Companies are increasingly introducing conversational reviews—reviews solicited via chatbots—to gain customer feedback. However, little is known about how chatbot-mediated solicitation influences rating valence and review helpfulness compared to conventional online forms. Therefore, we conceptualized these review solicitation media on the continuum of anthropomorphism and investigated how various levels of anthropomorphism affect rating valence and review helpfulness, showing that more anthropomorphic media lead to more positive and less helpful reviews. We found that moderate levels of anthropomorphism lead to increased interaction enjoyment, and high levels increase social presence, thus inflating the rating valence and decreasing review helpfulness. Further, the effect of anthropomorphism remains robust across review solicitors’ salience (sellers vs. platforms) and expressed emotionality in conversations. Our study is among the first to investigate chatbots as a new form of technology to solicit online reviews, providing insights to inform various stakeholders of the advantages, drawbacks, and potential ethical concerns of anthropomorphic technology in customer feedback solicitation.

公司越来越多地引入对话式评论（通过聊天机器人征求评论）来获得客户反馈。然而，与传统的在线表格相比，人们对聊天机器人介导的招揽如何影响评级效价和评论有用性知之甚少。因此，我们将这些评论征集媒体概念化为拟人化的连续体，并研究了不同程度的拟人化如何影响评级效价和评论有用性，结果表明，拟人化媒体越多，评论的积极性越高，而帮助性越差。我们发现，适度的拟人化水平会增加互动乐趣，而高水平的拟人化会增加社交存在感，从而提高评分效价并降低评论的帮助性。此外，拟人化的影响在审查律师的显着性（卖家与平台）和对话中表达的情感方面仍然强劲。我们的研究是第一个调查聊天机器人作为一种征求在线评论的新技术形式的研究，提供见解，让各利益相关者了解拟人化技术在客户反馈征求中的优点、缺点和潜在的道德问题。