Consumer persuasion by chatbots: An integrative model of social persuasion

Ample evidence exists that the trend of using chatbot in the business sector will further accelerate within the next years. This dynamic has inspired various researchers to investigate the determinants of the effectiveness of interactions between consumers and chatbots in the recent past. However, the scope of published studies into the impact of chatbot communication is large and fragmented. In this chapter, we provide an overview of the current status of scientific knowledge within the domain of chatbot communication research. By doing so, we consolidate the earlier findings identified in our literature analysis and develop an integrated model for the impact of chatbot communication on key consumer outcomes – including consumers’ willingness to adopt chatbots and being influenced during purchases. By applying the classic framework for social communication, we identify five critical components for our model: communicators, stimuli, receivers, responses, and contextual influences. Our review shows that within each component, various factors (e.g., message quality, message personalization) are critical to the success of chatbots in business settings. Our review gives practitioners and scholars alike a first understanding of the main persuasive factors affecting consumer responses while interacting with a chatbot.