Solo consumption has become an emerging trend in recent years. However, the service experiences of solo customers with the growing adoption of frontline humanlike robots remain unclear, particularly in direct comparison with joint customers. Building on the literature of anthropomorphism and information processing theory, this study examines whether and how frontline anthropomorphized robots (FAR) might improve the service experiences of solo customers relative to their joint counterparts. Data from four studies, including field and online experiments, reveal that solo customers are more likely than joint customers to perceive FAR as offering rapport but also as being eerie, leading to different service evaluations (both attitudinal and behavioral outcomes). Nevertheless, as parallel mechanisms, these levels of social rapport and eeriness are contingent on features of the FAR, the service delivery process, and customers’ consumption goals. The rapport (eeriness) mechanism is strengthened (weakened) when the robot is of in-group favoritism, the service process deprives customers of control, and customers have a hedonic consumption goal. With the boom in adopting frontline humanlike robots in hospitality services, this study offers managerially relevant implications for serving solo customers as an emerging segment along with the traditional segment of joint customers.
AkdimK.BelancheD.FlaviánM. (2021). Attitudes Toward Service Robots: Analyses of Explicit and Implicit Attitudes Based on Anthropomorphism and Construal Level Theory. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 35 (8), 1–22.
2.
BaumeisterR. F.LearyM. R. (1995), “The Need to Belong: Desire for Interpersonal Attachments as a Fundamental Human Motivation,” Psychological Bulletin, 117 (3), 497-529.
3.
BeckerM.MahrD.Odekerken-SchröderG. (2022), “Customer Comfort During Service Robot Interactions,” Service Business, 17(1), 137-165.
4.
BenoitI. D.MillerE. G. (2017), “The Mitigating Role of Holistic Thinking on Choice Overload,” Journal of Consumer Research, 34 (3), 181-190.
5.
BiedenbachG.BengtssonM.WincentJ. (2011), “Brand Equity in the Professional Service Context: Analyzing the Impact of Employee Role Behavior and Customer–Employee Rapport,” Industrial Marketing Management, 40 (7), 1093-1102.
6.
BlutM.WangC.WünderlichN. V.BrockC. (2021), “Understanding Anthropomorphism in Service Provision: A Meta-Analysis of Physical Robots, Chatbots, and Other AI,” Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 49 (4), 632-658.
7.
BoltonL. E.MattilaA. (2015). How Does Corporate Social Responsibility Affect Consumer Response to Service Failure in Buyer–Seller Relationships?Journal of Retailing, 91 (1), 140–153.
8.
BottiS.McGillA. L. (2011), “The Locus of Choice: Personal Causality and Satisfaction with Hedonic and Utilitarian Decisions,” Journal of Consumer Research, 37 (6), 1065-1078.
9.
ChangY.GaoY.ZhuD.SafeerA. A. (2023). Social Robots: Partner or Intruder in the Home? The Roles of Self-Construal, Social Support, and Relationship Intrusion in Consumer Preference. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 197, 122914.
10.
ChenC. Y.LeeL.YapA. J. (2017). Control Deprivation Motivates Acquisition of Utilitarian Products. Journal of Consumer Research, 43, 1031–1047.
ChoiI.DalalR.Kim-PrietoC.ParkH. (2003), “Culture and Judgement of Causal Relevance,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84 (1), 46-59.
13.
ChoiI.KooM.ChoiJ. A. (2007), “Individual Differences in Analytic Versus Holistic Thinking,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33 (5), 691-705.
14.
ChoiS.MattilaA. S.BoltonL. E. (2020), “To Err Is Human(-oid): How Do Consumers React to Robot Service Failure and Recovery?” Journal of Service Research, 24 (3), 354-371.
15.
ChoiS.WanL. (2021). The Rise of Service Robots in the Hospitality Industry: Some Actionable Insights. Boston Hospitality Review, 2–11.
EpleyN.WaytzA.CacioppoJ. T. (2007), “On Seeing Human: A Three-Factor Theory of Anthropomorphism,” Psychological Review, 114 (4), 864-886.
18.
EysselF.KuchenbrandtD. (2011), “Social Categorization of Social Robots: Anthropomorphism as a Function of Robot Group Membership,” British Journal of Social Psychology, 51 (4), 724-731.
19.
FastE.HorvitzE. (2017), “Long-Term Trends in the Public Perception of Artificial Intelligence,” Proceedings of The AAAI Conference On Artificial Intelligence, 31 (1), Article 1.
20.
FӧrsterJ. (2009), “Relations Between Perceptual and Conceptual Scope: How Global Versus Local Processing Fits a Focus on Similarity Versus Dissimilarity,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 138 (1), 88-111.
21.
GeG. L.SchleimerS. C. (2023), “Robotic Technologies and Well-Being for Older Adults Living at Home,” Journal of Services Marketing, 37 (3), 340-350.
22.
GoelL.ProkopecS.JunglasI. (2013), “Coram Populo-In the Presence of People: The Effect of Others in Virtual Worlds,” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 18 (3), 265-282.
