Avatar Design of Virtual Salespeople: Mitigation of Recommendation Conflicts
研究虚拟销售人员的头像设计如何缓解其推荐与在线顾客评论冲突的负面影响，发现高自动化社会存在的头像能减少冲突影响，但仅对低可爱度的头像有效。
The role of virtual salesperson (VS) and the importance of customer reviews in facilitating online purchase decisions and sales have recently received much attention from technology companies, marketing practice professionals, and academics. However, customers’ willingness to follow the purchase advice of the VS when there is a conflict between these recommendations and those of other online customers is less understood. This research theorizes and investigates the extent to which customers’ relationship satisfaction with, and trust in, the VS helps explain customer willingness to follow VS advice in the context of recommendation conflict. Using four studies, our research explores how and when the VS’s avatar design mitigates the negative influence of conflict. An important theoretical and managerial implication of this research is that VS avatar designs that are high in automated social presence (ASP) help reduce the negative impact of conflict. However, we find that ASP mitigates the negative effects of conflict only for avatars that score low (vs. high) on cuteness.