Insights & resources

Dr. Marc Becker
This dissertation explores how social agents transform service interactions across work, education, and leadership, showing their role in reshaping social expectations, roles, and legitimacy.

Dr. Mark Steins
This dissertation explores how service robots transform human interactions across hospitality, education, and healthcare, showing their role in reshaping service ecosystems and relationships.

Dr. Chelsea Phillips
This dissertation examines how service robots support frontline employees’ well-being in hospitality and aged care, reducing burnout and turnover while shaping human-robot work interactions.

Dr. Martina Čaić
This dissertation examines how social robots shape value networks, highlighting their roles in elderly care, service design, and value co-creation while stressing human-centered robot design.

This editorial in Journal of Service Research highlights the transformative role of robots in services. It shifts focus from technological novelty to human–robot interaction impacts, urging wise investment in service robots to shape a future that enhances human relationships, well-being, and societal value.

This research introduces robot teacher confidentiality, showing that students engage more when interactions are private, reducing anxiety and judgment concerns. Findings from six studies with 2,012 participants highlight how confidentiality boosts usage, especially for prevention-focused students, moderated by teacher benevolence.

This study explores the role of socially assistive robots in elderly care networks. It identifies six robot roles, enabler, intruder, ally, replacement, extended self, and deactivator, and links them to safeguarding, social contact, and cognitive support. Findings provide insights for designing robots that enhance value co-creation while minimizing co-destruction.

This study examines service robots in healthcare ecosystems, focusing on how their roles drive innovation. It introduces Service Robot-based Innovation, highlighting the collaboration between public and private stakeholders. A case study of Ivy demonstrates its integration into long-term care to enhance patient support.

Ann-Kathrin Meyer collaborated with Welbo, an MCR industry partner, to study how service robots’ voice types (robotic vs. humanlike) and language styles (emotive vs. non-emotive) affect customer acceptance. Using online experiments with 402 participants, she found that a humanlike voice is most effective when paired with a humanlike appearance.

 Nina Beau collaborated with MCR partner Welbo, conducting studies with 496 participants. Her thesis shows that a humanlike voice and informal language style align best with customers’ conversational expectations. She also finds that extraversion matters: introverts prefer robots with a humanlike voice type.

Minako van Overstraeten conducted 17 interviews on service robot acceptance in restaurants, considering both customers and employees. She highlights the need for a network-conscious approach, ensuring customer satisfaction and employee well-being. Customers need clear guidance on robot use, while employees should be reassured about job security and offered ways to differentiate from robots.

Gabija Norkeviciute collaborated with MCR partner Dadawan for her thesis, exploring service robot use in restaurants from an employee perspective. Through 10 in-depth interviews, she found that personality shapes employees’ views of robots, identifying two personas: the cooperator and the sceptic. Managers should adapt implementation strategies to address both.