Exploring the effects of a non-interactive talking avatar on social presence, credibility, trust, and patronage intention in an e-commerce website

Abstract

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.

Service brand rehab: diagnosing trust repair mechanisms

“…This results in a cognitive-based distrust mind-set being very fluid and context based, as well as consumer specific. Moreover, most existing research (Corbitt et al , 2003; Liew et al , 2017) argues for trust being critical for consumers’ patronage behavior. The current study suggests that cognitive-based trust (also referred to as social distrust by Hill and O’Hara, 2006; Mayo, 2015) and affective-based trust breaches are distinct from behavior and behavioral intent.…”

Mindful and Mindless Anthropomorphism: How to Facilitate Consumer Comprehension Towards New Products

“…When presenting information to consumers, the employment of anthropomorphic attributes increases information credibility (Holzwarth et al, 2006;Liew et al 2017) leading to lower perceived risk and reducing consumer uncertainty which is useful when learning about RNPs (Hoeffler, 2003;Castano and Giner-Sorolla, 2006). Learning theories within different frameworks support the employment of anthropomorphic attributes as a means of improving consumer comprehension (e.g.…”

Physical-Virtual Agents for Healthcare Simulation

“…In this study, 44 students interacted with the simulator and 15 observed the simulation due to limited space around the patient. There is evidence that learning outcomes are not strongly affected based on whether students interacted or observed the interaction [29].…”