Shoppers served by AI chatbots were less likely to buy than those served by people, tests find

The authors say a weaker sense of belonging explains the gap. They propose a Social Belonging Perspective to account for why consumers consistently prefer human agents over chatbots, a preference they say is documented in academic research and industry reports.

The effect also varied with context: incidental social experiences that evoke different levels of belonging, and individuals' chronic social connectedness, shaped how people responded. That suggests the penalty for chatbots is not uniform across customers.

The research tests why consumers prefer human agents to AI chatbots in customer service. The authors propose a Social Belonging Perspective: dealing with a human supports a sense of belonging that a chatbot does not, and this affects willingness to buy.

The evidence combines three online experiments with 587 participants and one study using real-world social media data. Purchase intentions were weaker after chatbot interactions than after human-agent interactions.

Both situational and personal factors moderated the effect. Incidental social experiences that evoke varying levels of belonging, and people's chronic social connectedness, shaped responses, which the authors take as strong support for their perspective.