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

一线员工是公司在客户心目中的重要代表，对客户关系有着重要的贡献。尤其是向客户传达积极情绪的能力是建立成功的客户关系的重要前提。情绪传递的机制，即所谓的情绪传染，在市场研究中经常出现在一线员工-客户二元组中。零售、酒店和酒店服务等不同行业的公司开始在客户界面引入社交机器人，它们通过告知或服务客户(例如，在入住时)与客户互动，并接管一线员工的特定职能。在此背景下，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造机器人的情感。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真实生活的内容中，主要通过机器人人工制品或机器人部件(例如头部)的图片或短视频序列来操纵情感，并且很少使用类人机器人。根据调查者的主要知识，在服务接触过程中，社交类人机器人对顾客的情绪传染尚未被考察，因此，本研究项目调查了社交类人机器人在现实的客户互动中对顾客的积极情绪传染，并将这种传染与人类一线员工的积极情绪传染进行了比较。在所提出的研究项目中，理论概念基础是情感传染概念，这一概念在人与人之间的互动研究中得到了很好的确立。此外，还探讨了影响情绪传染强度的重要参数。一项有240名参与者的实验系列计划采用受试者之间的设计，在酒店接待场景中，研究社交类人机器人和一线员工对积极情绪的传染。参与者的情绪状态代表情绪传染，通过使用不同的指标来记录，例如自我评分、独立评分者的外部评估和心理生理数据。

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.