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Millennials’ attitude toward Millennials’

attitude toward
chatbots: an experimental study in chatbots

a social relationship perspective

Roberta De Cicco 1213
Department of Neuroscience, Imaging and Clinical Sciences,
University of Chieti-Pescara, Chieti, Italy and Received 27 December 2019
Revised 20 January 2020
CAST, Center for Advanced Studies and Technology, University of Chieti-Pescara, 22 March 2020
27 March 2020
Chieti, Italy 21 May 2020
Susana C. Silva 10 June 2020
Accepted 10 June 2020
Catolica Porto Business School, Universidade Catolica Portuguesa, Porto,
Portugal, and
Francesca Romana Alparone
Department of Neuroscience, Imaging and Clinical Sciences,
University of Chieti-Pescara, Chieti, Italy

Abstract
Purpose – Chatbots represent an innovative channel for retailers to meet young customers’ needs anywhere and
at any time. Being an emergent technology, however, it is important to investigate more thoroughly how users
perceive it, and which are the variables that enhance a positive attitude towards this technology. On this premise,
this study applies a social relationship perspective to the design of chatbots addressed to younger consumers.
Design/methodology/approach – The study adopts a between-participants factorial design to investigate
the effects of visual cues (avatar presence vs avatar absence) and interaction styles (social-oriented vs task-
oriented) on social presence and how this, in turn, enhances millennials’ perceived enjoyment, trust and,
ultimately, attitude towards the chatbot. A survey experiment was employed to conduct the study on data
collected from 193 Italian millennials.
Findings – The results show that applying a social-oriented interaction style increases users’ perception of
social presence, while an insignificant effect was found for avatar presence. The partial least square structural
equation modeling (PLS-SEM) analysis further confirms the hypothesised model.
Originality/value – The adoption of new digital technologies such as chatbots is likely to have a far reaching
effect on retailers, consumers, employees and society. For this reason, a broad understanding of the
phenomenon is needed. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to provide results from an
experimental design in which both interaction style (social- vs task-oriented) and avatar (presence vs absence)
of a chatbot are manipulated to directly explore social presence and its effect on trust, perceived enjoyment and
millennials’ attitude towards a chatbot applied for retailing purposes.
Keywords Chatbot, Interaction style, Avatar, Social presence, Trust, Enjoyment, Attitude
Paper type Research paper

Introduction
Over the last few years, retailers have been providing customers with various digital
touchpoints as part of their ongoing use of digital technologies in the shopping process
(Hagberg et al., 2016). Many of them have adopted chatbots as a complementary online
marketing communication strategy to better engage and interact with their customers

© Roberta De Cicco, Susana C. Silva and Francesca Romana Alparone. Published by Emerald Publishing International Journal of Retail &
Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone Distribution Management
Vol. 48 No. 11, 2020
may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and pp. 1213-1233
non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms Emerald Publishing Limited
0959-0552
of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode DOI 10.1108/IJRDM-12-2019-0406
IJRDM (Gentsch, 2019). For example, chatbots used by the company 1–800- Flowers enable
48,11 customers to order flowers, make payments and track delivery without leaving Facebook
Messenger. Another example includes Northface, which launched its virtual shopping chat-
based assistant to help customers to find the right jacket (Tuzovic and Paluch, 2018).
To clarify, chatbots are programs that simulate human conversation, allowing humans to
interact with digital devices as if they were communicating with a real person (Oracle, 2019).
Recent improvements in natural language processing, combined with the shift towards
1214 messaging as a primary channel for communication, have contributed to the enormous
increase in popularity of chatbots in the retail industry (Gnewuch et al., 2018).
As mentioned by the news website Business Insider (2019), according to a report from
research and markets, the chatbot market size is projected to grow from $2.6bn in 2019 to $9.4bn
by 2024. Customer service, retail and e-commerce represent those market segments that are
projected to grow their market size at the highest compound annual growth rate, owing to the
increasing demand to provide customers with a seamless omnichannel experience (Business
Insider, 2019). The ease and accessibility of building a chatbot (thanks to the numerous platforms
and frameworks available for building them), the substantial developments in artificial
intelligence (AI) and the increased usage of messaging apps are the main factors pushing the
chatbot industry forwards. Despite this, however, a lack of awareness about the outcomes of
using chatbots within their various applications could constitute a threat to the growth of this
market. Currently, the main challenge with chatbots involves interpretational problems: in most
cases, chatbots cannot address more specific or complex requests, or do not always understand
what the customer is asking (Brandtzaeg and Følstad, 2017). Thus, businesses which require
only a relatively short number of options to fulfil online orders– i.e. those which can use an easier
algorithm – are more likely to use chatbots (e.g. food delivery businesses). Due to the
routinisation of activities and the limited recurrent tasks that allow for greater speed and lower
costs (Leidner, 1993), online food delivery businesses are most likely to constitute a field in which
the application of chatbots is easier to implement for companies and easier to use for customers.
This is particularly true for younger people, (e.g. millennials, the generation born between
1981 and 1996) as technology is significantly integrated into their daily lives (Moore, 2012).
Being the first generation to experience the smartphone era, although millennials demand a
customised service, they are not used to wait (Forbes, 2016). So, thanks to the real-time nature
which allows consumers to get instant informal responses to their queries (Mero, 2018), and
chats have become millennials’ preferred option for obtaining customer support. In this
perspective, chatbots are taking up the challenge of fulfilling this need, trying to assure a
personalised service available to meet such young customers’ needs anytime and anywhere
in a way that – with traditional methods – was just not possible (Chung et al., 2018).
Chatbots are currently grabbing the attention of a growing number of researchers,
addressing their interest in visual-conversational cues and interactivity of chatbots (Go and
Sundar, 2019; Chattaraman et al., 2019) as well as their potential role in enhancing customers’
satisfaction (Chung et al., 2018) and company perceptions (Araujo, 2018). According to these
studies, the issue of creating a chatbot seems to be more of a conversational rather than a
technical challenge. The question that arises is what is an appropriate format in terms of
conversational traits for an effective implementation of chatbots for retailing?
As the conversational abilities of chatbots quickly improve, it is important to understand the
emotional, relational and psychological outcomes that chatbots convey to the user through their
communication (Ho et al., 2018). So, building on this premise, the current study aims to give
insights into practitioners who wish to offer an engaging experience to young consumers
through “conversations” with chatbots. Specifically, the present study aims to extend research
on social features applied to chatbots (Chattaraman et al., 2019) by providing results from an
experimental study in which both interaction style (social-oriented vs task-oriented) and visual
cue (avatar presence vs avatar absence) were manipulated – through a fully functional chatbot
set up for online food purchasing – in order to investigate how such features impact social Millennials’
presence, which in turn positively predicts trust, perceived enjoyment and, accordingly, attitude toward
millennials’ overall attitude towards this technology. Thus, we expect to give a far-reaching
understanding of the new forms of communication between retailers and consumers by
chatbots
focusing on a contemporary feature at the heart of the retail digital transformation.

