Received July 6, 2021, accepted July 26, 2021, date of publication July 28, 2021, date of current version

August 5, 2021.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/ACCESS.2021.3100885

The Use of Chatbots in Digital Business

Transformation: A Systematic Literature Review
ANDREJ MIKLOSIK 1, NINA EVANS 2, AND ATHAR MAHMOOD AHMED QURESHI 3
1 MarketingDepartment, Faculty of Management, Comenius University in Bratislava, 83104 Bratislava, Slovakia
2 UniSA STEM, University of South Australia (UniSA) at Mawson Lakes, Mawson Lakes, SA 5095, Australia
3 UniSA Business, University of South Australia (UniSA) at City West, Adelaide, SA 5000, Australia

Corresponding author: Andrej Miklosik ([email protected])

This work was supported by the Research Themes Investment Scheme (RTIS) Seed Funding Grant of the University of South
Australia (UniSA) through the Project on Digital Transformation of the Superannuation Industry in Australia.

ABSTRACT The research on chatbots has gained momentum over the past few years. Academics and
practitioners investigate how these tools for communication with customers or internal team can be improved
in terms of their performance, acceptance, and deployment. Although there is a plethora of recent studies
available, not all of them deal with the digital business transformation implications of chatbots. The main
aim of the research presented in this paper was to conduct a systematic literature review of high-quality
journal research papers in order to summarise the current state of research on chatbots, identify their role in
digital business transformation and suggest the areas warranting further attention. 74 papers were included
in the research. Topical (focus and applications), methodological (methods used, sample size, sample type,
and countries studied) and bibliometric (publication outlet, citations, and Altmetric Attention Score) aspects
are evaluated and described. Scholars and practitioners can use the results to identify topics, areas, and
applications that are intensely discussed in the literature and require further attention, select a methodology
for their research that is well established in the field or is emerging, identify the most influential publications
not to be missed in their research or identify publication outlets for publishing their research on chatbots.

INDEX TERMS AI, chatbots, conversational agents, digital business transformation, digital disruption, ML.

I. INTRODUCTION chatbots are developed as Machine Learning (ML) or AI

We are currently witnessing an immense technological devel- driven chatbots [12], but the advantage of deploying AI
opment, resulting in the need for organisations to adopt driven chatbots is that they give the impression of being
new technologies and information systems (IS) [1]. The intelligent as they get smarter with increased data and user
technologies disrupt organisations’ business processes, and interactions [13].
trigger the need for digital transformation (DT) [2]–[4]. Chatbots can be defined as a ‘software that accepts nat-
The need for DT has been reflected across all industries, ural language as input and generates natural language as
including manufacturing (industry 4.0), retail, logistics, and output, engaging in a conversation’ [14]. Another definition
services [5]–[8]. accentuates their attempted human-liked character: ‘Chatbots
One category of IS with increasing capabilities are artifi- are interactive virtual characters whose mission is to assist
cial intelligence (AI)-powered systems. Such systems have people in high-profile environments’ [15]. Apart from engag-
many potential applications in decision making support, pro- ing in written conversations (text-based chatbots), chatbots
duction automation, learning, communication, etc [9]. The also have the ability to mimic human speech (voice-based
communication between online users and organisations is chatbots) to improve user experience and cultivate customer
shifting towards interactions with AI-driven systems [10]. loyalty [15], [16].
A chatbot is one example of technology that is used in Chatbots can be found on websites, social media or
computer-mediated communication where AI agents increas- instant messaging apps [17], [18]. They can be deployed
ingly occupy roles once served by humans [11]. Not all within an organisation to assist with various services
and processes such as internal support systems, IT Ser-
The associate editor coordinating the review of this manuscript and vice Management (ITSM), learning or human resources
approving it for publication was Chuan Heng Foh . management (HRM) [15], [19]–[24].

