The effects of customer consumption goals on artificial intelligence driven recommendation agents: evidence from Stitch Fix

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of consumer goals on artificial intelligence (AI) driven interactive recommendation agents (IRAs) and examine the effects of consumers’ consumption goals on their attitude toward IRAs and their perception of IRA value in the context of Stitch Fix. In this study, we also investigate the attitude toward IRAs and IRA value that influence the intention to use IRAs. AI powered recommendation agents have achieved noticeable outcomes in the contactless era by boosting revenues and customer value. On the Stitch Fix platform, an online personal styling service platform, AI-driven IRAs provide personalized recommendations to customers encompassing fashion styling and product design. In this study that considers the Stitch Fix context, a successful case of AI-driven IRAs, a survey was used to investigate key questions about the relationships among goals, IRA value, attitude, and intention to use AI-driven IRAs on the Stitch Fix platform. The participants were 321 AI-driven IRA users from South Korea recruited by a professional survey company. In conclusion, the study clarifies the relationship between personal hedonic goals and attitude and the value of IRAs, and the effects of these goals that ultimately influence the intention to use IRAs. The findings offer practical implications for IRAs that can be used to help consumers search and choose products. IRAs can be particularly helpful for engaging consumers with hedonic goals, stimulation, and comfort, especially consumers who seek comfort, as they are more likely to show a positive attitude and value IRAs, which could encourage behavior adherence. Advertising practitioners should target consumers who seek comfort to enhance personalized recommendation strategies via AI-driven IRAs. As IRAs proliferate in the advertising field, the findings offer implications that can enable advertisers and advertising academics and practitioners to better targeted audiences and enhance customer relationships.

Keywords:

• Artificial intelligence
• interactive recommendation agent
• Stitch Fix
• consumption goals
• AI-driven IRA value

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2018S1A5A2A01031643).