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General Discussion

In document List of Figures (pagina 56-59)

5. Discussion

5.1 General Discussion

During the last years, digital transformation has been a key for lots of businesses (Urbinati, Chiaroni, Chiesa and Frattini, 2020), wherein companies have explored new digital technologies to exploit their benefits (Matt, Hess, & Benlian, 2015). This resulted in more companies nowadays using AI to assist their customers with various activities (Zao, Zhang, Friedman & Tan, 2015). Due to some contradicting outcomes in previous research, this research was performed to identify if AI service results in more customer trust compared to human service, and if technology acceptance, task characteristics and age do influence the preferred service type and level of customer trust.

The first hypothesis was supported, indicating that human service results in higher customer trust compared to AI service. This indicates that customers still trust humans over AI, thus robots. This is in line with the research of Yen and Chiang (2020), which states that customers will not fully trust AI, since it will not offer the same quality when it comes to service. A possible explanation for lower trust in AI might be the fact that human beings will become more vulnerable when they rely and depend fully on the technologies (Martin, 1996).

Hypothesis 2a and 2b are related to the effect of TA on the direct effect of service type on customer trust. Identifying this moderation effect would help to answer the second part of the research question. This is important as companies might depend on their type of service on their target audiences, which might either be a customer's high in TA or customers low in TA.

Looking at the outcomes of the hypotheses, there can be seen that the level of TA of customers does not influence the direct effect of service type on customer trust.

Hypothesis 2a is supported, indicating that the customer trust of low TA customers is higher for human service compared to AI service. This fits the research of Mou, Shin and Cohen

(2017), who indicated that the lower the customer trust, the lower the TA of customers, indicating that they would prefer human service over AI service. This is backed-up by several researchers, who indeed state that TA and trust can be combined to prove certain relationships (Belanche, Casaloó & Flavián, 2012; Suh & Han, 2002; Ghazizadeh, Peng, Lee & Boyle, 2012).

Looking at hypothesis 2b, this hypothesis cannot be supported. This indicates that the customer trust of high TA customers is not higher for AI compared to humans. Actually, this research shows that human service results in higher customer trust for high TA customers. This is outstanding, as it does not align with the research of Mou, Shin and Cohen (2017), which indicated that the higher the customer trust, the higher the TA. This is an interesting finding as it indicates that human service is still preferred over AI service, also by customers who are highly familiar with technology and AI.

Hypothesis 3a and 3b, also able to answer the second part of the research question, are investigating the influence of task characteristics on the direct effect of service type on customer trust. Looking at hypothesis 3a, the research shows that human service results in higher trust levels for cognitive tasks compared to AI service. This is outstanding, as this is contradicting the research of Ramchurn, Wum Jiang, Fischer, Reece, Robert, Rodden, Geenhalgh and Jennings (2016), which points out that people tend to trust AI over humans when it comes to tasks which are cognitive driven. This was also supported by Allam and Dhunny (2019), who elaborated that AI could lead to multiple benefits when it comes to analyzing data and information, which are not overlooked by human beings. However, the outcome of this hypothesis does actually fit the research of Gauglitz (2019), which already stated that AI is beneficial in respect to analyzing data and information, but it will never replace humans in doing data analysis and thereby the customer trust. This outcome actually strongly supports this statement and the research and is an interesting finding for strategists. This namely

means that, although a task is related to cognition, customers still prefer human service over AI service.

Looking at hypothesis 3b, there can be seen that this hypothesis is supported and that there is a significant moderation effect, which indicates that human service results in higher trust than AI service, when a social intelligence task is performed. This supports several research, which indicated that human service is preferred over AI when tasks are related to social intelligence or do require social skills (Dietvorst, Simmons & Massey, 2016;

Thavikulwat, 2009).

Besides, research of Gaudiello, Zibette, Lefort, Chetouani and Ivaldi (2016) state that if a task contains social intelligence, the trust in that particular task will increase. Although this was not part of this research, it is interesting to see that this research can support that as it shows that the customer trust was overall higher for this category compared to cognitive tasks.

Looking at the last moderator that has been investigated, age, interesting insights will be provided. Hypotheses 4a is not supported and shows that digital natives (born after 1980) do not prefer AI service over human service. This indicates that this hypothesis does not have an effect on the direct effect of the service type on customer trust. This is outstanding, as research shows that digital natives seem to have a lifestyle that is expected to prefer AI over human service (Gibson and Sodeman, 2014; Morris and Venkatesh, 2000; Rodeschini, 2011;

Holzinger and Miesenberger, 2009; Cook and Wall, 1980; Kesharwani, 2020; Plaza, Martín, Martin, & Medrano, 2011). This outcome is also contradicting the research of Przegalinska, Ciechanowski, Stroz, Gloor and Mazurek (2019), which showed that the age group generation Y views the advice coming from AI as a tool that provides wiser decisions than humans.

Hypothesis 4b was supported and indeed showed that digital immigrants, customers born before 1980, do prefer human service over AI service. This was expected and in line with

research of Yang and Shih (2020), which indicated that digital immigrants would prefer human service over AI service.

In general, there can be seen that TA, task characteristics and age do not influence the direct effect of model body size on purchase intention. This research shows that human service is preferred over AI service, regardless of the TA level and age of the customer and the task characteristic that needs to be performed. However, it is outstanding that the AI service also indicates a slightly positive trust level, indicating that customers also tend to trust AI.

In document List of Figures (pagina 56-59)