Giving an “e-human touch” to e-tailing: The moderating roles of static information quantity and consumption motive in the effectiveness of an anthropomorphic information agent

This study examines the impact of having an anthropomorphic information agent (a humanlike chatbot that acts as an interactive online information provider) in an online store on consumers’ attitude toward the Web site, product, and their purchase intentions. Using consumer experiments, we show that the impact of the anthropomorphic information agent is moderated by the amount of static product information available on the Web site and the consumer's consumption motive at the time of visiting the Web site. Our results indicate that the anthropomorphic information agent has a positive effect when static product information on the Web site is limited. Furthermore, we show that when detailed product information is readily available on the Web site, the anthropomorphic information agent can prove detrimental when the consumer has a utilitarian consumption motive.