The Influence Of Perceived Attributes Of Service Robot On Customer Experience Of Hospitality

As a product of artificial intelligence and automation technology,service robots are increasingly entering the front line of hospitality services.A large number of hotels and catering firms regard intelligent technology as an opportunity to gain competitive advantage,and service robots have therefore become necessary equipment for many hospitality firms.Nevertheless,the services provision by hospitality firms is traditionally viewed as inviting and hospitable by customers who pursue high level of service quality.This kind of warm service is usually offered by the front-line human staff's care for customers,while the role of service robots in hospitality services remains to be examined.When intelligent technologies such as robots begin to infuse in the service frontline and interact directly with customers,what will it cause towards the customer experience? How to effectively manage the cooperation of employees and service robots so as to create a better service experience for customers? These are the practical issues that the industry is eager to address.In the past,hospitality service research focused on the interaction between employees and customers,but the emergence of robots has transformed this interaction into a three-way interaction among employees,customers and robots.This raises a new proposition for the research of hospitality service management: How will the attributes of the service robot affect this three-way interaction and further affect the hospitality experience of customers?This research explains this phenomenon from the perspective of technology compensation.The technology compensation theory,which is transferred from psychologist Adler's compensation theory,means that when some elements of the service system are weakened,the strengthening of technical capabilities and the improvement of its attributes are used to make up for defects and maintain or even improve service results.The background of technology compensation is that the application of technology objectively partially replaces manpower,thereby bringing potential losses to warm-hearted services;while the basis of compensation is the technology-human interaction caused by the non-neutrality of technology.The technology compensation mechanism in the service system is divided into two aspects.One is that the technology enables other elements(employees and customers)in the service system to compensate for the service results.The second is that the technology itself directly acts on the service results as part of the compensation for service system.Focusing on the core issue of how hospitality robots affect the hospitality experience of customers,the author conducted the research in the logical order of "proposing questions-qualitative exploration-constructing theoretical models-empirical testing-discussing conclusions".First,based on the relevant literature,the author conducted in-depth interviews with front-line employees and customers based on research questions,and found that the key intermediary variables "customer-robot rapport" and "employer-customer rapport" that play a role in the effect of service robots on customer hospitality experience.Based on existing literature research,technology compensation theory,and interview results,a relationship model explicating the influence of service robot perception attributes on customer hospitality experience is constructed;third,the scale of perceived service robot attributes is obtained,following a strict scale development process,while the other constructs in research model were measured by the mature scales extracted from previous literature.Fourth,the questionnaire survey method is used to collect quantitative data to test the conceptual model.Finally,based on the data analysis,the research conclusions are discussed.In order to obtain reliable data and research conclusions,the author used qualitative and quantitative methods including literature review,field research,in-depth interviews,web text analysis,expert panel,and questionnaire surveys.Finally,with strict data collection quality control measures,a total of 420 valid questionnaires were collected during the main survey.The research findings obtained in this study are reported as follows:First,the concept of perceived service robot attributes can be interpreted by three dimensions.Through a rigorous scale development process,the structure of the concept of perception attributes of service robots consists of three dimensions as "instrument","sociality" and “animacy ",and 15 measurement items.The " instrument " dimension covers the functional characteristics of service robots,that is,the superiority and intelligence of mechanical services and information services over employee services.The " sociality " dimension describes the characteristics of service robots as quasi-social entities.The variables in this dimension reflect the affinity characteristics of service robots that are similar to service employees.The “animacy" dimension shows the lifelike characteristics exhibited by service robots.Second,the perceived attributes of the service robot generally compensate the customer's hospitality experience,but the intensity and paths of the influence of the three service robot attributes on the hospitality experience may vary.Specifically,there are three ways to compensate the customer's hospitality experience with the attributes of the service robots.The three paths are:(1)Customers' perceived attributes of service robots positively affect their hospitality experience.The three factors of perceived attributes were all found positively related to hospitality experience.(2)The sociality of service robots compensates the hospitality experience through the mediation of employee-customer rapport building.