Something Smells Fishy: How Sales Assistant Types and Suspicion Influence Perceived Message Credibility

While prior research has demonstrated that consumers generally respond more positively to human sales assistants than to AI during service encounters, limited attention has been given to situations when the opposite might be true. Across five experiments, we find that particularly in a sales situation characterized by an evident persuasion attempt, consumers consider messages communicated by AI sales assistants more credible than those from human counterparts. This difference stems from the lay belief that AI sales assistants are less likely to have hidden motives, making consumers less suspicious. We further show that such a difference is diminished when AI sales assistants are associated with company-specific information, which prompts consumers to think about the company and its hidden motives in the sales encounter. Our findings contribute to the literature on consumer–AI interactions by demonstrating that consumers' attribution of persuasive intent is influenced by both the nature of the sales assistant (i.e., human vs. AI) and contextual cues that indirectly signal persuasive intent (i.e., company-specific information). These insights have practical implications for the design of AI-driven sales strategies, suggesting ways to leverage AI without triggering consumer suspicion.