A meta-analysis of the effect of chatbot anthropomorphism on the customer journey

Purpose Chatbots are increasingly engaged in service marketing. Some academics and managers think using anthropomorphism chatbots will improve positive attitudes and behaviors in the customer journey, but at a high degree of anthropomorphism, consumers may experience negative emotions such as fear and disgust due to the feeling that the robots resemble humans too much, which is known as the uncanny valley effect. Therefore, the authors aim to explore whether chatbot anthropomorphism will promote or limit the dev…