23.
GoodwinC.LockshinL. (1992), “The Solo Consumer: Unique Opportunity for the Service Marketer,” Journal of Services Marketing, 6 (3), 27-36.
24.
GremlerD. D.GwinnerK. P. (2000), “Customer-Employee Rapport in Service Relationships,” Journal of Service Research, 3 (1), 82-104.
25.
HanH.HsuL.-T. J.LeeJ.-S.SheuC. (2011), “Are Lodging Customers Ready to Go Green? An Examination of Attitudes, Demographics, And Eco-Friendly Intentions,” International Journal of Hospitality Management, 30 (2), 345-355.
26.
HayesA. (2017), Introduction to Mediation, Moderation, and Conditional Process Analysis: A Regression Based Approach. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
27.
HayesA. F.MontoyaA. K. (2017), “A Tutorial on Testing, Visualizing, and Probing an Interaction Involving a Multicategorical Variable in Linear Regression Analysis,” Communication Methods and Measures, 11 (1), 1-30.
28.
HerzR. S. (1997), “The Effects of Cue Distinctiveness on Odor-Based Context-Dependent Memory,” Memory and Cognition, 25 (3), 375-380.
29.
HoggM. A.TerryD. J. (2000), “Social Identity and Self-Categorization Processes in Organizational Contexts,” The Academy of Management Review, 25 (1), 121-140.
30.
HornseyM. J. (2008), “Social Identity Theory and Self-Categorization Theory: A Historical Review,” Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 2 (1), 204-222.
31.
HossainM. T. (2018), “How Cognitive Style Influences the Mental Accounting System: Role of Analytic Versus Holistic Thinking,” Journal of Consumer Research, 45 (3), 615-632.
32.
HwangY.SuN.MattilaA. (2020), “The Interplay Between Social Crowding and Power on Solo Diners’ Attitudes Toward Menus with Popularity and Scarcity Cues,” International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 32 (3), 1227-1246.
33.
JonesM. A.SuhJ. (2000), “Transaction-Specific Satisfaction and Overall Satisfaction: An Empirical Analysis,” Journal of Services Marketing, 14 (2), 147-159.
KätsyriJ.FörgerK.MäkäräinenM.TakalaT. (2015). A Review of Empirical Evidence on Different Uncanny Valley Hypotheses: Support for Perceptual Mismatch as One Road to the Valley of Eeriness. Frontiers in Psychology, 6, 1–16.
36.
KimH. J.ParkJ.KimM.-J.RyuK. (2013). Does Perceived Restaurant Food Healthiness Matter? Its Influence on Value, Satisfaction and Revisit Intentions In Restaurant Operations in South Korea. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 33, 397–405.
37.
KimJ.ChoeJ.HwangJ. (2020). Application of Consumer Innovativeness to the Context of Robotic Restaurants. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 33 (1), 224–242.
38.
KimS.KimJ. (2014), “The Influence of Hedonic Versus Utilitarian Consumption Situations on the Compromise Effect,” Marketing Letters, 27 (2), 387-401.
39.
KimN.RatnerR. (2018), “Signaling Fun: Anticipated Sharing Leads to Hedonic Choice,” in NA - Advances in Consumer Research Volume 46, GershoffA.KozinetsR.WhiteT., eds. Duluth, MN: Association for Consumer Research, 209-213.
40.
KimS. Y.SchmittB. H.ThalmannN. M. (2019), “Eliza in the Uncanny Valley: Anthropomorphizing Consumer Robots Increases Their Perceived Warmth but Decreases Liking,” Marketing Letters, 30 (1), 1-12.
41.
KovachevaA.LambertonC. (2018), “Whose Experience is it, Anyway? Psychological ownership and Enjoyment of Shared Experiences,” Psychological ownership and consumer behavior, 195-210.
42.
KrishnaA.ZhouR.ZhangS. (2008), “The Effect of Self-Construal on Spatial Judgments,” Journal of Consumer Research, 35 (2), 337-348.
43.
KrishnaA.LwinM. O.MorrinM. (2010), “Product Scent and Memory,” Journal of Consumer Research, 37 (1), 57-67.
44.
KuchenbrandtD.EysselF.BobingerS.NeufeldM. (2013). When a Robot’s Group Membership Matters: Anthropomorphization of Robots as a Function of Social Categorization. International Journal of Social Robot, 5 (3), 409–417.
45.
LearyM. R.HerbstK. C.McCraryF. (2003). Finding Pleasure in Solitary Activities: Desire for Aloneness or Disinterest in Social Contact?Personal and Individual Difference, 35 (1), 59–68.
46.
LeeJ. (2018), “Can a Rude Waiter Make Your Food Less Tasty? Social Class Differences in Thinking Style and Carryover in Consumer Judgments,” Journal of Consumer Psychology, 28 (3), 450-465.
47.
LeeJ.ChuW. (2021), “The Effect of Adding Novel Attributes to Hedonic vs. Utilitarian Base: Role of Holistic vs. Analytic Thinking Style,” Asia Marketing Journal, 23 (2), 1-29.
