Cooperation or Competition: Conceptualising and Measuring Shared Agency Power in Customer-AI Interactions
(A2023-114480)

AUTHORS

Benjamin Voyer, ESCP Europe; Marion Sangle-Ferriere, CY Cergy Paris Université; Laszlo Sajtos, University of Auckland; Billy Sung, Curtin University

ABSTRACT

Service encounters increasingly feature AI-powered inputs such as add-ons recommendations or aftercare solutions. These novel forms of customer service, provided by AI rather than humans, can shape customers’ sense of agency throughout the customer journey. Customers find themselves in a form of competitive collaboration with AI, sharing tasks, resources, inputs, and decisions. This research conceptualises and develops a scale to measure shared agency power during customer-AI interactions. Understanding the role of agency in AI-customer interactions is important, as agency represents a source, mechanism, delimiter and effect of a human’s or a machine’s actions. Agency may differ across various service encounters and with it, the type of perceived risks associated with human-AI interactions. Future research may use the shared agency power scale to better understand the nature and impact of customer-AI interactions in a service context on traditional marketing factors.