Literature review, theoretical framework and development of hypotheses

The present study complements current research on chatbots applied for business purposes 1215
(Araujo, 2018; Chung et al., 2018), integrating and extending the earlier literature on human–
chatbot interaction (Zarouali et al., 2018; Hill et al., 2015; Ciechanowski et al., 2019). In doing so,
this study focuses on a social relationship perspective, based on the premise that chatbots are
not merely a productive tool, but can also be seen as a more personal source of interaction that
possesses and conveys social value (Brandtzaeg and Følstad, 2017).
A considerable body of research has focused on human–chatbot interactions. With respect
to how users respond to the chatbot’s enquiries, Hill et al. (2015) found that users communicate
with chatbots using shorter messages and a less rich vocabulary compared to conversations
with another human, while Corti and Gillespie (2016) found that people are less willing to repair
misunderstandings with chatbots compared to humans. According to the authors, this is
probably due to the lower expectations people have of chatbots, as they are believed to be
unable to engage in complex intersubjective processes. Turning to the motivations that drive
people to use chatbots, Brandtzaeg and Følstad (2017) showed that most people tend to engage
in a chatbot conversation for productivity, entertainment and the social-relational benefits they
provide. Other studies investigated how interacting with the chatbot affects business outcomes
in terms of attitude towards the brand (Zarouali, 2018), love for the brand (Trivedi, 2019) or
emotional connection with the company (Araujo, 2018). Although a number of studies have
explored human–chatbot interactions, fewer of these studies have investigated how people rely
on social cues such as language, interactivity and the capability of chatbots – applied for
business purposes – to express emotions (Toader et al., 2020). From this perspective, Araujo
(2018) was among the first to compare both the frame introducing the chatbot and the human-
like cues (human name and greetings vs computer-like language) in terms of perceived
anthropomorphism, social presence and company perception. Go and Sundar (2019) argued
that identity cues (message interactivity and human identity) represent key factors in
developing certain expectations for interactivity that impact individuals’ psychological,
attitudinal and behavioural responses to chatbots. Chattaraman et al. (2019), whose research
involved an older sample (61–89), found that users with low Internet competency prefer task-
oriented interactions, while high competency users prefer a social-oriented interaction with
respect to social outcomes (e.g. perceived interactivity and trust).
Within human-computer interaction (HCI), a critical aspect is represented by social
presence, that is the sense of being with another (Gefen and Straub, 2003), where “the other”
can be either a human or AI (Biocca et al., 2003). Communication and HCI researchers have
typically been interested in social presence because it can mediate the effects of other
variables of central concern such as attitudes towards the mediated others, features of the
interface, persuasion, illusions of reality, learning and memory (Biocca et al., 2003). Since
social presence positively affects attitudinal antecedents, researchers have drawn on the
social presence theory to explore the lack of human warmth on the Internet (Hassanein and
Head, 2005). Many of them have discussed the potential of website features to infuse the
online interface with human warmth (Hassanein and Head, 2005, 2007), but research on what
cues positively affect social presence in human–chatbot interaction is still poor (Araujo, 2018).
To the best of our knowledge, no study has yet explored whether millennial consumers
favour an online social presence in chatbots, and how determining this is for their shopping
experience. Against this background, drawing from the social presence theory, where the
IJRDM perception of a person as “real” is determined by intimacy and immediacy, this study fills this
48,11 research gap by understanding how to leverage such intimacy and immediacy through
conversational design and visual cues, and further investigate whether and how social
presence affects trust, perceived enjoyment and millennials’ attitude towards this technology.
Following Gefen and Straub (2003) we believe a higher priority should be given for
identifying conversational cues that enhance users’ perception of social presence. As Araujo’s
manipulation of human-like cues (human name and greetings) turned out not to be a sufficient
1216 trigger for social presence, we believe Chattaraman et al.’s (2019) interaction style to be the more
exhaustive approach to researching the effect of social conversational cues on social presence.
Likewise, we consider cartoon avatars an interesting feature on which to conduct research, due
to their appeal with companies and due to the fact that, to date, in the domain of chat-based
platforms, only chatbots’ highly realistic human-like avatars have been researched (e.g. Go and
Sundar, 2019; Ciechanowski et al., 2019), contrary to what happened in the past for virtual
assistants residing on a website page (Qiu and Benbasat, 2009).
In view of the lack of knowledge about millennials’ preferences towards online social
presence within chatbots, our aim is to understand how to enhance social presence in
millennial–chatbot interaction and to know whether this creates a more trustful, enjoyable
and favourable shopping process for this cohort.

