Retail consumers' conundrum: An in-depth qualitative study navigating the motivations and aversion of chatbots

Abstract

This study addresses prevailing gaps in retail marketing literature encompassing the (chatbot) adoption behavior by delving into the motivators and inhibitors influencing consumer decisions to adopt chatbots. Employing a qualitative approach, we gathered consumer insights through open-ended essays that explored consumer adoption and aversion of chatbots, intending to contrive an inductive understanding of this behavior jacked up by the grounded theory approach. The study involved 55 US-based chatbot users recruited through the Prolific Academic platform. Participants responded to open-ended essay questions exploring the motivators and barriers to consumer adoption of chatbots. The Gioia method was employed to develop theoretical notions from empirical data inductively. The study's findings lead to categorizing motivators into functional motives, design attributes, and relational motives. At the same time, inhibitors/barriers were classified as technological and/or functional and personal and/or perceptual. The study significantly contributes to the existing body of knowledge by addressing a critical deficiency in prior literature, explicitly identifying the factors that truncate chatbot adoption. Explaining demotivators for chatbot adoption significantly enriches the behavioral reasoning theory argument, which bases itself upon the reasons for and against a particular (adoption/aversion) behavior. The study's findings can be helpful for practitioners by highlighting the necessity of prioritizing user-centric features as well as addressing both technological and perception barriers to truncate chatbot aversion or improve the adoption rates of chatbots.