Exploring the impact of chatbots on consumer sentiment and expectations in retail

Retailers are increasingly using conversational AI (chatbots) for customer service due to the perceived benefits and reduced operational costs of this emerging technology. Yet our understanding of how consumers perceive interactions with chatbots, and how these interactions may influence other consumer service programs, remains limited. This paper investigates the differences in consumers' sentiments towards chatbots across retail sectors, and the influence chatbots have on consumers' sentiments and expectations towards other service interactions with online human agents. Using a hybrid automated sentiment analysis approach, we identify that (1) overall sentiment towards bots are less negative than sentiment towards online human agents; (2) these sentiments differ across fashion and telecommunications sectors, and finally (3) sentiments towards online human agents in both sectors become more negative after a retailer implements a chatbot.