Do Human vs. AI Agents Influence Customers’ Reactions to “Big Data” Price Discrimination? The Mediating Role of Perceived Status

Customers may engage in social comparisons and feel a heightened sense of status compared to others due to the interpersonal price disparities in price discrimination, resulting in increased customer happiness. It is crucial to investigate what elements can amplify customers’ perceived status and subsequently boost their happiness. Through a scenario-based experiment involving 166 participants in the setting of an online ride service, we demonstrated that (a) advantage (vs. disadvantage) price comparison boosts customers’ perceived status, thereby enhancing their happiness, and (b) the type of agent involved (human vs. AI) notably intensifies the positive effect of advantage (vs. disadvantage) price comparison on perceived status, leading to increased customer happiness. Our research contributes to understanding social comparison by elucidating the impacts of advantage price comparison and agent type on customers’ perceived status and happiness, providing valuable implications for strategies involving human agent presence to optimize customer perceptions in social comparisons.