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1. Introduction
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to the faster digitization of businesses. Amidst COVID-19, e-retailing is growing as individuals escape face-to-face interactions (Kazancoglu and Demir, 2021; Qasem, 2021). In India, e-retailing is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of more than 35%, reaching US$25.75bn in 2020 (Khare et al., 2023). By 2025, e-retailing in India is projected to cater to 300–350 million shoppers and is expected to reach US$100–120bn (IBEF, 2021; Kautish et al., 2023a). Artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the way in which retail stores operate (Pillai et al., 2020). According to Grewal et al. (2017), AI will be vital to driving the future growth of retailing. As per IBM’s (2017) report, 91% of retail employees endorse that AI is disruptive in retail settings, and 45% of buyers prefer AI-based online shopping (Kautish and Sharma, 2018). The use of AI in retail is expected to reach US$8bn by 2024 (Bhutani and Wadhwani, 2019). In the process of making online shopping more accessible for consumers (Hoy, 2018; Kautish et al., 2023b), retailers have started using voice assistants (VAs) (Kasilingam, 2020; McLean et al., 2021), including India (Chopra, 2019). VAs is a type of voice-enabled AI (Poushneh, 2021). Voice shopping is becoming increasingly popular among consumers due to the ubiquitous presence of AI-based VAs in customers’ daily lives (Bawack et al., 2021; Choi et al., 2020; Vimalkumar et al., 2021). There is a shift in the way consumers interact with online marketers for varieties of purposes (Alepis and Patsakis, 2017), using “Amazon’s Echo (Alexa)”, “Apple’s Siri”, “Microsoft’s Cortana” and “Google’s Google Assistant” (Guzman, 2019). Shankar (2018) explained that AI VAs transform how consumers shop online. AI VAs plays diverse roles such as friends, assistants, servants or experts (Wang et al., 2020; Zhao and Rau, 2020). E-retailers have started using AI VAs to enhance the customer experience in online shopping (Kinsella and Mutchler, 2019; Terzopoulos and Satratzemi, 2020). AI VAs are used in service-related activities such as retrieving individual data, accessing different products, online reviews, product recommendations, placing an order with an online marketer, scheduling appointments and accessing customer service (Hsieh and Lee, 2021; Kautish and Khare, 2022). AI VAs has the potential for...