Interaction style and avatars as antecedents of social presence

In the e-retail context, chatbots assume the role of advisors, typically associated with
salespeople in physical settings (Qiu and Benbasat, 2009). Building social relationships
between salespeople and customers increases the chance of positive word of mouth, customer
satisfaction, loyalty and purchases, reflecting the fact that customers desire not only
functional but also social benefits (Qiu and Benbasat, 2009). This advocates giving a higher
consideration to a social relational approach in human–chatbot interaction, as such an
experience can be significantly strengthened by both hedonic, social or relational motivations
(Brandtzaeg and Følstad, 2017).
In online settings, users perceive agents as both interaction mediators and social actors, a
process that is explained by the computers are social actors (CASA) paradigm which posits that
people ascribe social attributes to a computer technology, especially when it is perceived to possess
characteristics typically associated with human behaviour (Reeves and Nass, 1996). According to
this theory, the more the agents transmit emotions and express empathy and sympathy, the more
users positively evaluate them and develop social and emotional bonds with the agents (Komiak
and Benbasat, 2006). In line with this, the same ought to apply to chatbots, since users should, in
theory, prefer chatbots which express emotions, sympathy and empathy compared to chatbots
that provide only neutral information about products (Liu and Sundar, 2018).
Research highlights how social cues conveyed through chatbots should better align with the
mental orientation of high task competency users (e.g. millennials), who possess the
competences to easily meet functional goals and who place value on the social value of the
interaction (Chattaraman et al., 2019). Specifically, a social-oriented interaction style, which
meets socio-emotional and relational goals through conversational cues that highlight empathy,
personality and friendliness (Van Dolen et al., 2007) is more effective for high task competency
users in terms of social outcomes, compared to a task-oriented interaction style in which the
language is formal and involves only on task dialogue which achieves functional goals, fulfils
responsibilities and satisfies concerns for a productive outcome (Chattaraman et al., 2019).
While the idea of the customer as simply a rational and cognitive being can be viewed as
incomplete, research about the ability chatbots have in making people perceive emotions and
how such emotions enhance a positive attitude is still limited (Smestad and Volden, 2018). In
order to shed light on this topic, we investigate social presence, a construct that refers to the
extent to which a medium is perceived as sociable, warm, sensitive and personal when it is used
to interact with others (Gefen and Straub, 2003). The social features of human–chatbot Millennials’
interactions and the way in which users’ perceptions of chatbots are swayed by social presence attitude toward
have gained attention only recently (Araujo, 2018; Go and Sundar, 2019). Previous research has
focused on social presence to explore the lack of human warmth in the online environment (Chen
chatbots
et al., 2005). Studies in this field show that personalisation and recommendation positively
influence perception of social presence (Gefen and Straub, 2003). Hassanein and Head (2005)
proved how an increased sense of social presence on websites can be achieved by stimulating the
perception of interaction with other humans (e.g. through socially rich text, pictures and video) or 1217
by providing means for actual interaction with others (e.g. personalised greetings).
In view of the specific nature of the chatbot, social conversational cues of online chat
agents could facilitate a feeling of interacting with other people (Go and Sundar, 2019). Thus,
we hypothesise that
H1. Users who interact with a chatbot set up using a social-oriented interaction style will
perceive a greater level of social presence compared to those who interact with a
chatbot set up with a task-oriented interaction style.
As higher levels of social presence can improve social exchanges and strengthen source cue
effects (Skalski and Tamborini, 2007), technology developers are interested in identifying
features that increase the potential for social presence. Besides conversational cues, in view of
the chat-based environment where human–chatbot interactions take place, another
important aspect worth understanding is the role of visual cues in providing human-like
attributes to chatbots (Go and Sundar, 2019). According to Gefen and Straub (2003), personal
photographs and pictures convey personal presence in the same manner as texts do.
Specifically, avatars, which are a graphical embodiment or visual presentation, are growing
in popularity in many interfaces used for computer-mediated communication (CMC)
including social media and e-commerce (Nowak and Fox, 2018). Scholars agree that a crucial
trait of avatars is their potential to situate or embed communication and generate an
experience of co-presence in shared virtual environments (Nowak and Biocca, 2003). Etemad-
Sajadi (2016) found that avatars increased the level of social presence and the emotional
appeal of a company’s website. Wang et al. (2007) argued that social cues inherent in avatars
induce perceptions of website socialness, leading to increased pleasure and arousal.
More specifically, cartoon-like characters are particularly appreciated in HCI (human–
computer interaction) because they lower customer expectations towards the character’s
skills and help matching the technical abilities of the system (Luo et al., 2006). This is a factor
which should not be overlooked, since the conversational skills of chatbots are still limited
and conflict may occur between chatbots’ ability and users’ perceptions of that ability, thus
generating frustration. Go and Sundar (2019) argued that in HCI, the more visually realistic
the representation is the higher the expectations of the user are. Thus, we purposely
investigate a feature which is increasingly applied by companies on Facebook Messenger to
overcome this issue, but of which little is yet known. In fact, the majority of the studies on
chatbots focus on human-realistic pictures rather than less anthropomorphic characters like
avatars (Ciechanowski et al., 2019; Go and Sundar, 2019).
Therefore, we propose the following hypothesis:
H2. Users who interact with a chatbot which displays the avatar will perceive a greater
level of social presence compared to those who interact with a chatbot that does not
display the avatar.

