Trust Building in Virtual Salespersons Versus in Human Salespersons: Similarities and Differences

Customer trust in a salesperson is important in generating sales and managing customer relationships. In online stores, recommendation agents (computer agents) can serve as virtual salespersons who advise customers on what to buy, just as human salespersons do in physical stores. This study compares the similarities and differences between customer trust in virtual salespersons and customer trust in human salespersons. In this exploratory study, 44 participants used the services of both virtual and human salespersons in the same commercial store. Written protocols were collected by asking the participants open-ended questions regarding their comparative trust. This paper finds that similar to trust in human salespersons, trust in virtual salespersons contains trusting beliefs in competence, benevolence, and integrity. However, the processes of trust building in virtual salespersons, trust building in human salespersons, distrust building in virtual salespersons, and distrust building in human salespersons differ. This paper theoretically outlines to what extent research on trust in computer agents can draw from literature on interpersonal trust. It contributes to our practical understanding of how to better design trustworthy recommendation agents as virtual salespersons.

[1]  Justine Cassell,et al.  External manifestations of trustworthiness in the interface , 2000, CACM.

[2]  Keith Devlin,et al.  WHY UNIVERSITIES REQUIRE COMPUTER SCIENCE STUDENTS TO TAKE MATH , 2003 .

[3]  Charles M. Brooks,et al.  An empirical test of trust-building processes and outcomes in sales manager-salesperson relationships , 2003 .

[4]  Peter A. Todd,et al.  Solutions-driven marketing , 2002, CACM.

[5]  R. Lewicki,et al.  Trust in relationships: A model of development and decline. , 1995 .

[6]  P. K. Kannan,et al.  E-service: a new paradigm for business in the electronic environment , 2003, CACM.

[7]  Clifford Nass,et al.  The media equation - how people treat computers, television, and new media like real people and places , 1996 .

[8]  H. Kundel,et al.  Measurement of observer agreement. , 2003, Radiology.

[9]  Peter Donnelly,et al.  Take my word for it: Trust in the context of birding and mountaineering , 1994 .

[10]  J. Rotter.  Interpersonal trust, trustworthiness, and gullibility. , 1980 .

[11]  Roderick M. Kramer,et al.  Trust and distrust in organizations: emerging perspectives, enduring questions. , 1999, Annual review of psychology.

[12]  Diego Gambetta.  Can We Trust Trust , 2000 .

[13]  L. Zucker.  Production of trust: Institutional sources of economic structure, 1840–1920. , 1986 .

[14]  Bonnie M. Muir,et al.  Trust in automation. I: Theoretical issues in the study of trust and human intervention in automated systems , 1994 .

[15]  Daniel J. McAllister.  Affect- and Cognition-Based Trust as Foundations for Interpersonal Cooperation in Organizations , 1995 .

[16]  P. Sztompka.  Trust: A Sociological Theory , 2000 .

[17]  Izak Benbasat,et al.  An empirical investigation of intelligent agents for e-business customer relationship management: a knowledge management perspective , 2003, ECIS.

[18]  J. R. Landis,et al.  The measurement of observer agreement for categorical data. , 1977, Biometrics.

[19]  N. Moray,et al.  Trust in automation. Part II. Experimental studies of trust and human intervention in a process control simulation. , 1996, Ergonomics.

[20]  Izak Benbasat,et al.  Process Tracing Methods in Decision Support Systems Research: Exploring the Black Box , 1987, MIS Q..

[21]  Charles J. Kacmar,et al.  Developing and Validating Trust Measures for e-Commerce: An Integrative Typology , 2002, Inf. Syst. Res..

[22]  Colin Camerer,et al.  Not So Different After All: A Cross-Discipline View Of Trust , 1998 .

[23]  Jacob Cohen.  A Coefficient of Agreement for Nominal Scales , 1960 .

[24]  J. G. Holmes.  Trust and the appraisal process in close relationships. , 1991 .

[25]  Joseph P. Cannon,et al.  An Examination of the Nature of Trust in Buyer–Seller Relationships: , 1997 .

[26]  Dan Ariely,et al.  Controlling the Information Flow: Effects on Consumers' Decision Making and Preferences , 2000 .

[27]  Justine Cassell,et al.  Embodied conversational interface agents , 2000, CACM.

[28]  Izak Benbasat,et al.  Online Consumer Trust and Live Help Interfaces: The Effects of Text-to-Speech Voice and Three-Dimensional Avatars , 2005, Int. J. Hum. Comput. Interact..

[29]  S. Hunt,et al.  The Commitment-Trust Theory of Relationship Marketing , 1994 .

[30]  Batya Friedman,et al.  Human values and the design of computer technology , 1997 .

[31]  F. Sultan,et al.  Placing Trust at the Center of Your Internet Strategy , 2000 .

[32]  B. J. Fogg,et al.  Computers are social actors: a review of current research , 1997 .

[33]  Pattie Maes,et al.  Agents that buy and sell , 1999, CACM.

[34]  J. Rotter.  Generalized expectancies for interpersonal trust. , 1971 .

[35]  Bonnie M. Muir,et al.  Trust Between Humans and Machines, and the Design of Decision Aids , 1987, Int. J. Man Mach. Stud..

[36]  N. L. Chervany,et al.  Initial Trust Formation in New Organizational Relationships , 1998 .

[37]  Batya Friedman,et al.  Trust online , 2000, CACM.

[38]  Izak Benbasat,et al.  Understanding Customer Trust in Agent-Mediated Electronic Commerce, Web-Mediated Electronic Commerce, and Traditional Commerce , 2004, Inf. Technol. Manag..

[39]  Izak Benbasat,et al.  Trust In and Adoption of Online Recommendation Agents , 2005, J. Assoc. Inf. Syst..

[40]  William A. Wallace,et al.  Trust in electronic environments , 2003, 36th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2003. Proceedings of the.

[41]  J. E. Swan,et al.  Customer Trust in the Salesperson: An Integrative Review and Meta-Analysis of the Empirical Literature , 1999 .

[42]  Roderick M. Kramer,et al.  Trust and distrust: Its psychological and social dimensions , 1994 .

[43]  Izak Benbasat,et al.  An investigation into the effects of Text-To-Speech voice and 3D avatars on the perception of presence and flow of live help in electronic commerce , 2005, TCHI.

[44]  J. Lewis,et al.  Trust as a Social Reality , 1985 .

[45]  Sherrie Y. X. Komiak.  The impact of internalization and familiarity on trust and adoption of recommendation agents , 2003 .

[46]  Pattie Maes,et al.  Agents that reduce work and information overload , 1994, CACM.

[47]  David Gefen,et al.  Managing User Trust in B2C e-Services , 2003 .

[48]  Detmar W. Straub,et al.  Trust and TAM in Online Shopping: An Integrated Model , 2003, MIS Q..

[49]  Steven J. Plimpton,et al.  Massively parallel methods for engineering and science problems , 1994, CACM.

[50]  Robert M. O'Keefe,et al.  Web-based customer decision support systems , 1998, CACM.

[51]  D. Christopher Dryer,et al.  Getting Personal with Computers: How to Design Personalities for Agents , 1999, Appl. Artif. Intell..

[52]  Aniruddha S. Gokhale,et al.  Applying model-integrated computing to component middleware and enterprise applications , 2002, CACM.