Clerk agent promotes consumers’ ethical purchase intention in unmanned purchase environment

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Highlights

  • Effect of a clerk agent on purchase intention for fair-trade food was examined.

  • Relative importance of fair trade was assessed using conjoint analysis.

  • Fair trade was valuated higher when an agent was displayed in purchase environment.

  • Reputation-based pro-social behavior can be enhanced by the presence of an agent.

Abstract

This study examined the effect of the presence of an artificial individual in a purchase environment on purchase intention for products with fair-trade labels among Japanese consumers. By manipulating the presence of an artificial individual, we assessed consumers’ intentions to purchase fair-trade products under two different experimental unmanned purchase environments: the agent condition, in which task instructions were given by a female clerk-like computer graphic agent throughout the task (N = 118), and the control condition in which task instructions were given through a text box (N = 106). Results demonstrated that participants under the agent condition valuated fair trade higher than those under the control condition, although participants in both the agent and the control conditions were instructed that their responses would remain anonymous. These findings suggest that the implication of the presence of an artificial individual, such as a clerk-like agent in an unmanned purchase environment, enhances the ethicality of purchase intentions as with manned purchase environments.

Introduction

With developments in information and communication technology (ICT), unmanned purchase environments such as online shops have become popularized. They provide consumers with a new medium to purchase products and services, and have increased the importance of understanding consumer behaviors while shopping online (Liao, Chen, & Lin, 2011). A major difference between online and real shops from the social psychological perspective may be the presence of other people (Tennie, Frith, & Frith, 2010). In contrast to manned purchase environments, it is less probable that consumer choices are observed by others, including other consumers and sales staff, in unmanned purchase environments.

It is well known in social psychology and socioeconomics that cues from others and potential reputational consequences influence altruistic and generous behaviors (Hoffman et al., 1996, Kimura et al., 2012, Piazza and Bering, 2008a, Piazza and Bering, 2008b). For example, Hoffman et al. (1996) demonstrated that the participants playing a dictator game in the role of dictator were more selfish when they were socially isolated from both the experimenter and their counterparts. Piazza and Bering (2008a) also found that threats of gossip by others encouraged altruistic decision making in a dictator game. Recently, Kimura et al. (2012) demonstrated that the effects of cues from others could also apply to a consumer’s intention to purchase food products with ethical labels. They assessed consumers’ intentions to purchase fair-trade food products under two different conditions: the observable condition, in which participants’ purchase behaviors were observable by others, and the anonymous condition, in which participants’ purchasing behaviors could not be observed by others. The effect of six sensory and extrinsic, including fair trade, attributes of hypothetical chocolate bars was examined using conjoint analysis. Kimura et al. (2012) found that participants under the observable condition valuated fair trade higher than those under the anonymous condition. These results suggest that reputational concern has an effect on a consumer’s intention to purchase a fair-trade-labeled food and also suggest that there is a possibility that a consumer product choice based on altruistic attributes, such as fair trade, is less likely in unmanned purchase environments than in manned ones.

On the other hands, several studies on human-computer interface have suggested that altruistic behaviors could be enhanced not only by potential reputational consequences from real humans, but also by artificial cues suggesting the presence of others (Bateson et al., 2006, Haley and Fessler, 2005, Izuma, 2012, Mifune et al., 2010, Rigdon et al., 2009). Haley and Fessler (2005) showed that merely including a stylized eye-like shape on the background of a computer screen was sufficient to enhance cooperation in the dictator game. Even when participants are explicitly made aware of the anonymous nature of their decisions, they may respond to environmental cues of being watched that prime participants to behave differently than they otherwise would. Similarly, Rigdon et al. (2009) demonstrated that even a weak social cue like three dots in a watching-eyes configuration has a positive effect on giving behavior in the dictator game. These findings led us to postulate that artificial cues suggesting the presence of others might enhance a consumer’s product choice based on its altruistic attributes such as fair trade.

However, it is still unknown whether the presence of an explicit artificial individual causes a similar effect on consumer behavior. Teramoto, Matsuura, and Asai (2012) used the Simon paradigm to suggest that participants feel a sense of being together even in a virtual environment. In this paradigm, one participant presses a key in response to one color and the other participant presses another key in response to a second color. Despite the fact that each participant is performing a go/no-go task, an effect similar to a standard Simon effect occurs if they feel a sense of togetherness. Teramoto et al. (2012) showed that the social Simon effect occurred under the condition where participants could communicate with each other during a 3-min interaction in the virtual environment. Thus, we can assume that the presence of an explicit artificial individual might change consumer response in the same way that virtual communication can generate a sense of togetherness.

Here, we examine the influence of the presence of an artificial individual on purchase intention for fair-trade food products among Japanese young adults. To manipulate the presence of an artificial individual, we asked participants to rate their purchase intent for a presented fair-trade food product in two different situations: one was the agent condition, in which task instructions were given by a clerk-like agent throughout the task, and the other was a control condition, in which task instructions were given through a text box. We used a clerk-like agent as the artificial individual in this study because it seemed more natural for a purchase environment than the eye-like figures used in previous studies of experimental games (Haley and Fessler, 2005, Mifune et al., 2010, Rigdon et al., 2009). We assessed consumers’ intentions to purchase fair-trade food using conjoint analysis as performed in Kimura et al. (2012). Conjoint analysis provides a model of consumer utilities for various attributes of multifactor stimuli. The model is built by quantifying respondents’ preferences for a set of factorially designed alternatives (Green, 1974). We hypothesized that the relative importance of fair trade among the attributes of food products would be higher in the agent condition than in the control condition.

Section snippets

Design

The experiment was based on a two-independent-groups design (artificial cues from another person: agent vs. control conditions) with consumers’ preferences toward eight hypothetical chocolate products as the dependent variable.

Participants

Data collection was administered by an on-line professional market research agency, Cross Marketing Inc., Japan. Data were collected in November 2011, among a registrant pool of Japanese consumers with responsibility for their household’s daily grocery shopping. The

Conjoint analyses

Pearson’s R and Kendall’s T, the utility scores (part-worth) for each attribute’s category, and the relative importance for the conjoint analysis with each condition are shown in Table 2. The conjoint models of the agent and control conditions were adequate based on their respective effect sizes (Pearson’s R and Kendall’s T), implying that the chocolate attributes properly accounted for the preference ratings of the eight chocolate products.

In the agent condition, the utility scores were

Discussion

The objective of the current study was to examine whether the presence of an artificial individual would have an effect on consumers’ purchase intentions for fair-trade food products. As predicted, the results of conjoint analysis demonstrated that participants in the agent condition valuated fair trade more highly for their overall purchase intention than those in the control condition. Fair trade accounted for 17.9% of the respondents’ purchase intents in the agent condition and 14.5% in the

Conclusion

The current results are consistent with previous studies that have shown that an individual’s altruistic behavior is influenced by artificial cues of an individual (Bateson et al., 2006, Haley and Fessler, 2005, Izuma, 2012, Mifune et al., 2010, Rigdon et al., 2009), and further provide evidence that displaying artificial cues of the presence of others has a positive effect on the consumer’s pro-social purchase decisions. These findings could serve as an important step towards understanding the

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Mr. Kazuki Shimizu for editing the images of the agent used in this study and ELCS (English Language Consultation Services) for examination of the manuscript. This work is supported in part by the Strategic Research Foundation Grant-aided Project for Private Universities from MEXT 07H012, Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B) 21330148, and the Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C) 23500158 and 24500999 from the Japan Society for Promotion of Science, and Health and

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