11/02/2008: Mirjam Schmidt: B2C Advice on complex service products via video calls

In the past, many face-to-face interactions between customers and service companies were replaced by online interactions. Faster internet connections allow to increase media richness of these interactions by e.g. using video calls. According to Social Presence theory, this should increase the feeling of “being together”. But is providing richer communication channels the only thing customers can do to increase Social Presence? We propose an experiment in which manipulate conversational style and existing relationship as other factors which could easily manipulated by a company and might increase Social Presence.