Interacting with Chatbots: Message type and consumers' control

Abstract

With advances in technology, personalized services provided by offline salespeople are replaced by new sales assistant methods, such as personalized chatbots in online and mobile environments. However, providing conversation-based recommendations may be insufficient to support consumers in online or mobile stores because they cannot experience the product in real-time. A salesperson often provides one-to-one customer support in an offline store, including verbal and visual recommendations. In this context, chatbots, the sales assistants, may better support consumers in the online and mobile environments by providing additional real-time visual information. This study aims to determine the condition of chatbots as online and mobile sales assistants, and the mechanisms by which consumers accept chatbots. The results indicate that a higher level of personalized chatbot messages enhances purchase intention through a sense of ease and understanding of the product. Moreover, additional real-time visual information (i.e., AR) supports chatbots in acting as successful sales assistants. © 2022 Elsevier Inc.