Relating the dark side of new‐age technologies and customer technostress

Abstract While the new‐age technologies do provide firms with opportunities to engage with customers better, they create undesired effects such as stress among customers in terms of navigating the newer technologies. This study identifies such stress as customer technostress and defines this new construct as “the result of negative experiences faced by customers when interacting with firm‐based new‐age technologies.” We also identify that the customer technostress construct to be comprised of six stressors—techno‐invasion, techno‐complexity, techno‐uncertainty, techno‐dependence, techno‐vulnerability, and techno‐inferiority. In doing so, we use a triangulation approach to develop a framework that proposes that customer technostress mediates the effect of new‐age technologies on customer engagement. Accordingly, we propose that (1) the negative experiences of customers when using new‐age technologies can create customer technostress, (2) a nonlinear relationship exists between customer technostress and customer engagement, (3) an increase in the marketing efforts of new‐age technologies by firms will help mitigate the effect of negative experiences of customers on customer technostress, (4) an increase in the customers’ familiarity with new‐age technologies will help mitigate the effect of negative experiences of customers on customer technostress, and (5) compared to reactive and proactive coping strategies, adaptive coping strategies will have a greater mitigating influence on the nonlinear relationship between customer technostress and customer engagement. This proposed framework also recognizes that a firm's reactions to a decline in customer engagement due to customer technostress can serve as inputs for subsequent improvements. This study concludes by identifying areas for future research.