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. For more information, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
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For external communication, standalone chatbots can also A. INITIAL DATABASE SEARCH (IDENTIFICATION)
represent an alternative to branded websites [25]. They The Web of Science database was selected as the source
have been deployed to provide services in many areas of papers for this SLR. To list possibly matching papers,
such as customer relationships management (CRM), cus- the following search query was entered into the new (Beta)
tomer service or sales and marketing [26]–[30]. Chatbots are interface of Web of Science:
used to make product or service recommendations regard- chatbot∗ (Title) or chat bot∗ (Title) or chatterbot∗ (Title)
ing shopping, financial or health related decisions [25], or chatter bot∗ (Title)
[31]–[34]. Researchers are, amongst others, focusing on The results were refined to include only articles, by
investigating how to build better social bots for interaction setting the Document Types filter to ‘Articles’. In this step,
in business or commercial environments, how to improve 298 papers were identified. This step of the SLR was com-
services with chatbots, which factors affect user percep- pleted on 27 April 2021.
tions of chatbots or how to encourage repetitive use of
chatbots [35]–[42]. B. TITLE AND ABSTRACT SCREENING (SCREENING)
In the second step, the appropriateness of the papers for this
II. OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY SLR was determined by reviewing their title and abstract.
Researchers have been examining the various uses of chat- Only papers with direct business implications were included.
bots, the factors affecting their acceptance by users, and The following exclusion criteria were applied: i) Specific
the creation of new algorithms and frameworks for chat- application to an unrelated industry such as health care, dis-
bot deployment to increase their efficiency. The number aster management, forensics, or hospitality (restaurants); ii)
of studies on chatbots has increased significantly over the COVID 19 and religion perspectives. The title and abstract
past few years which can make it difficult for researchers screening resulted in 158 selected papers. This step of the
to navigate the space and identify areas that need further SLR was completed by 10 May 2021.
attention. The aim of this paper is to fill in the gap and
provide a comprehensive overview of academic studies on C. DETAILED FULL TEXT ANALYSIS (ELIGIBILITY)
chatbots. For each of the 158 publications, full texts were obtained,
Although many papers have been written that focus purely read, and analysed.
on the development of chatbots, our research recognises the The exclusion criteria applied at this stage included:
need for interdisciplinary research and therefore focuses on
i) Paper type – although the filter in WoS was set to
papers that identify clear business implications of chatbot
show only journal papers, a few other than journal
use and development, both inside an organisation (internal
papers were included by WoS, e.g. book chapters, and
environment), and targeted at various external stakeholders,
therefore needed to be excluded at this stage;
mainly customers.
ii) Content – papers with purely programming/ technical
The paper provides an overview of relevant research in
perspectives such as algorithm improvements; other
high-quality journal research papers, in order to summarise
too narrow implications such as pedagogy, psychology,
the current state of research on business implications of
humour;
chatbots and identify the research gap that requires further
iii) Language – papers written in languages other than
attention. The paper aims to answer the following research
English;
questions:
iv) Quality – papers with missing or insufficient method-
RQ1: What are the focus areas and applications of the exist- ology, literature review or other major deficiencies; and
ing research on chatbots? v) Full text unavailable – no full text can be obtained.
RQ2: Which methodologies have been used in the current The decision to exclude papers written from a program-
research and what are the characteristics of the sam- ming/technical perspective only, was based on the follow-
ples used? ing assumptions: Although these papers could produce very
RQ3: Which journals publish most of the research from this interesting results, e.g. the ability to build chatbots based on
field and which publications are the most influential? smaller data sets or making the chatbots more human while
RQ4: What are the potential directions for future research in not increasing the requirements for resources drastically, they
this area? have limited application beyond the IT/programming field.
The decision on which papers to keep or exclude was
III. METHODOLOGY made through consensus between the authors. Based on the
A systematic literature review (SLR) was selected as the best consensus of the first two authors, records for exclusion were
method to achieve the defined objectives [43]. The process of identified in the screening and eligibility phases. The third
identification and analysis of relevant papers for the purpose author performed quality control and served as a mediator in
of this SLR consisted of three steps: i) Initial database search; case a dispute resolution was required.
ii) Title and abstract screening; iii) Detailed full-text analysis. The flow of information through the different phases of this
These steps are described below. SLR is depicted in the PRISMA flow diagram (Figure 1).

