Exploring customer stickiness toward banking chatbots: Focus on agility capability and emotional receptivity

• Agility capability–related attributes (i.e., competence, responsiveness, and speed) are critical in promoting BCs’ perceived usefulness. • Flexibility does not affect perceived usefulness. • Confirmation significantly drives perceived usefulness and satisfaction with BCs. • Perceived usefulness is the strongest motivator of satisfaction and stickiness intention toward BCs. • Emotional receptivity significantly influences satisfaction and stickiness intention toward BCs. Banking chatbots (BCs) are crucial to the banking sector. Therefore, this study aimed to illuminate customer satisfaction with and stickiness intention toward BCs by associating agility capability–related attributes and emotional receptivity with expectation confirmation theory (ECT). Agility capability portrays the ability to efficiently respond to changing market opportunities through the diffusion of new technologies like BCs. A questionnaire was designed and administered to a sample of 612 BC users in Vietnam, who were recruited through convenience sampling. Then, structural equation modeling was conducted to verify the research model. Agility capability–related attributes (i.e., competence, responsiveness, and speed) were found to play critical roles in promoting BCs’ perceived usefulness, whilst flexibility was not a significant driver of perceived usefulness. The findings also underscored significant impacts among three ECT antecedents: confirmation, perceived usefulness, and satisfaction. Notably, perceived usefulness emerged as the strongest motivator of satisfaction and stickiness intention. Additionally, users’ stickiness intention and satisfaction with BCs were found to be fostered by perceived usefulness. Theoretically, this study contributes significantly to academia by integrating agility capability–related dimensions and emotional receptivity into ECT to elucidate users’ satisfaction with and stickiness toward BCs. Furthermore, this study is the first to empirically analyze and validate a research model for BC stickiness behavior.