Avatar e-mail versus traditional e-mail: Perceptual difference and media selection difference

Abstract

The study investigates how knowledge workers perceive avatar e-mail differently from traditional e-mail, and how they select traditional versus avatar e-mail when different levels of task equivocality and different types of communication direction are present. Three field studies were conducted with knowledge workers who have used avatar and traditional e-mail. This study demonstrates that overall perception toward avatar e-mail is significantly different from traditional e-mail with respect to media richness and social presence characteristics. In addition, this study found individuals used different e-mail selection approaches when conducting tasks with different equivocality (high versus low equivocal tasks) and tasks for different communication direction (lateral versus upward). Avatar e-mail users also sent lengthier messages than traditional e-mail users when conducting a highly equivocal task.

Introduction

“When you don your avatar and join thousands of other people who are trying out life in virtual worlds you are joining in a great new experiment in human contact. … This contact goes far beyond simple chat to become a whole new way of being with people” [[14], p. 5].

As the business environment has become distributed and fast-paced, as well as information- and communication technology-dependent, companies increasingly consider e-mail an effective communication medium in interpersonal and inter-organizational communication [22], [43], [52], [65]. Previous research has determined that a high proportion of knowledge workers' time is spent on communication-related activities [6], [44]. Communication media, including e-mail, continue to significantly change the communication process, structure, and outcomes in organizations [20], [60]. New media have capabilities, absent from traditional media, that can improve and modify information gathering and dissemination strategies, affect social interaction, and allow communication partners to express information that otherwise would not have been communicated. Therefore, a better understanding of the effects of new media on business communication is crucial for providing efficient and effective communication among employees.

Despite numerous studies to investigate the factors affecting e-mail selection [19], [28], [31], [46], [72], [74], [78], these studies all used traditional e-mail, not newly emerged e-mail systems with advanced communication features supplementing the leanness (i.e. lack of media richness) of traditional e-mail. Past studies did not investigate whether improved features provided by advanced e-mail systems help overcome traditional e-mail's leanness. Therefore, researchers have requested further studies to examine whether the previous findings are directly applicable to new forms of e-mail [20], [39]. For example, El-Shinnawy and Markus [20] pointed out the issue, stating that

Little is known about how people make choices among new communication media. Yet, as new media proliferate and as new combinations of media emerge, people in organizations will increasingly face choices among several new media in addition to, or even in lieu of, one new medium and several traditional ones. This suggests the need for, and value of, studies that examine media choice when multiple electronic media are available (p. 443).

Our study seeks to address this issue in the context of the use of avatar e-mail, one of the advanced types of e-mail. The term “avatar” (or “avatara”) originates from the descent and incarnation of a deity in earthly form, chiefly associated in Hinduism with the incarnation of Vishnu. The term has been adopted from virtual reality and the 3D games arena and represents incarnation or embodiment of human beings in a virtual world. The applicability of avatars to communication systems has been widely recognized [30], [34], [62]. Companies that have developed and applied avatars as a business communication tool for customers have found the avatars to be useful. For example, LifeFX provides Facemail, an avatar e-mail system for interpersonal communication.¹ First Direct, a web-based bank, has also developed an avatar called Cara that provides financial service information to customers through mobile phones. Yahoo's Jenni, CocaCola's Hank, and Amtrak's Julie are avatars with a face and body–an animated digital image with a voice–that serve as guides or customer service representatives on websites [67]. Simultaneously, research groups at the MIT Media Lab have examined ways to:

make communication, mediated through avatars, more lifelike and natural through appropriate and meaningful animation of the avatar's body and face … an avatar can represent suitably large amounts of information, and can operate as meaningful rhetorical devices [[30], p. 180].

Researchers focusing on computer graphics and virtual reality [24], [30], [33], [41], [51], [55], [59], [66], [81] have attempted to develop better avatars for communication, e-commerce, virtual reality, and 3D games. For instance, Anderson et al. [2] indicated the importance of avatars in support of communicator identification and perception of telepresence and realism in teleconferencing. Lee et al. [37] and Qiu and Benbasat [55] also found that telepresence was affected by avatar use in an experimental setting simulating online shopping. Avatar e-mail is not yet widespread in the United States and other Western countries, but it does show promise as a next-generation e-mail system, considering its advanced richness features (e.g., a variety of facial expression, voice, gestures, background music)² and successful adoptions in several countries (e.g., South Korea and Japan). While some speculations [54] have been made by practitioners about avatar e-mail and its advantageous features, there is a paucity of theory-based research on avatar e-mail. A solid theoretical grounding is necessary to investigate individual perceptual differences when comparing avatar e-mail to traditional e-mail and conditions affecting media choice.

This study has three objectives. First, the media characteristics of avatar e-mail are compared to traditional e-mail with respect to media richness and social presence characteristics. Second, different media choice under different task equivocality (high versus low) and communication direction (lateral versus upward) is examined. Finally, the influence of media type on task performance is investigated. Through the study, a richer understanding of media selection in the presence of avatar e-mail emerges.