The impact of artificial intelligence virtual personal assistants as sales channels of costumer loyalty

• Autor(a) principal: Pires, Maria Martinho da Silva de Lemos
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/21776
• topic: Virtual Assistants; Loyalty; Relationship; Consumer behaviour; Technology adoption; Assistentes virtuais; Lealdade; Relações; Comportamento do consumidor; Adoção de tecnologia

Artificial Intelligence through Virtual Personal Assistants is a tendency rapidly growing in the market that offers a new purchase experience for the consumer. As such, studying the impact this channel may have becomes pivotal as it may influence customer loyalty which is one of the most important concepts for competitive advantage. Previous research on the relationship between different sales channels and loyalty is vast, however, it is mainly focused on the online (e-commerce) and offline channel. Therefore, the first objective of this dissertation is to fill in this gap and try to conclude on whether there is a relationship between customer loyalty, its antecedents, satisfaction and service quality and the new technology. Also, as Virtual Assistants are still not fully available in the Portugal, the second purpose for this dissertation is providing information on both the market’s behaviour and beliefs, and their current attitude towards the technology. From the output of a questionnaire with 253 valid answers, the first purpose of the thesis was not achieved as a relationship between loyalty or the antecedents and Virtual Assistants was not found, however, it was shown that experiencing this purchase before conducting the test could drive better results. Nonetheless, it was shown that the market may not be prepared for automatic shopping and may not trust personalization features, however, they highly value purchase convenience and VPA interactivity. Lastly, a three-cluster solution was presented showing different consumer profiles that suggest that the majority of the sample is open to adopt to the technology.