Examining the Acceptance of Virtual Assistant - Vanika for University Students

Finding the right information in easily manner is a need of the community. Virtual assistant is a mobile application to fill this necessity in easily, effective, and efficient manners. Vanika was the virtual assistant developed by Soegijapranata Catholic University (SCU) to serve students and prospective students in finding the right information about the SCU. This study aims to examine the acceptance of virtual assistant-Vanika among them. The answers of two hundred questionnaires were collected from students and prospective students of SCU after they utilized Vanika at least twice. The result reveals that all of factors Information Service Quality, Perceived Ease of Use, and Perceived Usefulness have statistically correlation on Behavioral Intention and each other. Only Information Service Quality has statistically significant direct effect on Behavioral Intention. Prospective students frequently spend more time in searching university information than students, conversely, student perceived easier in using Vanika than prospective students. The last, males spend more time in searching university information than females, and females have more intention to use Vanika than males. The practical implications derived from the findings are the actions to increase individual's acceptance to use Vanika by means of increasing factors relating to Information Service Quality, Perceived Ease of Use, Perceived Usefulness, Age, and Gender.