Social presence influence on perceived enjoyment and trust

In traditional retail environments, salespeople’s characteristics influence customers’
emotions, such as enjoyment while shopping (Lee and Dubinsky, 2003). Similar to what
IJRDM happens during the interaction with salespeople, perceived enjoyment is an important
48,11 component of the social benefits customers acquire from communicating with an artificial
agent that acts on behalf of the company. Previous research highlighted the relevance of
social presence in the transmission of positive emotions within a medium (McKenna et al.,
2002). Lombard and Ditton (1997) were among the first to suggest the effect that social
presence has on media users in increasing involvement, persuasion and enjoyment. Perceived
enjoyment is a significant experiential aspect of offline and online shopping, describing how
1218 an individual perceives something to be fun (Hassanein and Head, 2005). It is largely
classified as an intrinsic motivation for adopting a technology (Davis et al., 1992). Over the
years, studies have confirmed the key role that social presence plays in positively influencing
perceived enjoyment (Cyr et al., 2007; Hassanein et al., 2009; Shen, 2012); Hassanein and Head
(2005) proved that increased levels of social presence have a positive impact on enjoyment for
websites selling apparel, while Shen (2012) provides support for the role that social presence
plays in predicting enjoyment of social shopping websites. Studies of the electronic retail
sector have so far explored the role of enjoyment in online shopping (Koufaris, 2002) and
instant messaging (Li et al., 2005), but research investigating enjoyment in human–chatbot
interaction is still at a very early stage. On this premise, we hypothesise the following:
H3. Higher levels of social presence will have a positive effect on perceived enjoyment.
Trust represents the willingness to accept being vulnerable to the actions of another party, based
on the expectation that they will carry out a particular action important to the trustor (Mayer
et al., 1995). Trust is at the heart of social and financial transactions, especially in the online
retailing environment where this “social exchange variable” (Alnawas and Hemsley-Brown,
2018) plays a key role in the success or failure of online businesses (Lu et al., 2016). Because
chatbots are a digital form of salesperson and trust is particularly important for personal selling,
it is important to understand how consumers form trust with chatbots (Whang and Im, 2018).
Social presence is one factor that might enhance trust, by reducing the uncertainty and the
vulnerability consumers feel towards merchants, especially in the online context (Jiang et al.,
2019). In face-to-face human interactions, trustworthiness is usually manifested even within
trivial (yet considered important) social cues (Qui and Benbasat, 2009). When it comes to human
to non-human interaction, this process is no different, as consumers rely on a variety of sources to
form their trusting beliefs, and perceived quality of the information provided by the agent is only
one of the factors that contribute to the cognitive evaluation of the agent’s trustworthiness (Qui
and Benbasat, 2009). Generally, in an e-service and retailing context, social attributes conveyed
through social presence are believed to be both an enabler and an antecedent of trust (Gefen and
Straub, 2003). In human–chatbot interactions, when users interact with a chatbot for the first
time, they have very few cues from which to judge the chatbot’s trustworthiness. In this case, a
socially rich experience should allow a chatbot to function as an information source that exhibits
a human touch and higher credibility. On this premise we propose that
H4. Higher levels of social presence will have a positive effect on trust towards the
chatbot.

Perceived enjoyment and trust as antecedents of attitude towards the chatbot

For those studies involving a fictitious online interaction with a chatbot that do not make it
possible to obtain behavioural data, users’ attitude is considered an appropriate dependent
variable (Hassanein and Head, 2005). In fact, as Ajzen and Fishbein (1977) have argued, a
person who holds a favourable attitude towards an action will be more inclined to perform a
particular behaviour. Users’ attitude was shown to be a valuable outcome variable in many
contexts and studies on new technologies (Hassanein and Head, 2005). Because of that,
research is interested in investigating what are the antecedents that may impact on this
construct. The hedonic aspects concerning the online environment (e.g. online shopping) have Millennials’
been demonstrated to play a role that is at least equal to that of the instrumental aspects (e.g. attitude toward
usability) (Childers et al., 2001). Higher levels of intrinsic enjoyment and pleasure in computer-
mediated environments are factors that produce a positive attitude (Kim et al., 2013). Hence,
chatbots
perceived enjoyment turns out to be a psychological consequence of social presence but also
an antecedent to consumer attitude (Hassanein and Head, 2005). Many studies have examined
the effect of perceived enjoyment on technology preferences, such as computers, websites and
mobile. In the context of the online shopping experience, Lee et al. (2003) proved that shopping 1219
enjoyment was positively associated with online customer satisfaction (Suki and Suki, 2007).
Other studies found perceived enjoyment to be positively related to attitude towards online
shopping (Childers et al., 2001), television commerce (Yu et al., 2005) and website browsing
(Van der Heijden, 2003). Based on the above-mentioned arguments we propose
H5. Higher levels of perceived enjoyment will have a positive effect on the attitude
towards the chatbot.
In the online context, due to the unique characteristics of the virtual shopping environment
(i.e. absence of face-to-face interactions or inability to directly see and touch a product),
consumers feel greater uncertainty and heightened risk in their online buying decisions,
especially when new channels are involved (Ha and Stoel, 2009). In case of new technologies
or interactions with unknown companies and brands, research often refers to trust in terms of
initial trust as a more appropriate interpretation of trust given the precocity of the interaction.
In this regard, initial trust was found by Wu and Chen (2005) to influence attitude towards
paying tax online. According to Siau and Shen (2003) both initial and continuous trust are
affected by factors related to the vendor and the technology (interactivity, designed
aesthetics and personalisation) and represent antecedents of attitude and intention to use the
technology. Trust represents a central variable for online transactions where it reduces the
uncertainty and vulnerability consumers feel when engaged in e-commerce, further allowing
for the establishing of positive attitudes and retention of shoppers (Das, 2016). Being a
prerequisite for a successful implementation of a new technology, the relationship between
trust and attitude has been constantly studied by researchers (Wang and Benbasat, 2008;
Ming-Chi, 2009). Prior empirical studies have incorporated and supported trust as an
antecedent of attitude (Chen and Tan, 2004; Suh and Han, 2002). The impact of trust on
attitude has been confirmed in many contexts and online retailing is no exception. Wu and Ke
(2015) found trust to be a significant antecedent of attitude towards online shopping.
Consumer trust in a company’s website was shown to positively impact attitude towards the
company and willingness to buy from the online vendor (Gefen and Straub, 2003). On this
premise, we believe it is of major importance to assess the relationship between trust and
attitude in human–chatbot interaction; therefore, we hypothesise that
H6. Higher levels of trust will have a positive effect on the attitude towards the chatbot.
Figure 1 depicts the research model.

