatible with its smart lights “friends of Hue,” suggesting both object-extension (Philips Hue can “take control of your home”) and object-expansion (“make your home more thoughtful”) experiences are possible. While we recognize that current smart home assemblages have only limited capacities for expression during interaction, this is likely to change over time owing to advances in affective computing (Picard 2003).

Objects interact without humans and because of their sensors and actuators have capacities to understand their environment. They collect data, share the data with other objects and can make decisions based on their awareness of their context. What is the perception of the consumer from the object’s perspective? The consumer is something to be experienced through sensors and voice and touch interfaces. The consumer is a mediated presence, not directly experienced, but only experienced through how they are triggering sensors and entering data into interfaces. Because objects have their own ontology they are not just there for consumers, sensing and storing and actuating, but also for themselves and for their relationships with other objects. So smart devices play an active role in creating the experience and defining the identity of the assemblage. We believe that as consumers slowly become aware of this, they will begin to anticipate the ways that objects can meet their needs, opening the door to anticipatory self- extension (Kleine and Baker 2004) and self-expansion experiences.

Gershenfeld (1999) has proposed a “Bill of Things’ Rights” which captures three critical aspects our framework: “Things have the right to: Have an identity, Access other objects, Detect the nature of their environment” (p 104). A number of philosophers and physicists have argued that it is only a matter of time before humanity is faced with the singularity, that moment in time

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when smart objects, through an “intelligence explosion” (Bostrom 2014, p. 4), become smart enough to program themselves without human intervention, with potentially catastrophic consequences for humanity. du Sautoy (2016) argues that as machines develop consciousness and could be considered to be alive, we should be seeking approaches to measure consciousness.

The Turing Test has been proposed as a way to measure machine intelligence (Turing 1950). By this test, a machine is considered as intelligent as a human if a human observer cannot distinguish whether the machine or another human is answering the questions submitted to each of them. But this is a decidedly human-centric measure of object intelligence (French 1990).

New measurement approaches adopt a non-human-centric approach by focusing on direct measurement of the machine, borrowing from developments in neuroscience to develop a

“consciousness coefficient” that can determine the degree to which a network is self-aware

(Oizumi, Albantakis and Tononi 2014).

Technological evolution supports the idea of a framework such as ours for conceptualizing how consumer and object experiences emerge and evolve in the IoT. Today we confront the opportunities and challenges in the burgeoning consumer-facing categories of homes, wearables, cars, health and wellness, and retail (McKinsey Global Institute 2015). In the more distant future, it is likely that technology will change the definition of what it means to be human (Bostrom 2005). But even as we, consumer behavior researchers, along with computer scientists, and philosophers, wonder what awaits, thought leaders are already beginning to conceptualize and debate visions of a future that humans share will with sentient objects

(Bostrom 2014; Holley 2015). The day may be coming when we struggle with definitions of who

- or what - is a human. But for now, we believe we have arrived at that place where our usual human-centric perspective may already be limiting our opportunities for discovery and insight.

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71

Smart Home Assemblage

Interaction through paired capacities Interaction through CX leads to CX paired capacities OX Assemblage leads to OX C O Assemblage C O C O C O

Other assemblages are nested in and overlap with the smart home assemblage

CONSUMER EXPERIENCE (CX) IDENTITY OF THE SMART OBJECT EXPERIENCE (OX) Self-extension Self-expansion HOME ASSEMBLAGE Object-extension Object-expansion Emergent properties experience experience experience experience Emergent capacities Expressive roles Emergent Properties of CX Assemblage Emergent Properties of OX Assemblage Measures of how Measures of how Measures of how Measures of how consumer affects consumer is ANTHROPOMORPHISM object affects object is assemblage affected by assemblage affected by (i.e., BASIS, AAA) assemblage Emergent property of CX that allows (i.e., BASIS, AAA) assemblage (i.e., BASIS, AAA) consumer to understand OX (i.e., BASIS, AAA)

Emergent Capacities of CX Assemblage Emergent Capacities of CX Assemblage Things the Things the Things the object Things the object consumer can do, consumer can do, can do, or have can do, or have or have done to or have done to done to them, that done to them, them, that transfer them, that absorb transfer object that absorb consumer identity assemblage identity into assemblage into assemblage. identity into assemblage. identity into consumer. object.

