Reducing the Perceived Deception of Product Recommendation Agents: The Impact of Perceived Verifiability and Perceived Similarity

Product Recommendations Agents (PRAs) are software applications that augment consumers' purchasing decisions by offering product recommendations based on elicited customers' preferences. The underlying premise of PRAs is often grounded on the assumption that PRAs seek to optimize consumers' utility by tailoring product recommendations to meet requisite expectations. Because the majority of commercial PRAs are implemented by parties with partisan interests in product sales, it is highly probable that recommendations are biased in favor of their providers and do not accurately reflect consumers' interests. This in turn may possibly induce perceptions of deception among consumers. This study theorizes that the incorporation of IT-mediated components in PRAs, which induce high levels of perceived verifiability and perceived similarity, could mitigate consumers' perceptions of deception towards product recommendations.