Service Robots Rising: How Humanoid Robots Influence Service Experiences and Elicit Compensatory Consumer Responses

Abstract

Interactions between consumers and humanoid service robots (HSRs; i.e., robots with a human-like morphology such as a face, arms, and legs) will soon be part of routine marketplace experiences. It is unclear, however, whether these humanoid robots (compared with human employees) will trigger positive or negative consequences for consumers and companies. Seven experimental studies reveal that consumers display compensatory responses when they interact with an HSR rather than a human employee (e.g., they favor purchasing status goods, seek social affiliation, and order and eat more food). The authors investigate the underlying process driving these effects, and they find that HSRs elicit greater consumer discomfort (i.e., eeriness and a threat to human identity), which in turn results in the enhancement of compensatory consumption. Moreover, this research identifies boundary conditions of the effects such that the compensatory responses that HSRs elicit are (1) mitigated when consumer-perceived social belongingness is high, (2) attenuated when food is perceived as more healthful, and (3) buffered when the robot is machinized (rather than anthropomorphized).

How artificial intelligence will change the future of marketing

“…Moving beyond AI adoption, we pivot to how customers interact with robots with embedded AI. Early research suggests that interactions with AI-embedded robots trigger discomfort (linked to the UVH) and so further trigger (negative) compensatory behaviors, like buying of status goods, or eating more food (Mende et al 2019). From a theory perspective, this work not only shows the downsides of anthropomorphism (especially in the case of robots), but also the existence of compensatory consumption 6 specifically linked to robots.…”

The 3 C's of anthropomorphism: Connection, comprehension, and competition

“…However, traits related to emotions and morality tend to be strongly essentialized and perceived as fixed and difficult to change (Haslam, Bain, Douge, Lee, & Bastian, ; Haslam, Bastian, & Bissett, ), so seeing artificial minds display these characteristics may be strange for consumers (Gray & Wegener, ). Robots that are too similar to actual humans in physical appearance can be aversive and make consumers uncomfortable (Mende, Scott, Van Doorn, Grewal, & Shanks, ; Mori, ). Compared to human service providers, robots designed with human features (e.g., face, arms) elicit greater feelings of unease and discomfort in consumers, driving them to cope with compensatory behaviors (Mende et al., ).…”

“…Robots that are too similar to actual humans in physical appearance can be aversive and make consumers uncomfortable (Mende, Scott, Van Doorn, Grewal, & Shanks, ; Mori, ). Compared to human service providers, robots designed with human features (e.g., face, arms) elicit greater feelings of unease and discomfort in consumers, driving them to cope with compensatory behaviors (Mende et al., ). In fact, reminding consumers that these humanoid robots are nonhuman machines can reduce coping behaviors, suggesting that anthropomorphism plays a key role in consumer discomfort toward humanoid robots.…”

Editorial – Ten Trends Shaping the Future of Marketing: Considerations for the Academics

“…Given the complexity of the contemporary setting, other major issues, such as service experience and customer's response on service delivery (Van Vaerenbergh, Varga, De Keyser & Orsingher, 2018;Wan & Wyer, 2018) as well as green branding and green marketing (Papista & Dimitriadis, 2019;Wu, Wei, Tseng & Cheng, 2018) require continual investigation. Having said that, specific topics such as pop-up retail (Lunardo & Mouangue, 2019;Spitzkat & Fuentes, 2019), shopping cart abandonment (Huang, Korfiatis & Chang, 2018), selling cues (Das, Mukherjee & Smith, 2018;Yu, Hudders & Cauberghe, 2018), ambient scents (Girard, Lichters, Sarstedt & Biswas, 2019) as well as the use of chatbots and robots in marketing activities (Chung, Ko, Joung & Kim, 2018;Kim, Schmitt & Thalmann, 2019;Murphy, Gretzel & Pesonen, 2019;Mende, Scott, van Doorn, Grewal & Shanks, 2019) are as important because these are what organizations and customers are experiencing today.…”