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Notwithstanding their potential benefits especially for individuals with low health literacy, users are still somewhat skeptical about the reliability of healthcare chatbots. The present study aims to address this challenge by investigating strategies to enhance users’ cognitive and emotional trust in healthcare chatbots. Particularly, this study aims to understand the effects of chatbot design cues in increasing trust and future chatbot use intention for low health literacy users.

We conducted two experimental studies with a final sample of 327 (Study 1) and 241 (Study 2). Three different chatbots were developed (Chatbot design: Bot vs Male-doctor vs Female-doctor). Participants were asked to have a medical consultation with the chatbot. Participants self-reported their health literacy scores. The PROCESS model 7 was used to analyze the hypotheses.

The results showed that the female-doctor cues elicited greater cognitive and emotional trust, whereas the male-doctor cues only led to greater cognitive trust (vs bot-like cues). Importantly, this study found that users’ health literacy is a significant moderating factor in shaping cognitive and emotional trust. The results indicated that both the female and male-doctor cues’ positive effects on cognitive trust were significant for those with lower levels of health literacy. Furthermore, the positive effect of the female-doctor cues on emotional trust was also significant only for those whose health literacy level was low. The increased cognitive and emotional trust led to greater future intention to use the chatbot, confirming significant moderated mediation effects.

Despite the strong economic and educational benefits of healthcare chatbots for low health literacy users, studies examining how healthcare chatbot design cues affect low health literate users surprisingly remained scarce. The results of this study suggest that healthcare chatbots can be a promising technological intervention to narrow the health literacy gap when aligned with appropriate design cues.

AI-driven product recommendation chatbots have markedly reduced operating costs and increased sales for marketers. However, previous literature has paid little attention to the effects of the personality of e-commerce chatbots. This study aimed to examine the ways that the interplay between the chatbot's and the user's personality can increase favorable product attitudes and future intentions to use the chatbot. Based on prior literature, we specifically focused on the degree of extroversion of both chatbot and user.

A total of 291 individuals participated in this study. Two different versions of chatbot were created for this study (i.e. extroversion: high vs. low). Participants self-reported their degree of extroversion. The PROCESS macro Model 1 and Model 7 with the Johnson–Neyman technique were employed to test the hypotheses.

The results showed that the high extroversion chatbot elicited greater user satisfactions and perceptions of chatbot friendliness among users with a high level of extroversion. On the contrary, the low extroversion chatbot resulted in greater user satisfactions and perceived chatbot friendliness among users with a low level of extroversion. This study further found that user satisfactions and perceived chatbot friendliness mediated the effects of the chatbot on greater intentions to use the chatbot and more favorable product attitudes.

By showing the effects of matching the personality of the chatbot and user, this study revealed that similarity-attraction effects also apply to human–chatbot interaction in e-commerce. Future studies would benefit by investigating the similarity-attraction effects in different characteristics, such as appearance, opinion and preference. This study also provides useful information for e-commerce marketers and chatbot UX/UI designers.

This study aims to examine what parents from across the USA know about online advertising/marketing tactics directed at children, their familiarity with these tactics and what they believe about the appropriateness of using these promotional methods to target children.

The online survey company Qualtrics was used to collect data from 500 parents in the USA. Parents had to have at least one child between the ages of 5 and 14 to participate. To ensure socio-economic diversity, half of the participants had an associate degree or more of schooling while the other half of participants had some college or less. Participants were given vignettes describing 11 different online advertising/marketing tactics and were asked how familiar they were with each tactic, whether they could identify the tactic by name, at what age they believed their child could understand the promotional intent of the tactic and the age that they thought it was ethical to use this tactic with children.

The results revealed that parents were only moderately familiar with many of these advertising/marketing tactics and had difficulty identifying most of them by name. In addition, parents reported that, on average, most 11-year-old children would understand the purpose of these marketing approaches and that it was ethical to target children with them.

The results of this exploratory study offer researchers some key insights into how American parents perceive online advertising that targets children.

This paper aims to examine the joint role of the pandemic-induced source of crisis (i.e. health and social crisis) based on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and message appeal in customer perception of and behavioral intention toward a restaurant.

This study uses a 2 (source of crisis: social, health) × 2 (message appeal: social, health) between-subjects factorial design. A total of 181 samples was collected and data was analyzed by using ANCOVA and PROCESS.

The results showed a significant two-way interaction between source of crisis and message appeal on to-go intention. With the potential effect of risk aversion being controlled, message appeal significantly impacted perceived competence, which influenced both dine-in and to-go intentions.

The research findings suggest a crucial role of perceived fit between message appeal and customer concerns during crises. Therefore, restaurant managers should actively communicate their safety practices with their customers to inspire customer confidence.

This study identifies crisis dimensions based on human needs during crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic, which determines the persuasiveness of marketing messages.

This study aims to follow a rigorous approach to identify, critically analyze and synthesize 75 papers published from 2000 to 2022.

The study presents a systematic literature review on identity expressiveness (IE), clarifying and expanding what is currently known about the concept.

To synthesize current knowledge on IE, the study uses the overarching framework of antecedents-phenomenon-consequences, using this same framework to identify gaps and future research directions. The findings show individual and brand-related factors such as the need for uniqueness and anthropomorphism as antecedents of IE, and eWOM/WOM, impulse purchases and upgrading to more exclusive lines as consequences of IE.

The study contributes to theory by synthesizing and mapping current understanding of the state of knowledge on the concept of IE while highlighting gaps in the extant literature and paving future research directions for scholars in the field.

The study offers useful insights for practitioners, broadening marketers’ actionable options in identity-based marketing. Marketers can use insights from this study to inform marketing strategy and communication campaigns for different types of brands.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first of its kind and offers an integrative review of the current literature on IE, thus enhancing understanding of the concept, its antecedents and consequences. The study also contributes to knowledge by highlighting future research priorities for researchers in this field of enquiry.