Special Session: Rise of the Service Robots: Exploring Consumer Acceptance: An Abstract

Due to rapid developments of service robots, artificial intelligence and other new technologies (including big data, analytics, speech recognition, biometrics, mobile and cloud technologies, and geo-tagging) the service sector is facing a new wave of digitalization, including at the customer interface. Service robots, defined as system-based autonomous and adaptable interfaces that interact, communicate and deliver service to an organization’s customers (Wirtz et al. 2018), will bring opportunities for a wide range of service innovations that will dramatically impact the customer experience, service quality, and productivity all at the same time (e.g., many hotel, restaurant and hair stylist services are likely to be robot-delivered in the future), lower cost will make high-end services available to the broad consumer base (e.g., personal concierge services, image consulting, and high-end personal tuition), while potentially offering new services we have not thought of yet (Wirtz and Lovelock 2016).