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EXPRESS: Blame the Bot: Anthropomorphism and Anger in Customer-Chatbot Interactions

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Abstract

Chatbots have become common in digital customer service contexts across many industries. While many companies choose to humanize their customer service chatbots (e.g., giving them names and avatars), little is known about how anthropomorphism influences customer responses to chatbots in service settings. Across five studies, including an analysis of a large real-world dataset from an international telecommunications company and four experiments, the authors find that when customers enter a chatbot-led service interaction in an angry emotional state, chatbot anthropomorphism has a negative effect on customer satisfaction, overall firm evaluation, and subsequent purchase intentions. However, this is not the case for customers in non-angry emotional states. The authors uncover the underlying mechanism driving this negative effect (expectancy violations caused by inflated pre-encounter expectations of chatbot efficacy) and offer practical implications for managers. These findings suggest it is important to both carefully design chatbots and consider the emotional context in which they are used, particularly in customer service interactions that involve resolving problems or handling complaints.

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... Chatbots communicate with their users using text or voice to solve queries (Crolic et al., 2022). They simulate human conversations (Luo et al., 2019), which they can conduct with thousands of users simultaneously (Caldarini et al., 2022). ...
... A perceived performance that is below expectations leads to lower customer satisfaction based on the confirmation-disconfirmation paradigm and is referred to as negative disconfirmation (Oliver, 1977). This is in line with the theory of expectancy violation (e.g., Crolic et al., 2022) or similar to negative expectations disconfirmation (e.g., Morgeson et al., 2020;Smith et al., 1999). The lower customer satisfaction caused by service failure results in lower customer loyalty (van Vaerenbergh et al., 2014) and can lead to customers churning and speaking negatively about the company (Bitner et al., 2000). ...
... The negative emotions caused by expectancy violations, such as anger (Crolic et al., 2022) and aggression (Huang and Dootson, 2022) can be avoided by the skilful design of the chatbot. The pre-encounter expectations with the chatbot should be low key. ...
Article
Chatbots in customer service often fail to meet customer expectations, largely because they are considered prone to comprehension errors. Service recovery can decisively restore perceived humanness and user satisfaction through perceived warmth and competence after a service failure. In this study, we investigate the effect of the chatbot’s gender on the user in service recovery. The majority of chatbots in customer service display female characteristics. We use a pre-study (n = 30) to determine the perceived gender of several chatbot avatars and a scenario-based experiment (n = 300) in which the service recovery after an outcome failure and the gender of the chatbot are manipulated. The results show that the service recovery significantly improved user satisfaction with the chatbot. In addition, the chatbot was perceived as significantly warmer and more competent, which resulted in higher perceived humanness and increased user satisfaction. Male chatbots were perceived as less warm in failure situations when service recovery was not achieved. However, following service recovery, there are no differences in the perception of the chatbot’s warmth and gender. Perceived warmth is correlated with perceived competence. Gender incongruence between the chatbot and the respondent resulted in a higher perceived humanness of the chatbot in service recovery. Therefore, firms should pay particular attention to the contexts in which chatbots are used and whether gender matching is appropriate.
... A key feature is chatbot anthropomorphism-designing chatbots to mimic human traits like tone, expressions, and personality [2,3]. This is a strategic choice that significantly impacts customer engagement and purchasing decisions, making thoughtful design essential [2,4]. ...
... Studies further suggest that anthropomorphic chatbots displaying empathy and warmth can significantly enhance customer trust, engagement, and purchase intent [16][17][18]. However, challenges arise when chatbots exhibit overly human-like traits or fail to meet customer expectations, which can negatively impact satisfaction [4]. Research also highlights the influence of anthropomorphic features on consumer behavior and brand perception across various products [19]. ...
... While it fosters user engagement and loyalty, it can lead to unrealistic expectations about the chatbot's capabilities and result in user frustration or disappointment when limitations become apparent [43,44]. Emotional attachments to chatbots are another concern, potentially causing dependency or dissatisfaction [4,44]. These complexities highlight the importance of balancing human-like qualities with transparent communication about the chatbot's capabilities to ensure users maintain realistic expectations [45,46]. ...
Article
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The expansion of brands adopting artificial intelligence services with human characteristics, such as chatbots, has revolutionized digital marketing strategies, transforming how companies reach and engage customers. This technological innovation is reshaping digital interactions between companies and consumers, offering a more personalized and efficient experience. This study explores the influence of chatbot anthropomorphism on customer engagement and purchasing decision-making with brands that use this artificial intelligence service. Data from a questionnaire with 1319 participants was analyzed using partial least squares method. Chatbot anthropomorphism has a more positive influence on purchasing decision-making when this relationship is mediated by customer engagement. In turn, customer involvement also has a positive influence on decision-making. The results emphasize that for a greater influence of the chatbot's anthropomorphism on purchasing decision-making, the customer must first be engaged with the chatbot. This research illuminates a new path in the domain of AI-enabled brand interactions, showing the distinct influence of anthropomorphism in chatbots on customer satisfaction, trust and loyalty, thus revolutionizing traditional paradigms of consumer-brand engagement and decision-making processes. By exploring the intricate dynamics between customer engagement with anthropomorphized chatbots and purchasing decisions, this study breaks new ground, offering unprecedented insight into the transformative potential of human-like chatbot interactions in shaping consumer behavior and brand relationships.
... In Indonesia, AI service agents are deployed across a range of industries, including healthcare, education, banking, and telecommunications, with adoption accelerating during the COVID-19 pandemic due to the need to minimize physical contact (De, 2018; Laksmidewi & Gunawan, 2023). Despite these advances, many consumers in Indonesia still prefer human interaction over AI-based services, largely due to trust issues and AI's limitations in responding to emotions, especially when handling complaints (Mozafari et al., 2022;Crolic et al., 2022). This study addresses this gap by exploring why consumers prefer human services over chatbots, focusing on the role of technology and user experience factors. ...