Research method
Design, participants and experimental procedure
Due to the routinisation of the tasks involved, online food delivery businesses are more likely
to implement chatbots. Since in most cases chatbots still cannot address highly specific or
complex requests (Brandtzaeg and Følstad, 2017), businesses in which a relatively short
number of options are required to fulfil online orders – thus those which can use an easier
algorithm – are more prone to the use of chatbots. The routinisation of activities and the
limited recurrent tasks that provide greater speed and lower costs (Leidner, 1993) make online
food delivery business a field in which the application of chatbots is easier to implement for
IJRDM companies and easier to use for users. Despite this, however, a lack of awareness about the
48,11 outcomes of using chatbots within this application can constitute a threat to the growth of
this market. From this perspective, we adopted an experimental design to investigate how
conversational cues and visual cues affect social presence and how this, in turn, affects
attitude towards a chatbot applied for an online food delivery business.
Specifically, a between-participants factorial design 2 (interaction style: social-oriented or
task-oriented) 3 2 (avatar: present or absent) was adopted. To implement the treatments, four
1220 different chatbots were created with Chatfuel. The interactions were carried out in Italian for
an average of five minutes. Examples of the interaction with the chatbots (social-oriented vs
task-oriented; avatar vs no avatar) are displayed in Appendixes 1-2. Appendix 3 provides the
English translation of the human–chatbot interactions.
Participants were recruited using snowball sampling, where students enrolled in
bachelor’s and master’s degree programmes in an Italian university participated in the study
and helped researchers to recruit new subjects from among their acquaintances by sharing
the link to the web-based survey with their peers on Facebook. Participants did not receive
any compensation for participating in the study; they were free to choose whether to
participate in the study and share it with their acquaintances. An essential requirement for
participation was having a Facebook Messenger account (necessary in order to start the
interaction with the chatbot). Participants were informed about the institution’s ethical
approval and the overall storage and processing of data according to Regulation (EU) 2016/
679 GDPR. After participants gave their explicit consent, they were instructed to interact with
the chatbot with the aim of choosing any product (food) it presented. After interacting with
the chatbot and having accomplished the task, participants answered the questions
regarding perceptions about their experience with the chatbot. The questionnaire consisted
of a first part designed to acquire demographic insights into the use of messaging apps,
chatbots and online purchases experience and a second part consisting of statements
regarding the constructs.
A total of 193 millennials took part in this study, which corresponds to about 48 subjects
per group aged 22–34 years (M 5 22.6, SD 5 1.8). As expected, most of the respondents
reported the daily use of messaging apps, as out of all respondents, only 3.6 % indicated they
had no – or very little – use of messaging apps. The survey recorded the online purchasing
behaviour of the respondents. Only 3.2% of them indicated they had never made online
purchases, while 86.5% declared they made online purchases between one and four times per
month. After the interaction with the chatbot, participants were asked if they had ever used
such a technology in general and for online purchases. Overall, 79% had never used it at all
and 93% had never used it for online purchasing.

Stimuli
Following Chattaraman et al. (2019) and Van Dolen et al. (2007), the social-oriented interaction
style chatbot was set up to adopt an informal language. In addition to providing functional
guides and information, social-oriented interaction style chatbots maintain an informal
conversation through small talk, exclamatory feedback and visual kinesic paralanguage in
the form of animated images (GIFs) and emoticons (Luangrath et al., 2017). The task-oriented
interaction style chatbot is limited for providing formal guides to help users perform the task,
and no social features, with neither GIFs nor emoticons, were set up.
Before the main experiment, a pre-test was carried out to ensure that the manipulation was
effective according to Chattaraman et al. (2019). We randomly assigned 78 students (38 men
and 40 females, Mage 5 20.3; SDage 5 1.1) to one of the two conditions. The extent to which the
interaction with the chatbot was perceived as social-oriented or task-oriented was measured
by asking participants how much they thought the chatbot was expressive, enthusiastic,
entertaining and friendly on a seven-item Likert scale (1 5 “strongly disagree”; 7 5 “strongly
agree”). The responses were averaged to create a single index. As expected, findings revealed Millennials’
that the chatbot was perceived to have a significantly more engaging personality attitude toward
(t(51) 5 6.31, p < 0.001) when the interaction style was social-oriented (M 5 6.00,
SD 5 0.91) than task-oriented (M 5 4.11, SD 5 0.92).
chatbots

Measures
Previous research was reviewed to ensure that a comprehensive list of measures was 1221
included. The present study adopted validated scales for all dependent variables, with minor
changes in wording. For all the measures, responses were recorded on a seven-point Likert
scale (1 5 “strongly disagree”; 7 5 “strongly agree”). The measures for social presence were
taken from Gefen and Straub (2003) (five items, M 5 3.73; SD 5 1.50),and trust was measured
accordingly to Pengnate and Sarathy (2017) (four items, M 5 5.00; SD 5 1.26), while the
measures for perceived enjoyment were adapted from Van der Heijden (2004) (four items,
M 5 3.75; SD 5 1.48). The attitude towards the chatbot scale (four items, M 5 4.49; SD 5 1.59)
was adapted from Moon and Kim (2001).
Two control variables were considered in the study: need for affect (NFA), which is an
individual difference reflecting variation in the motivation to approach or avoid emotion-
inducing situations (Appel et al., 2012) and previous chatbot interaction experience. The
former was measured with ten items according to Appel et al. (2012) (M 5 4.37; SD 5 0.70) and
was added to control for a psychological dimension that might affect participants’
interpersonal relationship perspective. The latter was assessed by asking participants if they
had ever interacted with a chatbot before participating in this study; it was categorised using
a dichotomous variable (either “Yes” 5 1; or “No” 5 2).

