IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/joreco/v85y2025ics0969698925000724.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Fun or warm: How conversational style boosts customer engagement

Author

Listed:
  • Roy Bhattacharjee, Debashree
  • Kuanr, Abhisek
  • Pradhan, Debasis
  • Moharana, Tapas Ranjan

Abstract

This research proposes and shows that a fun conversational style fosters greater tourist engagement than chatbots' traditional warm conversational style in a hotel room booking context. Furthermore, successful technology adoption requires businesses to understand the influence of cultural factors. Specifically, comprehending how individualism, a key cultural factor, shapes the effectiveness of chatbot conversation styles is important to enhance tourist engagement. Our findings, across two studies employing a combination of online surveys (Study 1, n = 241) and a randomised between-subject experiment (Study 2, n = 113), demonstrate that tourists' individualism serves as a boundary condition for the relationship between chatbot conversation styles and engagement. Additionally, results show that a fun chatbot conversation style increases customer engagement through underlying mechanisms of consumer's sense of liberation and hedonic involvement. Our research contributes to the psychological theory of fun and literature related to customer engagement. From a practical standpoint, this research offers valuable insights into the effectiveness of chatbot conversations that resonate with the needs of tourists while booking a hotel room. Marketing firms should deploy fun chatbots that stimulate customers' attention, interest, arousal, and curiosity through enjoyable experiences to foster customer engagement.

Suggested Citation

  • Roy Bhattacharjee, Debashree & Kuanr, Abhisek & Pradhan, Debasis & Moharana, Tapas Ranjan, 2025. "Fun or warm: How conversational style boosts customer engagement," Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Elsevier, vol. 85(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:joreco:v:85:y:2025:i:c:s0969698925000724
    DOI: 10.1016/j.jretconser.2025.104293
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0969698925000724
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.jretconser.2025.104293?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:joreco:v:85:y:2025:i:c:s0969698925000724. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/journal-of-retailing-and-consumer-services .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.