An SFT research team — led by Profs. Chloe Ki and Christina Wong, and former postdoc Dr Woojin Choi, PhD candidates Sophie Xue and Violet Wang, and an MPhil student Chong Sze-man — has published a landmark study on artificial intelligent virtual assistants (VAs) in the International Journal of Information Management (JCR 2024: SSCI; Top 1 in Field; IF 27; ABDC: A*). This publication underscores the team’s exceptional contributions to advancing knowledge at the intersection of fashion, technology, and consumer behaviour.
Amidst debates about whether artificial intelligence (AI) benefits or challenges fashion retail, it is clear that AI is driving major advancements in VAs, which have evolved from simple chatbots to visually engaging, lifelike digital assistants. Despite these developments, little is known about how the appearance (form) and realism of VAs affect consumer perceptions and service quality. Research on VAs also faces theoretical gaps, as most previous studies rely on technology-, social-, or cognitive-centred frameworks that fail to fully explain human interactions with VAs. Online shopping — where VAs are primarily used—differs greatly from goal-driven, socially interactive in-store shopping. Consumers shop online not only to meet cognitive or social needs but also to seek leisure, escape from daily routine, and immersive enjoyment, so that shopping is treated like a source of fun and stress relief. These patterns indicate that traditional frameworks are insufficient, and research on VAs must account for the hedonic nature of modern online retail.
To address these gaps, the team conducted three experiments that examined how the visual form and realism of VAs influence shopping experiences. They found that giving a VA a human-like appearance and increasing its realism significantly improve consumer evaluation. These effects work through two psychological pathways. First, VAs with a human-like form and higher realism made shoppers feel freer and more relaxed (liberated), which increased the feeling of having fun and led to more positive evaluations. Second, such VAs also boosted enjoyable engagement (hedonic engagement), which similarly increases the fun and improves evaluations. Shoppers who browsed for enjoyment (recreation-oriented) are more influenced by these effects than those focused on completing tasks.
Overall, the study offers both theoretical and practical insights, thus demonstrating the importance of designing VAs that are not only functional but also engaging, fun, and emotionally satisfying, thereby enhancing the online retail experience.
