Chatbot Service Quality: An Experiment Comparing Two Countries with Different Levels of Digital Literacy

Julio Vena-Oya (), José Alberto Castañeda-García and Jan Burys
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Julio Vena-Oya: Department of Business Administration, Marketing and Management, University of Jaén, 23071 Jaén, Spain
José Alberto Castañeda-García: Department of Marketing, University of Granada, 18010 Granada, Spain
Jan Burys: Department of Marketing, University of Granada, 18010 Granada, Spain

Tourism and Hospitality, 2024, vol. 5, issue 2, 1-14

Abstract: The use of new technologies in tourism is bringing about a genuine revolution in the sector, where automated services, such as chatbots, are increasingly being used to perform some of the tasks involved in service delivery. However, the emergence of new technologies in a sector as globalized as tourism can mean that not all users are able to perceive the benefits of these innovations. Therefore, the aim of this study is to determine whether the digital literacy (DL) of a tourist may lead to different evaluations of the quality of the electronic service they received, both overall and as per the different dimensions of quality. This study compares a more innovative and interactive service-provision technology (a chatbot) with a more traditional one (email). To this end, an experiment was conducted in which 124 participants from Spain (higher DL) and the Czech Republic (lower DL) were asked to interact with these two technologies in a simulated hotel customer-service scenario. The results show that individuals with higher DL rated the quality of service received via chatbot higher than individuals with lower DL. The latter prefer email because they perceived it to provide greater security, empathy, reliability, and information quality. However, participants with higher DL preferred the chatbot due to its greater competence in completing the task. Finally, the participants rated the responsiveness of the chatbot higher than that of email. These results can help the introduction of chatbot-based customer service in the tourism sector.

Keywords: technology acceptance; digital literacy; e-service quality; automated services; technology in tourism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Z3 Z30 Z31 Z32 Z33 Z38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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