Location-based ads are defined as any ads that are sent by an identified source to consumers' mobile devices when they are around the advertised product/store. Although mobile ad spending is said to have accounted for 68% of all digital ad spending in 2020, knowledge of how businesses can use mobile and location-based technology to reach their customers effectively is limited. Thus, the purpose of this three-essay format dissertation is to review the literature on LBA and identify the gaps in the literature and attempt to address a few of these gaps in the remaining two essays. The second essay tests an integrated model by examining the effects of the various retailer and consumer-controlled factors on two retail performances. In the third essay, we explore how LBA affects different dimensions of consumer-brand engagement. The results and findings provide important implications for retailers and brands to increase their performances.

AI-enabled virtual assistants (AIVAs) have become increasingly popular (e.g., Amazon Alexa, Google Home) and assist consumers with various tasks, including home automation, access to media, entertainment, and shopping. Essay 1 focuses on the outcomes of consumers' lost autonomy after information search using AIVAs versus an online search engine (e.g., Google). Drawing on research in advances in AI technology, I predict that interacting with AIVAs (versus online search engines) will lead to several consumer outcomes: decreased cognitive task performance, word of mouth (WOM) intentions, and the desire for an unrelated subsequent search. I find support for my predictions across five studies, using different tasks to assess performance (verbal and quantitative), after interactions with both real (Amazon Alexa) and fake (Halo) AIVA brands, across different respondent populations (CloudResearch, MTurk, Prolific), thereby enhancing confidence in my findings. In Essay 2, I consider a different consumer outcome - embarrassment, and also a different underlying process variable – social presence. I predict that when consumers engage in information search using an AIVA, they will subsequently experience greater embarrassment when asked about embarrassing products (e.g., condoms, medication for gas, etc.). The increased embarrassment occurs even when the information search is unrelated to the embarrassing products (e.g., …