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TABLE 1. Journals that published more than one research paper.

used in a paper written by Sepasgozar et al. [44] about the

systems developed and technologies used for smart homes,
in which they i) reviewed relevant papers published between
2010 and 2019, within databases such as Scopus, ii) analysed
the papers in terms of bibliography and content to identify
more related systems, practices, and contributors, iii) used a
systematic review method to identify and select the relevant
papers and iv) reviewed these relevant papers for their content
by means of coding.
To assess the research impact, citations and Altmetrics
were used. Citations are the traditional way of determining
the influence of academic work [45]. Google Scholar was
used to determine the total number of citations. The evi-
dence shows that Google Scholar is still the most compre-
hensive source of citations, outperforming both traditional
(Web of Science, SCOPUS) and new (Microsoft Academic,
Dimensions, and the OpenCitations Index of CrossRef open
DOI-to-DOI citations) sources of citations [46]. After gath-
FIGURE 1. PRISMA flow diagram for the systematic literature review.
ering the total number of citations for each publication on
Google Scholar, the annual average number of citations was
To eliminate potential bias, key characteristics of the SLR calculated for every publication.
were determined by the authors prior to initiating phase 1. The Altmetric Attention Score was used as a metric to com-
This included the definition of research questions. Involving plement the citation analysis, thereby providing additional
the third author in the discussions regarding the research insights into the research impact and reach. Altmetrics are
framework also helped eliminate the risk of bias, as he has metrics and qualitative data that include (but are not limited
not specialised in chatbot research before. to) peer reviews on Faculty of 1000, citations on Wikipedia
The research sample included 74 papers from 54 different and in public policy documents, discussions on research
journals. Twelve of these journals published more than one blogs, mainstream media coverage, bookmarks on reference
paper. The most popular journals were Computers in Human managers like Mendeley, and mentions on social networks
Behavior (6 papers), International Journal of Advanced Com- such as Twitter [47]. The Altmetric Attention Score is an
puter Science and Applications (4 papers), Electronic Mar- automatically calculated, weighted count of all the attention a
kets (3 papers), and Journal of Business Research (3 papers). research output has received, based on three factors: volume,
Journals that published more than one paper are shown sources, and authors [48]. Both the number of citations and
in Table 1. the Altmetric Attention Score data were collected on 25 May
A protocol developed by Hao [43] was adopted for the pur- 2021.
pose of this SLR and used to collect and evaluate data about
i) research focus and design (research type and terminology IV. FINDINGS
used); ii) methodology (data collection, sample size, sample The findings part of the paper is organised to pro-
type, and countries studied); and iii) bibliometric aspects vide data for answering the research questions. Firstly,
(publication outlet and citations). A similar methodology was we present the analysis of focus areas and applications

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TABLE 2. Main research focus areas.

