Chatbots in the customer service: enhancing or hurting brand perception and customer satisfaction?

This thesis was presented to finish the Master's Program in Marketing and Communication with International Orientation at the Athens University of Economics and Business. The main purpose of this thesis is to assess if Chatbots and their aspects such as Personality, Usability, Perceived Ease of Use, Response Time, and Security enhance or damages Brand Perception and Customer Satisfaction. Firstly, Personality of Chatbots is a key component due to the fact that communications can be effectively personalized to adapt to the consumer needs. Secondly, Usability is one critical element of the chatbots. Usability can be explained as the quality that shows how easily an interface that is not a human can achieve a specific goal in an effective way, by being efficient and satisfactory (Petre et al., 2006). Thirdly, In Perceived ease of use refers to how good the functions of a system are and if additional work or expertise skills are needed from users so the system can work well, which means to work without having any crucial issue (Sarkar et al., 2018). In addition, various researchers in the marketing sector have found out that response time significantly impacts how users perceive the conversation (Holtgraves et al., 2007). Moreover, Security plays a vital role due to its ability to reduce and avoid threats and serious issues (Howard & Lipner, 2006). Last but not least, Brand perception is the summarization of all the activities and memories on the minds of customers and Chatbots are extremely critical when impacting the levels of satisfaction of customers. The first chapter of this thesis summarizes the issue. The second chapter's literature review contains incredibly important information regarding the personality of the chatbot, its usability, its perceived ease of use, and its response time. Security, brand perception, and customer satisfaction for chatbots. Furthermore, in Chapter 3, the study technique was described, followed by the variables utilized to administer the online questionnaire. The study findings in Chapter 4 were based on the data gathered from the online survey. The study's results are provided in the last chapter, followed by management implications and future research ideas.