Human vs Chatbot: The Role of AI in Healthcare Marketing

With recent innovations in artificial intelligence (AI) and its increased usage in healthcare, medical chatbots have emerged as valuable tools in healthcare promotion. These chatbots, acting as conversational agents, can play a crucial role in addressing disparities in healthcare access, particularly in countries like India. This issue becomes even more complex when addressing stigmatised health concerns, such as those related to gynaecology and sexual health. While existing scholarship has explored factors like awareness, trust, and comfort influencing the uptake of chatbots, limited research has focused on using chatbots for healthcare marketing among socioeconomically marginalised groups. Against this backdrop, this study employs a quantitative approach with a structured survey to assess the general understanding and perceptions of reproductive health-related chatbots among vulnerable women, as well as the factors influencing both adoption and aversion. Additionally, this paper examines whether factors such as confidentiality, accuracy, physical and technological convenience, and anonymity impact the adoption of medical chatbots for sexual health information by economically vulnerable women. The findings reveal notable relationships between prior sexual health education and the willingness to use a chatbot for reproductive health information. Furthermore, the survey indicates that chatbots, due to their anonymity, confidentiality, neutral tone, and ease of access, are often preferred over gynaecologists and even search engines like Google.