... The widespread adoption of chatbots by businesses of all sizes underscores their potential to improve service efficiency, especially in industries such as tourism (Um et al., 2020) and banking (Lee & Chen, 2022). However, while chatbots can enhance customer service and reduce operational costs (De, 2018), there are concerns that they may also compromise the quality of customer interactions and lead to negative experiences (Crolic et al., 2022). This presents a critical challenge for marketers to design chatbots that effectively balance these benefits and drawbacks. ...
... This heightened perception often leads consumers to believe that AI agents can perform at a level comparable to humans (Waytz et al., 2010). Besides, the research suggests that when the chatbot is more humanized, in that they are given more human sounding names, this increases the levels of consumer satisfaction (Crolic et al., 2022). This implies that anthropomorphism not only increases the perceived performance of a chatbot, but also the communication overall, thus making interaction with technology a better experience. ...
Article
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This research examines the key factors influencing Indonesian consumer’ willingness to use AI chatbots, focusing on technological characteristics, hedonic motivations, anthropomorphism, AI performance and user experience, using the extended Artificially Intelligent Device Usage Acceptance (AIDUA) model. This is quantitative research where a survey technique was adopted, and two hundred and eight participants’ responses were obtained. The participants were consumers in Indonesia who had prior experience using AI chatbot. The study reveals that anthropomorphism, technological competence, and consumer hedonic motivation while using a chatbot affects the consumer’s perception about the perceived performance of a chatbot and the user experience. These perceived performance and experiences influence feelings, and then influence the willingness to use the AI chatbot. Mediation analysis indicated that perceived performance mediated the relationship between anthropomorphism and willingness to use AI, while user experience did not. That hedonic motivation affects willingness to adopt AI through the mediations of user experience, emotions, and perceived performance. Further, technological factors influence willingness to use AI mediated by perceived performance, in which case, user experience is not a mediator. The results indicate that the factors influencing the willingness to use AI include technological readiness, anthropomorphism, and hedonic motivation, which are mediated by perceived performance and emotions, whereas user experience does not significantly mediate the relationship.
... When applied to AI-driven chatbots, affordance theory enables a detailed exploration of how the perceived and actual attributes of these systems condition user expectations. Unlike traditional service technologies, chatbots exhibit dynamic and interactive affordances that can amplify or disrupt user expectations (Belanche et al., 2021;Crolic et al., 2022). This paper leverages affordance theory to unpack these unique dimensions, offering a clearer understanding of how user perceptions are formed and shaped in AI-powered interactions. ...
... Affordances theory highlights that the potential for action is contingent upon users recognizing and enacting these affordances to achieve their goals (Davern et al., 2012). Recognition is shaped by the object's features, such as the anthropomorphic and human-like attributes of chatbots (Crolic et al., 2022). These characteristics can enhance the perceived potential of chatbots for personalization, availability (Lin et al., 2022), assistance provision, and privacy (Mygland et al., 2021). ...
... For instance, Belanche et al. (2021) found that more human-like robots elevate users' functional value expectations. Similarly, Crolic et al. (2022) discovered that anthropomorphic chatbots heighten expectations of efficacy, particularly when users interact while angry. Such elevated expectations are easily violated if the chatbot's behavior fails to meet expectations (Crolic et al., 2022), leading to negative disconfirmation. ...
Article
Purpose The implementation of AI-powered chatbots in the frontline may enhance efficiency, yet failures are still common. This paper aims to explore users' attribution of responsibility for service failures when using AI–chatbots and to examine how contextual factors influence perceptions of blame. Design/methodology/approach This work utilizes a mixed-methods approach, leveraging the findings from 39 exploratory interviews to develop the research framework and hypotheses. Subsequently, two experimental studies evaluated the type of interaction, failure type and failure severity. Findings The qualitative study identified voluntary and forced interaction types perceived by users based on contextual factors and demonstrated how these types impact expectations and responsibility attribution post-failure. The experimental studies showed that forced interactions intensify responsibility attributions toward the company and that disconfirmation of expectations mediates the relationship between forced interactions and responsibility attribution. Furthermore, failure type and severity level have a moderating influence on responsibility attribution. Originality/value This paper contributes to the theoretical understanding of user interactions with AI-powered frontline technology, by revealing the nuanced ways in which users perceive and react to failures.
... The realism of AI customer service agents can exert multifaceted impacts on consumers and companies in customer service. Studies have revealed that realism can enhance the long-term service quality of AI customer service agents by building a satisfactory consumer-brand relationship [7,13]. High-realism online assistants can ensure that customers have very satisfactory and enjoyable shopping experiences, as well as increase their purchase intentions [14][15][16]. ...
... Numerous studies have confirmed that overall service satisfaction can affect consumers' switching intentions [33], as well as their eventual repeat purchase intentions [13]. Consumer satisfaction is a critical factor that determines consumer repeat purchase intentions [34]. ...
... In this case, no significant difference will exist between the satisfaction degree [38]. However, once consumers experience an unsuccessful service recovery, they will nurture a negative impression of AI agents and high dissatisfaction [13]. Moreover, unsuccessful service recovery can lead to substantial revenue losses [37]. ...
Article
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Nowadays, human customer service is increasingly being replaced by artificial intelligence (AI) customer service agents. Service recovery plays a crucial role in shaping consumer experiences and business profitability. The realism of AI agents can significantly impact users’ attitudes and behaviors. However, it remains unclear how different types of realism in AI customer service agents affect customers during service recovery. Drawing on social response theory and expectation–confirmation theory, this study explores the impact of AI agents’ realism on consumer satisfaction and repeat purchase behavior during service recovery, as well as the underlying mechanisms of this effect. We collected data from 784 participants in three studies. Study 1 results show that form realism and behavioral realism of AI customer service agents affect customer satisfaction in successful service recovery situations. Study 2 indicates that the interaction effect of form realism and behavioral realism only influence satisfaction customer satisfaction and repeat purchase intention in terms of failed service recovery. Study 3 further explores the mechanism of action in failed service recovery, finding that perceived warmth and competence mediate the relationship between realism and satisfaction. We systematically examine the influence of the realism of AI customer service agents on consumer satisfaction across distinct success and failure service recovery scenarios, effectively addressing a critical research void. Additionally, our findings offer valuable insights to business managers, empowering them with actionable strategies for enhancing consumer satisfaction across varied consumption contexts and effectively mitigating the repercussions of consumption failures.
