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Electronic Commerce Research
Published in: Electronic Commerce Research 4/2023

16-05-2022

The impact of anthropomorphism on customer satisfaction in chatbot commerce: an experimental study in the food sector

Authors: Katharina Klein, Luis F. Martinez

Published in: Electronic Commerce Research | Issue 4/2023

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Abstract

Food retailers are lagging behind other industries in implementing innovative mobile solutions offering their services and purchasing processes on their online platforms. Chatbots can be leveraged as an application to provide customer-centric services while retailers benefit from collecting consumer data. Previous literature on chatbot technology provides evidence that human characteristics enhance the customer experience. This is the first experimental study to investigate consumer attitudes and satisfaction with anthropomorphic chatbots in food e-commerce. A sample of 401 participants was tested to verify the proposed hypotheses. The test group interacted with a standard chatbot without human-like characteristics, while the control group communicated with the anthropomorphically designed agent. The results confirm the vast potential of anthropomorphic cues in chatbot applications and show that they are positively associated with customer satisfaction and mediated by the variables enjoyment, attitude, and trust. The findings suggest that to remain competitive, food retailers should immediately adopt innovative technologies for their omnichannel strategy and incorporate anthropomorphic design cues.
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Appendix
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Footnotes
1
In total, about 10% of the respondents were retrieved from PollPool; n = 19 for Luigi (n = 14 male; n = 5 female) and n = 21 for the standard bot (n = 10 male; n = 11 female). No significant differences were found between the sample obtained through the survey exchange platform and the sample collected through the snowballing method. The target group allowed to participate via PollPool was defined beforehand, coinciding with the sample group from the snowball sampling.
 
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Metadata
Title
The impact of anthropomorphism on customer satisfaction in chatbot commerce: an experimental study in the food sector
Authors
Katharina Klein
Luis F. Martinez
Publication date
16-05-2022
Publisher
Springer US
Published in
Electronic Commerce Research / Issue 4/2023
Print ISSN: 1389-5753
Electronic ISSN: 1572-9362
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s10660-022-09562-8

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