Examining the effects of robots' physical appearance, warmth, and competence in frontline services: The Humanness‐Value‐Loyalty model

Abstract

Because of continuous improvements in their underlying technologies, customers perceive frontline robots as social actors with a high level of humanness, both in appearance and behavior. Advancing from mere theoretical contributions to this study field, this article proposes and empirically validates the humanness‐value‐loyalty model (HVL model). This study analyzes to what extent robots' perceived physical human‐likeness, perceived competence, and perceived warmth affect customers' service value expectations and, subsequently, their loyalty intentions. Following two pretests to select the most suitable robots and ensure scenario realism, data were collected by means of a vignette experimental study and analyzed using the partial least squares method. The results reveal that human‐likeness positively affects four dimensions of service value expectations. Perceived competence of the robot influences mainly utilitarian expectations (i.e., functional and monetary value), while perceived warmth influences relational expectations (i.e., emotional value). Interestingly, and contrary to theoretical predictions, the influence of the robot's warmth on service value expectations is more pronounced for customers with a lower need for social interaction. In sum, this study contributes to a better understanding of customers' reactions to artificial intelligence‐enabled technologies with humanized cognitive capabilities and also suggests interesting research avenues to advance on this emerging field.

Robots at your service: value facilitation and value co-creation in restaurants

“…The study findings revealed that service robot attributes, including competence, role significance, warmth, social presence, adaptability and autonomy, determine value facilitation. This extends recent studies on service robot attributes that aid in customer value co-creation (Akdim et al , 2021; Belanche et al , 2021; Qiu et al , 2020). Additionally, guest value co-creation mediates the effect of value facilitation on advocacy intentions ( H1 and H2 ).…”

“…The findings of the qualitative study revealed that six service robot attributes, including role significance, competence, social presence, autonomy, warmth and adaptability, are critical in facilitating the guest experience during the value co-creation process in the restaurant. While the identification of service robot attributes such as competence, warmth and social presence is consistent with the past research (Belanche et al , 2021; Chang and Kim, 2022; Yoganathan et al , 2021), autonomy, adaptability and role significance have received less attention in the previous literature. Furthermore, the findings reveal that guest interaction comfort plays a key role in determining guest interaction with service robots in restaurants.…”

“…2.1 Service robots in the hospitality sector Service robots are smart programmable physical devices or agents that can sense, interact and provide services to customers (Belanche et al, 2021). As an interaction counterpart of a customer in a service encounter, service robots are expected to carry out complex tasks, make autonomous decisions and adapt to changing circumstances (Kuo et al, 2017).…”

“…This is because consumers apply social roles and conventions when interacting with anthropomorphic robots, which results in favorable intentions toward the service robots. More recently, Belanche et al (2021) found that perceived warmth of service robots positively influences emotional service value. Thus, guest perception of the warmth attribute in service robots facilitates greater interaction and value co-creation.…”

Impact of anthropomorphic features of artificially intelligent service robots on consumer acceptance: moderating role of sense of humor

“…In contrast, service robots with discomforting appearances and features may evoke negative consumer reactions, such as objection to use (Gursoy et al , 2019) and lack of genuine interactions (Shin and Jeong, 2020). Considering the mixed findings in the literature and the fact that many AI service robots possess anthropomorphic features such as humanlike appearances to simulate humanlike emotions and behaviors (Belanche et al , 2021), it is important to investigate the effects of anthropomorphic features of service robots on consumer perceptions and acceptance.…”