research-article

Chatbots in the tourism industry: the effects of communication style and brand familiarity on social presence and brand attitude

Author:

Charlotte van HooijdonkAuthors Info & Claims

UMAP '21: Adjunct Proceedings of the 29th ACM Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization

Pages 375 - 381

https://doi.org/10.1145/3450614.3463599

Published: 22 June 2021 Publication History

Abstract

Text-based chatbots are increasingly being implemented in the tourism sector to supplement online customer service encounters. However, customers often perceive conversations with chatbots as unnatural and impersonal. Therefore, we investigated whether a humanlike communication style enhances users’ chatbot and brand perceptions. Two experiments were conducted in which the effects of informal language (vs. formal language) and invitational rhetoric (present vs. absent) were examined separately. In both experiments, participants engaged in conversations with a customer service chatbot in the tourism sector after which they evaluated social presence and attitude towards the brand. Also, brand familiarity was included as a factor in both experiments as users’ brand familiarity affects their perceptions of the communication style in human-to-human interaction. The results showed chatbots using informal language or invitational rhetoric increase one's brand attitude via social presence. Moreover, brand familiarity only moderated the findings when the chatbot used invitational rhetoric: participants who were familiar with the brand experienced more social presence when the chatbot messages contained invitational rhetoric. We conclude that the perceived humanness of chatbots can be increased by adopting a communication style consisting of informal language and invitational rhetoric. Implications for the design and evaluation of chatbot messages are discussed.

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Cited By

Khan MFatima JBahmannia SChatrath SDale NJohns R(2024)Investigating the influence of perceived humanization of service encounters on value creation of chatbot-assisted servicesJournal of Service Theory and Practice10.1108/JSTP-10-2023-0282Online publication date: 15-Oct-2024
https://doi.org/10.1108/JSTP-10-2023-0282
Hankel SLiebrecht CKamoen N(2024)‘Hi Chatbot, let’s Talk about Politics!’ Examining the Impact of Verbal Anthropomorphism in Conversational Agent Voting Advice Applications (CAVAAs) on Higher and Lower Politically Sophisticated UsersInteracting with Computers10.1093/iwc/iwae031Online publication date: 24-Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.1093/iwc/iwae031
Roy RBabakerkhell MMukherjee SPal DFunilkul S(2022)Evaluating the Intention for the Adoption of Artificial Intelligence-Based Robots in the University to Educate the StudentsIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2022.322555510(125666-125678)Online publication date: 2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2022.3225555

Index Terms

Chatbots in the tourism industry: the effects of communication style and brand familiarity on social presence and brand attitude
1. Human-centered computing
  1. Collaborative and social computing
  2. Human computer interaction (HCI)

Index terms have been assigned to the content through auto-classification.

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

UMAP '21: Adjunct Proceedings of the 29th ACM Conference on User Modeling, Adaptation and Personalization

June 2021

431 pages

ISBN:9781450383677

DOI:10.1145/3450614

Editors:
Judith Masthoff
Utrecht University, The Netherlands and University of Aberdeen, UK
,
Eelco Herder
Radboud University, The Netherlands
,
Nava Tintarev
University of Maastricht, The Netherlands
,
Marko Tkalčič
University of Primorska, Slovenia

Copyright © 2021 ACM.

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Published: 22 June 2021

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June 21 - 25, 2021

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Cited By

Khan MFatima JBahmannia SChatrath SDale NJohns R(2024)Investigating the influence of perceived humanization of service encounters on value creation of chatbot-assisted servicesJournal of Service Theory and Practice10.1108/JSTP-10-2023-0282Online publication date: 15-Oct-2024
https://doi.org/10.1108/JSTP-10-2023-0282
Hankel SLiebrecht CKamoen N(2024)‘Hi Chatbot, let’s Talk about Politics!’ Examining the Impact of Verbal Anthropomorphism in Conversational Agent Voting Advice Applications (CAVAAs) on Higher and Lower Politically Sophisticated UsersInteracting with Computers10.1093/iwc/iwae031Online publication date: 24-Jul-2024
https://doi.org/10.1093/iwc/iwae031
Roy RBabakerkhell MMukherjee SPal DFunilkul S(2022)Evaluating the Intention for the Adoption of Artificial Intelligence-Based Robots in the University to Educate the StudentsIEEE Access10.1109/ACCESS.2022.322555510(125666-125678)Online publication date: 2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2022.3225555

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