... To optimize customer satisfaction, FMCG retailers must prioritize the responsiveness and user-friendliness of their chatbots. By implementing this strategy, businesses can enhance customer loyalty and retention, hence resulting in a boost in sales and revenue [5,14]. A further study demonstrated that chatbots have the potential to reduce service expenses [15], but they may also diminish customer happiness as a result of providing unsatisfactory responses and exhibiting non-human-like behavior. ...
... Employing a communication style focused on social interaction enhances customer satisfaction [17]. Additionally, the sense of warmth towards the chatbot plays a role in mediating this impact [14]. FMCG merchants must carefully analyze the design of chatbots to offer optimal customer service experiences [8]. ...
... To improve customer engagement and satisfaction, it is crucial for FMCG merchants to have a deep grasp of the complex relationship between AI-driven factors and customer experience [3,17]. There is a significant change happening in the global retail industry, as consumers are increasingly preferring digital channels for [14] their buying experiences. FMCG merchants are using AI-driven chatbots to offer customized and efficient services to their customers. ...
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This paper evaluates the impact of AI-based chatbot services on fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) retail sector's customer satisfaction. The data of 615 respondents were collected from FMCG customers in organized retail shops in and around Albaha region of Saudi Arabia. The study acquired data from consumers who used chatbot services for the purchase of FMCG products. Seven hypotheses were formulated and tested to explain the relationships between these variables. It was found that responsiveness is related to customer satisfaction and affects the conversational tone. Further, the adopted conversational tone also influenced customer satisfaction, and the customers were able to process it better. Privacy concerns have an important role in how customers communicate online. This study contributes to the choice of FMCG retailers as far as customizing the chatbot services to ensure that their conversational tone is responsive and mindful of privacy matters in an attempt to increase satisfaction. Further, this study can be generalized in other geographic regions with similar setup in order to understand the consumer behavior.
... With the emergence of various artificial intelligence-(AI-) enabled service initiatives, AI often serves as a company's first point of contact with consumers. Consequently, the perceived quality of a firm's AI technology can markedly influence anthropomorphism (Crolic et al. 2022), perceived enjoyment (Noor et al. 2022a), and friendliness (Cheng et al. 2021). Additionally, researchers have conceptualized the dimensions of AI service quality, but they did not subject their identified dimensions to empirical examination (e.g., Noor et al. 2022c). ...
... With widespread development and application of AI technology, research on AI service quality has become a popular research topic. Initially, most studies focused on one or two attributes of AI chatbots, such as anthropomorphism, empathy, and friendliness, as well as decision guidance and communication style (e.g., Chen et al. 2021;Cheng et al. 2021;Crolic et al. 2022). Moreover, some work has proposed the characteristics of AI chatbots conceptually but not empirically (Stieglitz et al. 2022). ...
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Using a social cognitive theory perspective, this study examines how AI service quality influences perceived competence, perceived warmth, and consumer well-being. We tested the hypothesized relationships using structural equation modelling with data collected from 580 consumers in China. The results showed that four dimensions of AI service quality (i.e., technical security, technical reliability, perceived personalization, and hyperconnectivity service capability) are important drivers of perceived competence and perceived warmth. Furthermore, perceived competence and perceived warmth significantly affect consumer well-being. Last, employee service quality commitment significantly moderates the relationship between AI service quality and perceived competence and perceived warmth.
... Therefore, the extent of anthropomorphism is deemed the paramount factor influencing consumers' attitudes toward and trust in virtual spokespersons . This anthropomorphic quality can amplify the perceived presence of brand spokespersons (Pelau et al. 2021), elevate consumer satisfaction (Kim and Kim, 2021), foster brand goodwill, and mitigate uncertainty during the consumption journey (Crolic et al. 2022;Cui, 2022). Furthermore, within themarketing realm, pertinent research underscores the significant impact of the degree of personification of virtual spokespeople on brand trust, emotional response, purchase intent, and behavior . ...
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With the development of digital technology, virtual digital people have been used in various industries, and their advertising effectiveness has become a common concern in the marketing field. This study is based on the theoretical framework of heuristic-analytic modelling. It constructs a research model using brand trust as a mediating variable, adopts a 2 × 2 two-factor between-groups experimental design to compare the effects of human and virtual endorsements on consumer brand trust and advertising effectiveness under rational and emotional advertising appeals. In rational appeal advertisements, virtual endorsement can enhance consumers’ brand trust more effectively than human endorsement, thus exerting a significant positive influence on advertising effects. In the case of emotional appeal advertisements, human endorsement is more effective than virtual endorsement in enhancing consumers’ trust and significantly contributing to advertising effectiveness. This study not only provides a scientific basis for advertising planners to choose endorsements, but also provides a new vision for understanding the role of different endorsement types in advertising.
... This tool gives psychological satisfaction to the media user (Xu et al., 2012) by giving an intelligent talk that provides relevant information and a sense of feeling like having a conversation with a human being (Araujo, 2018). Chatbots, which offer scaling, value for money, ability to regulate the quality of interactions, and additional data about clients (Crolic et al., 2021), have increased in prominence as an interface for digital information and services (Følstad et al., 2021). It has transformed the way the company delivers value satisfaction to the customers by providing clients with shopping patterns and preferences details. ...