of the research, followed by details on methodologies B. METHODOLOGIES USED

used. Lastly, the most influential publications are identi- The most frequently used research methods within the
fied by means of citations analysis enhanced by Altmetric sample of papers are experiment (26 papers) and ques-
data. tionnaire (16 papers), followed by development/prototyping
(10 papers). Details on the methods used, along with the
A. RESEARCH FOCUS AND APPLICATIONS references are listed in Table 4.
The focus was identified for every paper in the research sam- In research studies where participants were involved,
ple. If a paper covers more than one area, the most dominant the sample size ranged from 4 [49] to 6255 [50].
area was selected. The highest number of studies focuses on In most cases, the structure of the research sample
user perceptions of chatbots and their acceptance by users was diverse. Students were used as participants in case
(16 papers), followed by communication (8 papers), the use of 11 papers [11], [31], [32], [51]–[58]. For many research
of chatbots for customer service (7 papers), performance studies, the participants resided in various countries, or the
of and satisfaction with chatbots (7 papers), and learning details of their residence were not disclosed. For 26 stud-
(6 papers). The focus, along with the references, are shown ies, the country of focus was disclosed. Details are offered
in Table 2. in Table 5.
In Table 3, various applications of chatbots were identified.
The main application accentuated in the paper was used to C. JOURNALS AND RESEARCH IMPACT
map references to the applications in the table. 41 papers In Table 1, the journals that published two or more papers
could be mapped in total, the research in other papers had from the SLR are displayed.
more general applications that were not restricted to a cer- Table 6 shows the 20 most cited papers, ranked in descend-
tain area. One paper [19] identifies multiple applications of ing order by citations per year.
chatbots and therefore, this paper was also not added to one In Table 7, papers with the highest Altmetric Attention
particular category. Scores are presented.

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TABLE 3. Overview of chatbot applications.

V. DISCUSSION Chatbots can play a role in digital transformation of many

In this section we indicate how the first three research ques- areas of the business. Identifying applications of chatbot
tions are addressed. deployment aims to determine in which processes and envi-
ronment, whether it is internal or external, can and should
chatbots be deployed. As per Table 3., human resources
A. RESEARCH FOCUS AND APPLICATIONS
were the area which was featured in the highest number of
The first research question (RQ1) refers to the identifica-
studies (eight studies), followed by e-commerce and Learning
tion of research focus and applications of the research on
Management System, both in the focus of six studies. Study-
chatbots. Various focus areas have been identified (24 in
ing the impact of social presence and enjoyment of mobile
total), as listed in Table 2. The focus of the research stud-
messenger chatbots on consumers’ purchase intentions [78],
ies mostly relates to perceptions and acceptance of chat-
customer purchasing behaviour and trust in chatbots [79]
bots (16 studies). Researchers investigated parameters and
or usefulness of chatbots for shopping [80] were some of
features that make chatbots more (or less) accepted by
the phenomena investigated in the e-commerce application
users and where their usage ultimately resulted in their
area. In reference to LMS, researchers looked for example
higher (or lower) acceptance. Examples include studies
at using voice messages in learning with chatbots [81] or
about chatbot gender perceptions [59], attitudes towards
suggesting he best e-learning content to the user including
warm versus competent chatbots [32], discomfort when
multimedia [82].
using chatbots and comparing reactions to a simple and
Researchers also investigated how customer service and
animated avatar chatbot [60]. The studies that are centred
customer experience can benefit from chatbot deployment
around communication (eight studies) focus on analysing
(five studies). Next, the use of chatbots in financial services
chatbot communication from various perspectives, compar-
and insurance was investigated (five studies), for example
ing various means of communication, the use of emo-
which three factors affect customer satisfaction with chat-
jis [11] or properties that make chatbots more human (anthro-
bots in the banking industry [83] or the use of chatbots in
pomorphism) –[27], [52], [61]. Customer service was at
insurance [84]. A chatbot that recognises user perceptions via
the centre of seven studies. The researchers investigated
connected cameras, useful by conducting presentations [85]
improving customer service via effective chatbots [62],
is an example from the sales application (five studies). Two
extracted feelings from chatbot data [63], developed a chatbot
studies examined marketing applications of chatbots; one
with advanced learning skills [64] or identified the factors
study focused on one of the other four applications each:
affecting satisfaction with customer service [65]. More pop-
CRM, internal support/ITSM, innovation management, and
ular topics included performance/satisfaction (seven stud-
multiple touchpoints.
ies), learning (6 studies), and development/deployment (five
studies).
Topics that were less frequently studied in the research B. METHODOLOGIES USED
relate to the use of chatbots for FAQs/troubleshooting This section presents answers to the RQ2: ‘Which method-
[66]–[68], recruiting [23], [24], [69], relationships with chat- ologies prevail in the current research and what are the char-
bots [70], [71], trust [28], [72], advertising [30], health [73], acteristics of the samples used?’
security [74], user classification [75], purchasing [50], per- As Table 4 reveals, experiment is the most frequently used
sonalisation [76] or surveys [77]. method to examine chatbots and their business implications.

