Building trust with voice assistants for apparel shopping: The effects of social role and user autonomy

Voice shopping creates a novel shopping experience as it is prompted by human-AI interaction. It greatly reduces the time required in consumer decision-making, while it could impair consumers’ autonomy. This study thus investigates how the social role of voice assistants and user autonomy affect consumers’ relationships and buying decisions. Using media equation theory, two experimental studies examined the effects of social role and user autonomy on perceived human-likeness, trust, and purchase intention. Study 1 (86 participants) and Study 2 (112 participants) found that perceived human-likeness and trust serially mediated the relationship between user autonomy and purchase intention. This finding contributes to the media equation research by affirming the effectiveness of implicit anthropomorphism processing and highlights the importance of improving consumers’ confidence via voice channels.