Consumer Responses to Service Robots

ASSOCIATION FOR CONSUMER RESEARCH Labovitz School of Business & Economics, University of Minnesota Duluth, 11 E. Superior Street, Suite 210, Duluth, MN 55802 Consumer Responses to Service Robots Jochen Wirtz, National University of Singapore, Singapore Paul Patterson, University of New South Wales, Australia Werner Kunz, University of Massachusetts Boston, USA Thorston Gruber, Loughborough University, UK Vinh Lu, Australian National University, Australia Stefanie Paluch, RWTH Aachen University, Germany Antje Martins, University of Queensland, Australia This conceptual paper explores the potential role front line (FL) service robots play in the future. It provides a definition of FL robots and examines consumer perceptions, beliefs and behaviors related to FL robot-delivered services. Finally, it provides an overview of the ethical questions surrounding robot-delivered FL services. [to cite]: Jochen Wirtz, Paul Patterson, Werner Kunz, Thorston Gruber, Vinh Lu, Stefanie Paluch, and Antje Martins (2018) ,"Consumer Responses to Service Robots ", in E - European Advances in Consumer Research Volume 11, eds. Maggie Geuens, Mario Pandelaere, and Michel Tuan Pham, Iris Vermeir, Duluth, MN : Association for Consumer Research, Pages: 219-219. [url]: http://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/1700211/volumes/v11e/E-11 [copyright notice]: This work is copyrighted by The Association for Consumer Research. For permission to copy or use this work in whole or in part, please contact the Copyright Clearance Center at http://www.copyright.com/. Consumer Responses to Service Robots Jochen Wirtz, National University of Singapore, Singapore Paul Patterson, University of New South Wales, Australia Werner Kunz, University of Massachusetts Boston, USA Thorston Gruber, Loughborough University, UK Vinh Lu, Australian National University, Australia Stefanie Paluch, RWTH Aachen University, Germany Antje Martins, University of Queensland, Australia EXTENDED ABSTRACT This conceptual paper explores the potential role front line (FL) service robots play in the future. It provides a definition of FL robots and examines consumer perceptions, beliefs and behaviors related to FL robot-delivered services. Finally, it provides an overview of the ethical questions surrounding robot-delivered FL services. The service sector is at an inflection point with regard to productivity gains and service industrialization similar to the industrial revolution in manufacturing that started in the 18th century. Rapidly improving technology that becomes better, smarter, smaller, and cheaper will transform virtually all service sectors. Especially exciting are the opportunities offered by robotics in combination of cameras, sensors, speech recognition, big data, analytics, and artificial intelligence, which will be further enhanced by biometrics, mobile technology, cloud technology, geo-tagging, drones, the Internet of Things, and other technologies. Robotics in combination with these technologies will bring opportunities for a wide range of service innovations that have the potential to dramatically improve the customer experience, service quality, and productivity all at the same time (e.g., many hotel, restaurant and hair stylist services are likely to be robot-delivered in the future), lower cost will make high-end services available to the broad consumer base (e.g., personal concierge services, image consulting, and high-end personal tuition), and will lower the cost of basic services (e.g., health screening, health care, and education), while potentially offering new services we have not thought of yet. This conceptual paper explores the potential role front line (FL) service robots will play in the future. The contribution of this article is three-fold. First, it provides a definition of FL robots, describes their key attributes, contrasts the key features and capabilities of FL employees and FL robots, and provides an understanding for which types of tasks robots will dominate in service delivery and where hu- mans will dominate. Second, this article examines consumer perceptions, beliefs and behaviors as related to FL robot-delivered services. Third, it provides an overview of the ethical questions surrounding robot-delivered FL services at the individual, micro level, at the market, mezzo level, and at the societal macro level. The object of this article is to explore the potential role front line (FL) service robots will play in the future. The article does not focus on the implementation of service robots into the frontline or customers’ acceptance during the advent of robot-delivered services, we assume that front line (FL) service robots will be implemented, will be accepted by consumers, and will deliver a quantum leap in productivity gains in the service sector in the future. Further, we assume that robotics-relevant technology and AI systems will continue to rapidly advance and that robots will be able to conduct a widerange of cognitive and physical tasks in the next decades to come. Second, this article examines consumer perceptions, beliefs and behaviors. Given these developments and the expectation that more and more robots will be providing front line service, this conceptual paper explores how this new kind of service delivery differs from people-delivered service, derives key conceptual models that explore robot-delivered services and advances a future research agenda. Specifically, the contribution of this article is three-fold. First, it provides a definition of FL robots, describes their key attributes, contrasts the key features and capabilities of FL employees and FL robots, and provides an understanding for which types of tasks robots will dominate in service delivery and where humans will dominate. Second, this article examines consumer perceptions, beliefs and behaviors as related to FL robot-delivered services. Third, it provides an overview of the ethical questions surrounding robot-delivered FL services at the individual, micro level, at the market, mezzo level, and at the societal macro level. 219 European Association for Consumer Research Volume 11, © 2018