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Human vs. Synthetic Recommendation Agents’ Voice: The Effects on Consumer Reactions

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Marketing at the Confluence between Entertainment and Analytics

Abstract

This paper aims to demonstrate the influence that recommendation agent type voice may have on users’ reactions. Through experimentation, we compare the effects of human and synthetic voice on perceived social presence, recommendation agent trust, website trust, and behavioral intentions. The findings suggest that the human voice is likely to provide a higher level of social presence and recommendation agent trust. The structural equation model shows that social presence has a positive effect on both recommendation agent trust and behavioral intentions. In turn, recommendation agent trust influences website trust and behavioral intentions. Finally, results show that website trust positively impacts behavioral intentions.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Multiple terms are used: avatars (Holzwarth et al. 2006), conversational embodied agent (Cassell and Bickmore 2000), virtual agent, interactive character, shopping agent and animated agent, etc. (McGoldrick et al. 2008).

  2. 2.

    The authors thank Davi Interactive and GMF, the companies which provide them with the website and the two experimental conditions of the virtual agent.

  3. 3.

    The item “I felt a sense of personalness in the agent” was removed from the scale of social presence because it has an extremely low factor loading.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Auvergne University – IAE Clermont Ferrand, Clermont-Ferrand, France

    Emna Cherif

  2. Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne University – ESSCA School of Management, Paris, France

    Jean-François Lemoine

Authors
  1. Emna Cherif
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  2. Jean-François Lemoine
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Emna Cherif .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Marketing Department, IESEG School of Management (LEM-CNRS), Lille, France

    Patricia Rossi

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© 2017 Academy of Marketing Science

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Cherif, E., Lemoine, JF. (2017). Human vs. Synthetic Recommendation Agents’ Voice: The Effects on Consumer Reactions. In: Rossi, P. (eds) Marketing at the Confluence between Entertainment and Analytics. Developments in Marketing Science: Proceedings of the Academy of Marketing Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47331-4_53

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