How Artificially Intelligent (AI) Leadership Impacts Trust and Recommendation Quality among Consumers: An Abstract

Abstract

There has been a renewed discussion of the role of leadership in current times in several media outlets that span from political and corporate leadership to leadership in the context of activism, consumerism, and public life. Partly, this demonstrates the urge of a huge mass of population wanting to be led by a leader, even if such leadership may land up in an epic failure or may encompass undertakings comprising of huge risks or at times outright against the law. Take, for example, the role of “the professor” in the recent worldwide popular series by Netflix which broke several records regarding its viewership in the entertainment industry (Pearce 2019). The character of the professor and his charismatic leadership in guiding his accomplices through complicated and detailed oriented heists, which despite being unlawful, have drawn tremendous fan following from the audience, thereby displaying an ardent desire of humans to be led and coached by another towards a purposeful goal. Such an idea of leadership has, however, not been studied in the context of Virtual Service Assistants (VSAs) or Artificially Intelligent (AI) chatbots such as Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, or Google home to name a few. Presently, the VSAs have been looked primarily at providing services to answer consumer questions or helping them with product selections, ordering, and purchases. However, the notion that such AIs and VSAs can grow beyond their traditional role of being assistants is not distant, though unexplored at this point. With the development of the prototype of Alexa prize chatbots (Amazon 2019) that engage consumers in near organic conversations, (without even using the wake word “Alexa” repeatedly) such as jokes, riddle, opinion on a subject, news and movie reviews insinuates the possibility of VSAs to play a more significant role such as that of a friend, a guide, and an impactful leader. The current study explores the role of artificially intelligent leaders, in the context of VSA enabled smart speakers such as Amazon Alexa in instilling a trusting relationship with its consumers and its influence on the consumers’ perception of the quality of their product recommendation. Although the idea of brand anthropomorphism (displaying human-like traits and qualities) in the context of AI has been recently introduced in the field of Marketing, existing scholarship has not looked at the specific leadership influences, such as leading, guiding, that these AIs have on its consumers.