Using chatbots in e-retailing – how to mitigate perceived risk and enhance the flow experience

Abstract

PurposeChatbots represent an undeniable player between online retailers and customers as they boost operational efficiency and bring cost savings to businesses while offering convenience for customers in terms of timing and immediacy. However, as chatbots represent a new-born online touchpoint in retailing, especially when it comes to online pre-purchase and purchase experience, this study examines whether and how effort expectation, facilitating condition, performance expectancy, social influence, trust, perceived risk and flow affect consumers' intention to use chatbots for online shopping. The purpose of this paper is to address this issue.Design/methodology/approachA total of 226 respondents participated in an online survey. Participants were asked to try a new online service and interact with a chatbot designed using Chatfuel, a platform within the Facebook Messenger setting. Structural equation modelling was used to test the proposed research model regarding the intention to use chatbots.FindingsThis study discusses the importance of offering useful and trustworthy conversational agents for online shopping and argues and explains the insignificant paths amongst other studied factors and intention to use chatbots concluding with the need to explore more drivers for such contemporary technologies. Moreover, the findings indicate that trust turns out to be an important predictor of behavioural intention towards chatbots, in addition to its role in mitigating perceived risk and enhancing flow experience.Originality/valueGiven the lack of empirical evidence related to chatbots applied for business purposes, this paper fills a gap in this research field and provides a deeper understanding of what leverages consumers' intention to use chatbots for online shopping.

Consumers' promotion focus mitigates the negative effects of chatbots on purchase likelihood

“…The present research contributes to chatbot and recommendation agent literature by demonstrating the impact of individual differences in terms of promotion focus. Our findings demonstrate that promotion focus could mitigate the negative effect of chatbots, alongside prior findings about communication style (de Gennaro et al, 2020; Kull et al, 2021), trust (Silva et al, 2023), cuteness (Lv et al, 2021), agency (Sands et al, 2022), and content of the conversation (Yu et al, 2022). This is because consumers with a strong promotion focus tend to exhibit a higher likelihood of purchasing products recommended by chatbots than other consumers.…”

“…The study also contributes by demonstrating the applicability of both regulatory focus and regulatory fit in explaining the interaction between consumers and AI‐powered technologies. Literature in the past has employed different psychological theories to explain the interaction, such as behavioural reasoning theory (Acikgoz et al, 2023; Jan et al, 2023), stimulus‐organism‐response theory (Nazir et al, 2023), and unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (Moriuchi, 2021; Silva et al, 2023). Based on the regulatory focus theory, the present study demonstrates that promotion focus can mitigate the negative effect of AI‐powered technology, such as chatbots, on consumers.…”

“…While previous studies have demonstrated the negative effect of chatbots, the literature has also shown that the negative effects of chatbots can be mitigated (Kull et al, 2021; Silva et al, 2023; Yu et al, 2022) (see Web Appendix D for the list of literature in mitigating the negative effect of chatbots). After establishing the negative relationship between chatbots and purchase likelihood in H1, we take a novel theoretical perspective on the relationship by considering the potential influence of consumers' promotion focus in mitigating the negative effect of chatbots on purchase likelihood.…”

Investigating the acceptance intentions of online shopping assistants in E-commerce interactions: Mediating role of trust and effects of consumer demographics

“…Trust is crucial in an individual's decision-making approach to online purchases [ 114 ]. There is empirical evidence that trust affects the acceptance of fashion chatbots [ 66 ], AI devices [ 85 ], service assistants [ 115 ], and chatbots in online retailing [ 8 ].…”

“…Chatbots are new forms of online assistance that e-commerce businesses utilize to support customers while shopping [ 6 , 7 ]. Chatbots in online shopping increase operational efficiency and obtain cost savings for companies while providing convenience and responsiveness for consumers [ 8 ]. Digital assistants can delight customers by making customer conversations more effective, anticipating their needs based on preferences, interests, past purchase data, and queries, and delivering recommendations, offers, solutions, and answers [ 9 ].…”