Managing Robotics in Retail

The vision of a technologized reality in which humans and robots coexist is not new. Robots have increasingly entered the world of everyday life. While the majority of humans have had only limited or no experience in interacting with robots, most of them have a certain perception of robots, which is often rooted in science-fiction movie and book depictions.

A closer look at the retail sector provides an insight into why retailers have begun to consider SRs as a technological innovation within their retail service systems. The retail sector is continuously gaining in importance, as measured by its revenue. The revenues of German retailers increased by around 35% across all retail segments between 2010–2020.

This chapter depicts the overall research design of this dissertation comprising five studies. First, the research questions addressed in each study are derived. Second, the design-oriented research approach is described.

This dissertation comprises eight parts. This part, Part I, explained the motivation for the research and highlighted the relevance of the topic. Furthermore, the overall research design was elucidated.

Having demonstrated the scientific relevance of the topic as well as the overall research design of this dissertation in Part I, Part II introduces the conceptual and theoretical background necessary for understanding the studies’ objectives. Where necessary, additional conceptual and theoretical background related to individual studies will be given in the respective parts.

Harkening back to the two challenges of retail organizations explained earlier, namely cutting costs, while improving service quality through leveraging frontstage service technologies, questioning which functions retail organizations fulfil and where service quality can be improved while costs are cut appears obvious. A closer look at retail functions will provide a brief overview of the typical functions of retail organizations.

Service systems are configurations of resources, including actors, technology, and shared information, interacting to co-create value. The smallest service system focuses on an individual interacting with others, and the largest service system covers the worldwide economy. Nations, cities, corporations, business departments, or government agencies, all are service systems.

The terms technology adoption and technology acceptance/resistance are often used interchangeably in literature. Borrowing from Maier et al. (2021), this dissertation understands technology acceptance/resistance as an overarching construct that addresses questions of adoption, usage, discontinuation, and resumption.

In this part, theoretical backgrounds and key concepts were outlined. Table 9.1 provides an overview of key concepts used to accentuate the viewpoint adopted throughout this dissertation.

After establishing the theoretical and conceptual foundation of this dissertation, Part III comprises Study 1, which consists of two sub-studies, and aims to contribute to the knowledge base by creating a solid understanding about the technological state of SRs and the state of knowledge informing about the antecedents to SR adoption within retail service systems.

Given SRs intuitive, analytical and mechanical intelligence, they can understand users’ input. In addition, SRs can even respond to users’ emotions with some degree of empathetic intelligence. Hence, they can become increasingly important within retail service systems to “represent the interaction counterpart of a customer“.

A well-directed use of SRs in retail service systems has appeared to be rather limited. To date, it has remained unclear to what extent SRs appear to be suited for fulfilling explicit tasks at the POS. To address this, this sub-study’s research question is:

To specifically address the research questions presented in Part I, obtaining the current state of scientific knowledge concerning the antecedents to stakeholders’ adoption of SRs in retail service systems appears fundamental. Lu and colleagues state “that current research on service robots is fragmented and […] that more research is needed“. Hence, a more systematic approach seems to be appropriate to obtain the state of knowledge, which will form the baseline for the forthcoming studies within this dissertation.

The goal of Study 1 was to create a solid knowledge base for the subsequent studies within this dissertation. Two sub-studies were conducted to understand the current state of technology as well as the state of scientific knowledge informing about key stakeholders’ antecedents to SR adoption in retail service systems. The theoretical and managerial contributions are briefly elucidated below.

Harkening back to the pragmatic design science research approach followed throughout this dissertation, a first contribution was made to the scientific knowledge base by Study 1. More precisely, descriptive knowledge about the phenomena at hand (what knowledge) was generated.

Part IV will take a closer look at understanding the customers’ perspective of SRs in retail service systems. Study 2 comprises four sub-studies (sub-study 2a–2d). Hitherto, service literature has evaluated distinct service robotic use cases, ranging from functional ones, such as navigation or distributing flyers, to hedonistic ones, such as entertaining customers.

Early as in 1994, Julien and Raymond (1994) stated that retail organizations need to master technologies in retail service systems to stay competitive in market. More recently, Grewal et al. (2017) noted that “retailers that can connect with their customers by offering value stand apart” (ibid, p. 1). To enable their customers to take up the retail organization’s value propositions and to transform it into value-in-use, the experience of a meaningful interaction is an important prerequisite for retail organizations.

