Effects of personalization and social role in voice shopping: An experimental study on product recommendation by a conversational voice agent

This study examines the persuasion mechanism in product recommendations made by a voice-based conversational agent and explores whether the personalized content reflecting the customer's preferences and the agent's social role of a friend, rather than a secretary, generate a more positive attitude toward the product in the context of voice shopping. With the framework of dual modes of information-processing models, we hypothesized that the personalization of messages would be a central route with a greater impact on attitude for products with high involvement. By contrast, the social role of the conversational agent was expected to represent a peripheral route with a greater impact on products with low involvement. An experimental study was designed to test the effects of personalized content that reflected individual preferences for product attributes and a friend role of a voice agent with high and low product involvement. The results showed main effects of both personalization and the social role on building attitudes toward the product. Although no interaction effect for personalization and involvement was found, there was a significant interaction effect for the social role and involvement. This study contributes to persuasion theory by extending it to the interaction with a conversational agent. For practitioners, the study provides insights into the importance of the personalized content of recommendations and the need for consideration of an alternative social role in the design of voice shopping through a conversational agent.