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

By Martin Mende, Maura L. Scott, Jenny van Doorn, Dhruv Grewal, Ilana Shanks. Journal of Marketing Research, 2019

1,001 citations recorded by the source corpus.

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).

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5d6924c5f00e7f27884a4a908b775c11177f7187

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Citations in the corpus

The future of in-store technology (2019, background): “We propose a 2 X 2 typology with the dimensions of convenience and social presence, however, other dimensions could be explored as they relate to our proposed typology, such as how the technology allows or threatens identity expression (Mende et al. 2019).”
Service robot implementation: a theoretical framework and research agenda (2019, background): “In this sense, greater levels of human-likeness might increase consumer discomfort, leading them to display compensatory responses (e.g. purchasing status goods, seeking social a ﬃ liation, eating more; Mende et al., 2019).”
Robots or frontline employees? Exploring customers’ attributions of responsibility and stability after service failure or success (2020, background): “First, although many theoretical predictions exist about how replacing frontline employees with service robots may affect customers’ experiences, empirical evidence is virtually non-existent (see, e.g. Mende et al., 2019 for an exception).”
Digital technologies: tensions in privacy and data (2022, background): “Service robots (embodied AI blending engineering and computer science) ( Mende et al., 2019 ; Xiao & Kumar, 2019 ) (cid:129) Enabling automated sharing of real-time data, some of which might be from physical interactions.”
Consumers and Artificial Intelligence: An Experiential Perspective (2020, positive): “For example, consumers report feelings of discomfort when interacting with “social robots” in service contexts (Mende et al. 2019), and customers’ responses in a field study became markedly more negative when they were informed in advance that their interaction partner would not be a human (Luo et a”
The 3 C's of anthropomorphism: Connection, comprehension, and competition (2019, background): “Compared to human service providers, robots designed with human features (e.g., face, arms) elicit greater feelings of unease and discomfort in con‐ sumers, driving them to cope with compensatory behaviors (Mende et al., 2019).”
Robotics for Customer Service: A Useful Complement or an Ultimate Substitute? (2019, background): “…presence on customer service outcomes; Marinova et al. (2017) explore how robotics technology empowers the frontline interactions with customers; Mende et al. (2019) study the compensatory responses that consumers display when interacting with a humanoid service robot; Holz-warth, Janiszewski,…”
Transforming the Customer Experience through New Technologies (2020, background): “There is a concern, following “uncanny valley” theory (Mori, 1970; Wang, Lilienfeld, & Rochat, 2015), that the sheer eeriness or uncanniness of such scenarios might scare away consumers (Mende et al., 2019).”
A strategic framework for artificial intelligence in marketing (2020, background): “In the frontend, service robots can interact with scale and consistency (Wirtz et al. 2018), and can automate social presence in the frontline (Mende et al. 2019; van Doorn et al. 2017).”
Engaged to a Robot? The Role of AI in Service (2020, background): “For example, service robots interact with customers with scale and consistent quality (Wirtz et al. 2018), automate social presence in the frontline (van Doorn et al. 2017), and have become part of routine service experiences (Mende et al. 2019).”