Research seminar by Priya Narayanan

Posted on June 8, 2026 by administrator

IIM K hosted its twelfth research seminar on March 26, 2026, for the year 2025-26. It was conducted by Prof. Priya Narayanan, Professor of Marketing Management, Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode.

The topic was Consumers Underestimate Effort Incurred by GenAI Users

Abstract of the talk given below

Popular media and academic research discuss generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools as effort saving. Consumers’ own experience suggests the same: GenAI is often used specifically to lower the effort required on tasks. Thus, use of GenAI seems to reduce effort in all cases. However, creating quality output using GenAI can involve high levels of effort, such as through prompt engineering and multiple iterations of the output. This research proposes that regardless of the actual level of effort involved, consumers use the “GenAI use = low effort” lay theory as a heuristic to estimate the effort incurred on tasks performed by others. This process could result in a false underestimation of perceived effort in cases where GenAI use entails high effort. Five experimental studies illustrate this lay belief, show that it is a heuristic by highlighting attenuation of the effect when details of GenAI use are provided, and offer a way to mitigate the effect. This research contributes to the evolving understanding of consumer perceptions of GenAI use, with wide-ranging implications for brands, influencers and content creators, professionals, and GenAI companies.