Hedonic or utilitarian? Exploring the impact of communication style alignment on user's perception of virtual health advisory services

Intelligent advisory services are becoming increasingly pervasive. Ranging from e-Commerce to e-Government platforms, intelligent advisory systems, with user-centered design, can potentially overcome technical barriers that commonly exist on traditional websites. This study explores the impact of system-user communication style similarities on the user's perception towards the virtual advisory service in the healthcare domain. Drawing on Similarity-Attraction Theory, we propose a research framework to investigate this relationship. Through a mixed-method approach, including preliminary surveys, experiments and follow-up interviews, this study shows that an intelligent advisory system's communication style, when aligned well with a user's communication style, can better engage the user and lead to more perceived transparency, enjoyment, informativeness and credibility during the interaction process. Overall, hedonic aspects of user perceptions are shown to be more critical for creating a feeling of social presence and reuse intentions than utilitarian ones. The implications of the study for research and practice are then discussed. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.