EXPRESS: Bad News? Send an AI. Good News? Send a Human

Abstract

The present research demonstrates how consumer responses to negative and positive offers are influenced by whether the administering marketing agent is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) or a human. In the case of a product or service offer that is worse than expected, consumers respond better when dealing with an AI agent in the form of increased purchase likelihood and satisfaction. In contrast, for a better than expected offer, consumers respond more positively to a human agent. We demonstrate that AI agents, in comparison to human agents, are perceived to have weaker intentions when administering offers, which accounts for this effect. That is, consumers infer that AI agents lack selfish intentions in the case of an offer that favors the agent and lack benevolent intentions in the case of an offer that favors the customer, thereby dampening the extremity of consumer responses. Moreover, we demonstrate a moderating effect such that marketers may anthropomorphize AI agents to strengthen perceived intentions, providing an avenue to receive due credit from consumers when providing a better offer and mitigate blame when providing a worse offer. Potential ethical concerns with the use of AI to bypass consumer resistance to negative offers are discussed.