The present research demonstrates how consumer responses to negative and positive offers are influenced by whether the administering marketing agent is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) or a human. In the case of a product or service offer that is worse than expected, consumers respond better when dealing with an AI agent in the form of increased purchase likelihood and satisfaction. In contrast, for a better than expected offer, consumers respond more positively to a human agent. We demonstrate that AI agents, in comparison to human agents, are perceived to have weaker intentions when administering offers, which accounts for this effect. That is, consumers infer that AI agents lack selfish intentions in the case of an offer that favors the agent and lack benevolent intentions in the case of an offer that favors the customer, thereby dampening the extremity of consumer responses. Moreover, we demonstrate a moderating effect such that marketers may anthropomorphize AI agents to strengthen perceived intentions, providing an avenue to receive due credit from consumers when providing a better offer and mitigate blame when providing a worse offer. Potential ethical concerns with the use of AI to bypass consumer resistance to negative offers are discussed.

本研究展示了消费者对负面和正面报价的反应如何受到管理营销代理是人工智能 (AI) 还是人类的影响。如果产品或服务的报价比预期的要差，消费者在与 AI 代理打交道时会以增加购买可能性和满意度的形式做出更好的反应。相比之下，对于比预期更好的报价，消费者对人工代理的反应更积极。我们证明，与人类代理相比，人工智能代理在管理报价时被认为具有较弱的意图，这说明了这种影响。也就是说，消费者推断 AI 代理在提供有利于代理的情况下缺乏自私的意图，在有利于客户的报价的情况下缺乏仁慈的意图，从而抑制了消费者反应的极端。此外，我们展示了一种调节效应，使营销人员可以将 AI 代理拟人化以增强感知意图，在提供更好的报价时从消费者那里获得应有的信任，并在提供更差的报价时减轻责备。讨论了使用人工智能绕过消费者对负面报价的抵制的潜在道德问题。