Adoption of Virtual Agents in Healthcare E-Commerce: A Perceived Value Perspective

Virtual agents help their users find what they need thanks to an interactive dialog. In the healthcare e-commerce market, virtual agents allow “virtual consultations” available on the web, that lead to a recommendation for personalized treatment. While the adoption intention of these virtual agents by their users is critical for many organizations, the traditional explanatory models such as UTAUT-2 miss key elements specific to the virtual agents in healthcare e-commerce. Filling this gap can help organizations better understand the factors leading to the adoption of such solutions and take them into account in the design and launch of their virtual agents. This paper adopts a perceived value perspective, and proposes an extended model explaining the adoption of virtual agents and of their recommendation in a healthcare context. We test this model with 903 observations collected via an online survey in collaboration with a major European actor in the food supplement market. Our model provides highly actionable recommendations for practitioners and offers a complementary view on the adoption mechanisms of virtual agents, leading to further research recommendations.