AMAZONE ECHO

ECHO

Amazon Echo is the first cloud-enabled wireless speakerembedded with conversational agent that can take voicecommands from its users to perform a variety of tasks. Inthe context of ubiquitous computing, Echo represents anotherimportant advance where technology recedes to the backgroundwith a voice interface to interpret and support a user’s intentions.While other voice-activated assistants already exist, particularlyon smartphones (e.g. Apple Siri, Google Now, and MicrosoftCortana), Amazon Echo is designed for home environmentsand has been frequently referred as “the computer of the future”in the media.The success of Echo is evidenced by its sales numbers. Echowas released first to Amazon Prime members and by invitationsonly on November 6, 2014 and then to the general public onJune 23, 2015. Now Echo has become the No. 1 Best Seller andthe No. 3 Best Seller in Home Audio Speakers and Electronicscategories, respectively (ranked by Amazon [2]). There aremore than 50,000 reviews of Echo on Amazon, and 68% ofthe reviews from verified purchases rated Echo as five stars.The average rating of all reviews is 4.41 at the time of thiswriting. Since then, Google and Apple have both released orannounced a similar product.In this paper, we present our analysis results of Echo reviewsas a means of revealing consumer reactions and to gain insightson this first voice interactive device designed specifically forhome uses. Our study focuses on three 

aspects: 

1) Echo’sfunctional features that are liked and disliked by users; 

2) Howcustomers personify Echo device as a spouse, a friend, a pet,and so on; and 

3) Emotion analysis of reviews which personifyEcho against other reviewers. 

For this exploratory study, wecollected 55,502 reviews from Amazon’s Echo product page [3]from May 2015 to May 31, 2017. For comparison, we alsocollected 105,952 reviews of Amazon’s 7-inch Fire Tablet (No.1 Best Seller in Electronics) and 10,065 reviews of DNightMagicBox II (No. 2 Best Seller in Home Audio Speakers).Compared with traditional electronic devices, Amazon Echois not only a music player or entertainment device. Its hand-free interactive mode helps Echo to have good performanceson many functions and use scenarios. Also it makes Echoa convenient electronic assistant, although some customerscomplain with the actuary of voice recognition and privacy.With the personification analysis, we find that about 30% ofcustomers not only treat Amazon echo as electronic device butalso a personification character in their daily life. Some of themeven developed closer relationship with Amazon Echo, treating“her” as a best friend, a girlfriend, or a family member. Thesereviewers expressed more positive sentiment and emotion toEcho in their review texts.To the best of our knowledge, this is the first large-scalereview analysis study for the conversational devices in theconsumers’ homes. The results provide a basic understandingof how such devices are used in real world. We hope someinsights can help ubiquitous computing community to designand deploy more voice interactive applications.