Think like a robot: How interactions with humanoid service robots affect consumers’ decision strategies

Jiancai Liao and Jingya Huang

Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 2024, vol. 76, issue C

Abstract: Service robots are beginning to be a popular choice in the frontline of customer service. It is important to explore how interacting with humanoid service robots (vs. human employees) influences consumers' following behaviors. Specifically, the present research examines how interacting with humanoid service robots (vs. human employees) influences consumers' emotional intensity and subsequent decision strategies. Through four experiments, the current research demonstrates that interacting with humanoid service robots (vs. human employees) induces a lower emotional intensity, which in turn promotes a relative reliance on cognitive reasoning (vs. affective feeling) in consumers’ decision-making such as hotel room choice. Furthermore, this research identifies the moderating role of service provider gender and anthropomorphism tendency. The main effect disappears when the service robot is female (vs. male) and when consumers have a higher anthropomorphism tendency. The present research provides significant implications for both robot literature and the tourism and hospitality business.

Keywords: Human-robot interaction; Emotional contagion; Decision strategy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0969698923003260
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:joreco:v:76:y:2024:i:c:s0969698923003260

DOI: 10.1016/j.jretconser.2023.103575

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services is currently edited by Harry Timmermans

More articles in Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().