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TABLE 4. Overview of research methods.

TABLE 5. Countries of focus. research with people involved. A significant number of stud-
ies included participants from various backgrounds, and they
were often recruited via a crowdsourcing marketplace, such
as Amazon Mechanical Turk. The sample sizes with partici-
pants ranged from 4 to 6,255.
For most studies (48 out of 74), the country of focus was
either not disclosed or the participants were from various
regions and countries. For the 26 studies focusing on one
country, USA was the most studied country (7 papers), fol-
lowed by Germany (3 papers) and South Korea (3 papers).
Canada, India, and the Netherlands were all investigated in
two studies. Other studies included participants from China,
Great Britain, Greece, Italy, Japan, Romania, and Turkey (one
country each).
C. JOURNALS AND RESEARCH IMPACT
To answer the third research question (RQ3), we analysed
which journals publish most of the research on chatbots
and their business implications. There were 12 journals that
published more than one paper from this SLR. Computers
in Human Behavior (six studies) and International Journal of
Advanced Computer Science and Applications (four studies)
were most popular.
Identifying the most influential publications was the core
26 studies used experiment as their main method, followed by of RQ3. Here 20 papers with the most citations per year
questionnaire (16 papers). Some of the least utilised methods were listed in Table 6. There are five papers with more
include patent analysis [86], content analysis [29], conceptual than 40 citations per annum [51], [53], [55], [60], [61]. The
framework creation [20], secondary research [12], [23], [24], total number of citations varied significantly between studies.
[87], and case study [22], [67], [88], [89]. There were three studies with more than 200 citations iden-
The research samples consisted of diverse types of par- tified in the Google Scholar database [22], [51], [53], and
ticipants. Students were the most frequent participants in further six papers with more than 100 citations [50], [55],

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TABLE 6. Most cited research papers. thinking about a focus area for their research, academic and
practitioners could point their attention towards some of the
areas that are topical and actual but have not been inves-
tigated thoroughly. These include, for example, the use of
chatbots for innovation, surveys, purchasing, stress manage-
ment, news distribution or security. If researchers want to
focus on a current application of chatbots that is relevant
and has not been the focal point of many previous studies,
they can investigate the use of chatbots in marketing, CRM,
internal support/ITSM, innovation management or multiple
touchpoints (how chatbots can help integrate or help serve
customers using more touchpoints).
Another contribution of our study is a comprehen-
sive overview of methods used in the field of chatbot
research. Researchers can now understand which methods
dominate the research field of chatbots and their business
implications. Experiment and questionnaire were found to
be the most often used methodologies – either one of them
was used in more than half of the studies (56.7 percent).
There are two possible perspectives of the implications of
these findings. If researchers want to use a method that is
standardised and widely accepted in the field, they can use
one of the most popular methodologies. Another option is
TABLE 7. Research papers with the highest altmetric attention score. to choose a methodology that has not been used in a large
number of studies, thereby enriching the field by not only
providing results from a different sector, perspective or appli-
cation, but also by developing a methodological application
that has not received much attention. Patent analysis, content
analysis, conceptualisation, secondary research, or case stud-
ies represent such opportunity.
By identifying the publications that have published most
of the research on chatbots and their business implications,
we helped the researchers to choose the publication outlet.
The journals identified in Table 1 published more than one
paper on this topic and therefore, if a quality paper is pre-
pared, the chance of being considered for publication will
be increased. Identifying the most cited studies also con-
tributes to the current knowledge in the research field. Based
on this overview, researchers can ensure that they read the
most impactful papers that have been published. There are
nine studies with more than 100 citations, four of these are
cited more than 200 times. We also created an overview of
citations per year as this takes the time factor into account
and helps reveal papers that have a very strong impact over
[60], [61], [66], [71]. 24 papers were cited between 10 and a shorter time. By including the Altmetric Attention Score in
100 times, and there were 13 papers without a citation. the impact analysis, we also enrich the theory and methodol-
Table 7 also shows which papers are currently actively ogy of conducting systematic literature reviews which mostly
discussed in the online space. The papers with the highest relied on traditional citations analysis. It is mostly newer stud-
Altmetric Attention Score are listed, with 13 of them featur- ies (2019 – 2021) with high Altmetric Attention Scores and
ing a score above 10. these values do not necessary correlate with the most cited
studies. Thus, an overview from Table 7 helps the researchers
VI. CONTRIBUTION OF THE STUDY identify studies that are being currently discussed and talked
Identifying areas needing future research attention was in about. These 10 studies with the highest Altmetric Attention
the centre of the fourth research question (RQ4) and repre- Score [30], [50], [58], [60], [61], [72], [90]–[92] should not
sents one of the contributions of this study. We identified be omitted from reading if conducting a study on chatbots
topics, and applications that warrant further research. When which would also include their business implications.

