Impacts of Live Chat on Refund Intention: Evidence from an Online Labor Market

Live chat plays a significant role in online labor markets, which mitigates the information asymmetry caused by the highly customized nature of service products. This study examines the impacts of live chat on refund intention in online labor markets and how these impacts are moderated by business familiarity. We collect unique archived data from a leading online labor market in Asia and hypothesize that reply speed has a negative effect on refund intention while both politeness intensity and sentiment intensity have a U-shaped effect on refund intention. In addition, these effects are proposed to be weakened by business familiarity formed by previous transaction experience. The study not only offers theoretical contributions to the online labor market literature by providing empirical insights on the impact of live chat on refund intention but also yields managerial implications for service providers and platform operators

How live chat assistants drive travel consumers' attitudes, trust and purchase intentions : the role of human touch

Purpose: By adopting a social presence theory perspective, this study aims investigate the influence of perceived usefulness of live chat services and of their unique human attributes on customer attitudes, beliefs and behaviours in the context of online travel shopping. Design/methodology/approach: Based on a cross-sectional survey research involving 8 travel provider websites and 631 travel consumers, this work applies structural equation modelling to analyse the data. Findings: The results illustrate that the perceived usefulness from the communication with a human live chat assistant positively influences customer attitudes and trust towards the website as well as increasing purchase intention. The findings further illustrate the role of the human social cues conveyed by live chat facilities, namely, human warmth, human assurance, human attentiveness and human customised content in positively moderating this effect. Research limitations/implications: The study is limited to specific human attributes. Future research could investigate the role of other human characteristics as well as assess the ability of artificial intelligent powered chatbots in replicating the human elements outlined in this research. Originality/value: The study provides a unique contribution to the travel literature by offering empirical insights and conceptual clarity into the usefulness of human operated live chat communication on travellers’ attitudes, trust towards the website and purchase intentions

Low-Income Consumers in Brazil: Nuances of a Market That Can No Longer Be Ignored

The main goal of this paper is to better understand the low income Brazilian market, supported by two basic concepts: price unfairness and perceived product value. In order to meet the research objective a qualitative approach, based on two methodological procedures – observation and in-depth interviews –, was used. The findings indicate that small neighborhood retailers, despite lacking adequate physical infrastructure and management skills, play an important role in meeting the needs of low-income consumers. They offer convenience, personalized services, easy and uncomplicated credit (on an informal basis), and a product mix that matches the needs and desires of their customers. It was also found that although these small retailers charge higher prices than large supermarket chains, their customers still see value in their offerings and do not consider the prices asked to be unfair: they recognize that the benefits they receive outweigh the higher prices they pay. It was also found that low-income consumers relate with neighborhood retail stores in a basis that goes beyond the mere business, but in a cultural basis too. These small stores function not only as points of sale, but also as places where people can meet and discuss issues related to the local community. The principal contribution of this paper is in providing substantive information about the nuances of a market that has hitherto not been adequately explored but that holds a potential that can no longer be ignored. In Brazil, this market contains nearly 90 million consumers, eager to be included in the world of consumption. The findings presented by this study are of relevance not only to academic organisations and businesses, but also to social organizations and public policymakers responsible for improving the quality of life of the poor

Telepresence in live-stream shopping: an experimental study comparing Instagram and the metaverse

Advances in digital platforms allow influencers to use live shows to showcase products, which has given rise to live-stream shopping. Moreover, new communication forms have emerged, such as the metaverse. The social interactions that occur in these immersive environments foster influencer-follower interactions. This research compares the impact of live-stream shopping on followers’ experiences and behaviors on two communication channels (live shows on Instagram and in the metaverse) and analyses the moderating role of content involvement in telepresence. Data were collected in a between-subjects quasi-field experiment. Two scenarios that differed in degree of telepresence were created, a live show on Instagram and a live show in the metaverse. The results showed that telepresence is an important part of the user experience and in the success of live shows. Telepresence was seen to have a major influence on experiential value, but not on instrumental value. Both values provided followers with satisfaction with the experience. This satisfaction generated stickiness intention and intention to recommend the influencers’ live shows. The effect of telepresence on experiential value was greater for followers less involved with the influencer’s content. This research is pioneering in comparing an established platform, Instagram, with the metaverse. Despite the greater experiential value provided by the metaverse, to increase its instrumental value metaverse spaces needs to be further developed

DECONSTRUCTING E-COMMERCE PRESENCES - A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW AND RESEARCH AGENDA

This literature review systematically analyses recent studies on the effective design of e-commerce presences in order to provide a state-of-the-art overview on this important topic. To do so, our review focuses on the level of webshop elements (i.e., the building blocks to design webshops), which we cluster in eight categories (e.g., color usage, music usage, rich media usage), derived from previous website quality frameworks (e.g., SITEQUAL, WebQual) and prior reviews. The basis of our comprehensive literature review are 91 articles grouped into the webshop element categories and additionally analyzed along three key study criteria, namely the applied research methods, theories, and key dependent variables. Based on the findings from this bibliographic analysis, we formulate an agenda for future research avenues to guide researchers in further exploring the field of e-commerce presences and to support practitioners in their decision-making on the implementation of webshop elements

