Effects of anthropomorphic communication style cues on human-chatbot interaction quality and the decision-making process in eCommerce platform

Disembodied chatbots often use informal language and social cues, like small talk and communication delays, to create a sense of anthropomorphism and social presence. However, these social-oriented communication styles can delay task service while mimicking human conversation. This, in turn, can reduce interaction quality and negatively impact users' feelings and attitudes toward the chatbots. Drawing from the cognitive fit theory, this paper examined the impact of anthropomorphic communication styles on human-chatbot interaction decision quality. A between-subject experiment involving 276 participants revealed a significant three-way interaction between anthropomorphic communication style cues, information format, and shopping tasks. Specifically, the results indicate that formal language coupled with an attributive information format improves decision quality when users conduct a search task in online shopping. Our study informs chatbot designers about the essence of chatbot formal communication style to enhance consumer interaction quality experience, thus facilitating effective decision-making in eCommerce platforms