Adaptive decision support system (ADSS) for B2C e-commerce
ICEC '06 Proceedings of the 8th international conference on Electronic commerce: The new e-commerce: innovations for conquering current barriers, obstacles and limitations to conducting successful business on the internet
How real should virtual characters be?
Proceedings of the 2006 ACM SIGCHI international conference on Advances in computer entertainment technology
Journal of Management Information Systems
Investigating effective ECAs: an experiment on modality and initiative
INTERACT'07 Proceedings of the 11th IFIP TC 13 international conference on Human-computer interaction - Volume Part II
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Although the motivational benefits of Embodied Conversational Agents in other areas have been demonstrated their potential for relationship building within e-tailing has been little utilized. In this exploratory paper we consider customer perceptions of what types of ECA are appropriate to retailing websites using data from semi-structured interviews with 30 Internet shoppers. Extrapolating the findings from the advertising literature concerning match-up between endorser and brand, product or retailer we find this will be an important element in the acceptability and viability of ECAs on retail websites. It is apparent that great care has to be taken in matching not only the physical characteristics of the ECA to perceptions of the brand, product or retailer but also to the goals and motivations of potential customers of a website. We also find that introducing customer interaction into the match-up' mix introduces a new level of complexity, that of matching customer expectations. It is this level of service that maybe most difficult for technology and organizations to meet.