Results
First of all, we performed a series of confound checks to control for the possibility that
differences in NFA and previous chatbot interaction experience could have been equally
distributed among the four conditions. A one-way ANOVA revealed no significant
differences in terms of NFA across the four conditions F(1, 191) 5 0.001, p 5 0.980; while
a chi-squared analysis revealed that previous chatbot interaction experience had no
significant relationship with respect to the interaction style (χ 2 (1, 187) 5 0.476, p 5 0.490) and
avatar conditions (χ 2 (1, 187) 5 0.576, p 5 0.448).

ANOVA results for social presence

To test for the effects of interaction style and avatar on social presence, we performed 2
(interaction style: social-oriented or task-oriented) 3 2 (avatar: present or absent) between-
participants ANOVAs. As regards social presence, the ANOVA revealed a significant main
effect of interaction style (F(1, 193) 5 29.63, p < 0.01, partial η2 5 0.14), indicating that
participants reported a higher level of social presence in the social-oriented interaction style
(M 5 4.29; SD 5 1.42) than in the task-oriented interaction style condition (M 5 3.19;
SD 5 1.39). The presence of the avatar, however, had an insignificant effect on social presence
(F(1, 193) 5 0.01, p 5 0.91). Even taking into account a different affective involvement when
using the chatbot – that is including NFA as a covariate – the relation between interaction
style and social presence revealed a significant positive effect (F(1, 191) 5 29.733, p < 0.000,
partial η2 5 0.14), while avatar presence was still found to be not significant (F(1,
191) 5 0.040, p 5 0.841). When controlling for previous chatbot interaction experience, social
presence was still significantly influenced by interaction style (F(1, 186) 5 25.930, p < 0.000,
partial η2 5 0.14) but not by avatar presence (F(1, 186) 5 0.084, p 5 0.772). The results
supported H1 but did not support H2.
IJRDM PLS analysis
48,11 Measurement model. The partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was
applied to analyse the proposed research model because such an approach has higher
statistical power – which is especially useful for exploratory research – and it better predicts
key driver constructs (Aw, 2019). To check the reliability and validity of the constructs, we
performed internal consistency, convergent validity and discriminant validity (Hair et al.,
2011). We assessed the above validities by analysing Cronbach’s alpha (α), factor loadings,
1222 composite reliability (CR) and average variance extracted (AVE). Cronbach’s alpha shows
internal consistency reliability as all the values are far above 0.60 (Hair et al., 2011). The
findings of the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) confirmed that all factor loadings are
above minimum level 0.7, thus supporting internal consistency (Hair et al., 2011). The value of
CR of all constructs is above 0.8, while the value of AVE of all constructs is above 0.5. The
outcomes show a reasonable convergent validity (Table 1).
To assess discriminant validity, Fornell and Larcker (1981) criterion – latent variable
correlations and cross loading were considered. As shown in Table 2, the square root of the
AVE is higher than the correlation between variables, supporting discriminant validity (Hair
et al., 2011). Table 3 highlights that the items’ loadings in the main factor are higher than
loadings in any other factor.
Structural model. Before analysing the path coefficient, multicollinearity was assessed.
The analysis showed that there were no issues as the maximum VIF value (3.8) was below the
threshold of 5.0 (Hair et al., 2011). In order to evaluate our hypotheses, we examined the
estimated path coefficients of the structural model. Figure 2 shows the results of the model.
As previously shown by the ANOVA, interaction style has a significant influence on social
presence (β 5 0.367, SE 5 0.061, t-value 5 5.994, p < 0.001), while avatars have an
insignificant effect (β 5 0.007, SE 5 0.067, t-value 5 0.097, p 5 0.461). The positive
relationship between social presence and trust is supported (with β 5 0.485, SE 5 0.063, t-
value 5 7.728 p < 0.001)and the same occurs with social presence and perceived enjoyment
(β 5 0.735, SE 5 0.037, t-value 5 20.055 p < 0.001); thus. both H3 and H4 are supported.
Likewise, attitude is positively predicted by trust towards the chatbot (β 5 0.424, SE 5 0.063,
t-value 5 6.692 p < 0.001) and perceived enjoyment (β 5 0.440, SE 5 0.061, t-value 5 7.157
p < 0.001), confirming H5 and H6. The results of the PLS-SEM analysis do not change when

Construct Item Item loading AVE Composite reliability Cronbach’s alpha

Social presence SP1 0.837 0.754 0.939 0.918

SP2 0.862
SP3 0.849
SP4 0.896
SP5 0.895
Perceived enjoyment PE1 0.898 0.746 0.921 0.886
PE2 0.813
PE3 0.884
PE4 0.857
Trust T1 0.897 0.725 0.913 0.872
T2 0.818
T3 0.887
T4 0.799
Attitude towards the chatbot ATT1 0.759 0.701 0.903 0.856
Table 1. ATT2 0.910
Reliability analysis and ATT3 0.871
convergent validity ATT4 0.800
controlling for both NFA and previous chatbot interaction experience. The coefficient of Millennials’
determination value (R2) for attitude towards the chatbot is 0.562, which represents a good attitude toward
value for behavioural research (Hair et al., 2017). The coefficients of paths and determination
values are displayed in Figure 2.
chatbots

Social Perceived Attitude towards the 1223

Construct presence enjoyment Trust chatbot

Social presence 0.868

Perceived enjoyment 0.735 0.864
Trust 0.485 0.507 0.851
Table 2.
Attitude towards the 0.578 0.655 0.647 0.837 Discriminant validity –
chatbot latent variable
Note(s): The italic values in diagonals represent the square root of AVE and the off diagonals represent the correlations and square
correlations root of AVE