Prior studies have already shown that SRs promote the experience while shopping. Thereby, the interaction with SRs requires extremely user-friendly and needs-oriented human-robot interaction, which considers both dialogue-oriented and non-verbal communication characteristics. Further, emotional and psychological factors play a significant role in the context of SR.

Sub-study 2a has empirically highlighted how customers react to several types of SR use cases in retail service systems during an experimental field study at a shopping center. The findings revealed i.a. that perceived fun as a short-term reward significantly determines the value of interaction with SRs, but in the long run, the immediate usefulness of SRs is most important for intention to use. As such, sub-study 2a only provides a first insight into understanding the customers’ perspective.

Resulting from the qualitative exploratory interview study, nine drivers of and seven barriers to customer adoption of SRs were derived and assigned to six higher-order categories. Yet, while the findings of sub-study 2b extend the conceptual understanding of the adoption of SRs in retail service systems by customers, they may benefit from a further validation of their relevance completeness.

Yet, while the findings of sub-study 2c validated the conceptual understanding of customers’ antecedents to SR adoption in retail service systems, Study 2 still lacks ways for scientific scholars and practitioners to quantitatively measure the uncovered drivers and barriers.

The goal of Study 2 was to understand what constitutes customers’ drivers of and barriers to SRs’ adoption in brick-and-mortar dominated retail service systems and how to quantitatively measure these drivers and barriers. To comprehensively address the research question, four sub-studies were conducted. The theoretical contributions of this study are described below.

Service research has scarcely focused on comprehensively exploring customers’ antecedents to the adoption of SRs, although the increasing presence of SRs in retail service systems merits further research. This study is among the first to explore this phenomenon in depth and to enhance the extant body of knowledge on technology adoption in retail service systems.

The previous part has empirically identified customers’ antecedents to the adoption of SRs. In this context, the findings of the previous study revealed i. a. that customers envision harmonious human-robot teams with transparent responsibilities and a clear hierarchical relationship between SR and FSE. Moreover, customers see FSEs responsible for assisting them in how to interact with the SRs.

In service research, the organization of frontlines has been controversially discussed over the past 50 years. Service literature has evolved from studies of FSEs focusing on employees carrying out frontline activities to studies of OFs, defined as “the point where the service is actually delivered to the customer” and focusing on “interactions and interfaces at the point of contact between an organization and its customers that promote, facilitate, or enable value creation and exchange”. Originated from a military connotation combining “front” with “line” in the middle ages, first definable terms of frontline were introduced in 1963 by Black and Ford and elaborated in 1965 by Smith.

A qualitative explorative approach was chosen to achieve profound insights and a more complete understanding of FSEs’ drivers of and barriers to the adoption of SRs in retail service systems. A qualitative approach is suitable for obtaining implicit knowledge of FSEs, and an explorative approach “can be particularly useful in exploring phenomena where little understanding exists”.

Resulting from the qualitative exploratory interview study, one driver of and 18 barriers to FSE adoption of SRs were derived and assigned to six higher-order categories. Yet, while the findings of sub-study 3a extend the conceptual understanding of the adoption of SRs in retail service systems by FSEs, they do not yet provide ways for scientific scholars and practitioners to quantitatively measure the uncovered aspects.

FSEs may reject SRs when they enter an otherwise consistent working environment, resulting in a reconfiguration of the retail service system. As mentioned before, extant technology acceptance and resistance theories are not able to explain this phenomenon satisfactorily and validly from a FSEs’ perspective. Thus, a qualitative explorative approach was adopted and complemented by a five-step scale development process.

Research on SRs has primarily concentrated on programming issues, such as emotion recognition or behavior patterns, or on customer’s attitude towards SRs. Service robotic research hardly focused on FSEs’ perceptions of SRs within a retail service system, although more research is required. The study is among the first to perform an in-depth exploration of aspects related to FSEs’ SR adoption.

The previous part has empirically explored the drivers of and barriers to the adoption of SRs by FSEs. This part will take a closer look at the retail managers’ perspective to complement the understanding of the three key stakeholders within retail service systems.

Several scholars have discussed the transformation of retail service systems originating from the traditional high-touch/low-tech retail service system to a high-tech/high-touch one where both human FSEs and frontstage service technologies play to their strength to provide more sophisticated value propositions to customers.

To investigate retail managers’ perceptions of SRs in retail service system, an inductive research study drawing on the Gioia methodology is conducted. The study is primarily rooted in service, robotic, retail, and technology adoption literature. While the managerial angle towards SRs in retail service systems has rarely been addressed in service research, any research study that empirically investigated antecedents and responses to retail managers’ adoption of SRs in retail service systems is unknown.