(3)The animacy and sociality characteristics of service robots compensated customers' hospitality experience through the mediating role of customer-robot rapport relationship.Third,generation gap and customer motivation act as a moderating role in the impact of some attributes of service robots on customer hospitality experience.Compared with the digital immigrant customers group,the impact of the animacy and instrument of service robots on the customer-robot rapport relationship is more significant among the digital indigenous customers group.In the relationship between animacy of service robots and hospitality experience,the moderating effect of generation gap is also supported(where digital indigenous customer group is stronger than digital immigrants).In addition,customer motivation was confirmed as a moderator in the relationship between rapport and customers' hospitality experience.Compared with the group of customers with utilitarian motivation,the constructs such as employee-customer rapport and customer-robot rapport have a more significant impact on the hospitality experience for the group of customers with hedonic motivation.The theoretical contributions of this research are reflected in the following aspects.First,this study provides new knowledge about the interaction between people and technology in service scenarios.Most of the previous research on the interaction relationships in services is based on social interaction theory,focusing on the interpersonal interaction between employees and customers.The author has sorted out the related theories of technology philosophy,modified the instrumentalism concept of technology in service settings,and proposed that there was a three-way interaction among technology,employees and customers.Technology not only empowers employees and customers,but also improves employees' service capabilities and customer experiences.Meanwhile,the non-neutrality of technology itself enables the formation of the quasi-social relationships between service robots and employees or customers.This is the area that has not been paid much attention to in the past.Secondly,this study developed the scale of the perceived attributes of service robots in the hospitality industry for the first time.Based on the previous research,this measurement scale also took the specialty of hospitality industry and service settings into consideration.The scale has been confirmed with a high level of reliability and validity.This instrument can be adopted to the future research regarding the service robots and their influences.Third,this research summarized the technical compensation theory of the service system by migrating the compensation theory of psychology,and referring to the technical philosophy perspective,the theory of human-machine interaction and service experience theory,and tested the theory using the service robot as an example.The theoretical framework reveals the mechanism by which the various attributes of technology affect the hospitality experience and the boundary conditions under which the theory is established.The results of this research enrich the theory of hospitality experience: Although previous studies have basically reached consensus on the structure of hospitality experience,there is a lack of empirical research on the antecedents of hospitality experience.This study indicates that robots,as technical elements,can have a positive compensation effect on the hospitality experience.This conclusion can be applied not only to service robots,but also to other technologies with instrument,sociality,or animacy.The findings and conclusions of this study carry practical management implications for the hospitality industry and other service industries that require faceto-face contact with customers.First,when applying the robotic technologies in service,service firms can enhance the customers' hospitality experience by increasing the perceived attributes of the robot.To make robot adoption decisions,practical managers need to focus on evaluating and strengthening the three-dimensional attributes of robots considering their service goals and scenarios.In order to balance of the three dimensions of the robot attributes,managers can improve animacy and sociality following the natural clues of sociality while ensuring the whole function is not affected.Second,arrange the division and cooperation of human staff and service robots properly to optimize service processes.The research confirmed the role of service robots in assisting employee in better serving customers.Thus,hospitality managers should pay attention to division of labor and coordination of work between employees and robots,and seamlessly integrate robots into customer service teams.The research findings suggest that under the current technical conditions,service employees cannot be completely replaced.For the abilities of front-line employees,managers are suggested to reduce the requirements for simple and repeatable skills,and focus more on employees' capabilities in terms of communication,empathy,and flexibility.They can make full use of robotic technologies to release employees' physically labor.Moreover,appropriate authorization should be given to front-line employees and this will enable them to quickly respond to customers and provide personalized services.Third,hospitality managers should pay attention to customer group differences and provide personalized services.The present study suggests that customers with hedonistic motivation are more likely to experience a high level of hospitality experience from employee-customer rapport and customer-robot rapport,compared with those with utilization motivation.Based on this conclusion,for customers who are motivated by pleasure,hotels and restaurants can strengthen customer rapport and build behaviors to enhance the level of customer hospitality experience.In addition,the study also found that the new generation of customers growing up in the digital environment is more sensitive to the attributes of service robots than digital immigration customers;and the enhancement of the animacy and instrument attributes of robots is more likely to improve the hospitality experience among the young customers than digital immigrants.Therefore,targeting the market of youngsters(digital indigenous customers),hospitality companies can create opportunities to strengthen the interaction between customers and robots,so as to win the future.