Article
Purpose In the present era, artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming and redefining the lifestyles of society through its applications, such as chatbots. Chatbot has shown tremendous growth and has been used in almost every field. The purpose of this study is to identify and prioritize the factors that influence millennial’s technology acceptance of chatbots. Design/methodology/approach For the present research, data were collected from 432 respondents (millennials) from Punjab. A fuzzy analytical hierarchy process was used to prioritize the factors influencing millennials’ technology acceptance of chatbots. The key factors considered for the study were information, entertainment, media appeal, social presence and perceived privacy risk Findings The findings of the study revealed media appeal as the top-ranked prioritized factor influencing millennial technology acceptance of chatbots. In contrast, perceived privacy risk appeared as the least important factor. Ranking of the global weights reveals that I3 and I2 are the two most important sub-criteria. Research limitations/implications Data were gathered from the millennial population of Punjab, and only a few factors that influence the technology acceptance of chatbots were considered for analysis which has been considered as a limitation of this study. Practical implications The findings of this study will provide valuable insights about consumer behaviour to the business firm, and it will help them to make competitive strategies accordingly. Originality/value Existing literature has investigated the factors influencing millennials’ technology acceptance of chatbots. At the same time, this study has used the multi-criteria decision-making technique to deliver valuable insights for marketers, practitioners and academicians about the drivers of millennials’ technology acceptance regarding chatbots which will add value to the prevailing knowledge base.
... The global service robot market is estimated to be worth $28.9 billion in 2024, more than three times that of the industrial robot market, and is predicted to grow to $34.7 billion in 2028 (Statista 2024). With such dramatic expansion in service robot implementation anticipated across industries, there is greater need for firms to understand attitudes toward service robots at a broader (i.e., societal/population) level, not least because prior attitudes influence customer evaluations and subsequent use of robot-delivered services (Crolic et al. 2022). While ...
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Societal or population-level attitudes are aggregated patterns of different individual attitudes, representing collective general predispositions. As service robots become ubiquitous, understanding attitudes towards them at the population (vs. individual) level enables firms to expand robot services to a broad (vs. niche) market. Targeting population-level attitudes would benefit service firms because: (1) they are more persistent, thus, stronger predictors of behavioral patterns and (2) this approach is less reliant on personal data, whereas individualized services are vulnerable to AI-related privacy risks. As for service theory, ignoring broad unobserved differences in attitudes produces biased conclusions, and our systematic review of previous research highlights a poor understanding of potential heterogeneity in attitudes toward service robots. We present five diverse studies (S1-S5), utilizing multinational and "real world" data (Ntotal = 89,541; years: 2012-2024). Results reveal a stable structure comprising four distinct attitude profiles (S1-S5): positive ("adore"), negative ("abhor"), indifferent ("ignore"), and ambivalent ("unsure"). The psychological need for interacting with service staff, and for autonomy and relatedness in technology use, function as attitude profile antecedents (S2). Importantly, the attitude profiles predict differences in post-interaction discomfort and anxiety (S3), satisfaction ratings and service evaluations (S4), and perceived sociability and uncanniness based on a robot's humanlikeness (S5).
... Related research indicates that anthropomorphism, empathy, and other factors are important means to effectively increase consumer acceptance of AI (Liu-Thompkins et al., 2022). When AI appears in professional fields such as interior design, strategies such as anthropomorphism or empathy are evidently less effective (Crolic et al., 2022). In this context, the research focuses on exploring whether increasing AI transparency could serve as an effective strategy to increase consumers' willingness to adopt AI-generated designs. ...
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The present research demonstrates how consumers’ trade-offs between different needs (aesthetic vs. comprehensive) in the interior design process influence their willingness to adopt artificial intelligence (AI) and human designer solutions. The results of three studies indicate that in scenarios emphasizing aesthetic needs, consumers rate AI designer solutions more highly, manifested in increased willingness to adopt; conversely, in scenarios emphasizing comprehensive needs, consumers more willing to adopt human designer solutions. This effect is explained by consumers’ differing lay beliefs about AI and human designers. Specifically, consumers focusing on aesthetic needs perceived AI designer solutions to be more unique, while consumers focusing on comprehensive needs perceived human designers to be more effective overall, with each of these differences influencing consumer adoption. Additionally, the research discusses how to increase consumers’ acceptance of AI designers. The findings suggest that enhancing AI transparency can effectively increase consumers’ willingness to adopt AI designer solutions. The research not only enriches the literature on AI-human service differences but also provides useful insights for enterprises or managers to better release the potential of AI in the field of interior design.
... While AI-based chatbots offer opportunities to streamline service processes, save costs and time, and provide round-the-clock service (Blazevic & Sidaoui, 2022), their execution often falls short of meeting customer expectations for high-level agents (Crolic et al., 2021), leading to reduced user compliance (Adam et al., 2021). For example, chatbots often fail to deliver satisfactory responses to complex user requests, resulting in user dissatisfaction, negative word-of-mouth, and users abandoning chatbot interactions (Haupt et al., 2023). ...
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Artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots have been widely adopted in customer service, playing a crucial role in improving service efficiency, enhancing user experience, and elevating satisfaction levels. Current research on the impact of chatbots on consumers’ purchase decisions primarily focuses on linguistic communication features, with limited exploration into the non-verbal social cues employed by chatbots. By conducting three scenario-based experiments, this study investigates the mechanisms through which chatbot response strategies (proactive vs. reactive) and the use of emojis (yes vs. no) influence users’ purchase intention. The findings suggest that proactive response strategies by chatbots are more effective in strengthening users’ purchase intention compared to reactive strategies. Psychological distance and performance expectancy serve as significant mediators in this relationship. Additionally, the use of emojis moderates the effect of chatbot response strategies on psychological distance, while its moderating effect on performance expectancy is not significant. This study offers new insights into non-verbal social cues in chatbots, revealing the psychological mechanisms underlying the influence of chatbot response strategies on users’ purchase decisions and contributing to the limited evidence on visual symbols as moderating factors. Furthermore, the findings provide practical recommendations for businesses on optimizing chatbot interaction strategies to enhance user experience.
... On the flip side, AI-based conversational agents present certain drawbacks. Their disclosure can negatively impact users' purchasing behaviors [5], while the anthropomorphism of these agents may detrimentally affect customer satisfaction [29]. Moreover, these effects extend to employees, as deploying AI-based conversational agents has been linked to decreased employee performance [30]. ...