The thematic analysis reveals nine second-order antecedents that spilt up into four drivers of and five barriers to retail manager adoption of SRs. Drivers are marked with a plus icon and barriers with a minus icon. Moreover, four factors of retail managers’ responses to SRs in retail service systems were detected and aggregated into two dimensions.

As with most disruptive forces, the emergence of SRs in retail service systems presents both opportunities and challenges for brick-and-mortar retailers. Even though retail managers’ responsibilities have increased in recent years due to ever-changing market demands, the retail managers’ perspective of SRs in retail service systems has rarely been touched upon in the academic literature before.

This study is among the first to not only conceptualize but also empirically explore the retail managers’ perspective on SRs in retail service systems. On the theoretical side, the extant body of knowledge in service, robotic, and retailing literature is enhanced.

Part VI complemented the picture of the three key stakeholders’ antecedents to SR adoption. SRs impact all key stakeholders of the retail service system, all of which expect SRs to act in accord with socially defined roles within the retail service system. To date, understanding how to manage SRs in retail service systems has attracted scant consideration.

This chapter synthesizes key insights of extant literature and new insights gained within this dissertation concerning customers’, FSEs’ and retail managers’ antecedents to SR adoption. For this, two viewpoints are adopted. First, the higher-order antecedents of customers, FSEs and retail managers are mapped.

A DSR process was followed to develop the artifact MARIE since it encompasses technology and organizational contexts. Stemming from the field of information systems, DSR has recently established itself as a valuable method for service scholars fostering iterative interchange between service design science and social science. Existing scholarly findings of DSR projects have multiply demonstrated “to create significant economic and societal impact”.

Drawing from the synthesized key insights in Chapter 37, this chapter presents four design principles followed throughout the design of the artifact MARIE. Then, the shortcomings of existent technology adoption process models to be applied to managing SRs in retail service systems will be highlighted.

The initial design of the artifact MARIE was constantly guided by the four design principles to ensure a design geared to stakeholders' needs. The artifact MARIE is presented on a global and a detailed level.

As proposed by Gregor and Hevner (2013), the artifact MARIE was evaluated for utility, quality, and efficacy. Following Venable et al. (2016), the two-phase evaluation strategy human risk and effectiveness was pursued to collect continuous feedback for the artifact. As illustrated in Figure 41.1, it commenced with an artificial-formative evaluation of the initial version of the artifact MARIE and continued with a more naturalistic-formative evaluation of it.

The results of the first artificial-formative evaluation informed the iterative redesign of the artifact and served as indication to prepare and purposefully conduct the subsequent second more naturalistic-formative evaluation which followed an illustrative scenario and involved three interdisciplinary workshops. The evaluation results of the more naturalistic-formative evaluation showed that the artifact MARIE is perceived as complete and understandable at both global and detailed level. This study contributes to the scientific knowledge base in several ways.

Study 5 followed a DSR approach. It contributes knowledge of both descriptive and prescriptive type to the scientific knowledge base. Service robotic research has hardly focused on addressing the challenges inherent in managing SRs within retail service systems, although their increasing presence requires deeper research.

Part VIII concludes this dissertation. The overall goal of this dissertation is to explore how SRs can be managed in brick-and-mortar dominated retail service systems to allow for key stakeholders’ adoption and to foster value co-creation. To achieve this, five studies were conducted to contribute to the overall goal.

This chapter briefly summarizes the major takeaways from each part of this dissertation. It highlights how each part has contributed to understanding the adoption of SRs in retail service systems and relates the pieces of knowledge gained from each study to each other. Starting from a highly fragmented scientific knowledge base, which merely addressed individual aspects of the research subject, such as findings of distinct SR use cases, a holistic picture of the three key stakeholders’ antecedents to SR adoption has become apparent.

While the distinct managerial and theoretical contributions of the individual Studies 1–5 have already been explicitly discussed in the respective parts, this chapter aims to discuss additional implicit implications for academia that arise on a more global level from the synthesized findings of this dissertation. Subsequently, the limitations of the Studies 1–5 are elucidated and promising paths for future research are derived.

This dissertation is entitled Managing Robotics in Retail: A Service Systems Perspective. It explains how SRs can be managed in brick-and-mortar dominated retail service systems to allow for key stakeholders' adoption and to foster value co-creation. Five studies were conducted to elaborate on this hitherto unexplored and relevant topic.