Marketing ZFP – Journal of Research and Management publishes four issues and 16-20 peer-reviewed articles per year. As subscriber you find fulltext access (PDF) and search function to the complete archive of all issues on elibrary.vahlen.de.
Please find detailed information on the current issues below:
ISSUE 2/2024
Young Customer Responses to Service Robots vs. Humans in Luxury Retail: A Multidisciplinary Approach
Gaia Rancati, Sabrina Bartolotta, Maurizio Mauri, Carsten D. Schultz, Alice Chirico, and Andrea Gaggioli
Luxury retailers are increasingly considering the introduction of service robots in their stores to enhance the value proposition and reshape the dynamics of both the service encounter and the customer experience. Although the literature recognizes the social presence of robots in service encounters, little empirical research compares humans and service robots related to luxury. In addition, further research is needed to investigate the emotional responses of young customers, like Generation Z, to a technology-infused servicescape and to explore the value of service robots as a social presence in luxury stores. A 2×2 mixed methods experimental design was developed to test the research hypotheses. The study was conducted in a laboratory with 116 participants randomly assigned to one of four experimental conditions: approaching vs. non-approaching behavior with a service robot or a human sales assistant. Self-reports and neurophysiological responses (skin conductance) were collected to measure their responses during the service encounter. The results show that a human or a service robot approaching the customer can lead to greater positive affective states and emotional responses than a human or a service robot not approaching. In addition, we found that young customers do not differentiate between human sales assistants and service robots. However, the customers’ level of immersion in the flow, understanding of the message, and happiness are higher with a human sales assistant. Finally, the absence of any interaction (non-approaching) during the service encounter leads to a negative reaction to a human sales assistant compared to a service robot, showing the importance of personalized and deep connections in luxury service. (->to the Executive Summary)
Understanding the Influence of Chatbot Human-Likeness on User Satisfaction in Erroneous Customer-Chatbot Interactions
Claudia Franke, Andrea Gröppel-Klein, and Natalie Matla
Increasingly, businesses rely on AI-driven tools like chatbots to facilitate customer communication. However, chatbot services might not always run flawlessly, yet there remains a gap in comprehensive research regarding consumer responses to such errors. In an experimental between-subjects design (N = 232), we manipulated the type of chatbot (robot-like vs. human-like) and the absence vs. presence of an error to investigate the interplay between visual chatbot human-likeness and error occurrence on user satisfaction and subsequent attitudinal and intentional variables. We discover that highly human-like chatbots increase satisfaction in error-free situations, but in error-prone scenarios, less-human-like designed chatbots might be the better choice. We further investigated the ascription of responsibility as a potential explanatory construct. From a managerial perspective, we advise that chatbots should incorporate human cues, while managing user expectations and acknowledging limitations. Future studies should consider different errors, contexts, and explanatory variables to deepen the understanding in this area of research. (->to the Executive Summary)
The Color of Togethernessmmary: A Theoretical Contribution to the Research on Color Effects
Heribert Gierl
The purpose of this paper is twofold. The first purpose is to contribute to knowledge about the effect of color on brand attitude in a specific case of advertising: the coloration of ads that promote togetherness or avoidance of loneliness. We found that reddish coloration is associated with the feeling of togetherness when compared to blueish coloration and natural color. The second purpose is more methodological. Since Cohn’s publication, 130 years of academic research on color effects have resulted in thausands of papers. Many authors in this field regret that the assumptions of most work are based on intuition and that researchers have presented a wealth of data based on colorimetic designs but have not provided generalizable findings. This problem arises from the fact that authors do not derive hypotheses from specific color theories or general psychological theories before conducting empirical work. For the case of colors in a togetherness/loneliness situation, we show that schema-congruity/incongruity theory, the hiercharcial-network model from schema theory, and regulatory-fit theory in combination with insights about the promotion or prevention orientation of colors enable the development of hypotheses. This article therefore also contributes to research into color effects by providing a perspective on how more theory-based research can be carried out. (->to the Executive Summary)