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Artificial intelligence (AI) has penetrated the marketing landscape and is having a profound impact on businesses' communication strategies. With AI coming under the spotlight, we know surprisingly little about its impact on consumers' patronage likelihood. This research attempts to address this void by investigating the "just-walk-out" retail technology in cohort with in-store communication. Across three studies, conducted online and in the field, the authors demonstrate that, compared to self-service checkouts, AI-enabled checkouts lead to significantly higher consumers' patronage likelihood. Furthermore, sensory stimulation stemming from in-store communication (environmental cues including assortment, advertising, and technology) underlies this impact. Importantly, the extent to which consumers perceive AI technology to be threatening is revealed as a boundary condition to these effects. These findings advance our understanding of how AI-enabled checkouts and in-store communication influence consumers' patronage likelihood and the boundary condition that moderates their impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research examines a contextual trigger, namely, choice architecture, which induces pro-environmental behavior among travelers. In particular, we test whether decision modes (choice vs. rejection) affect travelers' preference for a sustainable hotel over a less sustainable one, and if yes, how moral hypocrisy mediates the link between decision modes and preference. Results of a series of five experimental studies show that choice decision mode has increased travelers' preference for a pro-environmental hotel, which is mediated by different types of information processing (elaborate vs. deliberative processing), thereby refuting the potential alternative explanations (i.e., mood) of the findings. This article contributes to the literature by introducing a critical factor, namely, choice architecture, which significantly affects travelers' preferences for pro-environmental hotels. The implications of the findings are discussed for both practitioners and researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]