The impact of service robots on consumer response: Examining the roles of consumers' service expertise and technology expertise

Service robots as an example of service innovation has been of great interest to researchers as it could produce greater value-in-use for consumers during service encounters. However, the question of how and why service robots may affect consumers remains inadequately understood. Leveraging service-dominant logic and the heuristic-systematic model, Study 1 examines the impacts of service innovation types on brand equity and the moderating role of consumer expertise. Study 2 explores whether cognitive and emotional trust can bridge the underlying mechanism. We find that consumers with higher levels of service expertise rate firms with supportive innovation (vs. interactive innovation) higher in brand equity. On the other hand, service novices rate firms with both types of service innovation similarly. Emotional trust significantly mediates the effect mentioned above. In addition, consumers with high technology expertise will better recognize firms' service innovation efforts regardless of innovation type. Our findings extend the service innovation literature by demonstrating how individual-level factors such as consumer expertise help explain the relationships between various types of service robots and consumer response. Moreover, we reveal the importance for service brands to invest in different service robots based on target groups and build emotional trust with consumers.