Exploring factors that determine consumer attitude toward use of intelligent software agents

The aim of the research described in this paper is to evaluate the impact of Intelligent Software Agents (ISA) used in the on-line purchase of e-tickets, and their acceptance as a source of information service and decision assistance for customers. An empirical study was conducted using the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and the EC Consumer Behaviour Model in order to determine the factors affecting consumer attitude towards using ISA. The research instrument employed was a questionnaire survey among 150 postgraduate students from the School of Management at the University of Surrey, the findings demonstrate a positive view of ISA – the stronger predictors of consumer attitude towards ISA being perceived usefulness (PU), information richness (IR), customer interface (CI) and perceived trust (PT). Overall, the future of ISA at the business-to-customer (B2C) interface level is to a great extent affected by the consumers' perception of ISA usefulness and control over it. The present study's recommendations indicate a need for travel businesses to develop more intelligent electronic environments that will elicit a more positive response from the consumers if they are to be used more. Due to the broad range of activities and applications that are referred to as involving ISA, there is no universally accepted definition of the phase ISA. For the purpose of this paper, ISA was defined as an Information Technology (IT) programs that perform tasks on the user's behalf independently of direct control of the users themselves. In other words, ISA is " a software thing that knows how to do things that you could probably do yourself if you had time " (Cross 2003, p.176). With the increase of public interest in the use of the Internet during the mid 1990s, businesses took on the role of the e-mediary and capitalised on this (Chen and Tan 2004). At the same time, with the advance of Information Systems (IS) it became more economically feasible for companies to employ logic-based systems such as ISA, to improve their performance and in effect the extent of services they can offer to consumers (Davis 1989). In fact, Jupiter MMXI estimates that the European online travel market will grow from its 2001 figure of £2.8 bn to £12 bn by 2006 (Mintel International, 2004). Such a shift in consumers' self-service preference for the Internet in order to book their holidays online led companies to make more travel-related information available in their websites and …