Imagine walking into a department store to shop for various products. Based on the social heuristics related to expertise, you would likely favor and trust the advice conveyed by a product specialist dedicated to his/her product base than by a generalist advisor who opines on all product categories. As per the computers are social actors theory, this effect should also apply to people’s interaction with embodied conversational agents simulating product advisors in a multi-product category e-commerce. This study evaluated the effects of specialist agent design using surfaces cues that were 1) agents’ self-introduction as product specialists, and 2) agents’ assignment to dedicated product categories, in a multi-product category e-commerce website. An experiment (n = 122) was conducted to compare the effects of the specialist agent design against the conventional generalist agent design where one agent advised on all product categories. Consistent with source credibility theory and multiple source effect theory, the results demonstrated that specialist agent design increased the perceived agent’s expertise, message trustworthiness, social presence, website trust, and purchase intention. Further, mediation analyses revealed that perceived agent’s expertise and message trustworthiness mediated the effects of specialist agent design on purchase intention, thus affirming the source credibility model. As predicted by multiple source theory, the implementation of multiple agents in the specialist agent design prompted a higher social presence, which was found to be a mediating factor that led to higher perceived website trust ability and benevolence. Finally, the effects of specialist agent design on purchase intentions were also mediated by perceived website trust ability and benevolence. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed in this paper.

想象一下走进一家百货商店购买各种产品。基于与专业知识相关的社会启发，您可能会更喜欢和信任由专门针对其产品群的产品专家传达的建议，而不是针对所有产品类别的通才顾问。由于计算机是社会行为者理论，因此这种效果也应适用于人们与多产品类别电子商务中模拟产品顾问的具体对话代理的交互。这项研究使用表面线索评估了专业代理设计的效果，这些表面线索是：1）在多产品类别的电子商务网站中，代理商作为产品专家自我介绍； 2）代理商对专用产品类别的分配。进行了一项实验（n = 122），以比较专业代理商设计与常规通用代理商设计的效果，在这种情况下，一位代理商针对所有产品类别提供建议。与信源可信度理论和多信源效应理论相一致，结果表明，专业代理商的设计增加了感知代理商的专业知识，消息可信度，社交地位，网站信任和购买意愿。此外，调解分析表明，感知代理的专业知识和消息可信度介导了专业代理设计对购买意愿的影响，从而确定了来源可信度模型。正如多来源理论所预测的那样，在专业代理设计中实施多个代理可以促进更高的社交影响力，被发现是导致较高的网站信任度和仁慈感的中介因素。最后，专业代理商设计对购买意愿的影响还通过感知到的网站信任能力和仁慈来调节。本文讨论了理论和实践意义。