The smart home market and its barriers to adoption for consumers in Western Europe

Digitalization has a huge impact on human life, up to a point where components in households are interconnected and enabled to communicate with each other through IoT technology, automating every-day tasks previously executed by humans. The market for such Smart Homes is expected to grow significantly in the next years, however, the UK and Germany show a lower utilization rate on household basis than the United States or Northern European countries. Throughout this thesis, application areas and device categories are identified, IoT and AI are put into context and the UK and German Smart Home markets are analyzed. In an empirical study, it is verified that age, location and ownership status influence consumers’ attitude towards the Smart Home concept and that data security concerns are identified as the main barrier, preventing prospective customers to adopt Smart Home technology.