Purpose: Conversational agents (chatbots, avatars and robots) are increasingly substituting human employees in service encounters. Their presence offers many potential benefits, but customers are reluctant to engage with them. A possible explanation is that conversational agents do not make...

Purpose – Brand alliances take various forms, yet academic research has not investigated how value spillovers differ between partners. The purpose of this paper is to address psychological mechanisms to uncover consumers’ perceptions of a service alliance when a strong service brand partners...