Privacy in the Sharing Economy

Contemporary C2C platforms, such as Airbnb, have exhibited considerable growth in recent years and are projected to continue doing so in the future. These novel consumer-to-consumer marketplaces have started to obliterate the boundaries between private and economic spheres. Marketing personal resources online is inherently associated with the disclosure of personal and sometimes intimate information. This raises unprecedented questions of privacy. Yet, there is so far little research on the role of privacy considerations in the sharing economy literature. Leveraging the theoretical perspective of privacy calculus, we address this gap by investigating how privacy concerns and economic prospects shape a potential provider’s intentions to share via different communication channels. We relate privacy concerns back to the provider’s perceptions of the audience. We evaluate our research model by means of a scenario-based online survey, providing broad support for our reasoning

Passive, Active, or Co-Active? The Link Between Synchronous User Participation and Willingness to Pay for Premium Options

Social media-enabled business models have transformed the content industry. To increase users’ willingness to pay (WTP), many of today’s content providers have changed from mere content provision towards offering social content experiences. Recent research has confirmed that users’ participation activities, e.g. commenting on content, increase the WTP for social content services’ premium options. So far, social content has been available predominantly on-demand, only allowing asynchronous user participation. Recently, social live content services emerged, which facilitate synchronous user participation and enable so-called co-active behavior. With this study, we conceptualize co-active behavior as the interplay between users while co-experiencing content together, and empirically show that co-active behavior has a stronger effect on WTP for premium options than the classic forms of passive and active behavior. Our work provides theoretical contributions on the WTP for social content as well as implications for the management of social content services

Investigating the Drivers, Measures and Consequences of Customer Online Social Experience

This research plays a pioneering role in investigating the social aspect of online customer experience. Guided by the social presence and social response theory, and using a mixed methods approach, the research introduces customer online social experience (COSE) in the extant literature by defining the concept, identifying its dimensions, drivers and developing its measures. It also develops a scale for measuring omni-channel management (OCM) and reveals that OCM drives COSE, which eventually influences customer behaviour

The influence of live customer service on consumers' likelihood of disclosing personal information

textLive customer service has been used by many e-commerce brands as a method to gain consumers personal information. Previous research has found that live service agents have a positive influence on consumer perceived service quality and trust. This research aims to examine if certain type of live customer service generate better website and brand perceptions from the consumer and ultimately help in gaining consumer personal information. Results of this experimental design show that avatar selection and exposure did not significantly differ for service quality, trust, attitudes, purchase intention, and likelihood of disclosing personal information. It was also found that customers have a significant likelihood of selecting agents of the same gender.Advertisin

Evaluating the factors of corporate website favorability: a case of UK and Russia

Purpose - This research evaluates the significance of the corporate website favorability notion and examines its factors in developing competitive advantage in the context of retail and service settings in UK and Russia. Design/methodology/approach - Based on the attribution, social identity, and signaling theories, this research adopted the qualitative exploratory approach by conducting 14 interviews with retail experts and 8 focus groups with retail users in UK and Russia, combined with experts in website design, communication, and marketing. Findings - The research findings indicated that it is crucial to build and maintain a favorable corporate website that reveals the corporate identity as part of the overall company strategy. The study suggests that navigation, visual, information, usability, customization, security, availability, website credibility, customer service, perceived corporate social responsibility, and perceived corporate culture are the factors of corporate website favorability that contribute to the company’s competitive advantage. The findings show that consumers from Russia, as well as from UK found the significance of a favorable corporate website (i.e. corporate website favorability), as well as the factors affecting corporate website favorability. However, consumers in UK are more critical and demanding in the level of expectation of the website overall and put more weight than consumers from Russia on the perceived corporate social responsibility, perceived corporate culture, customer service, and website credibility Practical implications - Corporate website favorability should be adopted by the companies, as part of the overall corporate identity management. Furthermore, it is advised to take into consideration the variations in the level of importance of the factors of corporate website favorability in different countries. The findings of this research suggest that this investigation will make a considerable managerial contribution to the understanding of a company’s decision-makers, communication professionals and website specialists about the building of a favorable corporate website in line with corporate identity strategy of the company. Originality/value - There has been little systematic study of the effect of corporate websites on consumer evaluations of the websites, also there is a lack of research in regard to the factors that contribute to the development of a favorable corporate website (i.e. corporate website favorability). This is the first research of its kind to find the effect of corporate website favorability in Russia, representing a non-western country, and the UK, representing a western country. Therefore, it contributes to the corporate visual identity literature by presenting the corporate website favorability construct and demonstrating the factors that influence corporate website favorability