Article
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There are two ways to know why customers call the center: from the predetermined calling reason said by the customer to a Robot Agent (RA) before service with a Human Agent (HA) or directly from the customer’s conversation with an HA during the service. Obtaining tags by telling the call reason is easy, but customers can choose the wrong service operation at a non-negligible rate. So, this study used the data from 20,000 Turkish phone conversations with a HA at an inbound call center in the electronic products sector, which are handled for topic extraction with Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) and Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers Topic (BERTopic) topic modeling. First, the customer speeches converted to text received from the system were passed through cleaning and editing typos. Then, the models were created, and the topic extraction process was performed. LDA and BERTopic algorithms were evaluated by comparing the machine learning technology results of the call center with HA and RA. The topics covered were used for classification with Light Gradient Boosting Machine (LGBM) linear Support Vector Machines (SVM), Long Short Term Memory (LSTM), and Logistic Regression (LR). The classification and statistical test results showed that LDA is more successful than the guided BERTopic algorithm. In addition, LDA-based classification was also more successful than RA-based classification. Although LDA-based LSTM and LR algorithms were superior to others, the best performance according to accuracy score belongs to LDA-based LSTM.
... This indicates that emerging IT has changed the way technology generates impacts on employee performance. Our study complements prior studies concerning chatbots' anthropomorphism by assessing how chatbots can trigger emotion and provide emotional support [11,17]. ...
... It is unclear why the results conflicted with our expectation; however, the reasons could be stemmed from various customers' emotional states during interaction with chatbots (Ozuem et al., 2024). For example, an angry customer interacting with a chatbot which highly resembles human's natural language is more likely to develop a negative satisfaction (Crolic et al., 2022). ...
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Building on the perspectives of the uses & gratification (U&G) theory and stimulus-organism-response (S–O-R) model, this article develops and tests an integrative framework to examine the underlying factors influencing customers’ experiences with chatbots as a form of virtual conversational agent (VCA) in the UK and Vietnam. In addition to utilitarian and hedonic factors, anthropomorphism and social presence are also investigated, which are considered important experiential dimensions in a customer-machine relationship. We also explore how stimuli such as functionality, communication style similarity, and aesthetics indirectly affect outcomes like customer satisfaction and reuse intention, mediated by four types of customer experiences. Data collected from a sample of 417 and 359 participants in the UK and Vietnam respectively revealed that, in general, perceived informativeness, credibility, enjoyment, functionality, and communication style similarity are crucial for customer satisfaction in both countries. Interesting differences in the effects of customer experience between developed and developing countries were observed. For instance, the effects of anthropomorphism and social presence on satisfaction are only effective for customers from developed country, while those from developing country only need information provided by chatbots be transparent. Our findings offer a novel way to understand customer experience with chatbots and provide important theoretical and managerial implications.
... In the case of AI services, this chain model of the relationship between service quality and consumer loyalty presents different level of difficulties. Previous studies also have investigated other factors such as satisfaction (Crolic, Thomaz, Hadi, and Stephen, 2022), trust (Chen et al., 2020) to an AI chatbot on loyalty. However, there is not enough empirical research that look in the context of AI, despite the fact that previous studies have noted that these factors may influence loyalty. ...
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The trend towards the adoption of consumer-facing AI is anticipated to increase given ChatGPT's enormous popularity. Since its launch, ChatGPT has generated significant debate surrounding potential issues. Several factors identified to influence user loyalty. Hence the study aims to examine the influence of satisfaction, service quality and trust towards ChatGPT user loyalty. 216 students from the top technical university in Malaysia responded the survey via online platform. The data were analysed through PLS-SEM software and the result found that satisfaction, service quality and trust showed significant and positive influence on ChatGPT user loyalty. Theoretically, this study contributes valuable empirical insights into the determinants of user loyalty, specifically within the context of AI-driven platforms like ChatGPT. From a practical standpoint, the findings offer actionable guidance for ChatGPT creators, highlighting key areas such as trust-building, user satisfaction, and content quality that should be prioritized to foster and sustain long-term user loyalty
... Significantly, pre-trained language models (PLMs) with a substantial number of parameters, like GPT-3, PaLM, and OPT, demonstrate exceptional performance across many general-purpose tasks. Nonetheless, their training mostly depends on knowledge-based resources, including books, web pages, and academic papers, while insufficiently integrating data obtained from private interpersonal encounters [15]. ...
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In the changing financial environment, improving customer experience is essential for banks. A fundamental aspect of this experience is Customer Support Services (CSS). The banking business has traditionally utilized technology tools such as Interactive Voice Response (IVR) Systems and chatbots; nevertheless, their rule-based design frequently limits their adaptability. This study investigates the capacity of Generative AI to revolutionize Customer Support Services within the banking sector. In contrast to conventional systems, Generative AI's capacity to produce original material facilitates a more tailored and contextually aware engagement. We have evaluated traditional approaches against sophisticated Generative AI capabilities using a scenario-based methodology. The findings elucidate how Generative AI may transform Customer Support Services across digital platforms, ensuring an enhanced customer experience.
... This feature can increase the frequency or number of purchases by offering attractive incentives to customers who participate in providing feedback. Angry customers are more likely to experience expectation violations because they must overcome adversity and blame others (e.g., giving lower satisfaction ratings, bad reviews, or withholding the offending party from future business) (Crolic et al., 2021). This feature can also provide insight to companies regarding what customers feel in receiving the services provided. ...
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This research was conducted at PT Telkom Indonesia, a company engaged in telecommunications, to evaluate the implementation of the Special Business Request (SBR) marketing program in increasing perceived value by customers. The SBR program is an initiative that offers discounts on large projects to strengthen cooperation with government customers. This research uses a qualitative descriptive method, collecting data from the company through in-depth interviews, observation, documentation, and secondary data. The evaluation was conducted on the effectiveness of the SBR program in increasing customer satisfaction and perceived value, using customer value theory, which emphasizes the difference between the benefits obtained by customers and the costs they incur. The results showed that the SBR program effectively increased customer perceived value, helping PT Telkom Indonesia win significant projects and strengthening long-term relationships with government customers. Recommendations are given to refine the program and introduce more personalized marketing strategies based on individual customer needs to achieve optimal results.
