Attitudes of Online Consumers Towards Chatbots

Abstract

With the effect of digitalization, now consumers can instantly communicate through messaging applications. Today, when consumers are more active due to postmodern culture, companies have started to use artificial intelligence-based chatbots as a communication tool instead of physical customer representatives in customer communication. Chatbots provide companies with advantages such as speed, high efficiency, cost savings and brand loyalty; therefore, in this research, it is aimed to determine the attitudes and behaviors of online consumer’s towards chatbots. In the study, the Technology Acceptance Model was applied to determine the attitudes and behaviors of Turkish consumer’s online towards chatbots and in addition to this, the Theory of Uses and Satisfactions was applied to determine the strongest motivation that online consumers feel about using chatbots, so that an integrated model was established by combining the theories. Within the scope of the research carried out, data was collected by online survey method from 306 participants who had previously experienced chatbots. The collected data was analyzed using the regression method. According to the results of the research, it has been concluded that technology acceptance model components positively affect attitude and behavioral use and it was determined that efficiency was the strongest motivation that drives online consumers to use chatbots.