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VII. LIMITATIONS [17] J. Hagberg, M. Sundstrom, and N. Egels-Zandén, ‘‘The digitalization of

Our study has certain limitations. Firstly, although an effort retailing: An exploratory framework,’’ Int. J. Retail Distrib. Manage.,
vol. 44, no. 7, pp. 694–712, Jul. 2016.
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ferent databases, the search will never be entirely exhaustive, consumer responses to a chatbot on Facebook,’’ Cyberpsychol., Behav.,
as some relevant studies may have been omitted due to the fil- Social Netw., vol. 21, no. 8, pp. 491–497, Aug. 2018.
[19] R. von Wolff, S. Hobert, K. Masuch, and M. Schumann, ‘‘Chatbots at
tering process that was adopted. Only papers that specifically digital workplaces—A grounded-theory approach for surveying applica-
used the ‘chatbot’ terminology were included, while papers tion areas and objectives,’’ Pacific Asia J. Assoc. Inf. Syst., vol. 12, no. 2,
that used a related terminology (e.g. conversation agents) pp. 64–102, 2020.
[20] P. R. Telang, A. K. Kalia, M. Vukovic, R. Pandita, and M. P. Singh,
were not included in the research sample. Secondly, only jour- ‘‘A conceptual framework for engineering chatbots,’’ IEEE Internet Com-
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papers, books, book chapters, monographs, dissertations, and [21] E. H.-K. Wu, C.-H. Lin, Y.-Y. Ou, C.-Z. Liu, W.-K. Wang, and C.-Y. Chao,
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ATHAR MAHMOOD AHMED QURESHI

ANDREJ MIKLOSIK has brought his exten- received the degree (Hons.) in computer sciences,
sive experience from IT project management and the master’s degree in ICT management, and the
consulting into academia. He is currently an Ph.D. degree. He is currently teaching academic at
Associate Professor with the Department of Mar- the UniSA Business. He is also a Certified Knowl-
keting, Faculty of Management, Comenius Uni- edge Manager. His approach to development in
versity in Bratislava. He is also the holder of both teaching and research is through effective
industry certifications, including ITIL, PRINCE2, strategy and active learning and absorption of
CISA, CISM, CRISC, and CGEIT. He has knowledge. As the chief investigator, he is working
authored more than 180 publications, including with industry partners and leading an interdisci-
numerous monographs and University textbooks plinary team into the strategic consequences of digital transformation. He has
focused on IS in business and marketing, digital marketing, IT project been awarded the RTIS Grant for the project, such as Digital Business
management, and knowledge management. Serving the community, he is the Transformation.
reviewer of several IT, marketing, and management journals.

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