Social Robots at the Customer Interface: An Experimental Study of Emotional Contagion Between Social Robots and Customers

客户界面的社交机器人：社交机器人与客户之间情感传染的实验研究

• 批准号: 388097473
• 负责人: Professorin Dr. Ruth Maria Stock-Homburg
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Fachgebiet Intelligente Autonome Systeme
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 财政年份: 2017
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2016-12-31 至 2021-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/388097473?language=en
• 关键词: Social; Robots; Customer; Interface; Experimental

Frontline employees are important representatives of a company in the eyes of the customers and therefore, contribute to the customer relationship in an important manner. Especially the ability to convey positive emotions to the customer is an important antecedent for a successful customer relationship. The mechanism of emotional transfer, so-called emotional contagion, has frequently been shown for the frontline employee-customer dyad in marketing research.Companies of various industries, such as retailing, hospitality and hotel services, started introducing social robots at the customer interface which interact with the customers by informing or serving them (e.g., at the check-in) and take over specific functions of the frontline employees. Against this background, the suggested research project poses the question whether social humanoid robots are able to convey positive emotions to the customers, too. While research in marketing and management remained silent about the boundary between social humanoid robots and customers, robotic research provides valuable insights that humans are able to recognize artificial robotic emotions in a laboratory setting. However, the findings are restricted, because these studies do not embed their manipulation in a real-life content, manipulate emotions mostly with pictures or short video sequences of robotic artifacts or robotic parts (e.g., head), and seldom use humanoid robots. To the principal knowledge of the investigator, emotional contagion from social humanoid robots to customers during the service encounter has not been examined.Therefore, the proposed research project investigates the contagion of positive emotions to the customer by social humanoid robots in a realistic customer interaction and compare this contagion with the contagion of positive emotions by human frontline employees. In the proposed research project, the theoretical conceptual basis is the emotional contagion concept, which is well established in the research of human-human-interactions. Furthermore, important parameters are explored which affect the strength of the emotional contagion. An experimental series with 240 participants using a between-subject design is scheduled, in which the contagion of positive emotions by a social humanoid robot and a frontline employee is examined in a hotel reception scenario. Emotional states of the participants, which represent the emotional contagion, are recorded by using different indicators, for example, self-ratings, external assessments by independent raters, and psycho-physiological data.

一线员工是客户眼中公司的重要代表，因此，以重要的方式为客户关系做出贡献。特别是能够传达积极的情绪给客户是一个成功的客户关系的重要前提.情绪转移的机制，即所谓的情绪传染，在营销研究中经常被用于一线客户-客户二人组。各个行业的公司，如零售，酒店和酒店服务，开始在客户界面引入社交机器人，通过通知或服务客户与客户互动（例如，办理登机手续时），并接管前线员工的特定职能。在这种背景下，建议的研究项目提出了一个问题，即社交类人机器人是否也能够向客户传达积极的情绪。虽然市场营销和管理方面的研究对社交类人机器人和客户之间的界限保持沉默，但机器人研究提供了有价值的见解，即人类能够在实验室环境中识别人工机器人情感。然而，这些发现是有限的，因为这些研究没有将他们的操纵嵌入到现实生活中的内容中，大多数情况下操纵情绪是用机器人工件或机器人部件的图片或短视频序列（例如，头），很少使用人形机器人。据调查人员的主要知识，从社会人形机器人的服务过程中，客户的情绪传染还没有检查。因此，拟议的研究项目调查的积极情绪的传染给客户的社会人形机器人在一个现实的客户互动，并比较这种传染与人类的积极情绪的传染前线员工。在拟议的研究项目中，理论概念基础是情绪传染的概念，这是在人与人之间的互动研究中建立起来的。此外，重要的参数进行了探讨，影响的情绪传染的强度。安排了一个实验系列，240名参与者使用受试者之间的设计，其中积极情绪的传染由一个社会人形机器人和一线员工在酒店接待的情况下进行检查。参与者的情绪状态代表情绪感染，通过使用不同的指标记录，例如，自我评级，独立评级者的外部评估，以及心理生理数据。