Evaluating Anthropomorphic Product Recommendation Agents: A Social Relationship Perspective to Designing Information Systems

TLDR

Product recommendation agents are increasingly replacing human salespeople in online shopping, yet research has largely ignored their potential to exert social influence on users. This study applies a social relationship perspective to the design of interfaces for PRAs. The authors examine how anthropomorphic interfaces—humanoid embodiment and voice output—affect users’ perceived social relationship with a technology-based recommendation agent. Laboratory experiments show that humanoid embodiment and human voice enhance users’ social presence, trust, enjoyment, and intention to use the agent, extending shopper‑salesperson theories to digital interactions and offering design guidelines for online stores.

Abstract

In online shopping environments, the product-advising function originally performed by salespeople is being increasingly taken over by software-based product recommendation agents (PRAs). However, the literature has mostly focused on the functionality design and utilitarian value of such decision support systems, mostly ignoring the potential social influence they could exert on their users. The objective of this study is to apply a social relationship perspective to the design of interfaces for PRAs. We investigate the effects of applying anthropomorphic interfaces—namely, humanoid embodiment and voice output—on users' perceived social relationship with a technological and software-based artifact designed for electronic commerce contexts. The findings from a laboratory experiment indicate that using humanoid embodiment and human voice-based communication significantly influences users' perceptions of social presence, which in turn enhances users' trusting beliefs, perceptions of enjoyment, and ultimately, their intentions to use the agent as a decision aid. These results extend the applicability of theories concerning traditional shopper-salesperson relationships to customers' interactions with technological artifacts residing on Web sites—that is, the recommendation agent software—and provide practitioners with guidelines on how to design Internet stores with the goal of building social relationships with online shoppers and enhancing their overall shopping experiences.