Author(s): Deepika Chhikara, Ruchika Sharma and Kanishk Kaushik
India is evolving at a fast pace in terms of technology and the consumer’s behaviour towards it. This study is focused around understanding the consumer behaviour towards chatbot, a form of artificial intelligence in India. This study incorporated new and relevant factors - enjoyment, technicality, and perceived risk into the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to fill the literature gap to analyses the consumer’s behaviour towards chatbots on e-commerce sites in India. Based on literature review and supported with the first stage sequential mixed method exploratory research, the paper summarises and aggregates the results of a pilot study on 237 e-commerce consumers of India. It applies principal component analysis in order to extract the factors which may impact consumer’s attitude towards chatbots and their subsequent usage intentions. Study contributes to the sparse academic and empirical work on chatbot, a form of artificial intelligence in consumer services. The empirical results are initial steps towards the development of a measurement scale for measuring consumer behaviour towards chatbots in the later stage. Principal component analysis results in eight factors namely, perceived usefulness, ease of use, excitement, technicality, perceived ease, perceived value, attitude towards chatbots and intention to use chatbots. The paper concludes with theoretical and practical implications followed by directions for the future research. This study incorporated new and relevant factors - enjoyment, techicality and perceived risk into the TAM to fill the literature gap and deepen and broaden existing theoretical frameworks of the TAM in the Chatbot sector.