... Besides and indirectly related, GenAI has been shown to generate high-quality responses to customer complaints (Koc et al. 2023). GenAI's increasing capabilities to understand and manage emotions can then contribute to dealing with consumers in an angry emotional state (Crolic et al. 2022), as is presumably the case with complaints, among other things. Besides, consumer interactions with GenAI can be harnessed to predict purchase intentions (Liao, Ma, and Moe 2024). ...
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Generative AI (GenAI) is breaking new ground in emulating human capabilities, and content generation may only be the beginning. In our work, we systematize and illustrate promising areas of application of GenAI in marketing. We lay out a conceptual framework along two dimensions: a) GenAI impact (i.e., human enhancement, human replacement), and b) the marketing cycle stage (i.e., marketing research, marketing strategy formulation, marketing actions related to the marketing mix instruments). Based on the AI ethics literature, we then introduce a set of principles (i.e., ASSURANCE: Autonomy, Security, SUstainability, Representativeness, Accountability, Non-biasedness and non-discrimination Crediting, Empowerment) to enable marketers to address the risks and challenges of GenAI and thereby achieve beneficial outcomes for companies, consumers, and society at large. Finally, we delineate the public policy implications for each principle and illustrate avenues for future research.
... Drawing upon the expectancy-violation theory, unmet expectations, particularly when outcomes fall short of anticipated outcomes, will cause people to experience negative emotions (Han et al., 2023). This effect is especially pronounced when initial expectations are high (Burgoon, 1993;Crolic et al., 2022). ...
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In gift-giving, it violates social norms for recipients to explicitly deliver negative evaluations of gifts, potentially causing emotional or psychological harm to givers, which raises ethical concerns. However, recent research indicates that this behavior is surprisingly common among young adults. While substantial research has focused on instances where recipients are dissatisfied with gifts, little attention has been given to the unique emotional harm experienced by givers and the underlying psychological processes involved. This study addresses this gap from the perspective of social exclusion and examines how givers’ feelings of social exclusion differ between close and distant relationships. We argue that givers tend to devote more effort to selecting gifts for close (vs. distant) recipients, leading them to hold higher expectations of gifting success in close relationships. Instead, when givers get negative feedback from close recipients, they perceive a higher level of expectancy violation, which, in turn, backfires on their perceived threats to the relationship and arouses stronger feelings of social exclusion than in distant relationships. Results from three experiments substantiate our theoretical claims based on the expectancy-violation theory. Further, we apply neuroscience technology (event-related potentials, ERPs) to capture the cognitive characteristics of givers’ emotional experiences, offering additional evidence and insights into givers’ feelings of social exclusion. This research contributes to a deeper understanding of the emotional harm givers experience when their gifts are unappreciated, highlighting the ethical aspect of gift-giving.
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This study explores the conditions under which experimentally primed anger influences both attributions of responsibility and the processes by which people make such attributions. Drawing on social functional theory, it was hypothesized that people are best thought of as 'intuitive prosecutors' who lower their thresholds for making attributions of harmful intent and recommending harsh punishment when they both witness a serious transgression of societal norms and believe that the transgressor escaped punishment. The data support the hypotheses. Anger primed by a serious crime 'carried over' to influence judgments of unrelated acts of harm only wizen the perpetrator of the crime went unpunished, notwithstanding the arousal of equally intense anger in conditions in which the perpetrator appropriately punished or his fate was unknown. Participants in the perpetrator-unpunished condition also relied on simpler and more punitive attributional heuristics for inferring responsibility for harm. (C) 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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What do negative emotions do for people? We present a framework that defines the function of emotions as the degree to which discrete emotions result in better outcomes in particular types of situations. Focusing on sadness and anger, we review evidence related to the situations that elicit these emotions; the cognitive, physiological, and behavioral changes associated with the emotions; and the extent to which these changes result in demonstrably better outcomes in the type of situation that elicits the emotion. Sadness is elicited by perceived goal loss without possibility of restoration given current abilities and is associated with deliberative reasoning, reduced physiological activity, and behavioral expression. There is preliminary evidence suggesting that sadness can permit coping with loss, and that expression of sadness can recruit others to assist in goal attainment. Anger is elicited by perceived goal loss that can be prevented if an obstacle is overcome and is associated with heuristic reasoning, increased physiological activity, and behavioral expression. There is evidence that expression of anger prompts others to remove themselves as obstacles, and preliminary evidence that anger can promote overcoming obstacles and goal attainment. Like precision tools, specific emotions are best utilized to resolve particular problems.
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This research shows that brand anthropomorphization increases the perceived unfairness of price increases and the perceived fairness of price decreases. First, analyzing a household panel data set, the authors demonstrate the real-world consequences of brand humanization on consumers' price sensitivity. Second, building on the theoretical premise that fairness judgments depend on consumer focus on the self versus others, they find that brand humanization enhances perceived unfairness of price increases for agency-oriented consumers, who tend to maximize their own self-interests. However, for communion-oriented consumers, who generally consider the needs of others, brand humanization increases perceived fairness of both price increases and decreases. Furthermore, because consumers' focus on the self versus others also depends on relationship goals, the nature of consumer-brand relationships interacts with agency-communion orientation to influence the effect of brand humanization on perceived price fairness. For example, exchange relationship norms reduce the power of brand anthropomorphization to enhance perceived fairness of price changes for communion-oriented consumers. In contrast, the communal nature of these relationships makes both agency- and communion-oriented consumers infer greater positive intent from a humanized (vs. nonhumanized) brand, thus leading to a more positive effect of brand humanization on price fairness for price decreases.
