Online shopping during the Covid-19 crisis: the impact of anthropomorphic virtual agents on consumers' psychological states
Sihem Ben Saad, Fatma Choura · International Journal of Technology Marketing · 2022
Because of the unpredictability and uncertainty of the Covid-19 pandemic, online shopping and the use of artificial intelligence featured in the e-commerce have helped companies in attracting clients through a better online shopping environment and experience. However, the e-commerce still lacks human warmth to pretend and equalise with in-store human interactions and experience. This paper addresses this issue by examining the anthropomorphic characteristics of the embodied virtual agent and by measuring their impact on the user's state of flow and telepresence experience. To identify the characteristics that could potentially make virtual agents more 'humanised', an exploratory approach was implemented. An experimentation survey with 660 internet users followed to test the relation between the anthropomorphic dimensions of embodied virtual agents and consumers' psychological states and online word of mouth. Our findings confirm the influence of the anthropomorphic characteristics investigated in improving consumers' psychological states.