ABSTRACT
Robotics significantly influence retail and consumer services. The COVID-19 pandemic further amplified the rise of service robots (SRs) through social distancing measures. While robots are embraced widely by retailers and service providers, consumers' interaction with SRs remains an intriguing avenue of research across contexts. By taking a relative social power perspective, we report on a series of pre- and intra-COVID-19 studies. Our findings suggest that Gen-Z consumers hold more positive attitudes towards SRs perceived as lower in power vis-à-vis the human user. The longitudinal nature of our study also reveals that while attitudes towards such low-power services turned more negative during the COVID-19 pandemic, attitudes towards SRs that are high in power vis-à-vis the human user remained stable. In practical terms, while Gen-Z consumers hold more positive attitudes towards low-power robots, such service providers also face the challenge of relatively changeable attitudes towards them, especially during crisis times. © 2022 The Author(s)
ABSTRACT
The COVID-19 pandemic has heightened the need for a better understanding of how service robots (SR) can aid practitioners as well as society. Individuals must not only embrace the robotic environment but also learn how to collaborate with humanoid service robots for collective value creation. Starting with the eminence of humanoid SR in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, we majorly focus on anthropomorphism and social exclusion. These two key concepts present both opportunities and challenges, being the most eminent areas of research in the quest for understanding society-robot relationships. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.