A valued agent: How ECAs affect website customers' satisfaction and behaviors

•The effects of ECA usage on satisfaction and behavioral intentions are examined.•Three ECA usage consequences are studied: playfulness, decision quality, social presence.•PLS structural equation modeling is used to test the research model.•Shopping values mediate the effects of ECA usage consequences.•Results highlight the importance of shopping values to understand ECA outputs.

Building on literature related to selling and embodied conversational agents (ECA), this research seeks to determine how the use of an ECA might improve users’ perceptions of shopping value (hedonic and utilitarian) and the consequences for their purchase intentions and satisfaction with the website. This analysis focuses specifically on three ECA usage consequences: playfulness, decision quality, and social presence. Hedonic value mediates the effects of playfulness and social presence on satisfaction and behavioral intentions; utilitarian shopping value mediates the effects of decision quality. The results highlight the importance of accounting for both utilitarian and hedonic features to understand ECA outputs in e-commerce sites.