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I describe a test of linear moderated mediation in path analysis based on an interval estimate of the parameter of a function linking the indirect effect to values of a moderator—a parameter that I call the index of moderated mediation. This test can be used for models that integrate moderation and mediation in which the relationship between the indirect effect and the moderator is estimated as linear, including many of the models described by Edwards and Lambert (200710. Edwards, J.R., & Lambert, L.S. (2007). Methods for integrating moderation and mediation: A general analytical framework using moderated path analysis. Psychological Methods, 12, 1–22.[CrossRef], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®]View all references) and Preacher, Rucker, and Hayes (200743. Preacher, K.J., Rucker, D.D., & Hayes, A.F. (2007). Assessing moderated mediation hypotheses: Theory, methods, and prescriptions. Multivariate Behavioral Research, 42, 185–227.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®]View all references) as well as extensions of these models to processes involving multiple mediators operating in parallel or in serial. Generalization of the method to latent variable models is straightforward. Three empirical examples describe the computation of the index and the test, and its implementation is illustrated using Mplus and the PROCESS macro for SPSS and SAS.
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The purposes of this research were to contribute to advertising theory and practice. The theoretical contributions are to understanding and predicting the relationships between presence and advertising effectiveness employing an anthropomorphic agent in the Web advertisement. Knowledge of these relationships can also guide advertising practice, especially to prepare messages that communicate effectively. Results of an experiment indicate that an anthropomorphic agent on the Web site can increase a sense of social presence and telepresence to influence some of the advertising effectiveness measures to be more favorable. The study concludes with specific managerial implications and limitations.
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Interpersonal exchanges between customers and frontline service employees increasingly involve the use of technology, such as point-of-sale terminals, tablets, and kiosks. The present research draws on role and script theories to demonstrate that customer reactions to technology-infused service exchanges depend on the presence of employee rapport. When rapport is present during the exchange, the use of technology functions as an interpersonal barrier preventing the customer from responding in kind to employee rapport-building efforts, thereby decreasing service encounter evaluations. However, during service encounters in which employees are not engaging in rapport building, technology functions as an interpersonal barrier, enabling customers to retreat from the relatively unpleasant service interaction, thereby increasing service encounter evaluations. Two analyses using J.D. Power Guest Satisfaction Index data support the barrier and beneficial effects of technology use during service encounters with and without rapport, respectively. A follow-up experiment replicates this data pattern and identifies psychological discomfort as a key process that governs the effect. For managers, the results demonstrate the inherent incompatibility of initiatives designed to encourage employee-customer rapport with those that introduce technology into frontline service exchanges.
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This research examines the relationship between consumer anthropomorphism and personal value. A hierarchical linear regression analysis revealed that after marketplace variables (purchase price, frequency of use, and self-acquisition) were considered, the sole second-level factor, anthropomorphism, had a positive and significant influence on personal value for four products. Results demonstrate that anthropomorphism can account for the personal value of a product beyond the influence of common marketplace factors. Additionally, a series of paired t-tests found that the magnitude of anthropomorphism is related to product complexity. This finding suggests that the effectiveness of product managers to prime or otherwise influence consumer anthropomorphism may depend upon what product is being anthropomorphised. Implications of these findings for marketers are provided.
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Previous studies have found that writing about upsetting experiences can improve physical health. In an attempt to explain this phenomenon, 72 first-year college students were randomly assigned to write about either their thoughts and feelings about coming to college or about superficial topics for three consecutive days. Measures of language use within the writing samples and cognitive measures of accessibility and schematic organisation were collected in the weeks before and after writing. As in previous studies, writing about college was found to reduce health centre visits for illness and to improve subjects' grade point average. Text analyses indicated that the use of positive emotion words and changes in words suggestive of causal and insightful thinking were linked to health change. Improved grades, although not linked to these language dimensions, were found to correlate with measures of schematic organisation of college-relevant themes. Implications for using written language to understand cognitive and health processes are discussed.
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Anthropomorphic beliefs about objects lead people to treat them as if they were alive. Two experiments test how anthropomorphic thought affects consumers' product replacement intentions. Consumers induced to think about their car in anthropomorphic terms (i) were less willing to replace it and (ii) gave less weight to its quality when making replacement decisions. Instead, they (iii) attended to (experimentally induced connotations of) the car's “warmth,” a feature usually considered relevant in the interpersonal domain. While anthropomorphic beliefs about brands are often seen as advantageous by marketers because they increase brand loyalty, similar beliefs about products may be less desirable.
Article
Technology is profoundly changing the nature of services and the ways in which firms interact with their customers. The result, while positive, also has its downside. This paper elaborates on the opportunities that technology presents for firms to develop new services, and provide better, more efficient services to customers as well as the paradoxes and dark side of technology and services. The paper concludes with a section on what customers expect from technology-delivered services suggesting that “the more things change, the more some things remain the same”. Customers still demand quality service no matter how the firm chooses to structure the relationship. It is incumbent upon firms to develop technology-based services that can provide the same high level of service that customers expect from interpersonal service providers.
Article
Three studies were conducted to assess the effects of disconfirmed consumer expectations on food acceptability. In the first, disconfirmed expectations for the sensory attributes of an edible film had a negative effect on acceptability of the film. Greater disconfirmation resulted in lower acceptance and purchase intent. In the second study, written product information was used to establish three levels of expected acceptability and expected bitterness for a novel fruit beverage. Comparison of preexposure (expected) and postexposure (perceived) ratings of acceptability and bitterness supported an assimilation model of disconfirmation effects for conditions in which expectations of acceptability were high and expectations of bitterness were low. A contrast effect was observed for bitterness judgments when expectations of bitterness were high. Associative effects resulting from the expectation manipulation were observed on other sensory attributes. In the third study, expectations were manipulated to influence both direction (positive versus negative) and degree of disconfirmation for the acceptance of cola beverages. Results provided further support for an assimilation model of these effects.
