Paper Type
Short
Paper Number
PACIS2026-1527
Description
Generative AI (GenAI) is increasingly adopted in restaurant marketing to refine visual and textual content, yet such AI-polished content—despite its ostensible appeal—may undermine consumers’ confidence in purchase decisions. Focusing on restaurant marketing contexts where AI authorship remains undisclosed and consumers subjectively infer potential AI involvement, this study investigates how perceived image and text AI-likeness jointly influence purchase deferral, reflecting decision hesitation rather than outright rejection. We propose that perceived image AI-likeness erodes perceived brand authenticity and information diagnosticity, thereby prompting purchase deferral. Perceived text AI-likeness amplifies these effects by strengthening consumers’ attribution certainty of image AI involvement. A between-subjects experiment is proposed to test our framework. This study contributes by shifting focus from explicit AI disclosure to authorship inference contexts, introducing purchase deferral as a consequential outcome, and uncovering a cross-modal amplification mechanism. Findings offer practical recommendations for restaurant operators seeking to preserve consumer decision confidence.
Recommended Citation
Guo, Tangxuan; Mao, Mingsong; Wu, Qingan; and Zhou, Qinyue, "When Beauty Breeds Hesitation: How AI-Likeness in Restaurant Marketing Content Delays Consumer Purchase Decisions" (2026). PACIS 2026 Proceedings. 10.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/pacis2026/general_topic/general_topic/10
When Beauty Breeds Hesitation: How AI-Likeness in Restaurant Marketing Content Delays Consumer Purchase Decisions
Generative AI (GenAI) is increasingly adopted in restaurant marketing to refine visual and textual content, yet such AI-polished content—despite its ostensible appeal—may undermine consumers’ confidence in purchase decisions. Focusing on restaurant marketing contexts where AI authorship remains undisclosed and consumers subjectively infer potential AI involvement, this study investigates how perceived image and text AI-likeness jointly influence purchase deferral, reflecting decision hesitation rather than outright rejection. We propose that perceived image AI-likeness erodes perceived brand authenticity and information diagnosticity, thereby prompting purchase deferral. Perceived text AI-likeness amplifies these effects by strengthening consumers’ attribution certainty of image AI involvement. A between-subjects experiment is proposed to test our framework. This study contributes by shifting focus from explicit AI disclosure to authorship inference contexts, introducing purchase deferral as a consequential outcome, and uncovering a cross-modal amplification mechanism. Findings offer practical recommendations for restaurant operators seeking to preserve consumer decision confidence.
Comments
17-General