Shopbot banking: An experimental study of customer satisfaction and loyalty

Agent technology has been applied to design new services simplifying product and merchant brokering in several consumer industries. The term “shopbots” is generally used to characterize these services. It is proposed that shopbots will make consumers more rational, more satisfied, and less loyal. In this study, the propositions of reduced loyalty and increased satisfaction is elaborated. We propose seven hypotheses of the effects of using shopbots on customer satisfaction and loyalty. The hypotheses are tested in an experimental study of consumers choosing a financial service provider. We find strong support for the hypotheses of increased satisfaction with the Internet as a search medium, but no effects of shopbot use on product satisfaction. We find conditional support for the hypothesis of reduced cognitive loyalty, but no effects of shopbot use on affective, conative, action or behavioral loyalty. The implications of these findings for financial and information service providers are discussed.