Chatbot-based services : a study on users’ intention to reuse them

Abstract

In recent years, companies have started to invest in the creation of chatbots to increase their productivity (Haupt et al., 2020). At the same time, customers seem increasingly receptive to the adoption of cognitive computing solutions like chatbots in their lives (Temple et al., 2019). Without surprise, academics are paying increasing attention to the topic, demonstrated by the growing number of articles published about chatbots, namely from a user perspective, in recent years (Kull et al., 2021; Miklosik et al., 2021). Despite the growing interest of managers on chatbot services, the literature on the topic is very scarce, especially in what concerns the consumer behavior and experiences. The aim of this article is to identify the main factors that lead a user to reuse them. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study on consumers’ intentions to reuse chatbot-based services. It adapts well-established models to explain the adoption of technology in an emergent topic and proposes additional variables that are suggested as particularly relevant to explain reusage intentions. The proposed conceptual model comprises a total of eight hypotheses that were tested with quantitative data on consumers belonging to generations Z and Y that was collected in 2022 in Portugal.