As service robots become increasingly common in the marketplace, more research is necessary to better understand customer perceptions of and responses to those robots, especially in the context of service failures. This paper investigates service robots from the perspective of a customer as a third-party observer, specifically examining the effect of the customer’s empathy toward the robot on downstream customer responses and the moderating role of robot eeriness on that effect. Namely, we find that for a low eeriness robot (e.g., a robotic “arm”), customer responses generally become more desirable as empathy increases (i.e., complaint intentions and dissatisfaction are lower, and satisfaction is higher). Meanwhile, for a high eeriness robot (e.g., a humanoid robot), those same customer responses generally become less desirable as empathy increases. The findings have implications for scholarship on robotic automation in services marketing and for marketers seeking to implement service robots in customer-facing contexts.

中文翻译：

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第三方观察者同理心在观察机器人与顾客之间的互动时的影响：机器人怪异的调节作用


随着服务机器人在市场上变得越来越普遍，需要进行更多研究来更好地了解客户对这些机器人的看法和反应，特别是在服务失败的情况下。本文从作为第三方观察者的客户的角度研究服务机器人，特别研究了客户对机器人的同理心对下游客户反应的影响以及机器人的怪诞对此影响的调节作用。也就是说，我们发现，对于低怪异度的机器人（例如，机器人“手臂”），随着同理心的增加，客户的反应通常会变得更令人满意（即投诉意图和不满程度较低，满意度较高）。与此同时，对于高度怪异的机器人（例如，人形机器人），随着同理心的增加，这些相同的客户反应通常会变得不那么令人满意。这些发现对服务营销中机器人自动化的学术研究以及寻求在面向客户的环境中实施服务机器人的营销人员具有重要意义。