 Case study—Embodied virtual agents: An analysis on reasons for failureMohammed Slim Ben Mimoun, Ingrid Poncin and Marion Garnier Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 2012, vol. 19, issue 6, 605-612 Abstract: Despite very optimistic academic and professional literatures, embodied virtual agents (EVA) on commercial websites do not seem to keep all their promises. An update in December 2009 of a benchmark led by OrangeLab in 2007 on embodied agents displayed on French websites reveals that more than 60% of them have actually disappeared. This case study deals with understanding the disappearance of embodied virtual agents thanks to a literature review, a benchmark of 80 agents on French commercial websites and an analysis of experts' in-depth-interviews. This work identifies a series of common errors in the agents design – namely, appearance inadequacy and lack of intelligence and autonomy – that creates a gap between consumers' expectations and agents' performance explaining agents' lack of success. As a conclusion, this case study gives practitioners actionable advices to design future agents by highlighting the characteristics of the ideal virtual sales agent (VSA). Keywords: Virtual sales agents; Embodied virtual agents; Commercial websites; Disconfirmation paradigm; Uncanny valley theory (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:joreco:v:19:y:2012:i:6:p:605-612 DOI: 10.1016/j.jretconser.2012.07.006 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services is currently edited by Harry Timmermans More articles in Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services from Elsevier |
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