While prior research has examined the effects of interactive e-commerce avatars that simulate the roles of virtual assistants and recommender agents, there is lack of empirical study that investigates the effects of non-interactive talking avatars in e-commerce. This is unfortunate, as many websites today utilize non-interactive talking avatars that provide one-way dialogue in the forms of greetings, introduction of the company, and description of products and services offered. To bridge this gap, our study aims to investigate the effects of non-interactive talking avatar on perceptions of social presence, credibility, website trust, and patronage intention in an online store. Comparing between the experimental (website with avatar) and control (website without avatar) conditions, the experimental results showed that perceived social presence was significantly enhanced by the presence of the non-interactive talking avatar. Furthermore, the presence of the avatar had positive effects on website trust and patronage intention among male participants; but had negative effects on perceptions of information credibility and website patronage intention among females. Analysis based on participants’ comments suggests that females were more critical towards certain shortcomings of the non-interactive talking avatar; citing limited interactivity and artificial dialogue from text-to-speech engine. Additionally, the comment analysis suggests that females preferred processing textual over auditory information (as spoken by the avatar) about the products in the online store. Theoretical and managerial implications related to non-interactive talking avatars are discussed in this paper.

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The present study aimed to test the hypothesis that a smiling expression on the face of a talking pedagogical agent could positively affect a learner's emotions, motivation, and learning outcomes in a virtual learning environment. Contrary to the hypothesis, results from Experiment 1 demonstrated that the pedagogical agent's smile induced negative emotional and motivational responses in learners.Experiment 2 showed that the social meaning of a pedagogical agent's smile might be perceived by learners as polite or fake. In addition, qualitative data provided insights into factors that may cause negative perceptions of a pedagogical agent's smile, which in turn lead to negative affective (emotional and motivational) states in learners. Theoretical and design implications for pedagogical agents in virtual learning environment are discussed in the concluding section of the paper.

Purpose The aim of this paper is to examine the effects of a learner’s regulatory focus orientation and message frame of a motivational virtual agent in an e-learning environment. Design/methodology/approach On the basis of quasi-experimental design, university sophomores (n = 210) categorized as chronic promotion-focus, chronic prevention-focus or neutral regulatory focus interacted with either an agent that conveyed gain-frame message or an agent that conveyed loss-frame message to persuade learners to engage with the e-learning content. Statistical analyses assessed the effects of regulatory focus and message frame on agent perception, motivation and cognitive load. Findings The results of this paper did not support the hypotheses that chronic promotion-focus learners will benefit more with gain-frame agent than a loss-frame agent, and that chronic prevention-focus learners will benefit more with loss-frame agent than a gain-frame agent. There were main effects of message frame (albeit small effects) – the loss-frame agent was perceived to be more engaging, induced higher motivation and prompted higher germane load than the gain-frame agent. With gain-frame agent, chronic promotion-focus learners had higher motivation toward the e-learning task than other learners. Originality/value Prior studies have examined regulatory focus and message frame with agents simulating virtual health advocates. This paper extended on this by examining these roles with a persuasive agent simulating virtual tutor in an e-learning environment.