Article
Research on work aggression or anger has typically focused on supervisors and co-workers as the instigators of aggression; however, aggressive customers are also likely and may have unique consequences for the employee. We explore this phenomenon with a sample of 198 call center employees at two work sites. The employees reported that customer verbal aggression occurred 10 times a day, on average, though this varied by race and negative affectivity. Using LISREL, our data indicated that both the frequency and stress appraisal of customer aggression positively related to emotional exhaustion, and this burnout dimension mediated the relationship of stress appraisal with absences. Stress appraisal also influenced employees' emotion regulation strategies with their most recent hostile caller. Employees who felt more threatened by customer aggression used surface acting or vented emotions, while those who were less threatened used deep acting. Job autonomy helped explain who found these events more stressful, and implications of these results are discussed. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Article
This research investigates the antecedents and consequences of customer satisfaction. We develop a model to link explicitly the antecedents and consequences of satisfaction in a utility-oriented framework. We estimate and test the model against alternative hypotheses from the satisfaction literature. In the process, a unique database is analyzed: a nationally representative survey of 22,300 customers of a variety of major products and services in Sweden in 1989–1990. Several well-known experimental findings of satisfaction research are tested in a field setting of national scope. For example, we find that satisfaction is best specified as a function of perceived quality and “disconfirmation”—the extent to which perceived quality fails to match prepurchase expectations. Surprisingly, expectations do not directly affect satisfaction, as is often suggested in the satisfaction literature. In addition, we find quality which falls short of expectations has a greater impact on satisfaction and repurchase intentions than quality which exceeds expectations. Moreover, we find that disconfirmation is more likely to occur when quality is easy to evaluate. Finally, in terms of systematic variation across firms, we find the elasticity of repurchase intentions with respect to satisfaction to be lower for firms that provide high satisfaction. This implies a long-run reputation effect insulating firms which consistently provide high satisfaction.
Article
The effects of induced moods on interest in performing a wide spectrum of behaviors were examined in two experiments. In Experiment 1, subjects who received the Velten Mood Induction elation manipulation indicated significantly greater interest than neutral subjects in social, prosocial, strenuous, leisure, and general activities on a shortened version of the Pleasant Events Schedule. Subjects who received the depression induction indicated lower interest in social, leisure, and strenuous activities. Depressed mood was associated with an interest in sitting and thinking, being alone, and taking a nap, but depression produced no increase in interest in prosocial behavior or in 12 forms of self-gratification. Experiment 2 focused on seven potential mediators in the effects of mood on behavior interests. Following a positive, negative, or neutral mood induction, subjects were asked to record their positive and negative outcome expectancies, positive and negative emotion expectancies, and their self-perceptions of energy, ability, and opportunity for active and passive, social and nonsocial behaviors. Induced elation, depression, and neutral moods again were found to influence interest in both active and passive types of social and nonsocial behaviors. The subjects'' expectations of positive outcomes, and to a lesser extent their perceived energy for the behavior, were the strongest mediators of the effect of mood on behavior interests.
Article
We examine the crucial role of helplessness in explaining idiosyncratic coping responses to anger and frustration after service failure (a). Moreover, we examine the mitigating effect of informational support (i.e., explanations) on these emotions (b). With respect to (a), it is argued that the coincidence of anger (frustration) and high levels of helplessness enhances vindictive nWOM (support-seeking nWOM), whereas the coincidence of anger (frustration) and low levels of helplessness enhances vindictive complaining (problem-solving complaining). With respect to (b), it is argued that a retrospective explanation mitigates anger, whereas a prospective explanation mitigates helplessness. Using partial least squares modeling, these assumptions are tested and supported in an experiment and in a field survey with hotel guests. Finally, we delineate implications for theory and practice. KeywordsAnger-Frustration-Helplessness-Service failure-Coping responses-Negative word-of-mouth-Complaining-Informational support-Explanations
Article
This study examines the effects of distributive, interactional, and procedural justice on complainants' repatronage and negative word-of-mouth intentions. In order to test the hypotheses an experiment was conducted; twelve different scenarios were created, each describing a situation in which a customer was returning a product to a retail store. In the various scenarios, the customer was allowed to exchange the product or was given a partial discount on a new product, was treated either with courtesy and respect or was treated rudely, and was able to take care of the problem promptly or was asked to come back to the store the next day. Subjects were asked to read one of the twelve scenarios and to imagine that this situation happened to them, they were then asked to imagine how they would have felt and what they subsequently would have done. In order to make the scenarios more vivid, subjects then watched a videotape depicting the same event. Of the three dimensions, interactional justice had the largest impact on complainants' repatronage and negative word-of-mouth intentions.
Article
Taking a relational perspective on the employment relationship, we examined processes (mediation and moderation) linking high-performance human resource practices and productivity and turnover, two indicators of organizational performance. Multilevel analysis of data from hotels in the People's Republic of China revealed that service-oriented organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) partially mediated the relationships between high-performance human resource practices and both performance indicators. Unemployment rate moderated the service-oriented OCB--turnover relationship, and business strategy (service quality) moderated the service-oriented OCB--productivity relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] Copyright of Academy of Management Journal is the property of Academy of Management and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)
Article
Prior work on the equity and disconfirmation determinants of transaction satisfaction was extended to product satisfaction. Based on perceptions of inputs and outcomes of buyer, dealer, and salesperson, two subtractive versions of the equity formula-- absolute equity difference and equity advantage--were tested with fairness and preference as mediating variables. Both variables were related only to the equity advantage formula, and disconfirmation and fairness were shown to be distinct components of post-transaction dispositions. Moreover, product satisfaction was shown to be a function of product disconfirmation, complaining, and satisfaction with the dealer. The latter apparently mediates both fairness and salesperson satisfaction. Copyright 1989 by the University of Chicago.
Article
Three experiments show that semantic primes can enhance perceptual fluency, resulting in higher liking of the perceived product. Specifically, semantic primes that cue the visual identifier of one of two products (e.g., a bottle of wine with a frog shown on the label) increase preference of the prime-compatible target over another target (e.g., a wine without a frog on the label). This is observed even when exposure to the target is limited to levels associated with perceptual encoding of the target (experiment 1). Semantic priming of constructs compatible with perceptual features of the target increases liking of the target (experiments 2 and 3), and increased liking of the target is mediated by the target's increased visual appeal (experiment 3). (c) 2007 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..