Abstract
Artificial intelligence (AI) 's rise in consumer services supports businesses in providing better value and satisfaction to consumers. However, this rapid development raises critical questions about the ethical issues of consumer behaviour when interacting with AI because the anonymity provided by AI can significantly encourage retail consumers to engage in unethical behaviour. We will employ a mixed methodology, including 25 participant interviews and a bottom-up thematic analysis approach to analyse the qualitative data to explore participants' motivations. The second phase will be conducting eight experimental studies to understand how the motivations of participants when interacting with the anonymity of AI will correlate with unethical consumer behaviour. This paper explores how anonymity in AI service agent interactions leads to unethical consumer behaviour through the lens of dehumanisation theory, the psychological process that reduces empathy toward non-human entities, thus justifying unethical actions focusing on the specific context of the UK retail market.