Where AI enters the product development process: Task orientation, human identity threat, and purchase intention

Abstract

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly moving beyond analytical retail functions into product development, raising new questions about how consumers respond depending on where AI is positioned within the process. Across three studies with U.S. consumers in fashion-related contexts, this research examines how the task AI performs and how its role is framed shape consumer responses to products developed with AI involvement. Study 1 maps consumers’ perceptions of fashion-related tasks along a logic–intuition continuum and identifies trend forecasting as a logic-oriented task and design as an intuition-oriented task. Study 2 compares AI involvement in these two contrasting product-development tasks and finds lower purchase intention when AI is involved in design rather than trend forecasting, with heightened human identity threat accounting for part of this difference. Study 3 focuses on the intuition-oriented design context and shows that framing AI as complementing rather than replacing human designers is associated with lower identity threat and higher purchase intention. Together, the findings suggest that consumer responses depend not only on whether AI participates in product development, but also on where AI is positioned within the process and how its contribution relative to human creativity is framed. This research advances understanding of task-dependent responses to AI by identifying human identity threat as a mediator linking AI involvement to purchase intention and by showing how role framing can shape purchase intention when AI participates in creative work.