48.
LemonK. N.VerhoefP.C. (2016), “Understanding Customer Experience Throughout the Customer Journey,” Journal of Marketing, 80 (November), 69-96.
49.
LiX.SungY. (2021). Anthropomorphism Brings Us Closer: Mediating Role of Psychological Distance in User–AI Assistant Interactions, Computers in. Human Behavior, 118, 1–9.
50.
LiX.ChanK. W.KimS. (2019), “Service with Emoticons: How Customers Interpret Employee Use of Emoticons in Online Service Encounters,” Journal of Consumer Research, 45 (5), 973-987.
51.
LuL.ZhangP.ZhangT. (2021). Leveraging “Human-Likeness” of Robotic Service at Restaurant. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 94, 102823.
52.
MacDormanK.GreenR. D.HoC. C.KochC. T. (2009), “Too Real for Comfort? Uncanny Responses to Computer Generated Faces,” Computers in Human Behavior, 25 (3), 695-710.
53.
McLeayF.OsburgV. S.YoganathanV.PattersonA. (2020), “Replaced By a Robot: Service Implications in the Age of the Machine,” Journal of Service Research, 24 (1), 104-121.
54.
MelnykV.KleinK.VӧlcknerF. (2012), “The Double-Edged Sword of Foreign Brand Names for Companies from Emerging Countries,” Journal of Marketing, 76 (6), 21-37.
55.
MendeM.ScottM. L.van DoornJ.GrewalD.ShanksI. (2019), “Service Robots Rising: How Humanoid Robots Influence Service Experiences and Elicit Compensatory Consumer Responses,” Journal of Marketing Research, 56 (4), 535-556.
56.
MoraJ.GonzálezE. (2016). Do Companions Really Enhance Shopping? Assessing Social Lift over Forms of Shopper Value in Mexico. Journal of Retailing & Consumer Services, 28, 228–239.
57.
MoriM. (1970), “The Uncanny Valley,” Energy, 7 (4), 33-35.
58.
NisbettR. E. (2003), The Geography of Thought. New York: Free Press.
59.
NisbettR. E.PengR. K.ChoiI.NorenzayanA. (2001), “Culture and Systems of Thought: Holistic Versus Analytic Cognition,” Psychological Review, 108 (2), 291-310.
PonsignonF. (2023), “Making the Customer Experience Journey More Hedonic in a Traditionally Utilitarian Service Context: A Case Study,” Journal of Service Management, 34 (2), 294-315.
62.
PuntoniS.ReczekR. W.GieslerM.BottiS. (2020), “Consumers and Artificial Intelligence: An Experiential Perspective,” Journal of Marketing, 85 (1), 131-151.
63.
QiuH.LiM.ShuB.BaiB. (2019). Enhancing Hospitality Experience with Service Robots: Mediating of Rapport Building. Journal of Hospitality Marketing & Management, 29 (3), 247–268.
64.
SchankeS.BurtchG.RayG. (2021), “Estimating the Impact of “Humanizing” Customer Service Chatbots,” Information Systems Research, 32 (3), 736-751.
65.
SchepersJ.BelancheD.CasalóL. V.FlaviánC. (2022), “How Smart Should a Service Robot Be?” Journal of Service Research, 25 (4), 565-582.
66.
SchultzeU.BrooksJ. A. M. (2018), “An Interactional View of Social Presence: Making the Virtual Other “Real”,” Information Systems Journal, 29 (3), 707-737.
67.
SmithR. W.ReddenJ. P. (2020). The Role of Holistic Processing in Simultaneous Consumption. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 91, 104023.
68.
SprengR.MacKenzieS.OlshavskyR. (1996), “A Reexamination of the Determinants of Consumer Satisfaction,” Journal of Marketing, 60 (3), 15-32.
69.
SwannW. B.StephensonB.PittmanT. (1981). Curiosity and Control: On the Determinants of the Search for Social Knowledge. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 40(4), 635–642.
70.
TajfelH.BillicM. (1974), “Familiarity and Categorization in Intergroup Behavior,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 10 (2), 159-170.
71.
TurnerJ. C. (1987), “A Self-Categorization Theory,” in Rediscovering the Social Group: A Self-Categorization Theory, TurnerJ., et al. Wetherell, eds. New York: Blackwell, 42-67.
72.
WanL.WyerR. (2018). The Influence of Incidental Similarity on Observers’ Causal Attributions and Reactions to a Service Failure. Journal of Consumer Research, 45 (6), 1350–1368.
73.
WanL. C.ChanE.LuoX. (2021). Robots Come to Rescue: How to Reduce Perceived Risk of Infectious Disease in Covid19-Stricken Consumers?Annals of Tourism Research, 88, 1–4.
74.
ZhouX.HeL.YangQ.LaoJ.BaumeisterR. F. (2012), “Control Deprivation and Styles of Thinking,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 102 (3), 460-478.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
