Useful chatbot experience provides technological satisfaction: An emerging market perspective

Abstract

Background: Chatbots have revolutionised marketing and specifically customer services by delivering 24/7 customer care. This technology saves resources and time, whilst enhancing customer experience that has become a critical differentiating factor in an increasing competitive and hyperconnected landscape.Objectives: This research examined how perceived ease of use (PEOU), perceived playfulness (PP) and perceived usefulness (PU) of chatbots influence customer experience and how these experiences influence users’ satisfaction in an emerging market context.Method: A self-administered questionnaire was distributed to 333 South African millennials and subjected to exploratory factor analysis and multiple regression analysis to test the proposed hypotheses.Results: The results indicate that all the hypotheses suggested have been positive and significant. Whilst experience significantly predicted satisfaction, it is worth noting that PU was the strongest predictor of experience.Conclusion: Marketers should devote time, money and recourses in developing and incorporating self-service technologies, such as chatbots, that are useful for their marketing strategies that will enhance customer experience.

Antecedents of intention to use chatbots in service encounters: A meta‐analytic review

“…However, divergence is observed with respect to the coefficient of correlations. As expected, lower correlations of playfulness were reported from the studies conducted in the eastern countries (Cai et al, 2022;Lubbe & Ngoma, 2021;Patil & Kulkarni, 2019). Similarly, higher correlations were observed from the studies conducted in the western nations (Ashfaq et al, 2020;Bedue, 2020;Svikhnushina & Pu, 2021).…”

Exploring User Acceptance, Experience and Satisfaction towards Chatbots in An Online Travel Agency (OTA)

“…User satisfaction is one of the constructs that is frequently used in systems research to assess the system's success and effectiveness. Mkpojiogo & Hashim (2016), as cited in Lubbe & Ngoma (2021) stated that satisfaction is thus an evaluation of whether the products or services meet the needs and desires of the customers. The importance of user satisfaction cannot be overstated.…”

“…Gümüş and Çark (2021) also added that chatbots assist brands and businesses in maintaining contact with their customers while also improving user experience and brand trust. Satisfaction is the consequence of the customer's appraisal of the technological experience meeting their expectations (Lubbe & Ngoma, 2021). Customers are more satisfied with chatbots that deliver an excellent and engaging customer experience, according to (Diaz, 2019;Jain et al, 2018).…”

“…As a result, TAM can serve as a foundation for establishing correlations between external variables, internal beliefs, attitudes, readiness to use, and actual usage. According to Lubbe and Ngoma (2021), perceived playfulness (PP) was extended in the TAM antecedents by Moon and Kim (2001) and this model has proven to be a reliable tool for explaining new technology acceptance, as it accurately represents user behaviour across a wide range of user groups and end-user technologies. This statement was in line with Junnonyang's (2021) study's findings that revealed in addition to the validated TAM (Davis, 1989) framework's emphasis on perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and technology adoption, trust, self-efficacy, relative advantage, and government support play a significant role in persuading citizens to adopt mobile government TAM is used in this research to analyses the user satisfaction of chatbots for tourism planning because chatbots are a new technology in the travel and tourism business.…”

The acceptance of chatbot technology to support academic activity at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

“…In a survey conducted by Ernst & Young in South Africa, almost all business owners said they expected to have a positive impact on their bottom line from implementing AI tools like chatbots. Specifically, the optimization of chatbots as a safe and effective means of communicating with clients has been affected by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic (Lubbe & Ngoma, 2021).…”