Purpose Firms have begun to introduce virtual agents (VAs) in service encounters, both in
online and offline environments. Such VAs typically resemble human frontline employees in …

Few existing virtual agents (VAs) that customers interact with in service encounters can
experience emotions, but they can be (and often are) designed so that they appear to have …

Because of continuous improvements in their underlying technologies, customers perceive
frontline robots as social actors with a high level of humanness, both in appearance and …

Service organizations, emboldened by the imperative to innovate, are increasingly
introducing robots to frontline service encounters. However, as they augment or substitute …

In recent years, marketers have placed increased reliance upon artificial intelligence (AI)
and, subsequently, the use of virtual agents in customer service contexts is on the rise …

As organizations increasingly adopt artificial intelligence (AI) systems for their online
communication with publics, conceptualizing and operationalizing perceived humanness …

Purpose Extant research mainly focused on potentially negative customer responses to
service robots. In contrast, this study is one of the first to explore a service context where …

Despite the growing application of interactive technologies like service robots in customer
service, there is limited understanding about how customers respond to interactions with …

Purpose–The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the visual presence of a virtual
agent on a retail Web site reveals positive outcomes for older users with respect to …

In the near future, it is expected that we humans will receive an increasing part of various
services from robots. Many observers, and several existing studies, indicate that we react …