Construct Social presence Perceived enjoyment Trust Attitude towards the chatbot

SP1 0.837 0.656 0.486 0.542

SP2 0.862 0.576 0.398 0.483
SP3 0.849 0.671 0.446 0.519
SP4 0.896 0.643 0.358 0.449
SP5 0.895 0.630 0.401 0.506
PE1 0.670 0.898 0.417 0.578
PE2 0.641 0.812 0.404 0.537
PE3 0.612 0.884 0.508 0.617
PE4 0.613 0.858 0.418 0.526
T1 0.408 0.430 0.899 0.519
T2 0.464 0.438 0.816 0.549
T3 0.391 0.387 0.889 0.590
T4 0.385 0.472 0.797 0.539
ATT1 0.322 0.353 0.592 0.759
ATT2 0.575 0.638 0.625 0.910
ATT3 0.308 0.328 0.619 0.871
ATT4 0.543 0.588 0.517 0.800 Table 3.
Note(s): Italic values are loadings for each item, which are above the recommended value of 0.5; and an item’s Cross loading
loadings on its own variable are higher than all of its cross loadings with other variable (discriminant validity)

Avatar (present
vs absent)
Trust

Interaction style
Social Attitude toward
(social-oriented
presence the chatbot
vs task-oriented)

Figure 1.
Perceived Depicts the
enjoyment research model
IJRDM Avatar (present
vs absent)
48,11 Trust
0.42***
0.48*** R2 = 0.24
0.01 p < 0.001 p < 0.001
p = 0.46

Interaction style
Social Attitude toward
(social-oriented
1224 vs task-oriented)
presence the chatbot
0.37*** R2 = 0.14 R2 = 0.56
p < 0.001
Figure 2.
Structural 0.73*** Perceived 0.44***
relationships and p < 0.001 p < 0.001
enjoyment
hypotheses testing
R2 = 0.54

We used the blindfolding procedure to evaluate the relevance of exogenous variables to

model performance. This technique examines each construct predictive relevance by
computing changes in the criterion estimates (Q2) (Hair et al., 2017). Our results of Stone-
Geisser’s blindfolding technique (Q2) show that social presence (Q2 5 0.093), consumers’ trust
in the chatbot (Q2 5 0.172), perceived enjoyment (Q2 5 0.379) and attitude (Q2 5 0.364) have
satisfactory predictive relevance since their values are far above 0 (Thakur, 2018).
In order to advance the understanding of the relationship between the variables, we tested
the mediating effects with 5,000 bootstrapping resamples to highlight the direct and indirect
effects of interaction style on attitude towards the chatbot through social presence, perceived
enjoyment and trust (Table 4). Table 4 also shows the significant indirect effects of social
presence on attitude towards the chatbot through both mediators. The indirect effect via
perceived enjoyment (β 5 0.392, p < 0.001, 95% C.I. [0.258, 0.516]) is slightly higher than trust
towards the chatbot (β 5 0.189, p < 0.001, 95% C.I. [0.113, 0.294]).
Overall, because the direct effect of interaction style on attitude was not statistically
significant (β 5 0.073, p 5 0.12 95% C.I. [-0.160, 0.026]), we conclude that social presence,
perceived enjoyment and trust fully mediate the effects of interaction style on attitude
towards the chatbot (Hair et al., 2017).

Discussion and implications

Discussion
AI offers additional opportunities for conversational commerce, which refers to transactions
started and completed through chat interfaces such as chatbots (Tuzovic and Paluch, 2018).
This is particularly true for millennials, since chatbots represent a suitable tool for meeting

Mediation path Indirect effect with bootstrap estimate (b) Lower 95% BCBCI Upper 95% BCBCI

IS → SP → PE → A 0.151*** 0.085 0.230

IS → SP → T → A 0.073*** 0.040 0.120
IS → SP → PE 0.286*** 0.187 0.388
IS → SP → T 0.187*** 0.117 0.269
SP → PE → A 0.392*** 0.258 0.516
Table 4. SP → T → A 0.189*** 0.113 0.294
Indirect Note(s): NFA and past experience with chatbots were considered as control variables. Bias corrected
effects N 5 193 and accelerated (BCa) bootstrap confidence intervals were based on 5,000 samples. ***p < 0.001
their online interaction preferences. Given these premises, it comes as no surprise that online Millennials’
companies have started to feel the need to understand what contributes to building and attitude toward
enhancing younger consumers’ engagement within these platforms (Araujo, 2018). Despite
millennials’ predominant use of instant text messaging suggesting that they are more likely
chatbots
to give chatbots a chance, little is still known about the factors that positively influence their
attitude towards this technology. In order to shed light on this matter, our study builds upon
prior research on consumers’ attitude and response to online conversational agents applied
for retailing purposes, a research area, that, to date, is still limited (Zarouali et al., 2018). 1225
As a matter of fact, compared to offline shopping, the online purchasing experience may
be viewed as lacking human warmth and sociability as it is more impersonal, anonymous and
automated. For these reasons, understanding how to create a higher level of engagement in
online environments with new technologies such as chatbots is a complex process (Cyr et al.,
2007). Our results align with prior studies on social presence research in the online domain
and further confirms previous findings assessing that social presence is a factor at the heart
of consumer experience with online services (Hassanein and Head, 2005; Cyr et al., 2007;
Shen, 2012).
This study contributes to our understanding of the effects of conversational cues on social
presence. The results suggest that a social-oriented conversation enhances the feeling that the
interactant is a social entity (i.e. social presence). Compared to Araujo’s (2018) study, where
the presence of anthropomorphic cues (in terms of human name and greetings) were not
enough to establish a significant level of social presence, our study suggests that socio-
emotional, affective and relational aspects need to be present in the interaction in order to
enhance perception of social presence. The current study complements Chattaraman et al.
(2019), who proved the effectiveness of social interaction style on older users’ trust and
perceived interactivity when the interaction style matches the task-competency of the older
user. From this perspective, this study extends social-oriented interaction style positive
outcomes (compared to a task-oriented interaction style) in terms of social presence to a
specific and marketing appealing younger audience.
The present work also suggests a key finding regarding the elements that do (or do not)
enhance social presence in a human–chatbot interaction. In contrast to past studies on agents
applied on different platforms, where the presence of an avatar was found to enhance the
user’s perception of social presence of the medium (Gefen and Straub, 2003), the current
research cannot support this statement. This result, although conflicting with previous
research on the topic, could reasonably be ascribed to the role of the hosting platform. In fact,
unlike the placement on websites of avatars and virtual assistant characters that are highly
visible thanks to their dominant position on the screen, for app-based chats like Messenger,
the visual aspect of the profile image plays only a minimal role with respect to the
conversation flow itself. The section for the personal image is very small and located in a
rather marginal position with respect to the text.
The second part of the study confirms the role of trust and perceived enjoyment as
consequences of social presence and as antecedents of attitude towards the chatbot. In line
with past studies, social presence predicts users’ joy (Cyr et al., 2007; Hassanein et al., 2009) as
well as perceptions of honesty (Gefen and Straub, 2003; Etemad-Sajadi, 2016). At the same
time, perceived enjoyment and trust towards the chatbot significantly predict a positive
attitude towards the chatbot (Wu and Liu, 2007; Hassanein and Head, 2005).

