Preference for Human (vs. Robotic) Labor is Stronger in Symbolic Consumption Contexts

By Armin Granulo, Christoph Fuchs, Stefano Puntoni. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 2020

203 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Advances in robotics, automation, and artificial intelligence increasingly enable firms to replace human labor with technology, thereby fundamentally transforming how goods and services are produced. From both managerial and societal points of view, it is therefore important to understand demand-side incentives for firms to employ human labor. We begin to address this question by examining for which products and services consumers are more likely to favor human (vs. robotic) labor. In six studies, we demonstrate that consumers prefer human (vs. robotic) labor more for products with higher (vs. lower) symbolic value (e.g., when expressing something about one’s beliefs and personality is of greater importance). We theorize that this is because consumers have stronger uniqueness motives in more (vs. less) symbolic consumption contexts (and associate human labor more strongly with product uniqueness). In line with this account, we demonstrate that individual differences in need for uniqueness moderate the interaction between production mode and symbolic motives and that a measure of uniqueness motives mediates the effect of consumption context on preferences for human (vs. robotic) production.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Marketing

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/966a95511c67fb4f68d336ec257ccd387057e1ec

Citations in the corpus

• Consumers and Artificial Intelligence: An Experiential Perspective (2020, unknown): “Preferences for human over robotic labor tend to be stronger in symbolic consumption contexts (Granulo, Fuchs, and Puntoni 2020), and the same might apply in the case of one’s own labor: whereas for most consumers, being replaced by Nest in setting their home’s temperature is likely perceived as…”