Expressive Roles of Components Expressive Roles of Components Through Emergent Capacities Through Emergent Capacities Agentic role of Communal role of Agentic role of Communal role of consumer consumer object object

Consumer-Object Relationships

RELATIONSHIP STYLES Emergent properties from expressive roles of consumers and objects during interaction of CX and OX assemblages

Figure 1. Conceptual Framework

72

Habitual Repetition of Interaction

Territorialization/Reterritorialization Coding/Recoding

Identity and Experience Identity and Experience Formation Processes Consolidation Processes

Deterritorialization Decoding

CONSUMER Interaction through exercised capacities of components playing material or OBJECT expressive roles

Material role Material role Properties Properties Capacities Capacities Expressive role Expressive role

Material role Material role Capacities Capacities Expressive role Expressive role

Emergent Emergent Material role Properties of the Capacities of the Assemblage Assemblage Expressive role Assemblage can interact with its parts and with other assemblages through its emergent capacities

ASSEMBLAGE

Figure 2: Stylized Depiction of Emergence of Smart Home Assemblages

Figure 3. Interaction Among Components in a Smart Home Assemblage

74

CONSUMER EXPERIENCE OBJECT EXPERIENCE

a. Part-Whole interaction d. Part-Whole interaction (of Consumer and smart home assemblage) (of Alexa and smart home assemblage)

Alexa Alexa

Ecobee Ecobee Consumer Sensors Sensors 1 Hue Alexa Hue Lights 1 Lights

Consumer Consumer Hue Hue Hub Hub Ecobee Ecobee Thermostat Thermostat IFTTT IFTTT Smart Home assemblage

b. Part-Whole interaction e. Part-Whole interaction (of Consumer and smart home micro-assemblages) (of Alexa and smart home micro-assemblages)

Hue sub- Ecobee Hue sub- Ecobee Consumer Alexa assemblage sub-assemblage assemblage sub-assemblage Alexa 2 3 2 3 Alexa Alexa Alexa

Ecobee 4 Ecobee Hue Sensors Hue Sensors Lights Lights

Consumer Consumer Consumer Hue Consumer Hue Consumer Hub Hub Ecobee Thermostat Ecobee Thermostat Hue Hub Ecobee Thermostat IFTTT IFTTT sub-assemblage

c. Within-smart home assemblage interaction f. Within-smart home assemblage interaction (of Consumer and other components) (of Alexa and other components)

Alexa Alexa

Ecobee 4 Ecobee 5 Sensors Sensors Hue 9 Hue 6 Lights Lights 6 5 7 Consumer Consumer Hue 8 Hue Hub Hub 7 Ecobee Ecobee Thermostat Thermostat IFTTT IFTTT

Interactions leading to experience properties and capacities Other interactions

Figure 4. Interactions That Lead to Experience in the Smart Home Assemblage

Consumer Experience Object Experience (CX) (OX)

assemblage from interaction of consumer and object Time 1 C O

part-whole interaction can change assemblage

part-whole interaction can change consumer

CX C C O Time2 C O O OX

part-whole interaction can change object part-whole interaction can change assemblage

CX C C C O

Time3 C O O O OX

CX C C C C O

Time4 C O O O O OX

Figure 5. Consumer and Object Experience Emerge from Part-Whole Interaction Over Time

AUTHORITY

AUTONOMY

AGENCY PROPERTIES

Figure 6. The Relationship Among Agency, Autonomy, and Authority of Smart Objects (adapted from Luck and d’Inverno 1995, Figure 1)

77

Reciprocity of Agency Non-Reciprocity of Agency

Assured- Assured- Dominant Dominant Arrogant- Gregarious- Arrogant- Gregarious- Calculating Extraverted Calculating Extraverted Agentic + Agentic +

Communal - Communal + Warm- Communal - Communal + Warm-

of Communion Indifferent Indifferent Agreeable Agreeable - - Aloof- Unassuming- Aloof- Unassuming-

Introverted Agentic Ingenuous Introverted Agentic Ingenuous Unassured- Unassured- Submissive Submissive Correspondence a) Complementarity b) Isomorphic Acomplementary

Assured- Assured- Dominant Dominant Arrogant- Gregarious- Arrogant- Gregarious- Calculating Extraverted Calculating Extraverted Agentic + Agentic +

Communal - Communal + Warm- Communal - Communal + Warm- Indifferent Indifferent Agreeable Agreeable - - Aloof- Unassuming- Aloof- Unassuming-

Introverted Agentic Ingenuous Introverted Agentic Ingenuous Unassured- Unassured- orsodne of Communion correspondence

- Submissive Submissive

Non c) Semimorphic Acomplementary d) Anti-Complementary

Figure 7. Four Broad Classes of Consumer-Object Relationship Styles Defined by the Interpersonal Circumplex Model According to Their Degree of Complementarity on the Dimensions of Agentic and Communal Orientation