Being friendly and competent: Service robots' proactive behavior facilitates customer value co-creation

Jinzhu Song, Yanhuan Gao, Youlin Huang and Lihan Chen

Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 2023, vol. 196, issue C

Abstract: The rapid expansion and integration of robots in the service industry have transformed the way services are delivered. With service robots increasingly replacing frontline human staff, the dynamics of service encounters have shifted from human-to-human to human-to-robot interactions, thereby significantly impacting the process of value co-creation. The active involvement of customers in co-creating value with these robots becomes crucial for the successful implementation of robotic services. Drawing upon social perception theory, we investigate the influence of service robots' proactivity on customers' willingness to engage in value co-creation and delve into the underlying mechanisms. Three studies were conducted across diverse service settings, each involving different service robots. Consistently, the findings demonstrate that customers display a greater inclination to co-create value with proactive service robots. The proactive behavior exhibited by these robots substantially enhances customers' perceptions of warmth and competence. Importantly, these effects are observed across various service scenarios and customer segments, including both premium and regular customers, thus affirming the robustness and generalizability of our findings. Our research provides practical guidance for practitioners involved in the implementation of service robots. Additionally, theoretical advancements and suggest potential directions for future research are discussed.

Keywords: Service robots; Proactive behavior; Willingness to co-create; Perceived warmth; Perceived competence (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0040162523005462
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:tefoso:v:196:y:2023:i:c:s0040162523005462

DOI: 10.1016/j.techfore.2023.122861

Access Statistics for this article

Technological Forecasting and Social Change is currently edited by Fred Phillips

More articles in Technological Forecasting and Social Change from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().