Theoretical implications
The conclusions of the research present the following theoretical enlightenment. First, this
study enriches the literature on innovative marketing channels through an analysis of the
variables that play a major role in human–chatbot interaction for business purposes. In line
with the HCI literature, where social presence, perceived enjoyment and trust were found to
IJRDM have great value for online technologies (e.g. website, Hassanein, and Head, 2005), such
48,11 constructs can be considered as a proxy of the overall user experience with chatbots.
The present study further contributes to the literature on the social presence theory and
chatbot relationship by demonstrating that a chatbot showing psychological closeness that
employs a warm and friendly conversation can be a fundamental trigger for generating a
better experience of social presence (Cyr et al., 2007). Specifically, this work draws attention to
the necessity of considering interaction style in human–chatbot interactions as an antecedent
1226 of social presence, indicating that a social-oriented interaction style may work to compensate
for the impersonal nature often associated with AI .
The mediation analysis, which is at the heart of both the advancement of social presence
theory and the refinement of chatbots guiding users in the purchasing process, allowed us to
identify psychological mediators able to capitalise upon key processes involved in generating
positive outcomes. In this regard, the study sheds light on two important effects of social
presence in chatbots applied for online retailing, i.e. trust and enjoyment. Both perceived
enjoyment and trust towards the chatbot were found to have a significant positive influence
on the overall attitude towards the chatbot. So, drawing from the results of the mediating
effect, on the one hand, this work extends knowledge on hedonic motivation which leads to
positive attitudes in the online shopping environment (Koufaris, 2002). On the other hand, our
results advance research on online trust (Wu and Liu, 2007) confirming that trust plays a
central role for the overall perception of chatbots applied for business purposes.

Practical implications
The launch and the development of an appropriate chatbot involve a high degree of uncertainty
for companies, since they can be programmed in many ways with distinct sets of rules (Zarouali
et al., 2018). The present research offers practical support for designing visual and
conversational elements of chatbots that enhance their effectiveness for younger segments
of the customer base. Specifically, this study encourages retailers to focus on features that
enhance a sense of social interaction through a conversational style rather than profile visual
cues (i.e. avatars). The study suggests that chatbots applied for retailing purposes need to be
fun in order to attract young customers via more enjoyable experiences resulting from social
interactions. Companies that wish to make a favourable impression on young consumers
should embrace a social relationship perspective and create engaging conversations that
include small talk, exclamatory feedback, emoticons and GIFs to increase the level of social
presence and consequently perceived enjoyment, trust and attitude towards the chatbots.

Limitations and future research

This study has some limitations that call for future research. First, participants were asked to
complete a fictitious task and only a simulated purchase. While this design aimed to
maximise the validity of the study, future research could collect behavioural data from real
companies.
The sample is limited to a specific young cohort, which may limit the generalisability of
the findings. The future study may overcome this issue and further investigate whether the
gender of the chatbot itself influences participants’ perceptions (Skjuve et al., 2019). In order to
see if the attitude towards the chatbot varies across different levels of involvement and
spending, it would be of interest to examine potential moderators such as the type of product
(e.g. luxury goods) involved in the operation. Lastly, in view of different online shopping rates
across multiple markets, we believe it might be interesting to compare chatbots for
conversational commerce among countries with different online shopping rates in order to
see if this technology can increment online purchases in countries where such rates are
still low.
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1231

Appendix 1

Figure A1.
Original Italian
versions of the four
chatbots
IJRDM
Appendix 2
48,11

1232

Figure A2.
Focus on the task-
oriented
communication style
vs social-oriented
communication style
Appendix 3 Millennials’
English translation of the human–chatbot interactions in Appendix 1–2. attitude toward
chatbots

Task-oriented communication style Social-oriented communication style

Appendix 1 translation
1233
I am a chatbot and I am here to help you to choose the dish I’m a chatbot and I’m here to help you to
that best suits you choose the dish that best suits you!
Delivery is free and available in Pescara and Chieti Delivery is free &1F60D; and available in
Swipe to see all the menus and click on the one that is right for Pescara and Chieti!
you Swipe to see all the menus &1F449; and click
on the one that’s right for you!
Appendix 2 translation
I want to order it I want to order it!
Order received Great choice!
If you have already entered your delivery information, you Let me grab paper and pen so I can write
can confirm the address otherwise click on “enter address” down your order &1F61C;
I confirm the address Where should the order be delivered?
Thank you for ordering with our service Chieti
You can pay to the courier by card or cash Which is the address where you want the
order to be delivered?

Corresponding author
Roberta De Cicco can be contacted at: [email protected]

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