Textual or visual: consumer responses to compensation after AISA service failure

Purpose As the artificial intelligence service agent (AISA) becomes more widely used, service failures are inevitable. Marketers have to consider post-failure compensation to retain customers. However, little is known about how consumers respond to different representations of compensation. This study aims to show a mental construal carryover effect in which textually (vs visually) depicted compensation is appropriate for remedying AISA (vs human service agent; HSA) failures, and this effect is eliminated when the AISA is anthropomorphized. Design/methodology/approach Study 1 preliminarily explores the relationship between experiencing an AISA (vs HSA) service failure and preference for textual (vs visual) compensation. Study 2 examines the effectiveness of textual (vs visual) compensation for remedying the AISA (vs HSA) service failure. Study 3 investigates the underlying mechanism of mental construal matching. Study 4 explores the moderating role of AISA anthropomorphism on the matching effect. Findings An AISA (vs HSA) service failure leads consumers to prefer (Studies 1 and 2a) and be more satisfied with (Study 2b) textually (vs visually) depicted compensation. Consumers form higher-level construals both when experiencing an AISA (vs HSA) service failure and when receiving a textual (vs visual) compensation, contributing to a matching effect (Studies 3a and 3b). A boundary condition exists – this matching effect diminishes when the AISA is anthropomorphized (Study 4). Research limitations/implications This research contributes to the literature on human–AI comparison. It demonstrates a novel matching effect of mental construals between experiencing an AISA failure and receiving textual compensation. Moreover, it contributes to the literature on persuasion and anthropomorphism. This research is limited since it only examines one particular dimension of message construals, pays little attention to the possible influence of consumer heterogeneity and only focuses on consumers’ attitudes without examining consumers’ subsequent behaviors. Practical implications This research enriches the existing coping strategies for service recovery with improved effectiveness. It contributes to effectively distinguishing AISA and HSA from the perspective of mental construal levels and proposes strategies for providing information specific to AISA/HSA service failures. It provides managerial guidelines for marketers to design service compensation based on the mental construal carryover effect. Furthermore, this research provides some tactical directions for AISA anthropomorphism. Originality/value This research contributes novel and unique insight into recovery strategies for AISA service failures. Compensation depicted in different forms differs in recovery effects, which has received little attention in past research.