Are Retail Customers Ready for Service Robot Assistants?

The use of service robots is rapidly expanding in many industries, including the retail sector. In some Asian countries retail companies already deploy in-store humanoid robot assistants that interact with customers in a personalized and dynamic way. However, little is known about customers’ perceptions of these robot-assisted interactions. Therefore, we compared customers’ perceived service quality of a human-robot interaction with a human-human interaction in a retail store, using an experiment with hypothetical scenarios (N = 425). Participants’ general attitudes towards robots, their age, gender, and educational level were included as moderators in the analyses (a mixed-design ANOVA model). Results showed that participants valued service quality higher in the human-human interaction scenario. Additionally, findings from the moderation analyses indicated that perceived service quality of the human- robot interaction and the human-human interaction did not statistically significantly differ for participants with relatively high positive attitudes towards robots. Participants with relatively low positive attitudes towards robots, however, held statistically significantly lower perceptions of service quality for the human-robot interaction. Neither age, gender nor educational level statistically significantly influenced participants’ perceived service quality scores for both service encounters.