Understanding Consumer Behavior towards Chatbots: An Empirical Study of Indian E-Commerce Users

The rise of artificial intelligence has made chatbots a core element of customer service in Indian e-commerce. Consumer attitude toward Chabot usage is essential to improving user experience and adoptionS. This research examines consumers' perspectives by introducing additional constructs (enjoyment, technicality, and perceived risk) to the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), hence, providing an answer to current gaps found in the literature. A sequential exploratory mixed method approach was used, where a pilot study was performed with 200 Indian e-commerce users. Using Principal Component Analysis, variables clustered into eight factors: perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, excitement, technicality, perceived ease, perceived value, attitudes towards chatbots, and intention to use. These research results provide significant original findings regarding consumers' accepted chatbots in research literature and practice. This study is a stepping-stone towards the establishment of a reliable measurement scale and the identification of future directions to make AI adoption models in digital commerce more accurate.