Improving Consumers Continuous Usage of Chatbots: The Perspective of Multiple Reference Effects

Chatbots have been widely employed in e-commerce activities, and are replacing manual customer service, which shows strong market potential. However, compared with its rapid development, consumers' usage rate of chatbots still has room for growth. Therefore, this study aims to elucidate the factors that determine consumers' continuous usage of chatbots. Grounded on the multiple reference effects model, this study examines the role of the focal-object referents, other-object referents, and self-based referents in the judgment process, and uses mood as a moderating variable. Focal-object referents stand for consumers' evaluation results of the chatbot service performance with their expectations. Other-object referents are the performance of the alternative options that can be assessed by consumers compared with the focal object. Self-based referents indicate the self-image of consumers compared with the image of the focal object. The potential implications of this study were further discussed.